DeletedUser1465
Guest
I played a lot about 5 years ago. This game was much better and far more competitive then. took a break to finish school etc... now 5 years later this game has lost a massive amount of players. The game is still great and I want to help solve the issues. There are a few factors I believe contributed to this death in player base, but the one I want to focus on here is the cheating/abuse of mechanics.
The first suggestion would be to make the "delivery" technology not unlockable via premium or with quest rewards, but still once you have a 20 market it should unlock. In the early game there is no reason to use this. If you are passing resources to another player in the first few weeks you are hurting yourself to push them ahead. that's the definition of boosting. I believe this is most commonly used by people multi accounting. Now, in the later game I think you should/need to be able to send resources to allies without receiving anything in return, but in the early game it simply too abusable and not practical.
My second suggestion is more complicated and technical, but it could be implemented. The script farming abuse is a big deal. both for inno as a company, and for player who want a fair game. Scripting allows casual players to not pay anything or work hard and still dominate the game. I think that's a huge reason people quit. If someone wants to work really hard and farm all day, they deserve an advantage. that's what distinguishes them from players who don't farm as hard. I have have researched how the farming scripts work, particularly the mainstream ones. Many of the more useful farming scripts read reports and automate decisions off of the information in the report. For example it will send a wave of farms out. As the reports come in, if it registers a "haul" then it will imminently send another farming squad within the second the original farming report is received. If it is empty or if there are casualties, it will not resend. The way I noticed several players using this is when I take a barbarian city. There will be farmers inbound to them before the city is taken. Most of them are from real players who are not cheating. However, the ones who use farm scripts will continuously send farms until their browser is refreshed, as long as their are resources in the city to take. I tested this several times by taking a barbarian city and filling it with resources. each time i got hit by a script farmer, the second the attack lands another was launched. like clockwork. you then remove resources and the automation stops. Players who are not farm scripting, at the very least, need time to read there was a haul and then resend. they also tend to refresh their game more so they can see that the city is not occupied by a player. So, my suggestion would be to have a system set up to look for automated behavior such as this. if a player is continuously re-sending attacks to "hauls" particularly 24/7, and the attacks are send the moment a report in generated, that's a pretty good indicator. I farm really hard and really well. up to 18 hours a day. I am almost always the looter of the day for the first week because farm scripts dont function well in the first few weeks. There is a huge difference between no life farming and botting.
Essentially what this system would do is flag the account after a series of "bot like" actions have been taken and allow an admin to take a closer look to ensure that there is indeed farm botting. I understand that this might take some skilled programming but it seems doable. This way admins do not have to take on the impossible task of personally monitoring every single account. Just in the current world I am playing I have used this technique to determine a few farm scripters. It also makes sense that these players would have the looter of the day achievement every single day after the first week. Farm bots do not work well in the very early stages of the game. a skilled player can out farm one. once you leave the early stages of the game though,the ebst players can't come close to competing with farm scripting.
These are just two solutions to stopping players from snowballing through abusing mechanics and cheating, whiles still allowing players who play a lot to gain advantages.
The first suggestion would be to make the "delivery" technology not unlockable via premium or with quest rewards, but still once you have a 20 market it should unlock. In the early game there is no reason to use this. If you are passing resources to another player in the first few weeks you are hurting yourself to push them ahead. that's the definition of boosting. I believe this is most commonly used by people multi accounting. Now, in the later game I think you should/need to be able to send resources to allies without receiving anything in return, but in the early game it simply too abusable and not practical.
My second suggestion is more complicated and technical, but it could be implemented. The script farming abuse is a big deal. both for inno as a company, and for player who want a fair game. Scripting allows casual players to not pay anything or work hard and still dominate the game. I think that's a huge reason people quit. If someone wants to work really hard and farm all day, they deserve an advantage. that's what distinguishes them from players who don't farm as hard. I have have researched how the farming scripts work, particularly the mainstream ones. Many of the more useful farming scripts read reports and automate decisions off of the information in the report. For example it will send a wave of farms out. As the reports come in, if it registers a "haul" then it will imminently send another farming squad within the second the original farming report is received. If it is empty or if there are casualties, it will not resend. The way I noticed several players using this is when I take a barbarian city. There will be farmers inbound to them before the city is taken. Most of them are from real players who are not cheating. However, the ones who use farm scripts will continuously send farms until their browser is refreshed, as long as their are resources in the city to take. I tested this several times by taking a barbarian city and filling it with resources. each time i got hit by a script farmer, the second the attack lands another was launched. like clockwork. you then remove resources and the automation stops. Players who are not farm scripting, at the very least, need time to read there was a haul and then resend. they also tend to refresh their game more so they can see that the city is not occupied by a player. So, my suggestion would be to have a system set up to look for automated behavior such as this. if a player is continuously re-sending attacks to "hauls" particularly 24/7, and the attacks are send the moment a report in generated, that's a pretty good indicator. I farm really hard and really well. up to 18 hours a day. I am almost always the looter of the day for the first week because farm scripts dont function well in the first few weeks. There is a huge difference between no life farming and botting.
Essentially what this system would do is flag the account after a series of "bot like" actions have been taken and allow an admin to take a closer look to ensure that there is indeed farm botting. I understand that this might take some skilled programming but it seems doable. This way admins do not have to take on the impossible task of personally monitoring every single account. Just in the current world I am playing I have used this technique to determine a few farm scripters. It also makes sense that these players would have the looter of the day achievement every single day after the first week. Farm bots do not work well in the very early stages of the game. a skilled player can out farm one. once you leave the early stages of the game though,the ebst players can't come close to competing with farm scripting.
These are just two solutions to stopping players from snowballing through abusing mechanics and cheating, whiles still allowing players who play a lot to gain advantages.