Two allies per galaxy

[Cowch]

Since I originally proposed this idea in JBG's thread, I'll be the one to give it its own thread. As I said before, every time I think about this idea I come up with reasons why I don't like it. But, with your collective minds, maybe we can make it work. Here goes...

The first change is to limit alliances to 20 players in tag before the shuffle. Those twenty players would split up into 10 different buddy packs. Then two buddy packs from different alliances would be placed into each galaxy after the shuffle, along with 4 or 6 randoms.

Then, randoms could only join one of the two alliances in that galaxy. In order to increase the number of people in your tag, players would have compete to recruit the randoms. Would you offer them minister abilities? Maybe high def priority for 1 week, or resources from the alliance fund? Or, just shun them and go after others? (EDIT: To clarify, I intended the actual rule to be that you could only join an alliance that had two members in your gal. This could include two exiles from the same alliance who happen to converge in the same galaxy.)

The biggest problems I foresee is with exiling. It wouldn't be so hard to just exile around until you end up in a galaxy with your preferred tag. One possible solution is to limit the number of exiles. You may only exile 4 times, or something. Or, if you exile you can only join a tag outside of the top 8. This is an area that needs your creativity to find a solution.

Another problem is randoms who get shunned by both alliances. I think they should be allowed to exile for free after 72 ticks. In order to avoid abuse of this, they would have to be tagged as unwanted by the buddy pack members. Or, even if they don't exile they should be free to join any alliance. Once again, your creative input will help. (EDIT: Instead of tag applications, the HC make tag offers. No tag offer in the last 48 or 72 ticks? You're free to exile for free/half-price.)

Changes would also have to be made to merging alliances, and tags would probably have to be limited to 50.

Why make this change? First, it would help incorporate noobs into the game. Imagine if asc took on some promising young noob and taught him to play, instead of bashing him into dust and making him quit. I think this is in the spirit of what JBG did when he left asc, and I think that was rather noble (please flame this comment in a personal message instead of stinking this whole thread up). Second, it would shuffle alliance membership. I love playing with CT. I consider the members my friends and I would hope to be part of the core. But, if I had to join ND or Subh, I'm sure I would make new friends and no one could predict if we would kick ass, or crash and burn. Third, in order to guarantee membership in a decent alliance, I think there would be more alliances started, and no one could predict which would rise to the top.

I'm not married to any idea here, so please offer constructive suggestions. Want to make the alliance core 30 instead of 20? Fine. Make buddy packs 3 instead of 2? Fine. If you like the premise, let's try to make this a workable idea. Obviously, ideas that simplify code changes make it more likely to get implemented. But, the goal is to shake things up, so get your brains working.

[Linkie]

Originally Posted by Cowch

Imagine if asc took on some promising young noob and taught him to play

Hi.

Originally Posted by Cowch

Subh...crash and burn.

lol

[Cowch]

People generally seem to like this idea, so it doesn't get flamed and languishes in obscurity.

Shall we agree that my idea is perfect and petition that it be implemented next round?

Also, I didn't intend to single out asc, merely use them as an example of one of the several very selective alliances.

[t3k]

Just because nobody criticised your idea, doesn't mean we all like it.

Personally, I just chose to ignore you.

No, this idea sucks. I can't begin to describe the many many ways in which it demonstrates a clear lack of understanding for the game, which is why I ignored you the first time.

[neroon]

massive support to ppl here that try to come out with new ideas..

i cant see many ppl trying to come out with new ideas after a few has already been posted by em and all of em flamed down by others with insults

[Cowch]

Hmmm... some flaming would at least point out the deficiencies in the idea so we could work on improving it. I know it's not a perfect idea, and I tried to point out the most egregious problems.

Kenny, I don't claim to be the greatest or most well versed pa player, so please enlighten me. And consider that part of this idea is to change how the game is played, not maintain the status quo. Or, maybe you prefer to keep playing the same round over and over again?

[t3k]

Originally Posted by neroon

massive support to ppl here that try to come out with new ideas..

i cant see many ppl trying to come out with new ideas after a few has already been posted by em and all of em flamed down by others with insults

Good ideas are always well received, regardless of who posted them.

This is round 34, neroon. Many of the people here who are "shooting ideas down" are the same people who've spent 33 rounds (for example) coming up with 'new' ideas, and suggesting them - only to have them lost on the forums never to be given the slightest regard.

So yeah, when somebody comes up with a shit idea then no - they do not deserve praise simply because "they tried".

This forum contains dozens of decent, well-thought out ideas that would improve this game for the better. Almost all of them have been ignored or disregarded because we don't have anyone capable of implementing them. So I ask you, why should we entertain a bad idea simply because all the good ones have been overlooked?

Cowch:

Galaxies are created on the basis of buddypacks. The way the shuffler works is that it distributes the buddypacks across the universe, creating galaxies. Randoms are then added to these galaxies to make up numbers. Without buddypacks, there are no galaxies. Your suggestion implies that essentially, the shuffler itself creates buddypacks using 2 members from 2 alliances (4 total) - at random - and then adds in more randoms to make up the rest of the gal.

Is this just not Random Gals, with the assurance that there's going to be at least one other person from the same alliance as you in gal? This idea is basically killing galaxies if you have no control over who you play with. If you don't have any control over who you play with in a galaxy, then what the hell is the point? You'd be just as well removing galaxies altogether or calling it what it is - a completely random round. Why bother with the BPs at all?

Your idea would also involve including alliances into part of a planet's identity and at PT12 (in time for a shuffle). If the planet later decides to change alliance, or exile, your system is INSTANTLY destroyed (as you touched upon in your OP). I don't see how limiting the number of a planets exiles is going to change the fact that they have already exiled and destroyed this system. How many times they exile after that is immaterial, surely?

You've not gone in to much detail about it - but what about the "randoms" joining the BP? Do they only get a choice of going one or t'other of the alliances in the gal they've joined? If they wanted to join a different alliance, would they need to exile into a gal that has that alliance present? If you limit the number of times a planet can exile, maybe he wont find an alliance he wants to join. Alternatively, if a "random" can join any alliance then what is the point of this idea.

Also, you clearly fail to see how alliances work. Alliances aren't EVER going to 'compete' to get you to join, by offering you silly inconsequential token hollow gestures. People choose their alliance based on who's there, and what playing style they adopt. And any decent alliance will have dropped "def priorities" a long time ago. If you need to encourage people to defend in an alliance by using a priority system, your alliance is doomed to fail anyway. People should play for an alliance because they want to play FOR the people in it; to succeed as part of a team. And if you're joining an alliance based solely on "how much res they give you as a one-off gesture" then frankly you shouldn't be there. I know you were only using these as examples, but hopefully by showing you why your examples suck, it'd go a long way towards indicating that any similar gesture or method of recruitment would also be equally fail.

You're also assuming that people WANT to play in fortress gals. Why should the "game-generated" BP members care what alliance the rest of their gals play in? What if the rest of the gal turns out to be muppets? Should they compete for their galmates allegiances irrespective of who they are, just because they're in the same gal? You're assuming that people even care for who's in their gal. What if somebody in an alliance doesn't want to be in a gal with anyone else from that alliance?

Alliances have cores of players who play for the alliance and then an extended core of people who are in the alliance because it's considered their best fit (see 'style'/'friends'). Alliances are NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER going to say "right, lets kick everyone out until we only have 20 people left, and then fill the rest of the alliance up after PT12 based on who's randomly landed in our gals of 2 member BPs".

Also afaik JBG joined F-Crew because Asc voted on it and thought that would be the most comical destination for him - I wouldn't call that noble to be honest.

Anyway, to conclude: you've identified problems with this idea yourself, so you already know it's flawed. What I object to is somebody coming on to the forums with an admittedly shit idea and expecting somebody else to come along and "make it all better". If you want people to take an idea seriously, DO THE ****ING WORK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU POST.

This is a shit idea, it has not been thought out properly, drop it.

[Cowch]

Why can't I post the beginning of an idea and then let the creativity of others influence it until it's a workable idea? That's how we used to do it in rounds 3-5ish, back when the suggestions forum was a place to exchange ideas, rather than insults.

First, I guess I wasn't clear enough about the BP system. There is no reason why you couldn't decide who your buddy is. You could even decide what group of two you want from another alliance, but that would create instant blocks from the beginning of the round.

Maybe if BPs were 3 instead of 2 you would feel like you have more control over who you play with? As it is, over half of each galaxy is random anyway.

I have thought about the problems that changing alliances presents. I'd hate to make it so you couldn't change, but you are correct that changing alliances would destroy this system. Does anyone have a constructive idea on how to remedy this? I will continue to try to come up with an idea also.

You are correct that this system limits the alliances you can join. If you hate that, then clearly this whole idea is not for you. I can see how many, many people would dislike that. But, the alliance core is there for people who wouldn't want to let fate decide. And for those who switch alliances every round, things wouldn't change that much.

Would alliances compete for people? Not for crap people, certainly. Maybe for good players. And the exile system is there to get the crap players out of your gal.

Don't want to play in a fortress/fence? So some people like playing in crap galaxies? Ok, but if you hate being successful, there are other ways to have a crappy planet. Just go crash once a week.

Now that we've identified some of the problems, are there any adults around who know how to constructively share ideas? It's ok to hate this idea and simply declare it DOA, as Kenny has. But it's more fun to find workable solutions.

[t3k]

Surely the idea is to come up with concepts that people will like? If you'd read any one of the recent suggestion threads you'd also know that limiting what you do in a game is bad. Limiting what alliance you can join is utterly utterly awful.

And "back in the day" we had people(/person, really) who COULD implement change. We had people who read the suggestions forum scouting for ideas and chose the good ones to work upon. The suggestions forum was also a way of interacting with the developers, who would actively engage the community in the formation of new ideas, concepts and improvements before finally coming to something workable.

The suggestions forum is like Ravenholm to the admins these days.

Back to your idea though, this idea wouldn't create fences - it would limit the number of alliances in your gal to 2. How the **** would that create a fenced gal? And my point was purely that some people don't care what gal they are in, as they're only playing for their alliance. Not that they actively seek to suck, which is a gross misinterpretation of what I was saying but then you and I both know you're not THAT stupid (or at least, I maintain hope).

Also, just by calling me a child doesn't make it so. I was criticising you for making a bad suggestion, it wasn't intended to be taken as a personal attack on you. I've pointed out how your idea fails on every level, but if you or any other member of the community genuinely do enjoy wallowing round in pools of shit looking for "fun" then may I recommend going to live on a farm, far far away from the internet? You'll enjoy it more, I promise.

[Cowch]

It is too bad admin don't come on the forums. I think multiple pods classes, and even the idea for races was born here.

Anyway, sorry to imply you are a child. I can see from you're join date that you are at least 11 months old. I should actually be impressed that you have the social skills of a 13 year old! It would be nice if the tone of the forums was more civil and involved less pretend swearing and CAPS LOCK!!!!111!!!!ELEVEN!!

Also, you didn't point out how the ideas fail, simply how they change the parts of the status quo that you are clinging to. No idea is perfect at the beginning. This idea was born out of a thread that called for ideas for radical change, so I gave that a shot. I'm willing to admit at this point that this idea is dead, because the only responses it is receiving are non-constructive attacks, but I hope people will continue to post ideas even if they aren't perfect, or fully fleshed out. Our collective minds are better than one.

[t3k]

You know what, this is why I ignored you the first time. You lack the capacity to understand why you're wrong - and as such are wasting my time.

Also, being pretentious fails when you're arguing a 'lost' or 'flawed' cause, and you're hitting two for two on this one.

And when you start comparing forum join dates to somebody's age, you should just quit. Not only are forum join dates not indicative of age, they're not indicative of when the person started playing - or even when they first joined the forums. With this being so blatantly obvious to anyone with a bit of common sense, your attempt to imply that I am a child fails, as again it says more about your lack of reasoning and deduction skills than it ever could about either my physical or mental age.

Your idiocy offends me, which is why I swore. Sure, I shouldn't let life's idiocies get me wound up - but nobody's perfect.

I do feel like we're getting slightly offtopic here though, so back to your "idea". Yes, I did point out how your ideas fail, you simply don't agree that the disadvantages/implications/repercussions I mentioned would be bad for the game. Let me assure you that is down to your lack of experience/understanding for the game. My response was constructive; you just didn't like it because it used bold fonts, the occassional consecutive capital letters and the odd profanity. That doesn't mean I wasn't being constructive, that just means I wasn't being pleasant.

[t3k]

Also, just to show you how pointless and poorly thought out this idea was:

Originally Posted by Cowch

Why make this change? First, it would help incorporate noobs into the game. Imagine if asc took on some promising young noob and taught him to play, instead of bashing him into dust and making him quit.

Originally Posted by Cowch

Would alliances compete for people? Not for crap people, certainly. Maybe for good players. And the exile system is there to get the crap players out of your gal.

So basically NOTHING changes, except the way in which we end up in the exact same situation as we're in now.

You haven't even been consistent, so shut up and stop calling me a child just because I told you why your idea was shit.

Oh, and I use caps because sometime bold font gets lost when embedded in the middle of other text. Really, it's just for emphasis.

[Cowch]

Originally Posted by Kenny

Galaxies are created on the basis of buddypacks. The way the shuffler works is that it distributes the buddypacks across the universe, creating galaxies. Randoms are then added to these galaxies to make up numbers. Without buddypacks, there are no galaxies. Your suggestion implies that essentially, the shuffler itself creates buddypacks using 2 members from 2 alliances (4 total) - at random - and then adds in more randoms to make up the rest of the gal.

You have accurately described buddy packs. But my idea was to change that. See, you would form a buddy pack, then the shuffler would place two buddy packs in a galaxy and then add randoms.

Originally Posted by Kenny

Is this just not Random Gals, with the assurance that there's going to be at least one other person from the same alliance as you in gal? This idea is basically killing galaxies if you have no control over who you play with. If you don't have any control over who you play with in a galaxy, then what the hell is the point? You'd be just as well removing galaxies altogether or calling it what it is - a completely random round. Why bother with the BPs at all?

It's close to random galaxies, which is a change. The idea is to make changes. I think most people work together with their galaxy, including randoms, not just their BP, so I don't think this is killing galaxies.

Originally Posted by Kenny

Your idea would also involve including alliances into part of a planet's identity and at PT12 (in time for a shuffle). If the planet later decides to change alliance, or exile, your system is INSTANTLY destroyed (as you touched upon in your OP). I don't see how limiting the number of a planets exiles is going to change the fact that they have already exiled and destroyed this system. How many times they exile after that is immaterial, surely?

Yes, if the planet changed alliances there would no longer be two alliances in the galaxy, and everyone would be forced to join the only alliance in the galaxy with two members. There are three responses to this criticism. 1) So what? There would be more fortresses, and the world wouldn't end. 2) Prevent people from changing alliances if they are in a BP. 3) Make it so you can join any alliance that was in one of the buddy packs, regardless of what the members of that BP have since done.
I prefer option 1. But if the BPs are made up of players who are forming a core, would more than a few people really change alliances mid round?

Originally Posted by Kenny

You've not gone in to much detail about it - but what about the "randoms" joining the BP? Do they only get a choice of going one or t'other of the alliances in the gal they've joined? If they wanted to join a different alliance, would they need to exile into a gal that has that alliance present? If you limit the number of times a planet can exile, maybe he wont find an alliance he wants to join.[/b].

You are correct that randoms only get a choice of two alliances. In fact, you have described the whole system accurately in that quote. You see, the goal is to be different from what we have now, and inject some new strategy into the game.
If the rule was you can only join an alliance when there are already two members of that alliance in your galaxy, would alliances recruit players, then have them exile in the hopes of landing two in the same galaxy, thereby increasing the pool of potential recruits? Sounds like strategy!

Originally Posted by Kenny

Also, you clearly fail to see how alliances work. Alliances aren't EVER going to 'compete' to get you to join....

Alliances would not have to compete. But remember, their pool of recruits is limited to the people in galaxies where they have two members. Fail to recruit and you won't fill out your tag, and you'll limit your def pool. DLR and Euph have had a decent round with half-filled tags, but they aren't in contention for top alliance.

Originally Posted by Kenny

You're also assuming that people WANT to play in fortress gals. Why should the "game-generated" BP members care what alliance the rest of their gals play in? What if the rest of the gal turns out to be muppets? Should they compete for their galmates allegiances irrespective of who they are, just because they're in the same gal? You're assuming that people even care for who's in their gal. What if somebody in an alliance doesn't want to be in a gal with anyone else from that alliance?

I am assuming people care who is in their galaxy and want to have a good galaxy, true. I also assume most alliances would work on filling up their tags from their limited pool of recruits. The strategy would be to identify promising players, recruit them in and do it before the other alliance gets them
You can still exile crap players, but you would have no guarantee of getting the specific people you want. Now, I know I said alliances might try to incorporate new players and teach them to be better. But if someone is inactive, a chronic crasher, or merely unteachable, then ditch them.

[t3k]

tl;dr.

Shut up about this and every other idea you've ever had ever, you clueless baffoon.

[t3k]

/ignore