XP this round

[TheGoaT]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

What are you talking about you lunatic? Well more than one hundred people manage to attack every night, how the hell are they all going to fit in there?

some land more than others. Those in the first 100, have more luck than others.

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by TheGoaT

some land more than others. Those in the first 100, have more luck than others.

No, they get more defence than others. Or a better gal, which is partly luck.

[Furyous]

If XP must exist at all, this round is just about right.

You can play XP style and get a decent rank (easily t250, and even top 100 if you try very hard) but the best ranks go to the less 'casual' (as you put it) and more dedicated players.

Why should someone get more reward, or better rank, for playing 1 hour a day and logging in twice, than someone who watches their planet/galaxy and alliance 10 hours a day?

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by Furyous

Why should someone get more reward, or better rank, for playing 1 hour a day and logging in twice, than someone who watches their planet/galaxy and alliance 10 hours a day?

This is an important question and should be seriously considered by pateam when the future direction of the game is decided upon during, and after, this round.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Furyous

Why should someone get more reward, or better rank, for playing 1 hour a day and logging in twice, than someone who watches their planet/galaxy and alliance 10 hours a day?

If thats your argument then I tell you what, lets start asking PATeam not to rank us by score or value but on Activity. Ofc we shouldnt because that ridiculous, after all even with a value system someome spending less time online can be higher ranked than someone spending more because at no point are we all even. Some of us have better alliances than others, some of us have more suitable timezones ect ect

PA is a game made up of players that are different and as such the tactics that can be employed should reflect that. Spending 10 hours plus a day should be a choice not a requirement, just like being forced to ignore defence and 3 fleet attack should be a choice and not a requirement. The incesant moaning by a few small minded players whom will only be happy when we have a game that resembles the mess we had in r9 where you almost had to be able to commit 24 hours a day to get any kind of fun out of the game crippled any chance of us getting a XP forumula that allowed for the game to have differnt styles that were viable methods of success and which allowed you adapt your play to account for the different circumstances you found yourself in.

So stop worrying about being beaten by someone who spends less time than you logged in. If the differnt styles of play are alot more balanced then if your beaten by someone who spends fewer times it simply means they are better players so deserve a higher ranking

[Furyous]

Originally Posted by wakey

If thats your argument then I tell you what, lets start asking PATeam not to rank us by score or value but on Activity. Ofc we shouldnt because that ridiculous, after all even with a value system someome spending less time online can be higher ranked than someone spending more because at no point are we all even. Some of us have better alliances than others, some of us have more suitable timezones ect ect

PA is a game made up of players that are different and as such the tactics that can be employed should reflect that. Spending 10 hours plus a day should be a choice not a requirement, just like being forced to ignore defence and 3 fleet attack should be a choice and not a requirement.

It goes without saying that I did not imply that more active necessarily means better rank: Success should also be in respect to skill and co-operation with your galaxy and alliance, and down to your personal political play.

But if, regardless of skill, there is little or no reward for the person who does choose to be online 10 hours a day, and chooses to utilise the half of the game that is defence, then the game becomes very one dimensional, boring, and full of idling or absent players 95% of the day (the higher ranked of whom have a little more luck in landing more attacks than others).

If a player can gain a very high rank without regularly sending defence, co-operating with their galaxy and alliance, carefully planning their attacks and occasionally watching for incomings at stupid o'clock in the morning, while at the same time another player who does do all these things ends up ranked much lower because of a rediculous (apparently corrective) formula built into the game, then the game is indeed flawed.

Doing all of the above takes time. I don't mean that if a player stays on their computer more hours a day than anyone else they should win, but the mechanics of the game should be designed such that there is a minimum level of activity (or, should I say, a minimum set of tasks that a player must perform) in order for that player to contend for the very top ranks.

This is a tick based, real time, co-operative attack and defence game. If activity is not rewarded highly in a game like this (and thus the community built and strengthened) then I'm not quite sure what this game is for...

[qebab]

Originally Posted by wakey

If thats your argument then I tell you what, lets start asking PATeam not to rank us by score or value but on Activity. Ofc we shouldnt because that ridiculous, after all even with a value system someome spending less time online can be higher ranked than someone spending more because at no point are we all even. Some of us have better alliances than others, some of us have more suitable timezones ect ect

I can think of better ways to voice that question, but it boils down to the same thing. Why should it even be possible to play solo, without commitment, and get a far better rank than those who involves themselves in alliances and shows dedication to the game? I for one, think that the way XP affected round 16, was not only bad for the community surrounding the game, but it took away a lot of the challenge of it, and for some people, it nearly turned the game into a classic solo player game. For some people, the game wouldn't have changed much that round, even if they played against bots, as opposed to other human beings.

I do hope that you agree this is not good?

Originally Posted by wakey

PA is a game made up of players that are different and as such the tactics that can be employed should reflect that. Spending 10 hours plus a day should be a choice not a requirement, just like being forced to ignore defence and 3 fleet attack should be a choice and not a requirement. The incesant moaning by a few small minded players whom will only be happy when we have a game that resembles the mess we had in r9 where you almost had to be able to commit 24 hours a day to get any kind of fun out of the game crippled any chance of us getting a XP forumula that allowed for the game to have differnt styles that were viable methods of success and which allowed you adapt your play to account for the different circumstances you found yourself in.

What I fear about this, about being able to choose among two (The XP and value) ways of playing, will lead to a divided universe. Obviously, the value players will eventually grow so large that XP whore's won't be able to roid them without massive cooperation, and due to the nature of XP play this will not happen more than once in a while. I don't think the XP way of playing can sustain as many of the old players as the value style, while it might make the game easier for people who can't be active. This is of course of personal preference, but I hate to see people leaving...

Originally Posted by wakey

So stop worrying about being beaten by someone who spends less time than you logged in. If the differnt styles of play are alot more balanced then if your beaten by someone who spends fewer times it simply means they are better players so deserve a higher ranking

Playing better, how? Being in a better alliance, being more active, being smarter, knowing the stats better, being a better psychologist, predicting World War III?

What do you put into the term "better player"? And into the word "deserve"?

And why is it that activity shouldn't be very important, exactly? Due to the nature of the game (MMO), there isn't much difference in skill. You could maybe call it knowledge, and knowledge is shared between players. The rest is very much about social network and how egocentric you choose to play, other than activity.

It is no secret that I prefer value as opposed to XP, but I will let you try to convince me that value is bad

[Banned]

I think there's a false dichotomy developing here, between 'launch 3 attacks per day, do nothing else' and 'be online 10 hours constantly helping my alliance'. A person can be active by checking in for under a minute every tick they're awake, taking a little longer on the ticks they're doing fleet movements (like sending defense for their alliance or getting a target for attacks).

This is completely unproblematic activity. I don't think there's anything wrong with it and it's not something that should be written off as unreasonable.

I'd also like to point out that value requires less in the way consistency of activity. Once an alliance has won a value round, it can stop playing. Its members can drop from 'very high activity' to 'almost none'. In an XP round, the alliance has to maintain full activity (whatever that may be) until the end, as they stop earning score otherwise (I'm going by r16 here.) So claiming that a value round rewards activity more than an XP round isn't wrong, it just doesn't make sense. For what definition of activity? High intensity for a few weeks?

What a value round rewards more than an XP round, is cooperation on the alliance level. And alliance cooperation requires heavy duty coordination. This means a lot of attacks organized, a lot of defenses organized, a lot of politics organized. Coordination and cooperation take a lot of IRC time, but a player doesn't necessarily need to be the most active (most contributing) member to capitalize from his alliances coordination.

[Furyous]

What a value round rewards more than an XP round, is cooperation on the alliance level. And alliance cooperation requires heavy duty coordination. This means a lot of attacks organized, a lot of defenses organized, a lot of politics organized. Coordination and cooperation take a lot of IRC time, but a player doesn't necessarily need to be the most active (most contributing) member to capitalize from his alliances coordination.

Log in for 1 minute every tick is fine by me as a valid way to do very well in a round - as a player you dont have to be heavily involved in politics and IRC. But having to login every 1/2 ticks makes it far more likely that a player will take a much more active part in the community and their alliance, and be on to send defence!

A heavy XP round requires you to be on only for a minute 3/4 ticks a day, and rewards little to people staying online (and interacting with other players) and sending defence to each other when needed.

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by qebab

It is no secret that I prefer value as opposed to XP, but I will let you try to convince me that value is bad

Don't you worry about xp, let me worry about blank.

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by Furyous

A heavy XP round requires you to be on only for a minute 3/4 ticks a day, and rewards little to people staying online (and interacting with other players) and sending defence to each other when needed.

a) Someone has to the find the targets. The idea you only have to be on for a minute 3/4 ticks a day is a complete fallacy.
b) An xp-heavy round is not the same an xp-possible round. Obviously last round with deliberately low values and suiciding fleets was not the best of all possible worlds. However neither is the round.

If I want to play for xp and put in as much time as a value player should I be able to do as well?

If the answer to this is no then your objection is nothing to do with time invested. You just think people should be forced to defend. I'm not saying this is a bad perspective but you should at least acknowledge if that is the case.

[Furyous]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

a) Someone has to the find the targets. The idea you only have to be on for a minute 3/4 ticks a day is a complete fallacy.
b) An xp-heavy round is not the same an xp-possible round. Obviously last round with deliberately low values and suiciding fleets was not the best of all possible worlds. However neither is the round.

If I want to play for xp and put in as much time as a value player should I be able to do as well?

If the answer to this is no then your objection is nothing to do with time invested. You just think people should be forced to defend. I'm not saying this is a bad perspective but you should at least acknowledge if that is the case.

Someone has to sort targets still of course. So from an alliance of 60, 10 will be very active, and the rest could, if they wanted, be very inactive and do very well from the efforts of those few people who organise things.

If you have enough time to do very well as a value player, play value. The point of XP wasn't to bring in an alternative style of play, but introduce rewards into the game so that newer and less active players would see it worthwhile sticking with the game, and not be alienated by the very active high value players. If XP becomes something different, something that requires a lot of time, and activity, then great, but then Planetarion would be a different game: A game where you build nomimal score, and not a game where you develop and grow your planet and your galaxy by gaining value.

If you want to gain points you can't lose, then you might as well play a football league game.

I don't advocate forcing defence, but defence consolidates an alliance into being more than just an attack group. Defence justifies the existance of an alliance. It does the same, perhaps even more so, for your galaxy (the place where you tend to meet new players more than anywhere else).

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by Furyous

Someone has to sort targets still of course. So from an alliance of 60, 10 will be very active, and the rest could, if they wanted, be very inactive and do very well from the efforts of those few people who organise things.

Yeah because that's staggeringly different from what people could do now? Log in send defence to assigned co-ords, send attack, wait for sms, recall defence, send more defence.

If you have enough time to do very well as a value player, play value. The point of XP wasn't to bring in an alternative style of play, but introduce rewards into the game so that newer and less active players would see it worthwhile sticking with the game, and not be alienated by the very active high value players. If XP becomes something different, something that requires a lot of time, and activity, then great, but then Planetarion would be a different game: A game where you build nomimal score, and not a game where you develop and grow your planet and your galaxy by gaining value.

The question I'm asking is should it be that game? Or should it at least be possible. I'm not purely aiming this at you, more at everyone playing PA so they start to figure out what they really want.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Furyous

I don't advocate forcing defence, but defence consolidates an alliance into being more than just an attack group. Defence justifies the existance of an alliance. It does the same, perhaps even more so, for your galaxy (the place where you tend to meet new players more than anywhere else).

Out of curiosity, have you played in an alliance that doesn't do much defending? (I.e. one that acts mostly as an attack group.)

[Furyous]

Originally Posted by Banned

Out of curiosity, have you played in an alliance that doesn't do much defending? (I.e. one that acts mostly as an attack group.)

Quha

oh and..

1up this round

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Furyous

Quha

oh and..

1up this round

Thanks for answering, this is interesting.
Would you say that these were not justified existence as alliances? If they were, why? What justified (or justifies) them? Is this negative compared to an alliance that defends or positive?

For myself with Ascendancy I'd say that the answer is yes for the first question. An alliance that can win, is justified by the will to victory. Even this round when we're not exactly 'competitive', we play together in that we discuss the game, how we're playing it, what we enjoy, what we dislike etc etc. The alliance provides social context for all these things. I'd say that this is positive, because I'm not particularly interested in partaking in an alliance that requires I be available at certain times rather than others.

[Furyous]

Originally Posted by Banned

Would you say that these were not justified existence as alliances? If they were, why? What justified (or justifies) them? Is this negative compared to an alliance that defends or positive?

Quha was a long time ago, and by that time we were only really battlegroup not an alliance. I would say without defence, an alliance is incomplete in its role. After all, the only technical benefit of tagging up is provide defence -1 eta. The rules of the game imply that an alliance is there for defence, and not just as a flag for a group of attackers to wave together.

But my point is more that, regardless of alliance, a method of play for an individual that doesnt reward defence at all, be it galaxy or alliance, does rather make redundant half the reason for co-operation, and half of the game.

Lets not redirect this thread into one which analyses what an alliance should be, but rather keep it on the point of whether XP play should be a valid means of getting a high rank.

I don't think it should be. I don't think it is a style of gameplay for which this game was ever intended, or a route it should be taken down in the future. It transforms the game so far from it's original design, that a name change is perhaps justified.

[Furyous]

Originally Posted by Banned

For myself with Ascendancy I'd say that the answer is yes for the first question. An alliance that can win, is justified by the will to victory. Even this round when we're not exactly 'competitive', we play together in that we discuss the game, how we're playing it, what we enjoy, what we dislike etc etc. The alliance provides social context for all these things. I'd say that this is positive, because I'm not particularly interested in partaking in an alliance that requires I be available at certain times rather than others.

Well it all depends how you define alliance. If a definition of alliance can altogether exclude defence, and perhaps not even include regular attacking together, then what you describe is an alliance. I would not define an alliance this way. Any random group of players can tag up with the highest average score and win, and if there is minimal interaction ingame, then it is just that, a number of individual players.

I dont think you can justify defining something an active alliance if it's function is purely social, and knowledge/tactic sharing. It is a community of players.

Not that I disagree with your desire to play in an group like this. Did you not like 1up when you were in it, then?

[Heartless]

For PA:N pa team will implement an online vote which grants every registered passport to vote every 5 minute. Of course, if you do not vote in one of those 5 minute windows your vote will be lost. You can vote on 3 things: Your favourite passport, your favourite passport galaxy (you + max. 9 buddies) and your favourite passport community (you, your 9 buddies and 7 other buddypacks); alternately you can use one of the 3 votes for defense, i.e. "dispell" a vote for a hostile buddypack, group of buddypacks, or enemy passport. Every vote resembles 1k value, and there will be no more xp. Guess we're all happy then

Oh, you will complain when there are only like 500 active passports left that it is no more fun, but we all know not everyone likes text-based table calculations where only the amount of increasing values for one table cell count.

edit: sorry for the post - quote mess, the buttons are just like next to each other ...

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Furyous

I would say without defence, an alliance is incomplete in its role. After all, the only technical benefit of tagging up is provide defence -1 eta.

Technically, an alliance is complete in it's role when it's tag is listed in the alliance ranking. The eta-1 is just a bonus.

[Furyous]

Originally Posted by Heartless

Technically, an alliance is complete in it's role when it's tag is listed in the alliance ranking. The eta-1 is just a bonus.

Notice the two separate parts of my statement. In the first it said 'i would say' with regard to alliances role, and the technical point was purely that eta-1 is the only ingame tagging advantage of alliances.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Furyous

Not that I disagree with your desire to play in an group like this. Did you not like 1up when you were in it, then?

I quite liked my time in 1up, but I'm not interested in playing the game like that any more. Primarily the time requirements are not interesting anymore. If I'm busy when I'm playing in a highly cooperative alliance, I'm letting the team down, if I'm busy in my not-so cooperative alliance I'm just not around as much. I can live with the latter, but I quite dislike letting the team down.

[Furyous]

Originally Posted by Banned

I quite liked my time in 1up, but I'm not interested in playing the game like that any more. Primarily the time requirements are not interesting anymore. If I'm busy when I'm playing in a highly cooperative alliance, I'm letting the team down, if I'm busy in my not-so cooperative alliance I'm just not around as much. I can live with the latter, but I quite dislike letting the team down.

Well said. Which is why I don't play with 'highly co-operative' alliances (if at all) in rounds when I know I will likely be very busy with other things.

The question is, should an alliance with highly dedicated members for a whole round have more right to do well than a considerably more casual alliance (all other things being equal)?

[jerome]

that depends totally on what sort of a game we're aiming planetarion to be


by we i mean the pa-team, and frankly i doubt they know anyways.

[TheShadowMan]

lo all just add me input. I started circa pa tick 600.

To gain max score by attacking atm i need to hit people in the t150
To gain score by value i need to roid ppl just under my value to increase my res production and hence my ability to produce value

I am ranked circa 1000

Main gripes are that i need to hit ppl twice my score for good xp AND / OR noobie bash to get my value up

the new forumla promotes bashing