What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

I might for some be known for bitch*ng about gal size, tag size, and all that over the past year.
Now we are into tick 200 more or less, the game seems to be doing great looking on the past few rounds.
I do notice something worrying yet again.
All tags in the top10 are more or less full, the few ones left might be known to most for not focusing on recruiting newbies.
This is a proof on that the limits is too small, and the alliances that are recruiting or are open to new players are not able to do this cus of some limitation YOU the PA Crew have set without justifying, explaining or have delivered any reason for.
I wonder when, or if ever you will listen to my whine over these limits who might be hindering PA from growing.
Instead of adding more buildings as options for construction, or adding new cov-ops to be frustrated over i wish you couldve put more time and thought into how alliances can mass recruit new players again, or put up a page for new players to see wich allies actualy is searching for what players.
Maybe it would take a day or perhaps two to code, and another day to implent but it would perhaps be worth it.


First and foremost, fix the damn limit

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

This is by far the best attempt you've made, justified by a genuine reason to increase tag size. However i am neither for nor against.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Actually, whilst I have always disagreed with butcher on raising the limits (I would prefer smaller tags and more of them), I am seeing an increase of, and lack of space for, new players.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

These last couple of rounds have been a little odd, actually.

Round 53 was one of those "OH GOD PA IS DEAD" rounds, so lots of people signed up (1193 at round end). During round 54, player numbers plummetted to a record low of 698 (previous lows were 818 and 819 in r51 and 52, respectively).

This round things look slightly up again, at 884 planets, which is higher than we've seen since r46 (ignoring r53 and 1 free round).

Like I said, odd. It's not like anything about the game has changed in the last few rounds. The only real difference is that Lunar is doing some advertising, as far as I know.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

isnt it a good thing to have 4-5 alliances that are full, instead of just 2 alliances with another 3-4 not able to fill their tag and thus not able to compete for alliance win ?
i think it is, and it looks at tick200ish to me like it could be a fun round (yes the fact that i had a longer break helps aswell)

now new people are limited to where they can apply, true
but this isnt necessarily a bad thing, there is open tags enough where people can learn and enjoy their rounds

seriouslly how many new people you know, that are not able to find an alliance right now ? i count zero!
the few random planets exiling (or beeing drifted) into our galaxy hardly even answer any ingame mails.

They wouldnt even know, that they couldnt find an alliance, sadly.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

you dont need full tag to win round yo

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

I think it's marginally the alliances themselves bringing back old players. I know that Spore has done this the past couple of rounds, and I've brought back 6/7 ex TGV players this round.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

I for one applaud the fact that there are 7 tags with 50+ members. Makes for a much more interesting political situation and a tighter fight for final ranks. Obviously this eliminates a lot of the room for new players since none of the 5 tags with 20+ and 60- members are known recruiters of new players. The first interaction new players has with the community is always going to be with galaxies tho, and with the inbred nature of PA these days it's not that hard to help new players ingal and vouch them into alliances with room.

If that doesnt do the trick; then what about opening recruitment tags to every tag, direct relation, shared politics and command. Limitted to defending from main tag to recruitment tag(alliance eta), with a scorecap in recruitment tag. If a member in a recruitment tag reaches a certain score in relation to main tag avg score, the HC needs to swap them with a lowscoring member of the maintag or the highscoring member of the recruitment tag loses the ability to recieve def from the main tag. Lock scanners to main tag. Obviously the score of the full tags will get inflated, but general abuse would be limitted.

Idea spun in 2 mins right now and is not thought through properly, just throwing it into the discussion.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

To me it might seem to be harder than ever for a new player to get into a decent alliance due to the fact the competition for tags is so tight these rounds.
There is no room for dead weight, and the risk of taking in new players is big.
If the PA crew can't understand what it means that so many people from diffrent allies are happy with the competition atm they are not fit for the task

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Let's have oversized tags so they can go and bash the smaller tags. Great idea!

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

There is no smaller tags this round, and nobody voicing for smaller tags

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Yes but by opening up tag sizes you would create a gap between the 2-3 tags that would recruit up to 100+ and the tags that wouldnt want to stop playing but would lose half their tag to these new larger tags. So we would lose this current 'even' playing field and create a proper 2 teir environment, with a few huge tags and the rest just being farms for them as the smaller tags will not the def pools to stop a war against these monsters.

What you are suggesting Bitcher essentially is blocks but with a shared def page...

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

I like this idea. Though I haven't especially thought it through for flaws or abuse.

Something would be nice as one of the alliances currently full. We've promoted taking on old players returning and newer players too within Spore and I feel a little sad now that we're at a stage where it's difficult to do that.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Will the top 100 list be much diffrent with bigger tags?
And most players are in the alliance where they feel the most home.
Im not sure how many rounds its been since a new alliance won, but it is over 10 for sure.
Its more important to keep this game evolving than satisfing a few old players.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

This has been a discussing within spore im sure. Teaching new players with 30-40 "old" ones is a lit harder.
Now its come to the point where its no room in Spore by the look of it, sadly enough

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Ermmm... how does this reply have any revealance to the point i was making...

Instead of the 8+ full tags you have atm you will end up with 4 100 man tags and 5-6 30 man tags. The 30 man tags will be farms for the 100 man tags. Remember the communities of ND and HR are vastly larger than the 60 that the game currently allows. Lots of their communties play in other 'smaller' tags just to play the game. If ND or HR was given another 40 places or heaven forbid unlimited places then these are likely 2 alliances that would scoop the heart of out of some of the lesser tags leaving them to be farmed.

If a top alliance (Im thinking Ultores/Vikings mainly) said they 'were going FTW!' then you would see mass applicantions as people would wanna have a slice of the victory pie.

In the current round looking at the KIA you have 9 basically equal and competitive alliances, proper community alliances. Why would you want to change this? If anything the evening out of alliances in the last few rounds (actually mainly due to the emergence of Spore which seems to have balanced the political ship) has made for vastly better politics, more exciting rounds and really close run races in all 3 forms which someone can win in this game.


Why change what currently isnt broke?

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

What lesser tags?
NGO and PATSA?
Its not like cus the recruitment/training alliances are given more slots, all the other alliances will fold.
Quality will always beat quantity.
I dont think rounds has been more intersting due to smaller tags. It was something that was clearly diffrent from R47/R48/R49/R50 With the emergence of the alliances like ODDR/dS/HvN/Spore and ROCK wich made this change in PA.
You are freezing out more newbies actualy when there is 9 "Equal" alliances around, as those alliances will try to get better and not accept new players cus they cant risk it.
I dont care if HR/ROCK are given more slots, they have yet to win a round, and if they did win a round it would been interesting.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

As a relatively new player I don't see the problem tbh. If your active and talk to people, start in a small alliance or just ingal, learning the game like everybody has to do anyway, you get the hang of it..

If you're active on irc, or even in pm to people, you get to know them, and you form relationships that can prove valuable for when time comes and you feel you're ready to try moving on from a small/relaxed ally into something more hard core:p

It's not that hard to make some effort, and tbh, I usually send out pm's to people ingal that seems to struggle, and give them some help if they want it. Quite often I don't get a reply, guessing they're not really interested in playing or something.

Communication is key here, and it only took me half a round to get to know people, but I'm still learning something new every now and again since I started playing 6 rounds ago, and people are always nice and help when asked.

So imo it's just bullshit that you can't learn to play in a top alliance, ofc you can. It all comes down to how much effort one can be arsed to put into it.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

i would be for a small increase of tag size as i have turned away about 8 players so far from joining due to not having size in tag to fit them all

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

100% agree

need an alliance?
j/k
good post and interesting view imo

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

In regards to Hermoid's story: as suggested before, a shoutbox would greatly help to get new people connected to the game and community.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Wait...this coming from a dude whose alliance bashed my small galaxy 3 days in one week? LOL :salute::salute::salute:

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

You're 55 members.. Not full tag yet.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

I have already suggested that and had a good number of interest. Nothing.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

I personally started playing PA again in rd 53 having taken a break from rd 14 onwards.
I knew the basics of the game but was in need of training in the ways of PA again. Im still picking stuff up now.
In rd 53 i ended up in a gal with... Forest, B-Butch3r and snoops.

The reason i am still playing PA noe 2 rounds later is because of these guys (snoops particularly) helping me out, finding me a tag in Apprime which i love dearly etc...

So yeah, first entry to the game is and should be the gal.

Onto tag size.. I think they are fine as they are. Any bigger and there would be too few tags competing, any smaller and there would be not enough room in each tag to fit all the people you want in.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

This is probably the nicest thing Kai has ever said about Spore.

Thanks.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

we have to accommodate for late signs and such

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

What we really need is a mobile version of PA.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

B-Butcher If you really want to go back to the days of 2 100 man tags and 5-10 20 man tags then fine go find another game to play and bring all your friends with you.

Honestly I love the fact that theres now 6 alliances that are ABLE to compete for #1 Ally instead of there being just 2 or 3. It makes people play more politics yes, but that's the fun part of PA. Positioning yourself and knowing when you can go to war and when to call a NAP.

As for the new players argument Yes I think it would be critical for new players to learn how to play and the BEST way is through there galaxys. Most new players will not go to the forums to figure out that this game even takes place on mIRC, and the majority of the game takes place OUTSIDE the game itself. What we need to do is make it easier for the new players to communicate with there galaxy or even give them a starter option to notify them about mIRC and alliances and galaxys.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Hmm, i tend to disagree there. TGV always had a number of slots available for the unknown/new player. Vikings holds to the same principle afaik, apart from the fact that they have been rather full the past rounds forcing them to impose a 'invite only/vouch required' policy. Vikings usually does a fair bit of recruiting through their galaxies and are relatively easy when it comes to vouching and inviting people who are active in their public room and galaxy channels from my experience.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Who says it will be 2 100 man tags?
If it realy is 6 equal tags in game, it will be 6 tags equaly capable of competing about being the best recruiting new players to the game and training them.
R50 ROCKs memberbase was 50-60% new players wich they brought into the game to fill up the tag. Was that a bad thing?

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

We all say because we know. It will create a gap between those with larger communities/those with best players and those who want to play together in their alliance that has been going for multiple rounds.

For example if Ultores and FaNG played with 100 man tags then i think we can almost guarantee they would be close to full as both would be contenders for round win. Now we also have ND and HR, they have communities of over 100 people, not all play in thier alliance because of current tag restrictions but they could fill upwards of 80 members quite easily.

So that is roughly 350 players. We have 850 planets on average atm and probably 600 (and that is very generous) play in 'active' tags (over 10 members)so 60% of the playerbase is now in 4 tags of which only 2 will be going for the win. Politics will be stale and anyone not in a tag of 60+ will just be farmed down by sheer numbers of fleets attacking them. As a smaller tag you couldnt declare war on Ult or FaNG in my example because their defpools have just increased by 120 fleets, they cope ok atm, with 40 more members they would be inpenetrable.

Im not against raising tag sizes in the future but the playerbase has to be on an upwards curve for this to happen. I think that 10% of the playerbase as a tag limit is a good marker. With fluctuating signup atm ranging from 650-850 and tags of 60 a full alliance is roughly 8-9% of the overall playerbase. As far as im concerned that is fine and there is no reason to change. If it dropped to 6-7% due to an upward turn in signups then it should be increased to 70 and then 80 if the upwards curve continues but just taking the limits off or setting a random large number like 100 is wrong and would probably kill the game for a lot of the regular active playerbase.

In conclusion i think tag sizes is something to be discussed and monitored by the PA team when all the improvements they are making come to fruition and the signups start rising but until then there is far bigger problems with this game that need to be addressed first of which i personally think the biggest is taking some of the emphasis off 24/7 play and making the interaction more session based which would help more people play casually and possible open up new markets of players.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Oh, look.

Another pointless thread about tag limits.

Colour me surprised.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Oh, look.

Another thread derailing post from Mzyxptlk.

Colour me unimpressed.


Actually i think this tag limit thread is a good progression. We have moved away from the small tag vs large tag arguement and are more in the 'larger tags will be better when the game has more people' area now.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

There has not been a new argument in the tag limit discussion in the last 5 years.

Worse still, no one has ever presented a shred of evidence to support the implicit claim that tag limits have any influence on the game whatsoever. We've had tags of 60 when the game had twice as many players as it does now. We've had tags of 100 when the game had anywhere from 1.5 and 3 times as many players as it does now. We've had tags of 80 at anywhere between twice as many players as now and roughly current player numbers, very recently. There is more objective data available on it than almost any other aspect of the game. For the love of all that's good, look at it and show me some evidence.

Why people keep deluding themselves that page after page of carefully worded yet utterly unsubstantiated guesswork is meaningful in any way is beyond me.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

The argument is that now cus there are no avaible slots in any "decent" tags more or less, newbies have no where to go when they want a alliance.
Is this a new argument? I think it is.
I remeber you from a newbie training alliance back in a clone game 11 or so years back, i dont recall you from the early days of planetarion.
Once there was alliances making a living out of actively recruiting newbs, and training/forming them into decent players.
We need this back into planetarion if we want the game to evolve, if not grow, its been a major part of planetarion since the beginning.

One of the arguments of Kaiba is that alliances with a big community(He actualy manage to make it sound bad) will be overpowering the smaller alliances without a big community.
For all my caring we can have dynamic tag size, say 10% of the playerbase as tag limit, if the player base increase the tag limit will increase, and never decrease.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

My argument is that the game wont get bigger unless there are bigger tags, ill not cry for unlimited tags, im just saying that without no free spots in any decent tag there will be no Place for new players.
If you got a newbie into you gal(say you dont want exile him like most do), where would you tell him to go apply?
NGO? Heroes? FAnG?

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

It's what the big tag proponents have been saying for years. If you make spots in alliances rare, newbies will be the first to be kicked out.

It also ties into something else that's been said before. namely that there's no shortage of alliance members, there's a shortage of alliance HCs. If you make tags smaller, people will get kicked out. These people will leave rather than create new tags.

And just to make sure everyone's on the same page: these are not my opinions (any more), I'm merely rehashing what others have said.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Some HCs just don't want to be full tags, RexDrax and I decided to go small as it's too tiring micromanaging a full tag, and what you're proposing will force the smaller tags to either quit or go full on.

In regards to new players, as Influence stated, Vikings did accept a certain number each round, train them up, which worked well for a couple rounds, but then certain individuals decided to it would be a good idea to plant spies and leave the tag end of round. This has fundamentally caused us to close recruitment. Period. And have a strict Invite Only recruitment policy.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

If the new player has come to the point where he/she actively talks to the galmates and shows improvement and actually listen to advice given, finding a suitable alliance is not a problem. I've been in a gal with a couple noobs that eventually ended up in HR. I've sent ppl to ROCK.

And I'm new. You guys, you've been here for years. If you talk to the noobs, you can easily talk to someone that knows someone that can find a place for them in tag.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

As all tags are currently full, there is no space anywhere:cool:

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

No they're not.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

well i have to agree, that something needs to be done. i have goten 9 ppl back to PA this round "old players" and for 5 of them i need to "help" into other allainces becouse spore did not have room, they are old and they know how this game works, but we have no more room in spore :/.

the idea of haveing a "intag" support for lets say 20 ppl would alest make the room needed to look after and help those ppl out.

Re: What now Lunar_Lamp?
 

Increase the tag limit, but adjust the number that contribute to alliance score or whatever.