Page 1 of 2

Idea: Solution to "the new player" problem

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:20 am
by (MSR)Peace
Ok, the problem is that permanent servers are getting stale, and new players are having trouble starting out. How will we solve this? Will we "unstale" active servers by having deteriorating planets, smaller empires, and weaker corperations, making more space open to new players to start out and stake their claim?

Or can we rebang old permanent servers, thus creating upset players who worked 6-12 months on their empire, but also allowing new players, who may have gained experiance on rebangs or old permaverses, to then stake their claim out on fresh, new permanent servers?

Either way, something needs to be done. This is a test poll, and alternative solutions are welcome. If there are any good ones, we may need to poll again.

And once again, I encourage forum goers to discuss the topic before voting on the poll. I'd like to see at least 2-3 pages of discussion before any votes take place!

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:28 am
by RedLeader
haha sorry Peace, voted before actually reading :P

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:34 am
by (MSR)Peace
I was just going to note that this game is set for changes. Leaving things alone isn't really an option and it doesn't solve the problem. It's not fair to vote that way if you are an experianced and well set-up player.

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 9:02 am
by Crosseyed
I'd say the answer would be to gradually increase corp sizes, so new players have a place to actually go.

Other options would include having more forms of interaction with the properties of other players other than being solely limited to ignoring them, or attacking them.

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 1:21 pm
by MadAce
I was talking to Jym and I had te great idea that there should be some way to get veterans to aim only at vets. Make it so that it would be much more rewarding to attack vets in stead of sucking noobs dry.

But... that's a long way off, don't really see how that could be done.

Crosseyeds idea is good too, to allow more people in a corp when the active users list grows.

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:38 pm
by pbhead
answer to attacking noobs:

1. half of them are protected so you dont get stuff anyway...
2. another half of them dont carry enough $$$ on them to repay the shields you lost to their peas.
3. half of there colonys are protected so even if we wanted to invade the quazi-barrer of the un around their planets cant be penetrated.

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:53 pm
by Crosseyed
MadAce wrote:I was talking to Jym and I had te great idea that there should be some way to get veterans to aim only at vets. Make it so that it would be much more rewarding to attack vets in stead of sucking noobs dry.
The problem with this is that there's several levels of "attack". One form of attack is where the veterans simply fire on newbies as they fly through space. This is usually an obnoxious behavior not motivated by any desire for profit, but pure and simple aggression. The aggression rep ding is not a deterrence against this, and increasing the penalty is really not wise, because on the opposite side of the coin, a newbie frequently opens fire on a veteran or his properties and has to be killed in self-defense. Of course, grav tends to strike faster than peas and fusion blasters, and so the game will see this as "aggression".

On the other hand, there's the invasion of colonies: this behavior is pretty much unavoidable by even those fairly generous to newbies, because of one common problem: Newbies delight in colonizing the territories of other players. Of course, this represents a massive security liability, not to mention what is functionally claim-jumping, and thus is generally greeted with some disfavor. Even players not particularly interested in newbie-stomping will have to act to uproot these problems before they become a major security liability, when somebody starts using those planets to bombard them with nukes. The more generous players will often offer to buy out the newbie's colony for far more than it is actually worth, a deal which invariably is beneficial to the newbie, but sometimes the newbie is either not in a position to see reason, or not connected and thus just loses the colony.

Ultimately, the fact that the game is essentially competitive and zero-sum means that attacks on newbies by non-newbies is more or less unavoidable.

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:59 pm
by MadAce
personally I don't mind that the game is so harsh, more realistsic and challenging.

But a bit of balancing would seem nice.

The ideal situation would be that mid-range players invade mid-range players and vets invade vets.

Don't really know how to stimulate that situation though...

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 4:43 pm
by Shadow45
lol who cares about newbs its their own fault they dont play much and/or work for money to get better things.i for 1 personnaly dont like newbs begging for money they r annoying tht way...

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 4:53 pm
by General_Neox
Shadow45 wrote:lol who cares about newbs its their own fault they dont play much and/or work for money to get better things.i for 1 personnaly dont like newbs begging for money they r annoying tht way...
You know you know your an donkey when..

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 5:09 pm
by RedLeader
Newbies getting invaded can go two ways - they quit, or they rebuild. Most of us here chose to rebuild.

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 5:20 pm
by Morgoth
i am new player and yes it hard to start now , me and some real life friend start this game some days ago and we got a colony , just when we got our colony to 5k ppl , Amun took it... we worked so much to build that colony ,spend so much money on it.. but i dont want server start again from begin, i think is unfair for old players,probraly the best is make something new , that protect the new players colonies, i didnt think much about it yet, but i belive is possible make something about it, i dont agree when u join some corp u able to steal corp colonies , and that is bad for new players , because old players will not invite new players for they corps .. fear to lost some colonies, i think if was possible give penalty points to the guy that leave the corp to make impossible to steal colonies from old corp , will try explain better , for example , u join a corp ,ok, then if u leave it , u gain penalty for like 5 hours , and u cant attack/take any colonie or join any corp for 5 hours...that would help alot the noobs , old players could invite them to corp with out have the fear of lost some colonies. :)

sorry my bad english :)

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 5:32 pm
by Guest
having jumped into permas like 2 months into it I don't think your assessments are correct.

BS

take a UN col..


its got 40000 nukes


take 30 other colonies


relax you got a small empire.

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 5:34 pm
by RedLeader
Except that nuke storage plateaus at 500 :>

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:14 pm
by MadAce
Then build your brains out.

Colonise a bunch of Oceanics all over the place, see which don't get capped. TADAA! A new home-system!

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:21 pm
by JODRAM
Anyone who says u cant join in late to a permaverse I remind them that I did not start activley playing 11th Dimension until 3-4weeks into it. I believe the rest is well known history :)

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:23 pm
by MadAce
It's quite possible to emerge late in a perma, but it's not easy.
And I very much doubt that one without experience in the game.

On the other hand... Are Perma's meant for noobs? I very much doubt that too.

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:30 pm
by KUKA
Question: Why are we so worried about newbs or even vets being able to join a perma a few weeks/months into it and have a huge chance of success without an uphill battle?

Frankly, there is a huge problem with the whole premise. If someone has been working on a server for many weeks and does NOT have any advantage over late-arrivers, then what is the point of playing to begin with?

What IS fair is to try to recycle the maxed planets from people who have moved on or lost interest. The new rules help do that, though I hope a new way can be found that avoids having to land on every planet and mash a button.

A new perma bangs every month so far - anyone can just wait a bit to get off to a start on a level playing field. Rebangs provide a great training ground as well. Let's stop worrying about newbs and late-arrivals and redirect attention to gameplay improvement for everyone.

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:32 pm
by (MSR)Peace
I'm kinda seeing again that no one wants to rebang the permaverses.

I'd like to point out that the way the patches are looking, they are aiming to give new players a chance on old servers.

Just remember, it's on your own heads for voting this way. You wanted this, and now that the devs are bringing it about, a lot of people are complaining. I really hate to say it, but the patches are nessisary for the problem to be solved in this manner.

I personally am in favor of rebanging the permaverses. Starting out on a fresh permanent server is an experiance all of it's own.

And once again, leaving things the way they are IS NOT AN OPTION. In order to better ballance the game, changes MUST take place. The Devs WILL change the game, but I was hoping to produce an alternative solution to the problem, one most favorable to all players, new and experianced alike.
KUKA wrote:Question: Why are we so worried about newbs or even vets being able to join a perma a few weeks/months into it and have a huge chance of success without an uphill battle?

Frankly, there is a huge problem with the whole premise. If someone has been working on a server for many weeks and does NOT have any advantage over late-arrivers, then what is the point of playing to begin with?

What IS fair is to try to recycle the maxed planets from people who have moved on or lost interest. The new rules help do that, though I hope a new way can be found that avoids having to land on every planet and mash a button.

A new perma bangs every month so far - anyone can just wait a bit to get off to a start on a level playing field. Rebangs provide a great training ground as well. Let's stop worrying about newbs and late-arrivals and redirect attention to gameplay improvement for everyone.
Well said Kuka

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:35 pm
by MadAce
KUKA wrote:Question: Why are we so worried about newbs or even vets being able to join a perma a few weeks/months into it and have a huge chance of success without an uphill battle?

Frankly, there is a huge problem with the whole premise. If someone has been working on a server for many weeks and does NOT have any advantage over late-arrivers, then what is the point of playing to begin with?

What IS fair is to try to recycle the maxed planets from people who have moved on or lost interest. The new rules help do that, though I hope a new way can be found that avoids having to land on every planet and mash a button.

A new perma bangs every month so far - anyone can just wait a bit to get off to a start on a level playing field. Rebangs provide a great training ground as well. Let's stop worrying about newbs and late-arrivals and redirect attention to gameplay improvement for everyone.
Maybe thats why the pollution patch is quite good.
let's say that making the Perma's too new-player-friendly lowers the standards of our players.

And what would be the result: Heaps of half-finished colonies all over space and no real challeneges for the serious players.

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 9:32 pm
by Gen
I don;t like the idea of rebanging the perma's. If people are willing to spend the time and real money to build an empire, so be it.

Newbs come and go often. I get a bit tired of hearing about the poor newbs out there. Gimme a break and get some backbone.

Simple solution. No more UN colonies. Once a character gets deleted, all associated colonies die with it. This should freshen things up a bit. Furthermore, change the existing 30 day rule to 15 days.

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:05 pm
by MelkoR
a newb permaverse? that uses the same rebang coding to keep vets out? would that be okay? what about if you had all the other permas have a notice when you make a charachter that it will be tough, a few suggestions, and a little bit of information?

what about the idea that i had about having only a few corps, but infinite membership? this would give way to a place for noobs to start learning and also have a force behind them?

what if toonces made a noob perma, that had the few major corps, with vet leaders to help the noobs and teach them what to do?

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 3:07 am
by seth
in the tavern i made a sorta long winded post all about this subject, and i think alot of you feel the same as me, you should check it out.

but basically, yes, we helped make this happen by begging for a permanent server, and then not continuing to token in that server.

but.. its toonces's fault for making more, that was wrong, there should only have been one permaverse, that way, the fighting will be fiercer, the way its supposed to be. even if they did start on day one and token nearly as much as me or any other vet, the noob still wont be on level playing field, stop trying to let new players into old perma's by stealing planets from existing players, thats stupid. they will just build right next to my nuke base where i will immediately take it. just up corp size already and let us all go fight it out before the rebang.

perma's get stale as soon as toonces makes a new one, if he stopped making new ones, people wouldnt give up so fast, they would just token some more and get back in the fight.

a server that rebangs every two months would be ideal, and you could have those instead of new permas every month, just each rebang of the two month servers, have votes on forums for settings and map?

for instance, you could have a rebanging two month server that used the rules that we all like, or test new rules, like kuka's suggestion.

i cant really enjoy hitting the unpollute button on 1k planets, and even if i didnt have to token two or three fuel gauges to get to them, i still wouldnt have time, even if i didnt sleep. thats with my refinery 2's built, thats not always the case of course. so, basically no one has any hope whatsoever of holding onto their empire, taking the empire out of starport GE, how can that make the game better, thats just plain retarded.

all i can do is hope that poor toonces fixes the game fast, some of the players are dangerous psychotics that live in walking distance of him.

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 5:10 am
by grobual
I was thinking about something. I have noticed that there is less people playing on the old perma servers as new ones start up. And a few of those servers have no players. So, what happens to all of those colonies?

What if a restriction was put into place? If a player, or corp, doesn't log into a server for over a month, the colony under their control becomes abandoned, and all buildings and weapons are removed, leaving the planet capable of being colonized by another player. The player, or corp, who initially controlled the colony could be compensated for the work that was put into it, but at a reduced amount, like 50% of the value of the colony. This way, people wouldn't be cheated out of the work they put into building the colony, but they aren't rewarded for not being on the server.

Also, if a corp has only one active player in it for the majority of the time (other corp members appear once every two weeks or so), then the corp could be dissolved, with the active player receiving the majority of the corps holdings and funds. This could be instituted if it happens over a period of a month.

Well, I have to go, my little Tomagatchi thingy is gonna wake up soon. I have to be there to feed it.

Later y'all.

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 9:57 am
by MadAce
grobual, where the hell do you think the new pollution patches were added for?

Primary because if you don't log on the server and take care of the colonies you have they WILL disaster and then die out after a while, thus opening them for recolonisation.

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 8:47 pm
by grobual
I am still a newish player. Please forgive my newbie questions.

So, the pollution patch takes care of the inactive players by removing the colony. Then, do the turrets stay with the colonies or do they leave with the colonists

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 8:53 pm
by MadAce
All defences leave, except for mines. But I think they'll decay over time.

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 9:17 pm
by TopGunSF
Well, there are a lot of things that can be done; such as the galactic wars idea KelvinR2K4 came up with. But rebanging perma servers is NOT the answer. Otherwise it would not be "perma". (And you would have MANY mad players who put much $$$ into tokens and then it would all go to hell 'cause the server basically resets.) Just my opinion though.

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 9:58 pm
by MelkoR
i think the easiest way is to make the inactive limit down to 1 1/2 weeks; and then when they go un, have the un colonies lose all their defense and mil to 0

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:14 pm
by KUKA
1.5 weeks is uncool... I take vacations longer than that with no computer access...