Input requested on settlements

[Eric]

Within the next day or two, the game will be changed settlements will expire after seven days if you don't reclaim them.  An expired settlement will then be able to be taken over by any other player.  When you reclaim a settlement, you will lose a random amount of Mars Dollars (between 1 and 100, probably).

I think this makes sense logically because in real life, if you were governing a settlement on Mars, you'd need to give the people who live there some sort of payment (or bribe), otherwise they would kick you out and look for a new governor.

What do you think?

[Chris_UT]

I think the settlement expiring thing is a really bad idea and would piss off most of your players. Having to pay upkeep on settlements is also a dubious proposition. Supposedly having more settlements gives you a bonus to the money you earn mining but since we dont know the formula there is no way to know if you are actually making more money or losing money on your settlements by controlling them.

I offer an alternative: Have settlements produce income for their owners, this will encourage people to fight over settlements even more and add more competition and fun to the game. Nothing extreme but maybe 1MD per settlement per day, with a cap of 100MD per day.

[ZuG]

Hmm.

I think you are going to piss off your paying users.


I am totally with you on the idea that 'something' needs to be done to help newbies compete effectively, but I don't think this is a particularly good solution.


I think a better idea would be a two-pronged solution:

1. Start placing homesteads in areas that are not well-explored (the 200-400 zone). You need to wrap the world when you do this so people on the edge of the map aren't at a disadvantage.

I know this sort of mucks up your prize idea, but I think if you took a survey, most of us aren't playing primarily for the prizes. It may have been what drew us in, but now we're playing the game because we enjoy it and/or want the actual cashouts. I know when I buy extra moves or make suggestions, I'm thinking of conquering more settlements, not finding the missing ipod.

2. Stop veteran players from attacking newbies. Take your number of settlements, and divide by 5. You can only attack players with at least that number of settlements (color-code the results in the player name when you see a settlement or homestead). That will make the competition a lot more fair. This will also encourage your top players to buy more moves to go gobble up the settlements in the border areas before the newbs get them all (and there should always be border areas, keep enlarging the map).

Oh, that formula only applies to *below*... you can attack a player as high above you as you wish, at your own risk.


As suggested above, having settlements pay some small amount of money daily would also create great incentive to buy moves to get more settlements. If you also jack up (some more) the top-end upgrades, it should keep things fair.

Teleportation between settlements (I know you said you were implimenting this) would also be an important part of the game. Since my homestead is smack in the middle (and as the game progresses, ALL current players will have homesteads in the middle), I'm going to run out of settlements to attack. If I can buy more moves to get some border settlements to teleport to, I'd do it in a second. Then as the border settlements all got taken, I'd buy more moves. Repeat ad infinintum.

[ZuG]

oh, and I just want to say that I think you're doing a pretty awesome job of listening to player input and implementing suggestions. It's made the game a ton more fun and interesting since the start.

[S41nt]

very bad idea i think, maybe if you want to protect the newbies you can give them a week (maybe more) protection so they cannot be attack rather than using the expiring settlement.

and also for the payout if you do it then all of your upgrade level will be zero, it is a very bad  idea for me and maybe all of the player because if we still want to play this game we cannot request the payout as the upgrade itself is very expensive and you raise it price a lot LOL. maybe the release of settlement is still okay but making the upgrade level to zero is a very bad idea for me.

maybe you can make another idea like increasing the price for payouts,etc. what do you think?

[Shaun]

This is a bad idea.

[Eric]

Wow, I'm glad I posted here before implementing the change.  Thanks for the great input.

I think to start I may max out the number of settlements you can have at 500, just to keep a few players from taking over the game.  Does that sound fair?

There are currently over 22,000 settlements on the map and about 9,000 have been claimed.

I'll also work on getting the edges of the map to wrap to the other side, rather than just being blank.  I'm still thinking about having the polar ice caps on N and S too...there are some possibilities there.

[Chris_UT]

A 500 settlement cap sounds fair.

**edit - now that I see one player has over 600 you may want to consider a cap of 700 because I dont know that it would be fair to take settlements away from someone has already had them prior to the rule change.

[zonedguy]

I've actually been giving this topic quite a bit of thought since I began stealing a large number of core settlements in the last two weeks. I think I have a working system that I'd like to propose which will accomodate everyone's desires while furthering gameplay. Unfortunately I'm in the middle of moving, so I cannot type it all out tonight. For now, I'd just like a place holder to voice:

This implementation is a bad idea.
No settlement limits should be enforced.
Some of us are entirely too powerful.
Too many changes are being made to the game.

I'll explain all those in a day or two.

[jasonbay]

this is a bad idea , it would take alot of the fun out of the game

[CaptainAngry]

Dude, how can you say paying for a game is a bad when that is how you came to be? I can tell you that I haven't paid for anything I can definitely take you in a battle. This entire game is good because you can get something real for playing a game without paying for it. In order for that to be possible, some people still have to pay for it.

Who cares if paying gives you an initial advantage, there are still people who have worked their asses off one day at a time to get where they are. It is still possible. New players don't loose money if they don't have it, lets say if they spend it on upgrades. Furthermore, new players can have an advantage by not attacking people. If you spend all of your moves looking for money, and not losing on attacking. Then there is only one place for you to be attacked and I have not been attacked all that much (at my homestead) because there are tons of homesteads.

I think that a grace period would be good when starting, or maybe the chances of finding larger sums of money like maybe up to 200 instead of 100 for people that are either new (under a week or so) or people that are weak (under 6-10 total upgrades) would help balance things.

*Edit: Breesely took down his post, saying how much he had grown in five days and that paying money was bad because of this...

[Breesley]

I'm not saying that paying for a game is bad, I'm saying that player's who pay for upgrades and too many extra moves will dominate the game! You say you can take me in a battle? I've been taking your settlements too! But if I want to buy more moves you won't be able to take me by saturday. As thing's are now, I take everything I attack! If you have never paid for moves you will be left behind, it can't be helped! I removed my post because I didn't like the way it sounded to me after re-reading it, but now I will say it again: Leader board's are only good for hunting the player's that are playing well, and buying upgrade's like radar and more moves are a disadvantage to player's on a budget!, These things will bring needed income to this game but will also cause the game to become unbalanced. New player's will have no chance!, and the same big player,s will alway's cash out. Team attack's by alliance's will become a problem as well, If my alliance leader ask's all member's to attack a player, that player will get nothing for that day's work, what if we attack for a week? There should be a limit on team attack's so we don't destroy any player's hope of getting somewhere in this game. I haven't thought much about putting a limit on settlement's but, maybe to gain more than 500 settlement's, a player would have to pay 100 MD for each settlement above 500, I think someone already said this ( smart guy ) and I think it sound's fair. A grace period for new player's, that give's them more money will only give more money to their attacker's, Limit who can attack who! All the game's I've played say large player's can't take much from small player's but small player's don't have much to take anyway!, and in a few months all of us will be large to a new player. This game is very new and I like it, but it need's fine tunning, I'm not jumping on anyone, just don't want to see this game end up like some others. My typing finger hurts now, gotta-go!

[Jrobb]

Within the next day or two, the game will be changed settlements will expire after seven days if you don't reclaim them.  An expired settlement will then be able to be taken over by any other player.  When you reclaim a settlement, you will lose a random amount of Mars Dollars (between 1 and 100, probably).

I think this makes sense logically because in real life, if you were governing a settlement on Mars, you'd need to give the people who live there some sort of payment (or bribe), otherwise they would kick you out and look for a new governor.

What do you think?

I agree with most that this idea doesn't sound good.  Why reclaim a settle ment if I'm going to lose money?  They are supposed to help me not hurt me.  I like the idea of this game taking on more realistic trends.  If I own stuff I pay for its upkeep.  I have no problem paying say 5MD/day for every 10-20 settlements, 6MD/day for 21-31, and so on.  This would also address the issue of a settlement cap where the more you have, the more it costs you.  You can be a settlement whore or a money whore, you get to fiind the balance.  If you can't provide payment, you lose however many settlements you can't afford.

The random encounters with things to fight should also be explored, maybe even player-to-player battle when landing on the same coordinate.  It'd happen in real life why not here?

End of day and out of moves can players start from one of their settlements if they end their turn on it?  I know you want us to purchase moves, but this would be a realistic event during exploration as well.  Ending turn here, you would need to "resupply" contributing x-amount for staying here to do so say 100MD.  If you don't have it, you don't start here, you'd start from Homestead.

I like that you the designer are open to suggestions and are not just after creating a pile of shart that makes you money.  This game has the ability to be a great great game (it is already great) since it is essentially tailored to the players' desires.  But I agree with the poster who said too many things are changing.  You can't make everyone happy, and that is understood by all here and the game is different from day to day now.  I've been playing for maybe 4 days and each day something new has been added.  Mostly for the good, and some bad ideas I have seen have been removed too.  I think a little less "Hand of God" would make things run more smothly.  I'm glad you removed the option to buy upgrades...that (purchasing upgrades with real money) was just too easy for those on no budget.

I applaud you fo rbringing suggestions to us before implementing them and urge you to keep doing this, unless the change is not in need of our comment.

Keep up the good work, this game is too fun!

J

[ZuG]

I disagree with the too many things are changing folks right now, because i really don't think newbies can compete well at the moment.

Once the gameplay is balanced and fair, let it be. But you have to get it to that point first.

[CaptainAngry]

Okay, I have a new idea and I am sure that the paying members may not like this but here goes:

Reset the game.


If you reset the game, like every three months, new members will get a change to start a new with everyone else. Yeah, we will loose all of our settlements and have to start somewhere new but we will all start with a level playing field again. Alliances would remain in tact and maybe there could be a cash prize for the best alliance (average number of settlements/person, named sum divided among each other) or cash prizes for the top five (5) players.

This is the only way I see to even out the playing field.

Any thoughts?