I have been playing for a couple weeks now, I have enjoyed some things about the game, but there are some issues that prevent this from being something I see myself playing anymore. Instead of some attention grabbing post about leaving, I thought I would offer up a couple of ideas that may help address some of the issues I have seen in game.

As I said, I do not have a vast amount of experience in this game, but I have dug pretty deep into it over the last few weeks, and do have some experience in game design. So, here are my thoughts, for whatever they are worth.

Problem: Multiboxing (and Kingmaking)
In my opinion, multiboxing is the biggest issue facing the game right now. It is simply too easy to gain a SIGNIFICANT advantage in a game by bringing in an extra account or two. I am wrapping up a game right now (referenced elsewhere on the forums) where a player was clearly 2 boxing. Both accounts got early Hypnotists, and only 2 days in he already had 2 Kings. That is an insane. Now 2 early Kings won’t always happen, but being able to coordinate the hires and promotions of 2 Queens is super powerful.

Kingmaking is also a frustrating problem, as someone can put in a ton of work to navigate the treacherous seas of diplomacy, make brilliant tactical moves, and then have some that is about to lose get all butthurt and gift all their remaining drillers and Specialists to someone that was probably just sitting on the sidelines. Ugh.

Solution: Remove the ability to gift Specialists.
I understand the desire to give players a sandbox and the tools to have a game play out however they choose, but unfortunately if the risk vs. reward of exploiting something is too great, some people just cannot help themselves. These aren’t evil people looking to screw people at every turn; power like this is just too tempting for some normal people to pass up.

Gifting drillers and dropping shields to give away outposts are still powerful, but they aren’t completely game breaking and unfun. Let’s put this in the context of a game like Risk. You work hard to fight someone, commit your resources to taking them out, and just before they die they give all of their cards to your opponent who promptly turns then in and slaughters you. Fun game. Let’s play again.

I understand the intent of gifting Specialists, but I really do feel that this is a case of where the developers need to save us from ourselves.


Problem: Medals (both negative and positive)
I think this is less of an issue, but I think it can be addressed pretty easily. Some people don’t even really look at medals, but I assume in ranked games that most people will use whatever datapoints they have. In a game like this where trust is built on experience, information, and/or desperation, context is important. Right now, the medal system can be gamed. For instance, you can create a 2nd account for the sole purpose of buying your main account a bunch of good medals. There is no limit to how many you can buy.

So let’s say you have played in 8 games so far, and you have received a medal here or there. Someone might look at you and think “Oh, they probably keep to themselves or just don’t work with people much. Whatever.” Cool, no problem. Now, what if that player had 5-10 of each Master Diplomat, Trustworthy Ally, and Good Natured medals? You would probably believe that guy when he said that he will honor demilitarizing the borders, and maybe even give them the benefit of the doubt when they move against you later because of some outside influence. You have now purchased people’s trust.

There is a huge thread about negative medals here on the forums and I am sure most of the scenarios have been run through over there. I haven’t read through all of it, but I did want to make sure to bring up one scenario; extortion. Not for real money, but for reputation. With any game, as you climb the ranks your rating and reputation become more important for most people. With negative medals, people can use that as leverage. “Back off or a wave of negative medals are coming your way donkeylover!” With those same 8 games under your belt, you can probably explain away a single Toxic or Backstabber medal. But what about 5? 10? Trust is going to be a lot harder to come by if you have almost as many (or more!) negative medals as you have games.

Solution: Give purchaser information for all medals.
Medals are a good datapoint, but without the context of WHO and WHEN, they can be easily manipulated. Yes, it costs some RL money and yes, it is good to support the developers. But you can still improve the system without removing it. And it would be naive to think that the current price point (or even a higher one) would stop things. If players could see that a single player gave you all 10 of your backstabber medals, that is important information for them to have. Same goes for someone giving you all of your positive medals.


Ok, that was more than I intended to write, sorry about that. I just hate to see a fun, interesting game make dedicated players throw their arms up in frustration and walk away.

Great ideas! Especially the medals!

I really disagree with your idea to remove specialist gifting. It would take away trades, coordinated switches, paying people off for protection, and certain strategic situations(gifting kings or martyrs sometimes is helpful). It would also mean that the ONLY way to get a specialist you didn't hire is with a Hypnotist. In my personal experience(I know someone will say I'm wrong here), Kingmaking is not a major problem, and unless there are quite a few pawns, its normally something you and a few allies can deal with it. Whenever I've seen someone gift all their stuff away, it's because they've basically lost, so they don't have a ton of things to give away anyway.

actually... I think removing specialist gifting might be a good idea. It might be the simplest way to eliminate the problem with stacking specialists like King/Admiral. Its very hard to stack these specs when you can't rely an allies trading/giving them to you.

I think the risk of everything being gifted to another player is another good reason to have allies. Then, if they go down they could give you things they were losing. I can also stop someone going on a rampage and abandoning all allies, if everyone going down gifts, the last player would be very strong. It just seems like it gives you a better reason to make more allies.

aclonicy wrote:I think the risk of everything being gifted to another player is another good reason to have allies. Then, if they go down they could give you things they were losing.

This is actually a pretty unfun aspect, especially in standard mining games. It penalizes aggressive players by ensuring someone who often did nothing in a given war gets some of the most critical spoils (specialists).

If specs were ungiftable, you could still DENY an attacker from capturing them by letting the same 3rd party capture them instead, because then no one gets them. But theres a wild swing that happens where someone who does absolutely nothing in the game (maybe even been offline for the last 47 hours) gets 5 of the best specialists in the game simply by virtue of doing nothing. This wild swing is often pretty unfair, and unfun.

Also there's a hidden buff to hypnotist in here, along with a nerf to King. Which seems very appropriate for spec balance.

It can be annoying whenever someone who's done nothing gets specialists, but I only ever ally with people who will actively help me out, so none of my allies are ever "on the sidelines." So for me it doesn't become an issue.

I agree with Kevlar. When a non-player is given an assload of specialists, it makes the game unfun.

However, removing specialist gifting altogether would take away a lot of collaboration between allies. I'm in an anonymous domination game currently where a player who is about to be eliminated asked me if he could send his queen to the middle of my empire as refuge (I'm in first place). I agreed to it as long as he gift me his specialists. So in this case, me receiving gifted specialists was not an instance of kingmaking (I already have a big lead) but more of a fair trade between long-term allies.

Possible fix:

*The recipient of the spec gift must use one of his hires to revive the gift. Or one hire per sub worth (3) of specialists.*

OR

*Can only gift specialists X number of times per game*

The easiest solution wold just be to only allow you to have x gifts at a time.

over 12 open games I've experienced a specialist "gift away" three times.

The first one I wasn't prepared for however

The second one I saw potentially coming and pre-positioned a pirate in the dark to my opponent to steal the specialists I wanted - then activily encouraged the gifting from my target

The third was potentially more evil - big 10 player game

I was attacking player X and he didn't know player Y was my ally - so player Y speaks to my target and Talks of my evils and how he fears he is next etc etc etc. Target then gifts everything to my ally who shares out the spoils with me.

key point - if your target is a poor enough player to consider gifting everything rather than turtleing - he's probably also a poor enough player to be manipulated.