rantamplan
Sergeant Major
Reged: 03/26/03
Posts: 251
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Changes needed in neveron
#151731 - 08/19/08 03:09 AM (62.43.195.149)
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(Disclaimer: this is my vision of nev-problems and nev-solutions, feel free to discuss but as I allways ask in chat, BE POLITE, if you want to be rude against someone, or someone opinions, please open a new thread).
Nowdays Neveron has 2 problems:
- People cant actually “play” it (understanding it as doing what they want as long as its within rules limits, the point here is that 99% of actions you make on your empires is forced by game rules)
- Nev community is full of hate and bad behaviour.
Those 2 points must be solved for making neveron a viable game again, and both problems must be solved changing game rules, lets analyse the problems for finding solutions.
1st, Playing nev:
(don’t want to extend too much my post so ill write only the main idea if you want we can discuss it laters)
Nowdays most actions on neveron are forced, for example, you are forced to war or fake raiding for keeping a decent army, you are forced to have some infra to accommodate your army, you are forced to be in a faction or be killed… we can keep with the list but I think its not needed.
The point is that viable strategies (although not unique) are very very limited, that makes you to lose most your time and resources trying to adjust your empire to what is needed for survival instead of investing that time in something you really want to enjoy.
Solution:
Neveron must in some way adjust to players desires, and not the opposite.
We can discuss how to do that in here, but far from helping to LW we must think in ways to open strategical possibilities.
Some changes I would propose are:
- Reduce cost of mechs, so every level can access a few decent mechs withouth having to wait for months of making money, if reducing overall costs is too hard for nev economy, I would suggest to allow empires to buy as many mechs as their current level for reduced cost.
(Example: a lvl 4 empire can buy mechs at 1/10th as long as he has 3 or less mechs (for a total of 4 cheap mechs) it doesn’t mather if the mechs are stabled or not, up to 4 are cheap, of course if one of those get destroyed he can buy another one for 1/10th)
- Make more lvl classes, make them more radical and harder to remove, that way youll make more strategies viable, nowdays its hard to build a big city even for a lvl 11 empire, make it so some people that want to build can do so even at the cost of having less SP or something.
- Make wars affordable (reduce drop cost to 0, make it so if you pay 100 Millions you can drop as many times as you want on a single day, or make drop cost dependant of enemy number of zones (you have 1K zones, then drop costs 1/1000.
- Others you may think of, keeping in mind main target, which is to adjust neveron to players desires and not the opposite.
2nd, Neveron community:
(don’t want to extend too much my post so ill writte only the main idea if you want we can discuss it laters)
I have been saying it for years to my personal friends, neveron problem is that you can lose everything in a single night, and everything means you can lose 5 years of work while blinking.
Its hard not to hate someone when losing all that work even if the war was fair… nothing to say if some bug was used, under this rules conditions neveron community status is what it had to be, no more, no less.
Solution:
One of those two things must happen to solve neveron community issues:
1st reduce risk of empires destruction until destruction rate is close to rebuild rate.
2nd increase rebuilding speed until rebuild rate is close to destruction rate.
For 2nd option I would suggest to reduce costs of everything to 1/10th,1/5th, 1/2th (Depending on surrender rate) after losing a war as long as certain war ratting was archived by any LWer (so people don’t start killing towers for getting the bonus of cheap costs).
Don’t like this solution though, although its the only one I could think about.
For 1st option I think I have a cool idea though:
Make it so empires can only be dowed if they raided the dowing empire first, raiding is always allowed.
With that rule we can make sure no empire can be destroyed withouth some action from the part of the owner, you can still be attacked and you can get some losses but losses are limited to what you have in your city, if you raid back the offender then you are opening yourself for a DOW but in the event the empire get destroyed it required some intervention from the owner.
This will actually BOST arranged wars
Some other ideas for improving game experience:
Make offensives possible:
- first of all: makes it so ANYONE can claim any zone not owned by empire that has SOI over it. (żnot in your SOI? anyone can claim it). That will bost LW, combine with only raids allowed and youll make a huge improvement.
- Make it that BV inside a zone is added to the pop of that city for calquing the biggest cityes of the empire, 0 pop+10000 BV = 10000 pop in terms of seeing biggest cityes of the empire.
- Make arranged Wars: Arranged wars will end under certain conditions (defined and accepted by both empires) which can be traditional ones (lose of certain % or…)
Capture the flag (capture certain city), kill the general (destroy certain unit, unit will be visible in top cityes), limited land (only war in certain region), contested resource (war for certain mine), limited BV (each players selects an amount of units which adds the desired BV)…
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Dee
Sergeant Major
Reged: 02/15/06
Posts: 216
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: rantamplan]
#151757 - 08/23/08 12:38 PM (216.118.134.171)
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Some thoughts of mine on the subject...
Mechs should be cheaper to produce, so we can see more player produced mechs being up on the market for cheap. As an experiment I made a newbie empire and did nothing but save up money for mechs. It took a little less than 2 weeks to have the money to afford a 30 million Hornet produced by Alliance Command (I believe). That was from roughly 5 mil or so that I started with.
Less than two weeks per mech is not really bad, but it's only a hornet and they are limited in capabilities. But it is a mech and infinitely more entertaining to play with than newbie jeeps.
Also make some incentive for producing and selling mechs. No idea what it could be, but something,. That way it could get empires actually pumping out mechs for the masses instead of sitting on their products and selling only to friends when needed.
I remember when the price of building was increased (dramatically) years back. I think that was a very bad idea. While it did slow down growth (since it requires tons of money to build and time) and thus kept empires from being able to keep growing at the rate they were, it also made it much easier to destroy an empire. Unless you have a lot of money on hand or can get some serious funding building/rebuilding the infra in an empire is agonizingly slow and difficult. Even more so when you consider that weakened targets are better targets, typically speaking.
Community problems, though, are harder to heal. Like you said, it's hard to not strongly dislike someone for killing your stuff, especially if you paid real money for it or if they did it in a way you think wasn't fair. If someone has a feasible idea on how to fix that, I would be glad to hear it. I certainly think less wholesale destruction would ease tensions.
Anyway, not much I can contribute to this conversation, but this is what i'm thinkin' right now 
~Dee
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...my bed was on fire once. I blame the gnomes.
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MatthewAce
Captain
Reged: 06/25/04
Posts: 704
Loc: Neveron
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: Dee]
#151764 - 08/25/08 07:11 PM (218.186.13.3)
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Pretty much everything that dee said hits the spot.
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Urbies are good.
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PrimusHoppy
Newbie
Reged: 07/27/08
Posts: 24
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: MatthewAce]
#151767 - 08/27/08 02:22 PM (68.40.121.240)
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How about instead of a lance of newbie jeeps all empires starting on Noob island get a random market light mech? Have these mechs be unsalvagable so that people wont abuse it and just get a ton of mechs from the system, but at the same time newbs will have a lot more fun, as was pointed out, mechs are way more fun then newbie jeeps. Second, Let us cancel wars again. That way we can use diplomacy again, instead of fight until one side dies or stay stuck in war for a month. Just my two cents.
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DuncanMons
Newbie
Reged: 08/28/08
Posts: 15
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: PrimusHoppy]
#151771 - 08/28/08 08:55 AM (205.174.160.5)
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On wars, cease-fires, surrenders, and diplomacy: I agree that total wars / wars that auto-end without resolving anything are not good - they're not bad, per se, but not good.
The auto-cease-fire, though might offer a possible solution. When a cease-fire is called, have an option available for both warring nations to "negotiate". This locks the war into cease-fire mode until either one side hits a "break negotiations" button or BOTH sides hit a "end war" button, thus giving players a chance to end or resume a war depending on circumstances and whatever mediation may occur.
As a small side-effect, have a war that peacefully ends allow for cost-free zone transfers between both sides for 30 nevdays / 3 real days. This will allow land that must be ceded or claimed to establish borders to change hands without trouble. A hard limit of no more than, say 20% of the land the affected empires held at the START of the war will keep nations from gobbling other nations whole.
I believe that the limit of 3 cease-fires per war is a good idea and should be kept, even with the above-suggested negotiation system.
Got a few other ideas (heros, narrative wars) to build up on what's been said here but those will take time to think over.
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PrimusHoppy
Newbie
Reged: 07/27/08
Posts: 24
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: DuncanMons]
#151775 - 08/29/08 12:48 PM (68.40.121.240)
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Duncan,
Your ideas have merit and would work in most other communities. But this one has shown that if there is something that can be abused they will abuse it. Mostly these people are in one alliance, which will not be mentioned. But, on that note, is there something you can think of to stop abuses of this? because it sounds like a good idea, except people would simply declare war between their multitude of empires and then peacefully end them and if someone wars they can shuffle infra around and wall off cities and whatnot. As certain players have done in the past, hence the reason empires can't DoW other empires in their same faction. *looks at the people guilty of all the above listed abuses* And you know what's really funny? I'm apparently the "biggest cheat and scoundrel" on Neveron, but I have NEVER done any of these things.
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DuncanMons
Newbie
Reged: 08/28/08
Posts: 15
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: PrimusHoppy]
#151776 - 08/29/08 02:43 PM (205.174.160.5)
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Sounds like things have not changed too much since I played two years ago...
Well, the biggest abuse I can see with the negotiated peace idea would be in the land-transfer concept. Best way to do this, I think would be having a "give land" flag that a player can use on zones he wishes to give to his opponent to seal a peace.
e.g. Empire A and B are at war and Empire B is losing. He trips a ceasefire and hits the "Negotiate a Peace" button. The war is paused (pending existing battles resolving) and the two players chat, either by nevmail or by a chat channel, and decide that Empire B should surrender a border town, but Empire A surrenders some zones that are too close to Empire B's central territory.
So, once both sides hit the "Peace Settlement Reached" button, the war ends, and there is 30 nevdays for the empires to flag their own zones for transfer. Empire A flags the unpopulated zones he is going to give up, and Empire B flags the border town. At the end of 30 nevdays, the game autotransfers the land. Keep track of the land being transferred to insure that the 20% land area hard limit (perhaps with a second hard limit of 20% of empire population?)
Of course, there is no way I know of to hardcode a way to tell if both sides have honoured whatever agreement they settled on, but if one side does cheat on the other, the other would still be free to declare war again and try to settle the issue.
Other possible limits:
Empires within the same faction cannot negotiate land transfers for peace. So, Empire MegaConquerer (to make up a name) cannot use this method to grab essential infrastructure or vital staging areas from his allies to attack Empire LittleGuy. (Of course, if factionmates cannot declare war on each other, then they wouldn't be able to negotiate a peace in the first place...)
Flagged land should be within the enemy's SOI. This limits land transfers to border areas, so that, say, somebody can't give away Neveron City.
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mattbuck
Eeyore
Reged: 02/13/04
Posts: 2812
Loc: UK
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: DuncanMons]
#151781 - 08/30/08 05:39 AM (84.67.179.94)
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Complexity needs to be reduced, not increased.
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Haha, you people think admins still look at these forums.
Visit the Platonian blog!
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cbtgod
Major
Reged: 12/14/05
Posts: 1353
Loc: IN A BOX UNDER A HOUSE
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: mattbuck]
#151784 - 08/30/08 06:53 AM (97.97.246.88)
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the cowards that prey on noobs and noob factions is what has done the damage to neveron. just look at the dp whores on noob island why are they there? bottom line it is the veterans of this game that has driven away new players.
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yes its a toad, if you didnt know that you dont know anything about cbt
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PrimusHoppy
Newbie
Reged: 07/27/08
Posts: 24
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: cbtgod]
#151799 - 08/31/08 08:35 PM (68.40.121.240)
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meh its because the veterans get bored. I have a standing policy in my factions that no one is to be on noob island. i thought hoc was going to be doing the same when i talked to kato, but now he quit and nothing was ever done....woohoo for hoc's nonexistant honor once again screwing this game over
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Katrar
Captain
Reged: 09/15/02
Posts: 831
Loc: Seattle, WA USA, Terra
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: PrimusHoppy]
#151800 - 09/02/08 05:38 AM (24.17.223.10)
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This thread was brought to my attention, and though I don't play any longer I would like to respond.
The following announcement was made in the HoC forums on April 16th, 2008.
Quote:
Subject: Official HoC Policy re: Noob Island
I would like to propose that the HoC Alliance internally accept the restriction of all non-noob warring on Noob Island. Our newest players and other people that genuinely need to use it to learn how to war on Neveron would of course be acceptable. But we would be saying Veteran HoC players will not be allowed to hunt on Noob Island for sport or entertainment.
The vast majority of us already live by these currently unwritten rules. In fact I do not know of any actual HoC raider empires on Noob Island. But this would make it official, and we would be contributing to the legitemacy of a game wise ban on veteran use of Noob Island.
If you support this please respond in this thread. And if you have a reason you do not support this please identify it.
Kato
It was nothing but supports/approves following. Now, I was not, and am not aware of any HoC veteran operating as a noob island raider, and any such players or empires were never brought to my attention in the 4 months between those talks and me finally having the intestinal fortitude to walk away from this game. What I *DO* know is that there is a high degree of approval and interest in the "hands off Noob" idea within HoC. To the best of my knowledge veteran HoC players were not, and are not, active on noob island. That's not to speak of HoC noobs, which are as welcome to learn on noob island as any other member of the game.
"woohoo for hoc's nonexistant honor again screwing this game over" is bullcrap. There is plenty of honor in HoC, it's just fashionable to ignore it.
And as my final point of this message, no names were given so it's just as likely no hoc veterans are active on noob island, and this was just another baseless accusation intended for effect rather than accuracy. It's easy on Neveron to blindly accuse and use years of build up rhetoric and animosity as your proof. It's much more difficult to use actual proof to support your accusations. And your accusation is that noob raiding is all HoC, and that accusation is simply retarded.
If you know of HoC veterans that are abusing noob island with dp armies, Hoppy, bring it up with one of the active leaders. The overwhelming majority of HoC players see noob raiding as a problem, and have made their positions clear on that many times. If you don't want to because you prefer to smear the entire alliance, that's not HoC's problem.
Now if you all don't mind, I'll return to my Nev retirement.
Kato
--------------------
Harbingers of Chaos
"Come war with us!"
-links-
The HoC Archive
And remember, Rick Astley will NEVER: 1. Give you up 2. Let you down 3. Run around 4. Desert you 5. Make you cry 6. Say goodbye 7. Tell a lie 8. Hurt you
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rantamplan
Sergeant Major
Reged: 03/26/03
Posts: 251
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: Katrar]
#151801 - 09/02/08 08:03 AM (62.43.195.149)
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This post is not intended to be a what other factions have done or what havent done. Time to intervene before it happens.
I would ask everybody to avoid references to what has happened in the past or who did what.
Please just focus on "what can be changed in game rules for enhacing game experience".
That means:
A) We are talking about future, not past.
B) We are takling about rules, not player base.
Thanks.
Now talking about the point  .From all that ahs been said i mostly agree with most of the points of view but I sincerelly think mattbuck said somethign really interesting.
If you dont mind would like to read everyone ideas about "what has to be removed from game rules" the idea is to simplify the game and at same time increase game experience.
Of course this topic is still open to "what has to change in the future".
--Mantis--
P.S. Ill open a new thread for those who want to keep in the tak that i bet will end as most of the other threads in this forum :P.
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DuncanMons
Newbie
Reged: 08/28/08
Posts: 15
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: rantamplan]
#151804 - 09/02/08 03:00 PM (205.174.160.5)
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Thanks for diverting the "he-said-he-said" element.
From what I'm reading here, it looks to me that Neveron is
a) too complex for newbies,
b) not complex / challenging enough for long-time vets (if it was challenging enough, the vets wouldn't be engaged in newbie killing, enforcing against said newbie-killing, or blaming each other for newbie-killing).
Not entirely sure how to fix the second problem, but a thought that occured to me is that Neveron needs a tutorial system. We have a partial system with Noob Island and the single quest, but nothing structured and designed to take a newbie through the various aspects of Neveron gameplay.
Now I will leave it to the more experienced to attempt to fill in details of what a proper tutorial system should cover and how far it should go, but I'd like to outline the concept of a restricted, tutorial empire, a new player would have to run through either while developing his first empire or before he develops his first empire. Here are my off-the-cuff thoughts:
1. The tutorial empire is isolated from Neveron proper. Think of it as an impassible island or an isolated area like the arenas. A new player starts off with a single zone, a set amount of cash, no vehicles and no soldiers apart from his emperor, and a single building. The surrounding area is FREE of all empires, even fellow new empires.
2. The only way to progress through the tutorial empire is to complete each activity. For example, I'd think the first activity would be to build a building and claim neighboring zones - use this to teach how the build system works, how land management works, with messages and/or popups to make sure the new player gets the message.
3. Certain activities will require an AI "empire" to work against. Such an empire will be auto-spawned complete with one or more cities and a defensive force. I strongly recommend that an AI empire be designed to mimick a well-built and managed player empire, so that the new player gets a feel for some items that may work and some items that may not. This could be used to teach how SOI/garrisoning works as well as how to declare war and attack. Done right, we could also use the AI empire to teach about different vehicles and different zone terrains. Player has a chance to make mistakes here and learn from them without putting real empires in danger.
4. The tutorial empire will come with a tutorial market, designed to reflect how the Nev market works. The market activities will also come with sufficient funds for the tutorial empire to handle purchasing anything for the purposes of the tutorial. Done right this might also help teach people about different vehicles. Tutorial empires will also have prefab soldiers available for "hire" and an accelerated training system.
5. The tutorial empire will run at the *player's* pace - i.e. tutorial empires will experience time only when the player is online. That way, the new player can go away and come back if life gets busy. OPTIONAL - a possibility to "do-over" older activities in case the player feels he needs the extra practice.
6. At the end of the tutorial period, the player will have a graduating or extra credit activity where he may be attacked by another player empire. There would be a list of volunteer "attacker empires" that would be informed when a player is ready for his extra credit activity. A volunteer empire can assemble a force using "clones" of some of his units (personally, I'd recommend limits be set at 50-60 tons per vehicle/mech, and no units below 2/2 in related skills). Clone units would not need to be trained or purchased - I'll let others think of the behind-the-scene mechanics involved for this - but would give the volunteer a ready-to-go force he can use for the attack without using his own finances or units for the effort. Volunteers would not get anything beyond good karma for participating which might help keep out bored vets and attract vets who actually want to teach. New players completing the extra credit may get a "prize" that will translate to their real empire - a light mech, say, or cash, or treasure points - the amount of cash or TP and the kind of mech would be related to how well the player handled the extra credit activity. Players who don't pursue the extra credit would not get anything save the knowledge they acquired performing the tutorial.
Now I am sure that some of the vets will think of a billion flaws with this system. By all means, post such flaws, and how you would fix them. But it is my hope that such a tutorial system - or some variation thereof - will help to give newbies a chance to learn the ins-and-outs of the game without risk and without providing temptation to bored vets.
As for making the game challenging enough for the vets... others will have to concentrate on that. I got nothing so far.
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PrimusHoppy
Newbie
Reged: 07/27/08
Posts: 24
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: DuncanMons]
#151814 - 09/04/08 02:29 AM (68.40.121.240)
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damn good ideas duncan.
And Kato, why do you always have to make a huge post out of a small comment? Sheesh man, give the bureaucracy a break once in awhile...then again u probly have to fill out a request for a break in triplicate and get it stamped 5 times but watever.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. As I said, Duncan has a damn good idea, The Word of Blake and EFS factions fully support this.
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Katrar
Captain
Reged: 09/15/02
Posts: 831
Loc: Seattle, WA USA, Terra
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: PrimusHoppy]
#151818 - 09/04/08 11:29 PM (24.17.223.10)
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Quote:
And Kato, why do you always have to make a huge post out of a small comment? Sheesh man, give the bureaucracy a break once in awhile...then again u probly have to fill out a request for a break in triplicate and get it stamped 5 times but watever.
You brought my name into it, and the inference (whether intended or not) was that I didn't take it seriously and just let it drop, which is exactly 180 degrees opposite from the truth. I took Noob island very seriously, and did my part to help preserve it for noobs. That's why I responded to you.
And DuncanMons, yeah a fully realized tutorial would be of great help to new players. I think that is what was intended when the tutorial "missions" were thought of years ago. Unfortunately, like so many other things on Neveron, it never grew beyond the first day's work (mission #1), and has languished forgotten ever since.
imho simply adding a bunch of new repeatable missions, from simple to complex, would be a huge learning help for new players, and wouldn't require the extensive recoding necessary to create a new sandbox mode.
But your basic idea, that new players need a place to learn away from the rest of the game's predatory players, is pretty accurate.
Anyhow, have fun and back to retirement. Again.
--------------------
Harbingers of Chaos
"Come war with us!"
-links-
The HoC Archive
And remember, Rick Astley will NEVER: 1. Give you up 2. Let you down 3. Run around 4. Desert you 5. Make you cry 6. Say goodbye 7. Tell a lie 8. Hurt you
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Nahte
Sergeant
Reged: 05/20/05
Posts: 101
Loc: Usa
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: Katrar]
#151835 - 09/11/08 08:20 AM (67.140.107.10)
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I fully support Duncans idea. Noob island was a step in the right direction. I have been playing for 3 years and have never made it above lvl 5 for various reasons(mainly getting pwed by lvl7+). Right now I have two empires on noob island and to be honest, its a meatgrinder.
The sanbox mode should be set up on a seperate area(or server if possible). It should have an tab when you make a new empire asking if you would like to take the tutorial. Then it tosses you in a 'safe area' to learn how to build you empire. I like the idea of having the AI empire to 'beat' on. Might be a good idea to add a storyline into it to make it more engaging. I also like the idea of the cloned units. This would almost be like arena fighting for noobs so they can get the hang of moving units/giving orders/ weapons systems/ect.... The only thing I disagree about is the time stop idea. Building shoud still build and collect money but militaraly I think it should stop or pause.
OVer all a very good sujestion.
--------------------
A will gets more than a gun.
A hero is only a man who is brave five minutes longer.
"Death solves all problems. No man, no problem." Joseph Stalin
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PrimusHoppy
Newbie
Reged: 07/27/08
Posts: 24
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: Nahte]
#151836 - 09/11/08 04:30 PM (68.40.121.240)
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ok let refine this idea, then maybe some ppl who know how to code can work with WWS because if it's him alone he wont ever have the time to get it done.
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rantamplan
Sergeant Major
Reged: 03/26/03
Posts: 251
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Re: Changes needed in neveron
[Re: PrimusHoppy]
#151838 - 09/12/08 05:34 AM (62.43.195.149)
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I opened a new thrad for discussing the sandbox idea, so we can keep this one open for new brainstorming ideas.
Dont want anyone to not writting his ideas just becouse he things there is another discussion ongoing.
thanks all who took part for the constructive thread.
keep the good work :P.
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