Private Gals

[Vegeta]

Hey i would like to make a comment on the fact that private galaxies have been removed from the game. The frustration of being seperated from your friends at the end of a round is considerable. I personaly can not be bothered to pay for another round when i know i wont be able to play with the mates i have made. I know im not the only person who feels this way, please please consider putting private gals back in so people like me come back in the next round.

Vegeta.

[cypher]

private gals means blocking. means lame.

if you can't do well without a top galaxy you're lame aswell

[mist]

private gals are incompatible with the current game. if you want them, you'd have to accept rather major changes so that blocking is less effective. oh, and what cypher said

-mist

[Brimstone]

Have you looked at the universe recently? outside the T150, if not the T100, there are largely just inactives. I know, i've been doing an exile salsa recently, touring the gals to see if i can find one that shows vague signs of activity. C20 onwards progressively gets more inactive. Yes, i admit there are one or 2 exceptions, but that is the situation.

All that happens with Random gals, is the inactives keep being exiled until you get a full gal of semi actives. As time passes, as it has done here, you end up with half the universe full of active, experienced players, and the other half filled with inexperienced or inactive players.

The pro's and cons of Private/Random gals is a subject that will never be fully sorted, without 2 universes at the same time, and there is not the player base to do that.
Private gals will attract many older players back into the game, and will result in more energetic games. BUT will result in major blocking, and ruin the game.
Random will result in many people leaving because they cannot play with the friends they have gained, and hate the problem of inactives, BUT this often evens out the game a lot.

As a result, IMO the current layout of Private groups Randomly placed in gals is one of the best systems we can use, and if PATeam have any sense, they will NOT change it. (Hint Hint)

One thing i would change though, is that in the beginning of the round, and if possible for the duration of the round, i would like to see a mix of paid and unpaid groups. eg, 2 Paid priv groups with 1 unpaid group. How this would work is beyond me, but i think it could help some matters that arise with ppl abusing the system which still happens occasionally.

Just a random idea...

Brimstone

[The_Fish]

I would like a more rigid Buddy code system.

For example, 2 groups of 3 + randoms. Then everyone *should* get a decentish gal, at least, better than this round.

[Kal]

if we have Private Packs next round they will be a paid only feature, and to compenstae free accounts would gain a bit more in playability.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by The_Fish

I would like a more rigid Buddy code system.

For example, 2 groups of 3 + randoms. Then everyone *should* get a decentish gal, at least, better than this round.

I still think it needs to be the following

1. Galaxies need increased in size. Playerbase restructs how much because while 20/25 would obviously be great theres not enough players but we need atleast 12 but a couple more wouldnt do much harm
2. Private packs would be 3 members big
3. Each private pack would start the round in its own galaxy
4. You can join a private pack until tick 48
5. At tick 48 private packs are locked
6. Any account who hasnt been logged into in last 36 ticks is removed from the universe and placed in quarenteen
7. Any spaces in private packs are filled by paid randoms (spaces either cos they only had 1 friend or a friend was removed for being inactive)
8. The remaining paid randoms are collected into groups of 3
9. All the packs (private and random) are then shuffled
10. 3 Packs are placed in every galaxy
11. The remaining spaces in the galaxies are filled by free randoms
12. You now have your galaxy, made up of either 3packs and a atleast 3 freebies
13. Inactives will be dealt with alot harsher, free accounts would be quarenteened after about 48 hours of inactivity and deleted if they havent logged in again by 48 hours after this. Paid accounts would get a longer inactive period perhaps 72 hours and wouldnt be deleted from quareenteen
14. When placed in quareenteen your planet wouldnt be able to be attacked, you would also stop receiveing any resources. Potentially also have roids 'degrade' while in quarenreen so when/if you come out of it you lose x amount of your roids to prevent this being used as a cheap exile
15. If the quarenteened planet logs in they are randomly placed somewhere in the universe

I'll explain a few reasons I have have done some of the things above

Galaxy Size, remaining at 10 causes problems, its obviously easier to have total control of a galaxy when theres fewer competing parties, and you simply dont get potentially as many people with only two competing parties. ofc you can make it 3 packs by reducing the number of randoms in a galaxy to 1 but we need to help free accounts to come to love the game so giving as many as possible access to galaxies full of experianced players and not galaxies with people in the same boat as themselves is a good idea

Shuffle at tick 48. It makes cheating that little bit harder, you cant signup for multiple accounts and then choose which everone has the best looking galaxy without playing all the accounts for 48 hours which will not only be a bit of a chore but increases the chance of you getting caught by multi hunters. Also on account swapping this is alittle less appealing because at this point early mistakes could have already been made by the planet and you are locked into your race

Quarenteen. Inactives are the biggest problem this game has, they just gte bounced around the universe annoying everyone. If you can remove inactives out of the universe yet still give them a chance to continue playing (as sometimes people go inactive for valid reasons and will return) then you improve the game

[mist]

doing something about inactives is a must.

however, imo, not logging in for 12 hours is inactive, some people might think every couple of days is ok, some people might think that being on from midnight-4am is a requirement. untill you let people control what they think is active, there'll still be complaints. and if you let people control it, then you're going to get complaints as well. winner \o/

-mist

[wakey]

Yeah i know your never going to get inactivity settings to everyones liking and i'm sure most of us would like it to be lower than the 48 i stated but that seemed like a good trade off, its enough to allow legitimate periods of inactivity to not be penilsed (we have all had sitautions such as our net going down) but is low enough so that exiling inactives is a situation people are less lilkly to bother with and even if they do they wont be around their new galaxy for long

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by mist

doing something about inactives is a must.

however, imo, not logging in for 12 hours is inactive, some people might think every couple of days is ok, some people might think that being on from midnight-4am is a requirement. untill you let people control what they think is active, there'll still be complaints. and if you let people control it, then you're going to get complaints as well. winner \o/

That's why there needs to be a quarantine. PA is never going to delete inactive accounts fast enough to please anybody (hell, some rounds they don't get deleted at all ). A quarantine just means the planet is separated from the active universe where they won't be an annoyance. If/when the planet resumes activity it can be moved back amongst the living.

We can argue about how long before an inactive planet is quarantined--12 hours, 72 hours, whatever--but the penalty for being too aggressive isn't so severe.

[Kal]

the issue would be that the said planet would loose its place in a gal which might be a bit unfair

[wakey]

As long as its not set to something stupidly low then its their own fault, its not asking much for example for a player to login once in a 48hour period, and obviously you could have it so vacation mode over rides the inactive period so those going away could remain (but maybe have it so the GC has to accept vacation mode, this way if someone sets themselves into vacvtion mode and doesnt come back the gc can revoke it and they will then be quarenteened).

Also perhaps we could have it so your galaxy space wont be filled immediatly, perhaps for 24 hours or so after quarenteen you can log back in and be placed back in the galaxy

[Vegeta]

Originally Posted by cypher

private gals means blocking. means lame.

if you can't do well without a top galaxy you're lame aswell

Im not talking about doing well or not. Im talking about having fun. People like me will have much more fun if they can still co-operate with friends. You may be a loner but we're not.

[cypher]

i'm not a loner, i just think it'll be too easy to play with my friends who also know how to play.

and then random people will have it even harder as then everyone WILL bash the crap out of others.

[wakey]

Also anyone who has played the early rounds will tell you that if you can get the new people to start playing properly and being part of the community you can get more enjoyement from it than you can get in private. Making new 'friends' was always one of the nice things about the game of old which was generally lost when private galaxies were added. You see you mix with new people, you exhange skills but you are still able to play with your friends even if they arent in the same galaxy (and often this is actuallya bonus, you get a group of friends whom are not in a top alliance and a single attack sees them unable to get any good defence as they all get bashed at once, this takes the fun out of the game for many os once bashed you always get bashed. In differnt galaxies makes the chances of you all being hit much less)

And with private packs you get a bit of both, ok you cant play with all your 'friends' like private galaxies allows BUT you get to play with a couple as well as being forced to mix and make new 'friends' whom otherwise you wouldnt have

[cypher]

that's very true wakey... meeting new peeps is fun... but keep in mind new peeps won't come in big numbers when it's P2P...

[mist]

Originally Posted by Kal

the issue would be that the said planet would loose its place in a gal which might be a bit unfair

if you only quarenteen them when they're exciled then they'd have lost the place in the gal anyway. problem solved

-mist

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by Kal

the issue would be that the said planet would loose its place in a gal which might be a bit unfair

A place in a galaxy to which they've ceased contributing--assuming they ever did--by the fact they're inactive.

[Blixxard]

Originally Posted by wakey

Also anyone who has played the early rounds will tell you that if you can get the new people to start playing properly and being part of the community you can get more enjoyement from it than you can get in private. Making new 'friends' was always one of the nice things about the game of old which was generally lost when private galaxies were added. You see you mix with new people, you exhange skills but you are still able to play with your friends even if they arent in the same galaxy (and often this is actuallya bonus, you get a group of friends whom are not in a top alliance and a single attack sees them unable to get any good defence as they all get bashed at once, this takes the fun out of the game for many os once bashed you always get bashed. In differnt galaxies makes the chances of you all being hit much less)

And with private packs you get a bit of both, ok you cant play with all your 'friends' like private galaxies allows BUT you get to play with a couple as well as being forced to mix and make new 'friends' whom otherwise you wouldnt have

I agree. You said it all

[A2]

The implementation of packs can probably be improved, but they do combine a bit of the best of both full private and full random.

as wakey says:

Originally Posted by wakey

And with private packs you get a bit of both, ok you cant play with all your 'friends' like private galaxies allows BUT you get to play with a couple as well as being forced to mix and make new 'friends' whom otherwise you wouldnt have

[mist]

the implimentation of packs, in themselves, is fine. the problems come from the wider context:

the possibility that packs won't actually end up together, which could have been fixed by spawning a pack in a new gal and then shuffling, which happened anyway.

the fact that packs were shuffled with inactives, so people end up with their pack and then a gal full of dross

imo, wakey's suggestion to put packs in to gals on their own, and then shuffle them at tick 48 or some is a great plan, although tht might have something to do with me suggesting it as well if ministers get any bonuses these days, removing those would seem important tho

-mist

[Kal]

i'm not sure there is anyone in Pa Team who disagress as such with wakeys idea, the question really is how easy would it be to implement - there is a huge list of things to do for next round - bug fixes, tweaks, things like that, wakey's plan is great but I expect time consuming to implement - however if the community say they want it, then i'm sure it can be done, but people may then have to live with not getting every other thing they want.

[wakey]

Why couldnt PATeam have been more open to it when I was PATeam, they were always against it.

The thing that needs done however if there isnt time to get it implemented is to continue getting the groundwork ready. Its something that for too long PA has struggled with, they look too much in the now and not enough for teh future. Yes some ideas might not be able to be implemented for the upcoming round or realistically even the round after that but theres no reason development cant be started and spread over time. So many ideas have been binned as "too time consuming" where as if steps had been put in place they could have been developed without effecting the upcoming round and without adding any real development time.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by wakey

Why couldnt PATeam have been more open to it when I was PATeam, they were always against it.

The thing that needs done however if there isnt time to get it implemented is to continue getting the groundwork ready. Its something that for too long PA has struggled with, they look too much in the now and not enough for teh future. Yes some ideas might not be able to be implemented for the upcoming round or realistically even the round after that but theres no reason development cant be started and spread over time. So many ideas have been binned as "too time consuming" where as if steps had been put in place they could have been developed without effecting the upcoming round and without adding any real development time.

i'm agreeing with far to many things u say theese days

[mist]

Originally Posted by Kal

the question really is how easy would it be to implement

putting private packs in to their own gal
shouldn't be too tricky, depending on gal creation code. the code's already there to create new gals, it just needs to be called whenever someone creates a pack

shuffling after 48 hours
shuffle code already exists. using it shouldn't be too taxing , just need to add something so that if someone's been inactive for over X hours they're put in to a gal in cluster 200+, for example. can't see it being that hard.

quanrenteening inactives during exile
again, just gotta check if they're inactive, and then send them to a 200+ gal if they are. beyond the current excile code, and that needed to do the shuffle, should just be a little gluing together

all in all, i can't see it taking more than a day, and this seems to be the #1 thing that people complained about this round, so i'd hope it's quite high on the list of priorities

-mist

[pathogen]

All i say is bring back private galaxies , i would rather face fortress galaxies than be in a inactive one/nearly empty one

[wakey]

Yes cos going back to a system that probally worse for the community as a whole is a great way of solving a problem. Yes inactives are a problem but going back to fortress galaxies suffocating the game and stangnating it isnt the solution

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by pathogen

All i say is bring back private galaxies , i would rather face fortress galaxies than be in a inactive one/nearly empty one

I don't believe those are the only choices.

[Kal]

there is another issue here - what if someoen goes away for a long weekend and doens;t want to go into vacation mode as they have a good gal that will get them def - we can;t punish people for that.

[Gerbie]

Originally Posted by Kal

there is another issue here - what if someoen goes away for a long weekend and doens;t want to go into vacation mode as they have a good gal that will get them def - we can;t punish people for that.

Vacation mode was not implemented so we have another nice shiny button. It's there to be used.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Kal

there is another issue here - what if someoen goes away for a long weekend and doens;t want to go into vacation mode as they have a good gal that will get them def - we can;t punish people for that.

I cant see a reason why not tbh. After all is it fair then that someone in a good galaxy gets to keep making resources while away just because they are in a good gaalxy while those who arent cant because they will be bashed if they go away and leave it out of vacation mode. If anything it levels the playing field a bit by forcing them to use vacation if going away because they have to abide by the same playing conditions as the smaller players.

Also lets be honest whom are more often than not the people complaining about inactives in their galaxy, the big players in good galaxies. They cant have it both ways, either they put up with inactives or they have to accept that they may need to use vacation mode. A few players having to use vacation mode for a few days is certainly worth reducing one of the most damaging things to this game imho

[Kal]

anyway redesign your idea around the assumption that the number of paid planets is roughly eqal to the number of free planets

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by Kal

there is another issue here - what if someoen goes away for a long weekend and doens;t want to go into vacation mode as they have a good gal that will get them def - we can;t punish people for that.

Why can't you? You have dozens or maybe even hundreds of customers complaining about inactives and you want to tie your hands worrying about a few who want to take a long weekend and yet don't want to use vacation mode because they don't want to lose any resources? I think you need to look at your priorities.

That said, you could implement an option whereby the GC could disable auto-inactive-quarantine for selected planets; but I really don't think it's necessary.

[Brimstone]

There is another issue... Say someones i-net goes down, or their PC, or they end up in hospital for some reason. They cant get online to set vac mode, might be able to send someone in their gal/alliance a txt/phone call to tell them maybe.... They then return to find they've been kicked from their gal, and stuck in a c200+ gal full of real inactives.
This is why a code cannot be implemented like this for any short period. It is bad for business. Only other way to rectify it is to have an option for gc/ministers/gal to keep the planet.

regards,
Brimstone

[wakey]

For starters Brim they wouldnt end up in c200 with inactives, simply because inactives wouldnt be in the universe to start with. They would ahve been removed. And if inactives are activily being removed from the game theres then a much greater chance of players coming out of quarenteen landing in a good galaxy because the inactives taking these spaces up are removed from circulation.

And lets be honest how many people does this really happen to, and is it really enough to allow it to hinder such a large number of players enjoyment. Plus I believe i did say in my idea that paid accounts would get a longer grace time before they are quarenteened, as such they can have a few days extra before they get removed which for most cases is more than enough. This then leaves an even smaller amount of people whom are effected and it seems a little riduculous to put off something like this for such a small group of people.

[Kal]

after chatting with spinner, certain aspects of wakey's plan are unrealistic to implement for various reasons. We are however working on a solution to handle inactives, planet distribution, etc. No solution will be perfect and someone will allways loose out, lets see what we can come up with.

[wakey]

Which aspects and why?

[Clunge]

why can PA just be free or just be P2p?

[wakey]

Free PA isnt possible as it needs to make money
P2P only isnt possible because then youy restrict new blood thus leaving you with a shrinking playerbase as those leaving arent being replaced