Discussion to a suggestion... how to make the rounds more competitive?

[Dax]

Count me in for whatever. I like this idea, though the team captains would be a point of extreme interest for me.

 

[Alcibiades]

I see no reason not to try this. It might not work out, but if it did it could set a pattern for far more entertaining rounds. Thumbs up from me.

 

[LAFiN]

The main problem I see with this is a stagnation of the same 55 or so players fighting out for the top spot. There'd hardly be any chance for new people to make a name for themselves. There are certainly enough "active" people for there to be four alliances fighting for the top. The difference between the rank 1/2 alliances and ranks 5/6 is the number of active people in each of these alliances. I can say, honestly, that the 7th rank alliance has had 2/3 members over 8 hours active, attacking/defending and playing, but it's the rest of the alliance that drags them down.

Overall a good concept, but there needs to be some sort of way to get new blood into these top groups instead of massaging the same 60 people's egos round in and round out.

 

[Iamsmart]

I don't think its a suggestion for every round, just for one round

 

[Twigley]

I would be to worried about spies if i was the leader. I normally recruit people i know and trust not to to back stab me! But if i recruited say people who normally want to play with twigley, how do you know, the information wouldn't be passed over?

In (I think) every alliance i have led bar the latest i had Elderveld in it.
The round that i decided to lead late, he was taken and he stayed true to his alliance and wasn't allowed to even trade ID's with me.

Unfortunately i don't think this would work as some people say they are FTW, then are not. I also don't like people knowing who is in my alliance and it goes against a principle i have kept for a while which is picking up "unknown" players from round to round and letting them play FTW.

I would also hate to be a player who isn't on that list and you can't really do it by activity as i've played a few rounds where i barely refresh but keep at the top and end up organising everything in the alliance.


What i'd like to see is the people who criticise leaders the most, make an alliance of their own and see if they can lead it to the top.

 

[Dimitar]

This seems like kind of a "draft" like the americans do in their sports and it usually helps for all teams to be competitive, so I like this suggestion because it works in real life :O

Although..

Yes they would have their prefered players, however I would choose to play with ~5 people I consider to be the best in the game, I expect other leaders would wish to choose them players if given the option.

There's nothing stoping you from kicking 3 or 4 members that you didn't really want to have and making those ~5 people you consider to be the best shipjump.

So maybe alliances should be locked in the start of the round as they are at the end of it.

Or maybe high-profile players could be "locked" in their alliance, preventing them from shipjumping

 

[alwaysnumb]

make allies smaller say 10 max players per allie

 

[Twigley]

There's nothing i would love to see more than alliance size reduced significantly.

The amount of politics and discussions on the forums that would be generated from it (currently from almost none) and the competition for places would outweigh the "coverage problems" people talk about.

 

[Dark_Angel]

There's nothing i would love to see more than alliance size reduced significantly.

qft

-

As for actual suggestion - I think its a good idea and would go a long way in helping to avoid the same active/reliable/contactable people secure an early win time and time again.

 

[Davs]

I won't be taking part personally, but I want to see how this would go. Sounds like a really good idea to me.

One of the issues that seems to come up is "what if one of your members is friends with the leader of a rival alliance?"

I'm pretty sure that most (if not all) of the candidates for team captains are friends with each other and have served in several alliances together - so I don't see how this is much of an issue... As a great, great man once said "you gotta have faith"

 

[Ahead]

There's nothing i would love to see more than alliance size reduced significantly.

The amount of politics and discussions on the forums that would be generated from it (currently from almost none) and the competition for places would outweigh the "coverage problems" people talk about.

Agreed. It's a war game, I don't think anybody should be impossible to kill due to an alliance's 24/7 coverage and contactability. Having 10 player alliances would allow even the top allies to have coverage problems, making more battles and more kills.

Also, I like the idea of 5 minute ticks for opening the game up - it does make a huge difference as there's a lot more opportunity to get past defence, resist, and kill rank 1, and this will make more people willing to organise resistances imo.

Basically the two above ideas would make it so that everybody in the game dies more, and there are more battles, which is how I think it should be.

 

[Davs]

Smaller alliances I can agree with. 5 minute ticks I have to disagree with. Personally, I prefer 5 min ticks as I play solo and get bored easily

But active alliance players will get a bit too stressed by 5 min ticks - it's happened before, people complained. Although a lot of them enjoyed it at the time, afterwards there were a lot of statements along the lines of "that was far too hectic".

 

[Davs]

Back to the initial suggestion - shipjumping could become an issue. I don't think I really need to explain why.

 

[Ahead]

Nobody's forcing them to put that much effort in and get that stressed If they find it too hectic, then they can easily stop putting so much effort in. I didn't get that stressed in the 5 minute tick round.. personally I enjoyed it more than normal rounds.



P.S. Jeez Silence stop being so arrogant and claiming you're so good. I knew you'd use this whole thread as an ego boost you arrogant, self-centred homo! You're not the best leader and you're not even the second best leader, and you definitely don't try as hard as the best leader so in this case, you don't even get the DA award so suck on that you rubbish leader-noob!

 

[tobapopalos]

I personally don't agree with the idea of 10 man alliances. If it ever gets changed to 10 man alliances, that is the day I give up alliance play permanently.

On the subject of ending up with someone who is friends with the leader of the rival alliance and spies - You still have some control over who you pick. If you think someone might spy on your alliance, then pick someone else instead. Each leader is going to pick people they like first and foremost, so the problem of ending up with people who might spy should sort itself out.

But I can see shipjumping messing things up a bit. I can easily imagine an alliance kicking like 5 of the people they've been stuck with who they don't like / don't rate, and then replacing them with 5 friends who didn't put their names into the draw.

 

[Martin]

Lock alliances for the first ~3 weeks?

 

[Iamsmart]

What if someone isn't as active as promised? What if someone goes on vacation? What if someone cheats and is deleted? What if there is a spy?

Locking the alliances isn't fair.

 

[Signer]

The first idea proposed is a nice thought, but realistically I couldn't see it working.

However I do fully agree with 10 man alliances - for many reasons.

- Alliances of 20 super-active players are TOO difficult to breakdown nowadays, which has been shown these last 2 rounds. Reducing this to 10 may mean we still get these super-active alliances, but 10 player alliances are, in my opinion, easier to breakdown.

- Continuing from the first point, nowadays we struggle to get even 2 alliances capable of going for the win. 10 man alliances would increase competition, help with alliances working together to take down an alliance. I think we would get a guaranteed 3-4 allies going for the win. 20 man alliances worked in the past because we had more, more active players. We don't nowadays.

People have been saying that 10 man alliances would mean people would have to be more active to compensate for lack of coverage during the day. The change may make people play more actively, but I believe the majority of players wouldn't change.

And anyway, is the lack of coverage a bad thing? I don't believe it is. I hate the degree of invulnerability around the top alliances nowadays, and maybe this change would teach people to once again think 'Hey, it is actually alright to die'. And who knows, maybe we can bring some fun back in to this game, something that has been severely lacking in recent times.

 

[Ahead]

The first idea proposed is a nice thought, but realistically I couldn't see it working.

However I do fully agree with 10 man alliances - for many reasons.

- Alliances of 20 super-active players are TOO difficult to breakdown nowadays, which has been shown these last 2 rounds. Reducing this to 10 may mean we still get these super-active alliances, but 10 player alliances are, in my opinion, easier to breakdown.

- Continuing from the first point, nowadays we struggle to get even 2 alliances capable of going for the win. 10 man alliances would increase competition, help with alliances working together to take down an alliance. I think we would get a guaranteed 3-4 allies going for the win. 20 man alliances worked in the past because we had more, more active players. We don't nowadays.

People have been saying that 10 man alliances would mean people would have to be more active to compensate for lack of coverage during the day. The change may make people play more actively, but I believe the majority of players wouldn't change.

And anyway, is the lack of coverage a bad thing? I don't believe it is. I hate the degree of invulnerability around the top alliances nowadays, and maybe this change would teach people to once again think 'Hey, it is actually alright to die'. And who knows, maybe we can bring some fun back in to this game, something that has been severely lacking in recent times.

+1. You caught the essence of my post perfectly. And you worded it better than me.. that is why I love you <3 1:1

 

[Silence]

P.S. Jeez Silence stop being so arrogant and claiming you're so good. I knew you'd use this whole thread as an ego boost you arrogant, self-centred homo! You're not the best leader and you're not even the second best leader, and you definitely don't try as hard as the best leader so in this case, you don't even get the DA award so suck on that you rubbish leader-noob!

WELL YEAH WHATEVER. Ill arrogant your mother, she claims that IM SO GUUURRRDDDD.

You are just sooooooooo jealous you weren't part of my super amazing alliance this round. Look how well it is doing. RANK TWO! Im so good I lead without being IN THE ALLIANCE :O

So yeah, you fail so hard at flaming that IoF is better than you lols. Secondly you fail so hard that you weren't ever part of my super cool alliance. And FINALLY you fail to get the darkangel award because, YOU SIR, are just not as good as IoF at flaming and therefore I award YOU the darkangel award for trying as hard as IoF (INFACT EVEN HARDER) but just not as good.

So yeah, Ill self-centre you, you homo.

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Stupid war with Ahead aside; I agree with Signer.

The top groups are *too* contactable and as a result of which too difficult to topple. I would much prefer to see a round where it is chaos for the full round.

I strongly feel that an alliance of 10 would resolve this because the dedication would be too much for an alliance of 10 to retain a significantly dominant position for the entire round.