Crimson's Rant

[Mr President]

I'm not saying that constant wars are the answer. But we go like 5-6 sets with no wars, then 2 sets with them. I know its a lot harder now, because we have gotten so comfortable with each other that its difficult to come up with a legitimate reason for a war. But they do definitely spark some interest in both the game and forums.

I just want to see people start to care about the game again and taking pride in recruiting. Pres, I wasn't talking about you personally making ads for games. We as the community need to take the initiative and do the advertising themselves.


And yes, I know that the ingame forums have replaced the traditional message system. But there is something about a personal welcoming message that makes you feel more invited than a forum post. Like I said though, the blame also falls on me there because I haven't taken the responsibility to talk to new members either.


I just felt that something needed to be said to stir the pot before things kept going downhill. Because we have been on a long downhill slide and if we don't stop it then who knows where we will end up.

agreed.. and thanks for caring

[Lord Burch]

You know what might help a tad? Giving me a chance. I LOVE to war and LOVE to kill. I haven't ever gone main event status because its always a tri-fecta dominance: USA Sky and LoR. DKO/ARC never get off the ground because a get **** for members. Bright and Xav are okay...but not as active as I'd hope. This set is a disaster because the two recruits I hired never moved their ******. Everyone is exclusive. I believe if you elevate some newer young up and coming leaders things may get more interesting. ICN was great, but it formed after DKO's first disbanding. So I believe that in elevating new groups and mentoring them on the job, this game gets hella more fun!

(No insults meant for Xav and Bright. They've got other stuff to deal with in RL)

[Ragnar]

*Smells a tl;dr!!* er, don't leave!! I got three ideas here!!!!!

From a newbies point of view, the *worst* thing about the game is the fact that every round, all states are deleted except us nice paying players. That's the greatest way to make a game look *really* dead, and I've *never* understood why the states get deleted every set instead of simply reset!!!!!! The last thing you want is the attack page to look like there are few players!!!

Here's an example of what not deleting does. A few months ago I was looking for more round based games to play. I found ww2game, and when I went to the attack page, I was shocked to see a few THOUSAND accounts!!!! So I started playing, and by the time I realized there was maybe 100 active players, I was already hooked. I *really* liked seeing a LOT of players that I could attack and get really nice cash!!! I had joined five days before the three week round ended, and even the inactive accounts had really nice money, and I ended the round ranking...15. I was hooked!!!

If the accounts here were simply reset every round with the state showing up, and some how they were useful for new players, that would really help keep new players from leaving after being here for 10 minutes. In the ww2game game, every one get's income each turn based on the size of their army which makes all the accounts useful. If every account here got just one free extra piece of land every turn, that would give the new players more than enough stuff to do when they start. 144 pieces of land added a day. Low enough to keep us actives from touching the inactive accounts, but enough for the new players to have nice players to go after when they start attacking. And I think it would be a fair advantage for new players that start the round late, since they don't have all those turns to use that were generated before they registered.

About the game changes, I haven't seen very many useful game changes this year, other than ones like a lower time wait on the market, Casher Strat boost, and *maybe* the attack changes. All the UN changes are useless for 90% of us actives since we can't even go in to the UN, unless we make a one player nation!!! I don't see very much use from the loan idea! Nations all seem to do just fine with the tax cash.

there was just a reunion set in MD in earth empires so that is a group getting back together

Earth Empires could *easily* be a gold mine for getting new members here. If some one got really good at the game, in the Alliance version, then had their own alliance that ranked very well, then recruited players to the alliance and then in the alliance, promoted this game every so often, you could easily get a flood of players here.

Here's an idea, if some one here played the one week speed version a few times and got good enough to end the round ranking in the top 10, they could then post their strategy here in as much detail as possible, join the alliance version and make an alliance. Then a bunch of us join the game and join the alliance. (Don't name it Nation Wars, that'll quickly give off the real reason of the alliance!!) We then play the game using your guide, and make the alliance rank pretty close to #1. Then we recruit like crazy to the alliance. And who's not going to say no to an invitation to one of the top 5 ranking alliances??!! Then every so often, we mention this game in the alliance. There's no need to spam forums at all when you got a game called Earth Empires!!!!!! I think a lot of the players would like NW better.

Which version of Earth Empires is MD in?

you fix the market and the losses in attacks and i will provide the food

Simply having a bank that was useful longer than 10 days would be enough for me to keep providing food!!! I got 1,043,353,566 food sitting around and collecting dust!!!!! *ducks* We should try just ONE round with no bank cap, and see how it goes. By the 20th of the month we'll easily know!! That would do more good than nation loans!!

[kanman]

We definitely need more players and more new leaders like Lord Burch. I think the biggest barrier still though is the initial learning curve. There is just a lot to explain. We have a training manual, but it's boring to learn a game through a manual. And all the while, new players see how fast the states of vets grow and get frustrated.

I think we need to give more incentive to both the trainers and trainees. We could set up two "nations" dedicated to training new members and have them compete with each other. New members can automatically be put into one of these two "nations" but can leave at any time. I put nations in quotation marks because these "nations" don't have to be separate nations, they could be a part of existing nations except they have their own section on nation scores. This way, the trainees are competing with others with similar experience levels so how well they play matters and trainers will want their trainees to win so there is incentive to put in more effort. Who these trainees are can rotate through rounds and they can be nations looking for new members or players like Lord Burch looking to form a new nation.

[BeeNo]

i've actually been considering setting up my own new player training nation.

@burch, i remember a few months back i had a little nation called bro and tried to form an alliance with you. We went to war to support you but unfortunately it ended up just being us against the nation you randomly tried to attack. your restart didn't even join us

if you want to build your nation, it starts with follow threw, if someone goes out on a limb for you, you need to be willing to at least stand with them on the edge of the branch.

[CommunistCapitalism]

Crimson, i read through the whole post, and I have a few comments.

First off i'm glad that there are still members like you fighting for this game.

Secondly, I know that it is frustrating that these older veterans have slipped from our grasp. One of them you mentioned is gnorf. I have tried over the past 2 years to find a way to get in contact with this guy but he never comes on msn, aim, responds to private messages on Dak forums, or anything. I think they have just LITERALLY fallen off the grid.

I think the best way to get a community going is have every active member bring one friend or new player back every set. I'm not talking bringing tons of people or wasting tons of time on forums or in other games. Just get in contact with a friend, and get him to come play!

I think that another way to sort of mix up the fun is try to mix up the nations a little bit. While it is cool to see USA, Sky, LoR, set in and set out, perhaps a way to generate new interest and enthusiasm is to break these nations down and start some fresh ones with different people. Obviously this is not really possible to enforce but if we shuffled the nation it would encourage more communication and we would get to know some people that we wouldn't ordinarily know.

I also think that you should add a new bonus into the game that would give 2 turns per day if the player posts on forums. That way even anyone who is slightly competitive would want to try to get these extra couple turns. Heck i would even say the premium account players should have to do this.

[northbabylon]

Calvin, I just talked to you on msn a few days ago! Sadly my computer seems to have died or something since I can't even get past the home screen. But you and I have tried to recruit from MD a few times before.
If we can get 1/10 of MD to tag up that's like 6-7 players. I tried getting them to make an mD tag before. But it never went through. I know blade is from earth as well so maybe between the people that do play. We can start off with just an earth tag and see where it goes from there

[Lord Burch]

i've actually been considering setting up my own new player training nation.

@burch, i remember a few months back i had a little nation called bro and tried to form an alliance with you. We went to war to support you but unfortunately it ended up just being us against the nation you randomly tried to attack. your restart didn't even join us

if you want to build your nation, it starts with follow threw, if someone goes out on a limb for you, you need to be willing to at least stand with them on the edge of the branch.

Yeah, I was being an idiot then...kinda took a break to evaluate my mistakes, and learned them.

[totte]

Alright, here is kind of a long rant (which could be covered in another thread, I'm not really sure because I'm only semi-active right now and haven't looked through other recent threads). Not really sure where this thread should fall into since it falls into suggestions, game, and community haha.

IF YOU DON'T READ ANYTHING ELSE, AT LEAST READ THE LAST PARAGRAPH!!!

Anyways, how many of you are starting to feel like playing this game is becoming a chore more than a game? I know that for me I'm basically logging on at the same time every day, playing turns, logging off. The game and community (which was the biggest thing the game has/had going for it) are both dead.

The game is predictable...Moradon wins the set with a bunch of sky states up there, same states play top 10-20 all set long, same states stock, same military unit horded. Can't really war to add excitement because there either aren't enough states to war and the FS wins or you run the risk of pushing others away by randomly warring them and "ruining their set." The community is dead too. I know its the summer months so things are almost always more quiet than they usually are, but we are averaging like 3 posts a day from a community that used to put out 20-30 a day even with dwindling numbers.

There is NO interaction with new members either. Every set there are new members in USA that play like half a set running mixed strats/armies then they just leave. No attempt was made to contact and/or help out the player (blame falls on me here too). Now maybe there has been with private messages, but back in the day (old WoW) there would have been FWed messages welcoming/encouraging and helping out the new player.

We have become too content with doing our own routines and the game has become stagnant, which is the biggest hindrance to our game. No gameplay update is going to bring in substantial members, it relies on US to make things exciting again. Try to think about this from a new player's mentality. You join the game, the market is bone dry, only the top 10 states numbers (NW) change, everyone else's numbers stays the exact same because they are stocking or not playing. There are no dead states to show that something is happening, just a bunch of boring, inactive ones.


This is what got me hooked to the game...I went over to my cousins house who logged into the game to check and make sure his state was still alive because his nation was at war. He also checked to see when the next strike was and who their target was. Then he logged off. That was all it took to let me see how awesome of a game this was. What do new members have to look forward to now? Watching someone play 100 turns and then bank their money? Or be impressed that they are in 17th place....until they find out that its out of 40 active states? Let's face it, there is no excitement in the game any more and there won't be as long as we keep our routines and don't have any wars. And that won't change until we get more members.

Pres, I love the new additions that you keep making to the game, but look at it rationally, these aren't going to bring in hundreds, or even tens of members. With the low player base noone is going change their routine. Everyone will keep doing the same predictable thing and the game will eventually die.

So what can we do about this?

First of all, what happened to all of the old players that just randomly left? When we first opened this (NW) up to estonians there were about 50 that played (only 10 remain). What happened to them? Where did the other common people go? The MAGGIOs, dbozmens, ooga boogs, Kenshins, Alis, Devils, etc. Or the people that used to show up every couple of sets and play then leave randomly for a few more: Legends, jameswheels, Vialis. Or what happened to the really old vets who haven't played since NW opened: The CurLys, gnorfs, Multi-182s, zionzeypher, etc. Has anyone tried contacting these people since NW opened?

Secondly, the only thing that can probably save this game is ADVERTISING. Let's face it, we have probably gone as far as we can with word of mouth. So why can't we try other ways of drawing people to us. Joining other forums just to make a post about Nation-Wars or making an account to send Private messages to other members about the game. Worst-case scenario is that you waste 5 minutes of your time and get banned from a game/forum that you never would have done anything with anyways.



I'm not trying to be over-critical, but its something that we are ALL doing and until it changes, the game never will no matter what changes Pres brings to the game.

So here is my challenge to EACH and EVERYONE of you, make an account in a random game and either make a post in their forums or PM a few of their members advertising the game to them. Say that big changes are coming and that the game is about to be relaunched (because it is when the new attacks come out). If you get banned, big deal...not like you were ever would have visited that website if it weren't for recruiting anyways.


Thanks for listening guys,
-Crimson Shadow



PS - I have sent a message to all nation leaders regarding this thread to have them forward it throughout their respective nations. If you haven't gotten one in your nation then please spread the word to the other players in your nation so we can try to get as much awareness about this issue as possible.

i hear you but the problem for me is that i these days just dont have the time to be as active as i once was i barely have time to play a lazy state...

i used to be rather active when i started wow in 2001 sometime or other had my own nation running wich was very active... now the reason for it being so active was that first of all we had great internal coms everyone had icq for example and we had our own irc chan to hang around in and an off game nation forum site. The game comunity was very active aswell due to the fact that it also had an irc chan that you could just idle in thus people who had question could get instant help for example and ppl got to know each other.
now for me and i'm rather sure it goes for calvin to we dont play the game to be the best we play it because of the friends we have made

[Mr President]

*Smells a tl;dr!!* er, don't leave!! I got three ideas here!!!!!

From a newbies point of view, the *worst* thing about the game is the fact that every round, all states are deleted except us nice paying players. That's the greatest way to make a game look *really* dead, and I've *never* understood why the states get deleted every set instead of simply reset!!!!!! The last thing you want is the attack page to look like there are few players!!!

Here's an example of what not deleting does. A few months ago I was looking for more round based games to play. I found ww2game, and when I went to the attack page, I was shocked to see a few THOUSAND accounts!!!! So I started playing, and by the time I realized there was maybe 100 active players, I was already hooked. I *really* liked seeing a LOT of players that I could attack and get really nice cash!!! I had joined five days before the three week round ended, and even the inactive accounts had really nice money, and I ended the round ranking...15. I was hooked!!!

If the accounts here were simply reset every round with the state showing up, and some how they were useful for new players, that would really help keep new players from leaving after being here for 10 minutes. In the ww2game game, every one get's income each turn based on the size of their army which makes all the accounts useful. If every account here got just one free extra piece of land every turn, that would give the new players more than enough stuff to do when they start. 144 pieces of land added a day. Low enough to keep us actives from touching the inactive accounts, but enough for the new players to have nice players to go after when they start attacking. And I think it would be a fair advantage for new players that start the round late, since they don't have all those turns to use that were generated before they registered.

About the game changes, I haven't seen very many useful game changes this year, other than ones like a lower time wait on the market, Casher Strat boost, and *maybe* the attack changes. All the UN changes are useless for 90% of us actives since we can't even go in to the UN, unless we make a one player nation!!! I don't see very much use from the loan idea! Nations all seem to do just fine with the tax cash.



Earth Empires could *easily* be a gold mine for getting new members here. If some one got really good at the game, in the Alliance version, then had their own alliance that ranked very well, then recruited players to the alliance and then in the alliance, promoted this game every so often, you could easily get a flood of players here.

Here's an idea, if some one here played the one week speed version a few times and got good enough to end the round ranking in the top 10, they could then post their strategy here in as much detail as possible, join the alliance version and make an alliance. Then a bunch of us join the game and join the alliance. (Don't name it Nation Wars, that'll quickly give off the real reason of the alliance!!) We then play the game using your guide, and make the alliance rank pretty close to #1. Then we recruit like crazy to the alliance. And who's not going to say no to an invitation to one of the top 5 ranking alliances??!! Then every so often, we mention this game in the alliance. There's no need to spam forums at all when you got a game called Earth Empires!!!!!! I think a lot of the players would like NW better.

Which version of Earth Empires is MD in?



Simply having a bank that was useful longer than 10 days would be enough for me to keep providing food!!! I got 1,043,353,566 food sitting around and collecting dust!!!!! *ducks* We should try just ONE round with no bank cap, and see how it goes. By the 20th of the month we'll easily know!! That would do more good than nation loans!!

I really like a few of these ideas.. Great post! I think making it not delete states for everyone is a good idea and I also think adding a little land per turn for new members is good as well. The land thing we can work out on a seperate suggestion. We would need to make it not to much to really matter, but yet enough to help.. The bank cap issue is one that we are looking at. I don't think an unlimited bank would be the best way to go but maybe an increase would help. We don't want everyone stocking all set then jumping at the end.

Crimson, i read through the whole post, and I have a few comments.

First off i'm glad that there are still members like you fighting for this game.

Secondly, I know that it is frustrating that these older veterans have slipped from our grasp. One of them you mentioned is gnorf. I have tried over the past 2 years to find a way to get in contact with this guy but he never comes on msn, aim, responds to private messages on Dak forums, or anything. I think they have just LITERALLY fallen off the grid.

I think the best way to get a community going is have every active member bring one friend or new player back every set. I'm not talking bringing tons of people or wasting tons of time on forums or in other games. Just get in contact with a friend, and get him to come play!

I think that another way to sort of mix up the fun is try to mix up the nations a little bit. While it is cool to see USA, Sky, LoR, set in and set out, perhaps a way to generate new interest and enthusiasm is to break these nations down and start some fresh ones with different people. Obviously this is not really possible to enforce but if we shuffled the nation it would encourage more communication and we would get to know some people that we wouldn't ordinarily know.

I also think that you should add a new bonus into the game that would give 2 turns per day if the player posts on forums. That way even anyone who is slightly competitive would want to try to get these extra couple turns. Heck i would even say the premium account players should have to do this.

I can add something in for bonuses where if you post that day you receive your bonus. But, I worry that people will just come on and post a one word post to get the bonus.