War

Larry wrote: EDIT: And look, in response to the idea that certain individuals find it unsettling that a player can lose essentially everything, all that can really be said is that concept is one of the core ideas behind this game. Just like eve (for those who play that). There are plenty of other games that are far more gentle to the players, just because you happen to not enjoy that doesn't mean the rest of us dont. I don't intend to sound irritable but you're asking for a fundamental change in this game's entire premise.

I don't think the majority of posters on this topic are bagging on Illyriad as a whole. I think for the most part we are trying to find solutions to a potentially game-ending problem in it's mechanics.

I am all for war, and crippling your enemy. But I also think something should be done about how much they should be crippled. It has the potential to drive people away, I don' think there is any doubt in that. What we, as a Illyriad player whole need to do, is help give ideas (as Beengalas did) to the devs on ways to keep this from happening. I for one, would like to see Illyriad stick around.

Ideas:

1. Give us, the players, something that we can hold onto.
    a. Original, or main town cannot be sieged and taken.
    b. Alliance ownership, or faction, of claimed territories are the main targets of warfare. Losing these would be far more acceptable than losing months worth of work on a town.

I was going to try and go a little more in depth, but time caught up to me. I'm sure with every ones help we can give the devs plenty of food for thought.

Actually, I'd say the vast majority of players active in these forums aren't complaining at all.  And when people leave without complaining, it more often points to either usability issues or discovery of a complete disinterest in the whole concept, rather than any problems with specific design of this particular game.

As I've said before, browser games are not for the impatient.  Harmless had our own players who left because of this.  We couldn't make exciting things happen quickly or often enough to keep them interested, or wouldn't stir up chaos, so they quit--generally without even trying other bigger or smaller/agile alliances.

If you make things easier to gain or harder to lose, you're tampering with matters that have sweeping consequences.  If anything, you're more likely to encourage despair and feelings of hopelessness because the reduced risk of loss/consequence promotes chaos while the aggregate result trends even more toward stalemate in a sea of nondescript accounts unworthy of note or titles of accomplishment.

If this were a real society, a balance of 99% middle class white collar workers would be awesome, yet still boring.  Since this isn't a real society, it's just boring.

I think That possibility of  loosing cities totally is not so bad thing it makes things more interesting.

Although I think there should be way(s) to wage and win war so that you could get gain by other means than simply destruction of enemies. Example remodeling raid so that it would be useful again, perhaps so that it would also get part of advanced resources because it is surprise but it would work only if it would  Also perhaps  full attacks could kill also diplomatic units least partially.  Also upgrading of walls against siege with techs  or additional buildings, so sieges would take even longer would make people who are afraid of sieges could feel safer.  White should have known to stop the war when they had the chance.. but losing wars is always demoralizing especially if there is no long term goals other than wage that war.
 

HonoredMule wrote:   Without getting into the details of White itself, note how many in Black--a group of players not cut from the same cloth--have continued and rebuilt themselves under a new name despite being misused and discarded by White as well as overpowered by Harmless.

Yes, the active players from black has started a new allaince. I joined this alliance because there wasn't much fun in black anymore. Yes, White has used us against you guys and we loved this war because it had some action in the game. But after the big defeat White left the game and alot of black members did also. I joined Good Company to get away from this H? war. We have our own goals in this game now and don't have a mother allaince like White telling us what to do.
But now I got a mail from KP that some of the old black members need punshment and can expect that very soon.
Can't you guys just leave this thing with Black alone? I joined a other allaince because I wanted to get away from reputation that White/Black had. If I was planning to continous this war with H? I wouldn't have left the Black company. But I did, I don't feel like suiciding against H? wich was always the case.
Now H? is going after these old Black members because they are on their ''sh*t-list''. I know I also -might- be on that sh*t list. But do you really think its nessesery to go after me or the other old Black members with a dominating alliance like Harmless?...

keep it off the public forums :) if you want to talk there is a mail option besides this isn't even a war thread, it's a suggestion :P of sorts

Edited by -hypocritical- - 21 Sep 2010 at 21:28