A new way of XP

[XelNaga]

Well, after thinking about it for a while, and reading through a lot of posts, I came up with yet another idea to fix XP.

\o/ hooray \o/


The purpose of XP initially was, as far as I can see, to:

1) Make someone not lose almost all his score if his fleet gets owned, so he doesn't stop playing.

2) Making the gameplay more aggressive by rewarding attacks.

Does everyone agree here? This means, the purpose was NOT:

1) To allow less active players to get top positions.

2) Making defending and losing value completely unimportant.


Now, clearly, XP accomplished those four things. But what is more, it was too much. XP didn't only render value completely useless. It even made value a disadvantage:

1) You get less XP cap if you have higher value.

2) You get attacked more often, since other get nice XP cap from attacking you.

3) You can lose a huge part of your score by getting fleet-caught or just attacked to death, while XP players hardly lose anything and can recover much easier.


Now, what I personally think is, value should be the aim of every player. Accumulating value, which represents fleet size, roids and tech level. Value impersonates power. Power is what every planet in the universe should be striving for: being stronger than anyone else. And score, as a consequence should reflect this power. If anyone disagrees here, I think the point of Planetarion as a war game has been lost somewhere along the rounds.

XP, contrarely, is supposed to reflect the achievements a planet made, even if he was thrown back on his way, even if he had some hard times. It should show what a planet accomplished, even when everything that he accomplished already vanished.

Now, these two concepts put together, how can that work out? The way it currently is handled doesn't really reflect what it should look like. It doesn't show achievements or effort put on, it only reflects how many roids someone got from someone bigger. It shows who attacked most with the best cap. Where is the value, the importance of POWER here? Here is my idea:

1) Remove the current XP completely.

2) Make value = score.

3) Whenever someone loses ships / roids / anything else that has value, and thus score, don't remove that value completely. Take the lost value, divide it by 3 (well, that is a number I think would be nice, but maybe 2 or even 4 or 5?), and call it XP. And then add it to the score again.

Another good name for this XP would be...respect. Or awe. Or reverence. Or influence. People that accomplished something always keep a part of their achievements in the mind of the other people. They can still influence things, even if everything they ever achieved has lost its importance. An ancient culture that reigned the universe would still be respected amongst other cultures, that look up to their past supremacy. So, all in all, old achievements play a role in the scale of POWER, which again, is what this game should be about.


What would this leave open? If you attack, you get roids. If you get roids, you can grow bigger, and get more value. It would still put the emphasis on attacking. But defense would become important, again. Alliance wars would be interesting again (not that this round, they weren't, but that wasn't exactly a war between 2 XP alliances). Planets that only care about attacking would cease to play an important role in the universe. Teamwork and coordination inside alliances would regain the importance they deserve.


But there is one single thing this would leave open: how to reward attacking bigger planets? It's still rewarded as is, since you get more roids already. But that was always the case, and apparently, it wasn't enough. Since you don't get XP from capping roids anymore, your score for roids diminishes. But I have a simple, on a closer look not that simple, answer here:

1) Increase the value of roids in average.

2) Increase the value of roids exponentially.

To explain this: if someone has 1000 roids, and you cap 125 roids, you get 3 times the value for the same amount of roids taken out of 500. Of course this leads to some relativation of value: as soon as you have the roids, they are worth less (or more if you have 1200). This means if you lose them, you lose less (or more).

Which, again, rewards you for attacking bigger targets than yourself. If you attack someone bigger than you, you will get more score than if you attack someone smaller, but the amount you would lose is the same. Which means you get more score from attacking bigger targets, and you keep more score from attacking bigger targets.

Of course this would need to be balanced, so the percentage you keep of the original score/value while capping 25 out of 100, and then losing those 25 out of 150, would be the same as the percentage of the score/value you keep when capping 250 out of 1000 and then losing 250 out of 1500.

This roiding value change has some similarities to XP, but it would just make the minor difference between two top planets, and not decide the ranks all on its own. It would add a reward, but a reasonable one. And it would accomplish what XP was intended to achieve much better than the current system, in my humble opinion.


So, after annoying you again with my idea, what do you think this time?

[XelNaga]

After a constructive chat with AppocoMaster I want to add a few things:

While the idea of XP was a good one, the concept and the way it was realized is flawed, imho. And in a way that can't be fixed. You can't build a house on bad ground, it will fall apart.

XP just gives you too much score for capping roids currently. You might think, let's fix it, so the impact is less huge, so it won't be more important than value.

But if you lower it too much, it will automatically become less important than value, and therefore useless, because you can't go both ways.

The only way to make it useful is, to connect it to value. XP or whatever you want to call it has to be directly connected to value, else there will always be two ways, and you have to choose one, and either both are balanced, and the one side whines because the other side is too easy, or they are imbalanced, and the one side whines because it can't win their way.

You can't have two completely different ways of playing this game. It will never work out. You can play the same way, with different nuances, but you can impossibly add two fundamentaly different ways to a game that has rankings and winners. If you connect value to XP, as I tried to work out in my idea and post, you just have the one way, the traditionnel way of value, while still being rewarded for attacks, growing and power.

What you don't have, is a possibility for weak planets and less active players to achieve as much as more active players and stronger planets. While many people feel this is not in their interest, no one can deny it is fair. Why should someone less active, with smaller fleets and less average roid count deserve a higher score than someone else? I understand it's nice, as the concerned person, but it certainly ain't fair.

And while this sounds like a completely pissed value player, I can assure you that I'm rather exterior spectator, since I only started some time ago, and I personally don't feel like I suffer from anything, since I can't achieve anything this round anyways. I just tried to post what I feel would be a better step than "fixing" the current XP system, so no flames and stay objective, please.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by XelNaga

1) To allow less active players to get top positions.

2) Making defending and losing value completely unimportant.

Actually both of those are reasons for the XP system.

1) The activity required to succeed at Value based PA is ridiculously hight and isnt compatable with having any kind of real life. This results in existing playrs burning out and quitting the game and players whom can only play casually being scared away because they cant acheive anything but to be bashed to peices. Being able to grow without litterally killing yourself is a good thing for the game

2) Hardcore alliances get defence much easier as these alliances have people on constantly. This means your less likly to get caught out. Smaller planets in less active alliances made the better targets as they were easy to hit without loss and wouldnt get defence. This again meant that causual players were driven out of the game with constant incoming that they couldnt cover and which would catch their ships at base and wipe them out

Hardcore players are rare and theres not a steady stream of them, there is a steady stream of the casual players and if we are to have a game with the playing numbers to provide a great game they need appealed to, not driven away again.

The real problem with XP is simply that you are rewarded for intentionally killing your ships and its this that you need penilised not penilise anyone whom cant spend every waking hour playing the game. For example you could make XP harder to get the more XP you have to balance off suiciding your fleets regularry OR reducing XP gains or Roids gains if you lose too much value.

[XelNaga]

So you think it's fine for a player that logs in twice a day for 10 minutes to be TOP 100, while the hardcore players put in 6 hours daily without achieving the same rank?

I fail to see the fairness here. You think it's unfair to penilise anyone who can't spend so much time...I rather see it as rewarding those who put in so much time.

If you play for the fun, then ranks don't need to matter to you. If you want to achieve something without putting as much effort and time into it, you simply don't deserve it.

[jerome]

why do you WANT to spend so much time at this damned game?

[wakey]

Originally Posted by XelNaga

So you think it's fine for a player that logs in twice a day for 10 minutes to be TOP 100, while the hardcore players put in 6 hours daily without achieving the same rank?

I fail to see the fairness here. You think it's unfair to penilise anyone who can't spend so much time...I rather see it as rewarding those who put in so much time.

If you play for the fun, then ranks don't need to matter to you. If you want to achieve something without putting as much effort and time into it, you simply don't deserve it.

You are somewhat buying into the anti XP hype there. You wont be top 100 even if your XP whoring if you just spend 10 minutes. Successful XP whoring requires time to be invested also

Now lets deal get a few things clear here

1) Fairness isnt an issue. Things in life arent fair its about making the game accessable and thus providing the largest playerbase possible. The fact that some people can put in 15 hours a day is great but if you have to put in those hours for 2-3 months solid just to survive and then you have to do this round after round its simply not indicative of maintaining a playerbase, infact it has been shown by past rounds it drives casual players away. PA needs to be more RL friendly and require a realistic amount of activity so it appeals to a larger auidence

2) Achieving something doesnt mean winning, it means that your growing and meeting goals along the way. Someone ranked around 1300 if they are growing and having fun are acheiving as much as the person in first. A Value based game produces a game where unless your a hardcore player your taking knock after knock which is demorilising and not something your going to pay for for long

[The Real Arfy]

I don't "get" how XP actually helps someone after they've been bashed to bits - they will still have the same value/roidcount/power (whatever) as if XP never existed. They will still grow very slowly unless they do something about it and go out roiding again, and if all they have is XP then they will keep dropping and dropping and dropping while being confused as to why the hell this is happening (I'm talking new players here).

For the love of god, can we bump dynamic salvage?

[wakey]

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

I don't "get" how XP actually helps someone after they've been bashed to bits - they will still have the same value/roidcount/power (whatever) as if XP never existed. They will still grow very slowly unless they do something about it and go out roiding again, and if all they have is XP then they will keep dropping and dropping and dropping while being confused as to why the hell this is happening (I'm talking new players here).

For the love of god, can we bump dynamic salvage?

XP helps people whom have been bashed because it somewhat removes that "kicking the person when they are down" factor.

Losing roids and ships is demorilising enough but to have had some idiot come in kill all your ships and half your value thus reducing your rank by a few hundred if not thousand ranks. In a value game this setback means weeks of rebuilding to get back there and whole rounds of work can be undone in one attack. Its especially annoying when you had the situation I saw with many new players where they are persuaded to continue playing, they get back to where they are, feel proud about it and then have someone do it to them again. Its simply hard for people to justify spending obscene amount of hours needed to survive just to have their round ended.

The lower end of the game especially would quickly stagnate because most of the people had got to a point where it wasnt worth playing on by the half way point. XP allows you to recover, and gives people something to continue playing for

[XelNaga]

Originally Posted by wakey

You are somewhat buying into the anti XP hype there. You wont be top 100 even if your XP whoring if you just spend 10 minutes.

I have mates in the TOP 100 begging to differ .

Successful XP whoring requires time to be invested also

As I said, 10 minutes twice a day, yes.

Now lets deal get a few things clear here

1) Fairness isnt an issue. Things in life arent fair its about making the game accessable and thus providing the largest playerbase possible. The fact that some people can put in 15 hours a day is great but if you have to put in those hours for 2-3 months solid just to survive and then you have to do this round after round its simply not indicative of maintaining a playerbase, infact it has been shown by past rounds it drives casual players away. PA needs to be more RL friendly and require a realistic amount of activity so it appeals to a larger auidence

Sorry, but why should a game be unfair just because life is? An unfair game certainly won't attract more players. People that put in effort want to get what they diserve. Plus, you don't have to XP whore to put less time in. It's not about the time, it's all about the ranks, more on that soon...

2) Achieving something doesnt mean winning, it means that your growing and meeting goals along the way. Someone ranked around 1300 if they are growing and having fun are acheiving as much as the person in first. A Value based game produces a game where unless your a hardcore player your taking knock after knock which is demorilising and not something your going to pay for for long

If the point is not winning for someone, I don't see the problem of him being knocked down again and again. It makes the reward bigger when overcoming obstacles. And if the reason is not winning, but playing with friends, having fun, you don't need ranks either. So why should XP whoring be a viable way to win a round?

Face it, the only reason why XP whoring is claimed to be a nice thing by so many, is that they CAN win, CAN achieve high ranks, WITHOUT the skill and/or effort and/or time it required previously. If you don't care about ranks, why are we even arguing? It's all about the people that want to be up there without deserving it like the hardcore players do.

If that's not the case, just reduce the effect of XP to a tenth of the actual formula, and you can play, somewhere down the ranks, with XP whoring. I certainly like that idea.

[Kargool]

Originally Posted by wakey

XP helps people whom have been bashed because it somewhat removes that "kicking the person when they are down" factor.



The lower end of the game especially would quickly stagnate because most of the people had got to a point where it wasnt worth playing on by the half way point. XP allows you to recover, and gives people something to continue playing for

Erm.. I dont quite get what you are on about. XP doesnt allow anyone to "recover" as you put it. It only allows people to hoard up insane amounts of unreachable score that isnt possible to remove one way or the other. While I have no objections to a certain amount of XP, I do feel it needs to be scaled down abit. For example like what TomKat said in http://pirate.planetarion.com/showpo...1&postcount=25

This will allow the recovery factor of XP quite okay I feel.

[ComradeRob]

It's possible to finish high on value spending little more time than an XP whore would. You just need to be in a good enough alliance and avoid volunteering to be a BC/DC/MO/whatever.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Kargool

Erm.. I dont quite get what you are on about. XP doesnt allow anyone to "recover" as you put it. It only allows people to hoard up insane amounts of unreachable score that isnt possible to remove one way or the other. While I have no objections to a certain amount of XP, I do feel it needs to be scaled down abit. For example like what TomKat said in http://pirate.planetarion.com/showpo...1&postcount=25

This will allow the recovery factor of XP quite okay I feel.

Your taking what I said out of context, my post was dealing with the "kick them while down" factor that after someone has bashed your fleet into the ground and stolen your roids you then find yourself going down the ranks by a massive amount. You can have spent all the round playing well and it takes just one bit of bad luck to push you behind the people whom havent logged in for the last 6 weeks. Thats demorilising for anyone and if happens a couple of times (for example your fleet caught twice and you are in a lesser alliance whom cant defend it) its like taking part in a boxing match with a top boxer with your hands tied behind your back. Theres only so much pummeling you can take without being able to make any progress before you say "sod this im not paying for this abuse"

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by XelNaga

I have mates in the TOP 100 begging to differ .

They're probably lying. It takes me that long to open up my search on sandmans.

Sorry, but why should a game be unfair just because life is? An unfair game certainly won't attract more players. People that put in effort want to get what they diserve. Plus, you don't have to XP whore to put less time in. It's not about the time, it's all about the ranks, more on that soon...

A fun game will always attract more players regardless of fairness. How is it unfair anyways? Information was not hidden pre-round or anything. Putting in more time does not make you more entitled to a high score. You have to use it correctly.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by XelNaga

I have mates in the TOP 100 begging to differ .

As I said, 10 minutes twice a day, yes.

Wow you have a friend in the top 60 whos getting awya with very little actvity. Theres been people whom have value played in the past whom have relied on the fact they have a very active galaxy and top alliance to get themselves a high finish with little activity.

Also people have a habit of overstating their achievments. If you are spending 20 hours a day and are only just top 100 then thats not very impressive. If you say your spending 20 mins a day that sounds impressive.

Sorry, but why should a game be unfair just because life is? An unfair game certainly won't attract more players. People that put in effort want to get what they diserve. Plus, you don't have to XP whore to put less time in. It's not about the time, it's all about the ranks, more on that soon...

BECAUSE WE WANT A GAME THAT HAS MORE THAN 500 PLAYERS. It doesnt matter if a casual or hardcore player the simple truth is more players makes a better game.

The way the game was going pre PAX this was the road the game was going down, the new and casual players were quitting left right and centre, the training alliances were crumbling all around us and the Hardcore players were quitting due to burn out or simple as the lack of numbers was causing major stagnation.

Players will always quit the game and the key should be to make sure you replace those whom quit but that simply wasnt happening as there was little incentive to keep playing for those outside the top few alliances. We need a game to be somewhat unfair so that its more compatable with having a real life

If the point is not winning for someone, I don't see the problem of him being knocked down again and again. It makes the reward bigger when overcoming obstacles. And if the reason is not winning, but playing with friends, having fun, you don't need ranks either. So why should XP whoring be a viable way to win a round?

Face it, the only reason why XP whoring is claimed to be a nice thing by so many, is that they CAN win, CAN achieve high ranks, WITHOUT the skill and/or effort and/or time it required previously. If you don't care about ranks, why are we even arguing? It's all about the people that want to be up there without deserving it like the hardcore players do.

If that's not the case, just reduce the effect of XP to a tenth of the actual formula, and you can play, somewhere down the ranks, with XP whoring. I certainly like that idea.

Firstly Value Playing != Skill you can walk your way throuh a value game with a limited amount of activity and little skill. Bashing little planets isnt that skillful, hiding behind your active alliance and galaxy mates isnt skillful which is something that can and has been done in the past. Also you seem to be taking the view that [i]XP playing == No Skill[/b] which is not true, as an XP player your reliant on landing alot of attcks on bigger targets, if you dont land them your going to slip behind as your own roids vanish.

Now you are seriously misguided if you dont think rank losse are important to players, a casual player may not think they can win or be aiming to win BUT they are still chasing their own smaller goals and trying to rank as high as they can on their limited activity due to RL. Suddenly finding you have been bashed and are now 1000 places lower, with little roids and no ships is a major kick in the teeth, getting that ranking back is going to be almost impossible and makes you feel like its a total waste of the time you have put in so far.

[XelNaga]

Apparently my views of what should lead to success in a game differs from the general consensus of most players on these boards. I have been active in many competitive sports and "esports", and I just have this feeling that the way it currently is, it's just plain unfair and NOT right.

And value playing DOES require more skill than xp whoring, and it is MUCH easier to xp whore. Nothing and no one will ever change this opinion of mine, as long as stats and formulae stay the same.

Apparently giving noobs a better chance to land high ranks so they keep playing plays a bigger role than making this game fair and have a correct effort-reward relation.

There are other ways to increase the player base without making a game unfair and rewarding the easier way. For example short term ranks, special achievements and prices, nice gimmicks etc. Look at poker, it's a good example. Every player can get lucky and win a big pot, but in average the bad players keep losing, and the good players keep winning. That would be the way to go. XP rather compares to making it possible for every bad player to play profitable over time, if he just uses the "allowed" x-ray glasses, while many others just feel it's not right and play the old way.

I can just say this: if something like this stays possible next round, I won't play for sure, and I have talked to several other players that see it in the same way. Why waste time playing the hard, honest way, if you someone choosing the lame, easier way, wins the round anyways? PA is, as I said, a space game, where value represents your power...and the one with the most power should simply win. Creating a score that isn't related to value, and thus power, just won't work out.

My idea attacks this weak point and makes everything possible that the XP was originally intended to. Making PA worth playing, even if you can't keep at the top value-wise, or activity-wise, needs other solutions, as, if it stays this way, you will lose a big part of the hardcore player base.

I'm a competitive, fair player, and if I feel this is unfair, I'm sure anyone with the same fairplay competitive spirit will agree...since I'm not on either side of this conflict in-game. I'm a third party. I still think my solution would be the best, by far, to solve this whole problematic. And even if it is tempting to keep XP just for the sake of enough players, it would be much better to find other ways to get new players, since most people that profit from xp are inactive players, whereas the real, huge amount of potential players lies within the large base of players that daily put hours into gaming, the freaks, geeks, or lucky guys that simply have so much spare time, and not in the small amount that knows PA from earlier and wants to keep playing it, or the even smaller amount of people that don't spend much time online and found the game by pure coincidence. You should think about that before arguing with "player base" and similar things.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by XelNaga

I'm a competitive, fair player, and if I feel this is unfair, I'm sure anyone with the same fairplay competitive spirit will agree...since I'm not on either side of this conflict in-game. I'm a third party. I still think my solution would be the best, by far, to solve this whole problematic. And even if it is tempting to keep XP just for the sake of enough players, it would be much better to find other ways to get new players, since most people that profit from xp are inactive players, whereas the real, huge amount of potential players lies within the large base of players that daily put hours into gaming, the freaks, geeks, or lucky guys that simply have so much spare time, and not in the small amount that knows PA from earlier and wants to keep playing it, or the even smaller amount of people that don't spend much time online and found the game by pure coincidence. You should think about that before arguing with "player base" and similar things.

You do realise you have basically nullified your point with that last sentance as yo have clearly shown your thinking comes from realms of 'neverland' . Only in a fairy tale land can you seriously try and argue that the majority of potential players lies in the players whom can give over RL to the game. People have jobs, education and social lives that need catered for and they cant on the whole sit around all day checking their planet or get up at all hours to respond to text messages asking for defence. The people whom can do this are hardcore gamers whom are mostly past the stage of playing browser based games as they want something with 3d graphics such as EVE, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft. If you thinking was right then pre PAX we would have seen a growing playerbase and not a rapidly shrinking one.

Also your idiotic view that a game that encourages everyone to hide behind their alliance while bashing players into the ground so that you get cheap roids to build more ships and more value is inheritly more skillful annoys me. Any idiot can sit in an alliance like 1up and in a top galaxy and just pick on players with a fair number of roids and are just in your bash limit and acheive a good ranking. Neither XP or Value is less or more skillful, they both require skill just differnt types of skill , the only difference between the two is XP allows more people to keep playing for the whole round rather than only allowing those in the top 2 or 3 alliances from really getting anything out of the game after the half way point of the round.

The only problem with XP is that some people have found a loophole now to abuse it ie the suicide your fleet tactic but that doesnt mean XP is bad. IT just needs some anti abuse factors placed into it, be it penalties for suicding your fleets, simply making XP harder to gain the more you have so you mirror the value problem of score being harder to get the higher in value you are or some other system

[XelNaga]

As I previously said, you could certainly fix XP that way, but that wouldn't fix the flawed basis of the whole concept. Giving XP not for attacking, but for capping roids is the first issue already. But giving XP like that at all is flawed, too.

Plus, you really are very naive if you believe that PA should be aiming for a the average PC user that doesn't put lots of time into his PC and PA. Maybe you should wake up. As a browser-based game that runs in real-time without pauses, the people that put a lot of time into PCs _ARE_ the way to go. They are the perfect audience. They already sit at the PC so much, and they certainly have the time to check PA every so much ticks. Contrary to the average user, who will in 95% of all cases end up as an inactive planet in cluster 200.

You want to know why pre-PaX play base didn't grow? Because there wasn't any efficient advertising, and there was no reason for anyone, playing something else already, to start. There was and is no good marketing and there still ain't any reward for average PC gamers to stay in the game. Plus, PA as a whole is targetting the wrong audience. I have lots of ideas. OBVIOUS ideas, that everyone who starts the game will enjoy. Not some wannabe XP idea that most people won't even know or notice, and just kept up because some oldschool players want to keep playing while their life has evolved into something where they have less time.

You seriously think XP will change THAT much about the player base? You must really be living in a dream world. All it does is keep some old players that got less time. That's absolutely ALL it does. The game doesn't get so much easier for noobs, that XP would be a reason to stay. It only gets easier for the core players, that analyze stats and exploit it. The average PC user won't even attack more than once per week, if at all, giving him a score 99% composed of value. Your argument is flawed from A to Z. It's full of nonsense. You lose at least as many CORE players to XP as you win NOOB players that keep playing cause they didn't lose all their score. Is that worth it? I seriously doubt that.