It’s been over 10 years since I played this game and recently returned to see what’s new. Not much it would appear, but that’s not a problem since the game has always been fun.
However, I have noticed a HUGE increase in the amount of players that immediately quit or go AFK if they don’t get the start they want (e.g. poor spawn location, immediately attacked). I assume they are just churning games, quitting until they get a game with a strong start. This means that within the first few days many games lose 50% or more of their human players, and the result is then always a tedious slog against the AI.
Why are there no penalties to quitting (e.g. timelock on joining new games)? The way it’s set up at the moment incentivises churn and dramatically lowers the quality of game play.
I dont know about anyone else, but I’ve little interest in the playing against AI. The human diplomacy aspect and coordination with other players is what made the game fun…
Well, I can play devil’s advocate a little bit, and say that it is really not fun to play seriously uphill battle.
I am quite new to the game, and I may lack some expirience, but AFAIK there are little to none comeback mechanics.
Recently I started a game being last one joining, and had huge lead in expansion (which is another topic to discuss)
But two cycles pass, and I am on the first place with lowest economy because of offline and poor decisions. 9 economy against 25+ while being attacked… I could probably cling on, if it was my main game, but it was suppoused to be a secondary one to 64 player one, as there was litte action going.
With such an uphill battle, and action in “main” game starting, I simply quit.
But I do agree with your point, literally my first game was 6/10 AI players, and I won (on my first game ) because got tucked away in the corner behind AIs, and was able to create a literal stream of ships.
Nice Idea Pan, I seldom stick around for the end of a game once it is won and will concede in order for the winner. mostly because it is obvious who the winning team is. but to get that win they need several hundered more stars, and that could take a while. so if offered I’ll concede so they can go out in order and have the top player claim the win.
Last time I looked at this, over 3/4 of early AFK were people win 0 completed games. In 64p at least they should just require a “minimum rank 1” (i.e. you have compelted a game) to play and it would drastically reduce this effect.
I’m curious: was this game you played Kappa Menkent? Because I’m pulling together some end-of-game stats, and that is by far the highest AFK rate I’ve seen in a game - more than double what most of the games I’ve seen have.
No it wasn’t Kappa Menkent. It was just a general comment.
I think players who quit or go AFK within the first week definitely need to receive some negative consequences. Even if you get a terrible start position there is always to option to assist another player and pick up reknown from them. Perhaps the scoring system needs to be more subtle, rewarding players for actions other than outright wins (max stars captured?)
I understand Jay wants to keep the game as open as possible, but incentives need to be aligned to result in the best gameplay experience for everyone.
There is value to keeping the game as open as possible, but if there were options, then private games could be used for those players wishing to have various rankings such as reliability. Web Diplomacy uses such a feature for every player
I agree there should be some kind of system to discourage quitting. Not allowing players that haven’t finished a game yet is also a great idea.
I think that cycling games because you get a bad start is trash. That’s when you start the diplomacy game. Whenever I introduce friends to the game and they complain about their start I show them this 64p start I had where I had to get two levels of range just to get my 6th and 7th star.
) because got tucked away in the corner behind AIs, and was able to create a literal stream of ships.
