Jump to content
Domination: Earth
  • 1

Couch expansions


Ruvox

Question

Today I'm very concerned and just had to write this statement. I know that this will offend many player and that it's just my personal opinion so please see it as such. This is not meant to insult anybody and I hope we can discuss politely here.

I've recently noticed that it is a very common practice to just sell your big home/work land to a friend/partner/relative to build a new land from your couch/desk and afterward trade your big land back and merge them. That way players can keep expanding from their couch bypassing the restrictions you (@Mr. D) made this February (making nested lands no longer possible to prevent couch expansion). As long as I remember couch expansion is something you always wanted to prohibit and Utility Structures are something made to be a compensation to have something to do at home/work.

Clearly the current situation divides the players into two groups. Those who bypass the restrictions meant to prevent couch expansion and those who don't. The first group is expanding very fast, climbing leaderboards and leaving the second group behind which focuses more on capture land outside their home land every now and then and planning trips for new bases our lands on remote locations. If both groups proceed to play as they do we'll soon have an elite much more powerful than the second group and the second group having no chance to ever catch up again.

So I see the need of you deciding into one of both directions. You could either allow couch expansion (nested lands) again once and for all so everybody can do the same and nobody is heavily disadvantaged or implement some sort of restriction to prevent couch expansion via trades (for example huge fees on trades including big lands of level 100+ or something since they should be something which is not traded often/usually) 

I'm an "anti-coucher" and would have to change my style of play hugely if you decide for the second direction since if I would then just proceed playing as I do now I'd be far behind everybody else very fast. I also think that the "couchers" would at least have a reason more to play as I do if you implement the Utility Structure suggested by @Oлer Поленин. As you might have noticed I prefer the second direction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 2
On 11/09/2018 at 6:41 PM, Ruvox said:

I don't think/hope Mr. D would just deactivate land trades at all

That is accurate!
Do I regret introducing trades in the current format? Perhaps. Are we going to remove any features that I spent many hours developing? Unlikely... :)

As I stated in the original post, a fix to this problem will be released relatively soon (i.e. before any rewrites are complete); until that happens, please consider land expansion via "couch trading" a known exploit that goes against our code of conduct, i.e. if we spot anyone doing it there will be a single warning and, in case of a repeat infraction, penalties applied to account severity of which will be decided at our discretion.

Just to reiterate and avoid misunderstandings, the punishable offences are:

1) The actual fact of re-purchasing previously sold lands for the purpose of merging them with a newly created land in the same location (within the re-purchased land's radius)
2) Repeat sale of a land in the same spot for the purpose of infinite resource generation and bypassing the level 100 growth cap (i.e. growing your base and accumulating wealth via endless checking in from home/office/other frequently visited location that isn't your base).

@Ruvox your suggestions make sense, but are unfortunately too complex (there's no single-sentence tutorial that would explain all these rules! New player confusion is our key enemy right now) while the cost-based solutions only "patch the symptoms" without solving the underlying issue; rich players still gain access to some fairly "grey area" strategies.
I believe we've come up with a more-or-less straightforward set of restrictions that will enforce the requirement to travel (yes, I will continue insisting on "couch expansions" being against the rules; if you don't want to travel - don't play a travel-based game), but just working out the finer details now (all of which will be explained once the update is ready).

Stay tuned.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1

1. Okay, then I like that.

2. Meh, I'm still not 100% on this idea, but a smaller cooldown (50 days) wouldnt be too bad. 

3. I'm just going to stick with my "This would be too hard to teach new players" point, and besides it's not like we have a robust tutorial for anything else. 

4. Okay, that could work... I don't love it (i don't even like it) but it would be a significant block to the "pass and grab" group. 

New points since this is getting old to fine-tune further and further. 

@Mr D, I understand you're a busy guy but you haven't given us any indication of which (if any) of these ideas are even on the table. We don't know anything except: 

- Change is coming 

- The FA needs to be broken

- You think the game has become too complicated 

The final one I reject wholeheartedly, I agree that we have evolved past a simple tutorial, but a simple link to the discord could be added easily enough (which I know you don't care to use but many of your pro players (including every single player in this thread) prefer as a means of communication. It lets us teach them in real time as a community) I find the game needlessly complicated at times, and UI/UX breaks at times ofc but I think if you held a poll you would not find more than a handful players would support your (as it appears in my mind) essentially rolling back updates that added features.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Ironically, I've stumbled upon this realization recently myself; just yesterday I've been a witness to a transaction similar to the one you're describing made by a hardcore traveller whom I've known for a long time, but who's been encouraged to proceed down this route for the reasons outlined above - it's much easier to trade lands back and forth than actually travel outside of the land's radius.

Needless to say that I'm very disappointed in this approach as the "couch expansion" is the #1 reason why actual travellers leave our game (heck, even I am discouraged from playing fairly now as I've spent tons of money on petrol / plane tickets travelling around for land capture and turns out I could have done *this*! :D).

Something will be done about this without doubt.

I'd also like to disclose some surprising/shocking stats about "Domination: Earth" in general: we've been a lot bigger and had more active players when the game was simpler 8-10 months ago.
In fact, our growth was phenomenal and we've almost reached 10,000 concurrent active players in January 2018. However, once we've added the trade system, high-level land restrictions based around couch expansion and all the "civilization-like" features things went downhill!

That is why I personally think that we need to stop trying to be a "civilization" and return back to what we were originally: a competitive travel-based strategy, not an MMORTS (i.e. more travelling, less "diplomacy"; more cooperative gameplay, less PvP).
We've already grown past the point where the game is "easy to understand or explain via tutorials", there are too many complex features unrelated to travels and the gameplay process with all the trade-based exploits is nothing but messy right now.
I know many of you will disagree, but I believe that at this moment in time we need fewer features and a simpler gameplay process, not "even more stuff" to make things irrevocably confusing, which is why I need to do a lot of thinking before any new utility structures are introduced.

But in any case, couch-expansion and all the associated problems definitely need to go!
Major gameplay changes are to be expected in the future.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
25 minutes ago, Mr. D said:

I'd also like to disclose some surprising/shocking stats about "Domination: Earth" in general: we've been a lot bigger and had more active players when the game was simpler 8-10 months ago.
In fact, our growth was phenomenal and we've almost reached 10,000 concurrent active players in January 2018. However, once we've added the trade system, high-level land restrictions based around couch expansion and all the "civilization-like" features things went downhill!

That's very sad to hear but at least for Germany I have the feeling that we are a growing community since those players who find their way into the Discord (which tend to be more in the last time) mostly stay within and get all their questions answered. 
I like Domination like it is today, of course there is always something to be better but I think having less features is not the right way. Other games are also complex even much more complex but don't have a problem about loosing players because of it. I think one of the biggest problems is that while the game evolved, gained more features and became more complex, the "tutorial" stayed simple and small as it is not even noticed by many fresh players, additionally there is still the lacking community/chat option since as already mentioned as soon as the players get in touch with others (the Discord at the moment) they tend to understand and like the game. I honestly think that it's not the complexity but the lack of explanation what "scares" off some players. If you focus on that two parts (a discord ping and a more "forced" tutorial) you might not higher the stream of new players immediately but extremely higher the rate of those fresh players staying active leading to a growing community.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

@Ruvox

I was trying to avoid turning the discussion against players that use the "wife swapping" technique, pardon the pun, but contrary to my desire, my previous post forced the issue to begin appearing along some Discord conversations. Thus, you may be right with putting the issue up for discussion until it is still early and the rift among players is still not wide :)

As for my opinion:

1. I do support the anti-couch measures. For two main reasons: firstly, the game should be about travel and then also, with couch-expansion too easy, the game becomes unplayable for fresh players.

2. But I also think that maintaining some couch-enabled features is important in the long run. Unless the game mechanics drastically change (abandoning the growing lands feature), the gameplay tends to deteriorate with time, as you literally have less and less to do, unless you wish to waste some gas, travel to some really uninteresting locations and, well, couch-expand from your car at best.

To be clear, under "couch-enabled" I think of:

  • primarily, the ablility to play around your neighbourhood and town, with your actions having some real meaning despite the lv1000 land hovering above the player,
  • to some extend, as explained before, the true couch play, that still does keep you in the game, but does not affect the game environment significantly.

Without couch play, the game will quickly turn from every-day amusement, through perhaps something like "will play when travelling outside the city..." up to "...unless I forget playing while on travel". And then yet another player abandons the game.

In light of this:

3. I would support banning or severely limiting land swap abuse, intramaritial or otherwise, but only if a decent solution to playing inside one's own "backyard" is provided.

@Mr. D

I sincerely think there might be a misjudgement in the interpretation of the statistics.

I would attribute the big peak and following fall that you describe to following factors:

  • the game attained significantly higher internet media interest than does today, mostly because it was something fresh back then and ceased to be fresh with time,
  • the media-influenced gamers influx often evaporates strongly over time, as most of contemporary players get bored quickly with anything (save for breathing, perhaps),
  • the game is seriously simplistic in terms of graphic, branding etc., making it less atractive visually and thus discouraging many players.
  • the game features regarding welcoming new players and explaining the gameplay are virtually nonexistent; when I was beginning, the tutorial implemented was hard to find and completely unhelpful, also the game, perhaps along the lines of No Man's Sky, offers no narrative to lead the player along and gives player no clear aim; this tends to push many players away;
  • in virtually all areas the players feel completely lonely, and this is significantly worsened by the lack of ingame communications.

Simplifying the gameplay works for some specific games, but there are lots of other games that are really complicated and yet popular, if only to call upon the Civilization you yourself named. The games which fail are the games that feel overly complicated, but this is where UI/UX planning most often fails, not the game idea itself.

I'm not arguing here that the feature I suggested is technically proper in UX terms.

But I feel the idea behind points in the right direction. Allowing the players to benefit from their travels and to convert local production into external growth (within previously visited areas) does reduce the effects of local overexpansion, does provide incentive for lategamers and it will, I believe, reduce that complete loneliness the fresh players feel, because of the higher chance of some other gamers presence in their area. Allowing the lategamers to play in remote lands will densify the game environment, and then I feel all you need is just a proper balancing, promoting "davids" in ther local area against remote, imperial "goliaths", making it a harder to overexpanded players to maintain their superiority over small, distanced players, thus making fresh players more engaged.

And I feel we, as current players, want to travel and expand, but also want to have a decent reason to do it, and we want to compete. The travel-based expansion is fun in itself, but offers little reward afterwards. You have few lands abroad, you can fight more FoT and find more players to talk to via Discord, but other than some rare situations that allow for some growth or action, these visited lands are as good as a numb limb.

As for simplification, If you turn to simplify the game and turn away from Civilization-style gameplay, it will become just a differently painted conglomerate of Strava and GPS-oriented social media, social-part excluded. I believe that the only right direction is the Civ one, and if followed by proper UX softening whatever complicated mechanisms the game hides in the trunk, and new gameplay possibilities that encourage interaction, then with introduction of UI 2.0 it has a huge chance to repopulate and keep running well :D

Edited by Олег Поленин
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

Thus, you may be right with putting the issue up for discussion until it is still early and the rift among players is still not wide

I'm afraid it's already very late... Back in the days where nested lands were allowed, I also did it to don't fall behind and had at least one level 100 land to merge in a week sometimes even two. So especially the "ultra-couchers" will already have gained many hundred land levels making every singe land level I capture outside my big land nearly worth nothing. This leads to me loosing interest in capturing when leaving my home land since it just has no impact in contrast to the "couchers" work. So the current situation lets "anti-couchers" loosing interest and in worst case abandon the game since their work looses value day by day. So sorry but I see the need of restricting this as by far more urgent than introducing new things to do from home.

8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

To be clear, under "couch-enabled" I think of:

  • primarily, the ablility to play around your neighbourhood and town, with your actions having some real meaning despite the lv1000 land hovering above the player,
  • to some extend, as explained before, the true couch play, that still does keep you in the game, but does not affect the game environment significantly.

Actually couch-play is already a big part of my everyday gaming. Especially since I travel and want to trade and hold remote locations I have a gigantic need of resources. The easiest way to get resources is to capture every 15 minutes within my home land. Doing this also slowly expands my base which is great to higher my maximum storage for resources and soldiers and keep me high in the leaderboards. Furthermore, while building and upgrading the already existing Utility Structures helps to improve the gain of exactly the resource you are lacking of the most or defending your land. So the game is already couch-enabled and without the already existing couch gaming it would be nearly impossible to pay my growth on trips and trade and support smaller players. I couldn't just not do it without loosing many benefits. But it's not exactly that stressful as capturing is if you expand your land at the same time.

8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

but only if a decent solution to playing inside one's own "backyard" is provided.

As already mentioned there are already so many benefits on couch gaming. But I see that it would be easier for "couchers" to come back to the normal kind of gaming if they would have an opportunity like your lately suggestesd Utility Structure. But again it shouldn't be too valuable. Being able to upgrade a land remotely every 10 captures would not be at all comparable to travelling there which might reqcuire lots of money and many hours of driving etc. Every 100 captures is something more comparable. And again this implementation would require land swap restrictions beforehand otherwise your "land exchange" idea would just make no sense at all. (But sorry for changing the topic to things which belong into the other thread).

8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

As for simplification, If you turn to simplify the game and turn away from Civilization-style gameplay, it will become just a differently painted conglomerate of Strava and GPS-oriented social media, social-part excluded. I believe that the only right direction is the Civ one, and if followed by proper UX softening whatever complicated mechanisms the game hides in the trunk, and new gameplay possibilities that encourage interaction, then with introduction of UI 2.0 it has a huge chance to repopulate and keep running well :D

I totally go with that!

8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

You have few lands abroad, you can fight more FoT and find more players to talk to via Discord, but other than some rare situations that allow for some growth or action, these visited lands are as good as a numb limb.

Now think about how valuable those remote lands and bases will be if Domination gets populated more and more :D

8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

I feel all you need is just a proper balancing, promoting "davids" in ther local area against remote, imperial "goliaths"

At the moment this is given since it is pretty hard to grow bases remotely and local players can easily grow theirs pretty fast reducing the influence of the imperialists very easy. For example it took only weeks for a small player on one of my remote level 1 bases to have its own 13 levels beyond mine ;) Considering your suggested Utility Structure this would still be given if this does not affect your remote base (which you also already suggested).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Perhaps I should add a few thoughts to the discussion, considering that I may have pioneered the land swap technique. I started doing that when I achieved a large territory in my home/work area and started to get frustrated at the inability to "play" as usual. (In my defense, it is one-way swap with my wife having the large land. I actually am trying to rebuild anew using the post-February changes.)

Having said that, I would actually favor restrictions on "couch" play. The game is indeed designed to encourage travel, which we do, and the construction of huge lands from a single spot should be curtailed. But as I mentioned, there needs to be something available to players during times they are not able to travel. The utility structures are fine until you hit the Level 1000 maximum, at which point you either are stuck or required to do away with a source of resources.

I think part of the problem is the way land areas grow. There's not much of a diminishing return system in place, given that the 1 gold/0.1 supply per level fee for merging lands is particularly prohibitive, especially as land areas grow quadratically along with resource collection. Perhaps some quadratic growth of fees would diminish the marginal return. Just a thought.

I agree with other commentators about the post hoc ergo proctor hoc assumption related to game traffic. Certainly other factors are principally involved.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Okay. I was going to stay out of this but I realized that there are actually no "Couchers" here. 

I'm going to say it, I am. 

I am a Coucher. 


Now, I'm going to explain why, and why I think we desperately need to break couching. 

First, I'm going to explain Why I choose to become a coucher. First off, I had read through the terms and conditions for my favorite game and noticed that there was no rule saying that I couldn't use a family member as a Bank. This was my initial go at it, first, I was going to use a collective account for the entire family, that way as we all traveled in our separate directions we could be a super beast reaching out to the ends of the country. However, when I explored the ToS and TaC I found that this was, in fact, clearly against the rules. Thus I didn't do it. Now, I began looking into this after the second Billion surfaced in America. This was a moment I went "snap, I'm never going to catch up at this rate". But then just days later his wife, IndianaCatLady, took over and I realized that there was a system that would throw me into the top 20 (at the time).  Thus: what I coined later as the Kell System was coined. This being said, I doubt he was the first to find this system, and I don't think he did anything wrong. What I am not doing here is saying "Well, he did it first, punish him not me" I will accept a punishment for my admitting to being a Coucher should one be decided, despite my opinion that would be idiotic. 

So for a Why? My why is because it was not against the rules, yes others were doing it (i have several others but I will not surrender their names as they are protected), And as someone else mentioned when I have to go 5km to do anything IG then yes, it gets boring really fast. 

Time for the How-to-Break-Your-Game-Breaking-Bug segment of my mini-essay. 

I truly think that the SE (settlers expansion) would be a relative fix. Would it be less effective? yes. Would I use it over the Family Advantage? Yes, I would. Once again the only reason that I began using the FA (family advantage, my nickname for coaching in this particular setting) was I was could not do anything for several days. You know when you were a kid and you didn't just use Youtube for video games and you got stuck how you would just keep trying to beat the level/crack the code/make that crazy jump for days? and eventually you just kinda gave up on it for the weekend/next chance you got to see your brother/uncle/friend that knew everything about video games? That is where many of us ended up. We only played maybe once a week, and even then only for maybe 10 minutes. So, if I had a way to still be contributing to my other lands I would take it in a moment. I would love the chance to upgrade distant lands especially at a 10:1 ratio. I think that making it harder to use the FA is the wrong way to go without some kind of solution and alternative. All your going to do is effectively lose your core veterans, along with lots of your biggest donators.  

Okay, now for the conclusion to my comment: Why Couching and the Family Advantage Needs to be Broken. 

First off: it is not really fair to those who are stuck going through life with no friends, family or Spouses. Many of your players are stuck without this (the FA) and thus it creates an unfair environment within the game. There is also the fact that despite this trick, many players are still getting burned out on the game for lack of things to do. Eventually, it gets boring simply watching your rank level up with very little other purpose in-game. In addition to this, there are players that don't choose to use this system and feel that if unfairly leaves them out of the loop and at a severe disatvatge. I, for one, felt that to remain relevant I must evolve and began working co-op with my brother Jason. I can understand how this would not be well accepted and leave players like the FA players cheated. I'm all for the destruction of this as a viable method, but within reason and not with any insane or unreasonable changes that will do nothing more than hurt the 5%.  A fee? that would be a waste of time, I have 160,000 in the bank. Something like a land percentage? well then... I guess I'll just grind a bit slower. We *DO* need to break it, I just don't have any ideas on how too. (Other than obv, make it against the rules, that will deter lots of players such as myself).  

Final notes: Thanks for reading this. I value your opinion and hope this doesn't offend anyone. However, I think I need to be the vote that points out that very few realistic players can expect to go further than 10km (just a single level 2000 land) from their work/home/school/etc for more than a few minutes a day. 15 minutes? Who has 15 min to sit and waste sitting to claim land again? and a single land level at level 2000, its worth hundreds of M2 and way-way better than a single level land. I just felt i needed to point out that many players with busy lives don't have many options to expand much if this is starting to feel like an ad for the SE... well finally. I think the SE I awesome and I would love to see it in the game by the end of month and at latest Halloween.   ~~ Raines 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

I will accept a punishment for my admitting to being a Coucher should one be decided, despite my opinion that would be idiotic. 

I don't think that this is about punishing someone for doing something which is questionable but about proclaiming the need of restrictions to prevent such strategies.

11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

And as someone else mentioned when I have to go 5km to do anything IG then yes, it gets boring really fast.

Yes, sure. But I don't think that this is the point. Just for fun, let me make a list of game features you can use from your couch and those you can't if there were a restriction about land swapping to prevent couch expanding.
What you can do from your couch within your homeland:

  • Buy and sell lands 
  • Track other players
  • Generate and collect resources (one of the most important thing in the game)
  • Search for and fight the FoT and afterwards work on your perks
  • Fight other players
  • Produce Items and manage your Warehouse
  • Build or repair defence or other constructables (and delete them on level 100+ lands)
  • Scrap items
  • Merge lands
  • Rename lands
  • Upgrade lands remotely
  • Build, upgrade or delete Utility Structures
  • Collect your hourly resources from your stations
  • Let you show areas around your remote lands to find new players and make alliances (or fight them if necessary)
  • Transfer or recruit new soldiers
  • Use Missile Launchers, Nukes or Guard Towers to damage enemy structures
  • Manage wars (surrender, start them, end them, accept, issue or decline a truce)
  • Higher the defense value of your base temporarily
  • Let your base grow to gain more space for soldiers and resources
  • Upgrade lands remotely via using Unobtainium
  • Exchange Unobtainium for resources
  • Make your inventory bigger using Unobtainium and fill it (if you are within your base) or use the items (if you are without your base)
  • Conquer new lands from enemy players
  • Move your base (depends on the position of your bases)

Literally everything except the following points.

What you can not do from your couch within your homeland:

  • Expand your homeland (as soon as it's too big)
  • Establish new bases
  • Capture new lands

I just can't go with the idea of nothing to do from your couch actually you can do nearly everything possible in the game from your couch as mentioned above.
One of the reasons you might not see collecting new resources as that important might be that you

11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

have 160,000 in the bank

But why do you have that much? Amounts like that jut melt away if you travel around establish new bases and capture new lands so you have the need of building new constructables and lots of defence. As soon as you get around a little bit you'll find new players and have an even bigger need of resources to trade with or support them (especially as a high level player). 
So one of the main reasons you might think you have nothing important "normal" to do from your couch might be that you spend too much time on your couch ;)  And why don't you travel around (besides the fact that you just might not be able due to real live reasons like time and money)? Because you have no need to it since you can accomplish so much from out your couch especially expanding your lands with your swapping tactic. Do you see the vicious circle?

11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

I would love the chance to upgrade distant lands especially at a 10:1 ratio

Oh, what a coincidence, a further reason to stay at home making traveling even less valuable in the same run xD
Honestly, just think about how many remote land level you would have already got that way? It would completely reduce the reasons to travel around to capture initial lands somewhere. Imagine upgrading four lands remotely everyday, this would totally shift the main focus to staying at home rather than travelling around. 
In a travel based game it should always be easier to accomplish the same during a trip than from home. That's the idea behind it. Why should I spend hours of time and lots of money to go out and upgrade some lands if I just could stay at home on my couch and get a remote land level every 2.5 hours?
I'd go with the 1:100 ratio but 1:10 would shift the games focus too drastically!

11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

We *DO* need to break it, I just don't have any ideas on how too.

Great that we share this opinion!



Lastly, I will just leave this here ;)

On 19.9.2017 at 6:29 PM, Mr. D said:

Common sense
We do rely on everyone's common sense when playing "Domination: Earth" or using this forum and will refrain from listing rules that are too obvious 

11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

First off: it is not really fair to those who are stuck going through life with no friends, family or Spouses. Many of your players are stuck without this (the FA) and thus it creates an unfair environment within the game. [..] there are players that don't choose to use this system and feel that if unfairly leaves them out of the loop and at a severe disatvatge. [...] I can understand how this would not be well accepted and leave players like the FA players cheated.

Edited by Ruvox
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I'm not going to write near as long as my previous comment because I think I have explained the POV from a player who actually uses FA. 

I'm just going to say, I play the game for several reasons, I love to capture land, I love to hold influence over my area, and I love I can play a game when I'm away from home but it doesn't take an enourmous amount of time. (Also, one of my favorite things was Google Places, no that has gone away I'm still wanting a 5.99 "Name everything for free" buy-in) 

So, as aforementioned, I can't do the first very often, the second is still doable, the third keeps me playing and engaged, and the last is already been eliminated. So, that's fine, we break FA. (Not sure how to even do that without basically breaking the game and making a dog eat dog world, bc frankly if you break trading I'm going to kill every new player in my area. If that's the only way to get land ill gladly wipe out all players and cause them to quit with zero moral qualms. If it's me vs. globe than ill gladly stop playing co-op with anyone in my area) But what comes next? Do we attempt to change the very landscape of the game? 

Also, I didn't get a chance to comment on the drop from 10k active monthly user drop. No offense, but I srsly doubt it had much to do with the game getting more complex and a lot more to do with how the game changed so drastically (1.14.4 if I remember correctly, I had quite a bit to say), along with the fact that new players are hard to keep after a spike after the holidays, and the winter events. After that players played in January but as school/work ramped up again lots of players who already were playing less where frustrated when the game changed incredibly with legit zero tutorial for the changes. (I know I'll catch some flak for this comment but this is just imho) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
32 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

Not sure how to even do that without basically breaking the game and making a dog eat dog world

Just some ideas:

  • A big fee on trading level 100+ lands dynamically expanding with the lands level similar to the merge costs but with the original value
  • A trade cooldown for level 100+ lands like a single land can only be traded every 100 days or something like that (because seriously who trades that big lands more often if not for couch expansion?)
  • A trading charge for level 100+ lands where you needed to upgrade/merge (merge and upgrade equally to prevent just buying an adjacent level 100 land) the land for example 100 times before being able to trade it again
  • Making it impossible to trade a big land back to the original owner starting at level 1000+ lands since I can't imagine an legal scenario where you wanted to sell your big land and then get it back. (I've to admit that this would somehow be the most extreme idea but it's also the only really preventing couch expansion via land swaps and not only making it harder)
43 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

If that's the only way to get land

I don't think/hope Mr. D would just deactivate land trades at all.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
8 minutes ago, Ruvox said:

Just some ideas:

  • A big fee on trading level 100+ lands dynamically expanding with the lands level similar to the merge costs but with the original value
  • A trade cooldown for level 100+ lands like a single land can only be traded every 100 days or something like that (because seriously who trades that big lands more often if not for couch expansion?)
  • A trading charge for level 100+ lands where you needed to upgrade/merge (merge and upgrade equally to prevent just buying an adjacent level 100 land) the land for example 100 times before being able to trade it again
  • Making it impossible to trade a big land back to the original owner starting at level 1000+ lands since I can't imagine an legal scenario where you wanted to sell your big land and then get it back. (I've to admit that this would somehow be the most extreme idea but it's also the only really preventing couch expansion via land swaps and not only making it harder)

I don't think/hope Mr. D would just deactivate land trades at all.

 

Again, I count you a friend so this isn't about you, but your ideas and mine. 

1. Everyone would just trade level 99 lands and if you staggered the price.. well not much good still. You would have people just eating the price and/or buying lands at low levels. 

2. That might work, but as a reminder, Governor has purchased several lands over level 100 in the last 100 days and those were fair and legitimate trades. 

3. This one breaks even non-couching trading/and I find super confusing (not to mention hard to teach new players) 

4. Yeah, I think removing the ability to trade 1000-plus lands is smart, except what happens if a big player quits? then that land is basically lost forever? 

 

And the one thing we both solidly agree on is that under no situation should land trading be removed. Ever. 

Edited by Republic of America
typos lol
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

To clarify some misunderstandings:

7 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

1. Everyone would just trade level 99 lands and if you staggered the price.. well not much good still. You would have people just eating the price and/or buying lands at low levels. 

This was not about getting lands of family members but to prevent "parking" your big land (which should normally be above level 100) by family members to capture a new land. The expensive thing would be to get your big land back/to trade it to your family member.

9 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

2. That might work, but as a reminder, Governor has purchased several lands over level 100 in the last 100 days and those were fair and legitimate trades.

Yes but so what? Those lands were bought once and I meant that "a single land can only be traded every 100 days" not that you can just trade one every 100 days. The counter applies towards the land not the seller/buyer.

11 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

3. This one breaks even non-couching trading/and I find super confusing (not to mention hard to teach new players)

Complicated, yes! But this would require to upgrade a land "the hard way" before being able to trade it again.

12 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

4. Yeah, I think removing the ability to trade 1000-plus lands is smart, except what happens if a big player quits? then that land is basically lost forever? 

No, this only prevents to trade it back to the original owner. Like if you'd ever sell this land you will never be able to get it back but others could still buy it.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Grizzly, no offense..but you have a 6 page thread of JUST YOUR ideas..please don't distract other threads.
And I'm going to declare War on the next person that says this game needs Taxes!

But I digress

On 9/11/2018 at 1:50 PM, Republic of America said:

And the one thing we both solidly agree on is that under no situation should land trading be removed. Ever. 

I don't think he ever said that, and I certainly will not be agreeing with you.

You saw my comments the other day in discord and never said anything, which is fine. But I maintain that if you leave the opportunity to trade flags to anyone, even one way sales, I fully expect the cheese mongers to enter into trade relationships where they build their flags and sell them to their friends. You're still gonna build your death stars... They'll just be at your friends house instead instead of yours..and vice versa..there's no functional difference to your land being somewhere else and living on someone else's lands.

The cheese is real, and it's going to be responsible for some nasty side effects.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
11 hours ago, Mr. D said:

@Ruvox  New player confusion is our key enemy right now

(I couldn't delete the tag 🤔)

Not to over simplify things, but couldn't you just add a little blurb at the end of the current objectives menu where you say "Go conquer the world, but don't be a cheese and engage in flag swapping!"

Of course you'd consider your words more carefully, but if we're having these problems with player communication and "what exactly *Is* the Cheese?" then why not add another page of text, like a menu tab, where you just lay down the law so nobody has the excuse of "..Oh, but I never went to the forums..But oh I don't do the discord.. I didn't know"

Even though were still not at the end of the issue, I think it would give you some room to breath if you could just update that cheese text with any other no-no's as they crop up.. Ie: there are still ppl that join these games that think gps spoofing is ok.. -blurb- now everyone knows it isn't..

Ppl can't wait to be an Idiot if you let them.. Lol don't let them!

Also there seems to be some confusion on the second parameter you outlined as unacceptable, I'm pretty sure that will turn into its own thing shortly! (Lol this threads getting confusing enough already)

Please don't let these thoughts detract from our thanks for you putting your foot down on the cheese👇🧀! Looking forward to 2.0!!

Edited by Irrelevents
schpelling
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • -5

God I'm far behind because I'm not a coucher. Mostly because of the inactivity in Norway. 

What if you needed to have a trade center to be able to trade? 

Trade may be raided by rebellions so you should eskort your trade (costly)

And a wild thought:

able to attack small Players, but a big United Army will go against you, the army is made of taxes (a very small percentage of trade from tradecenter) 

And I really think that players should know about the discord. The discord is keeping me here.

Also bringing back the name thing 20unobtanium for all free nameing.

Would also be nice to have Navy

And more buildings that unlocks when you have a total amount of base levels eks. 20 or 30. This will keep big players in the game, those players also know the game and is ready to get more stuff.

 

  • Confused 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Answer this question...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...