Toughts about October 31st blog

First, just to reiterate the game dates:

WoL and Genesis both end on Monday 3rd Nov
WoL will restart on Tuesday 4th Nov
Genesis will take a break for 1-2 weeks, and then be restarted

**Game ending times for both games will be significantly different.
The fact that they're both starting so close together is a
once-off.**

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|Game Updates|

So we've added some new features. The first thing you'll see when you
log in on the next round is a new account system and UI.

Let's get the premium one out of the way first.

1. Province Sitting
This is the official province sitting option. It is the *only*
official sitting option. You'll see the function in your shiny new
account section. In short, it costs 25c/day with the following rules:

-Players may only sit one province at a time
-The minimum number of sitting days in any one sitting session is 3
-The maximum number of sitting days over the age (per province) is
21
-Only players within your KD may sit your province
-Only the player who is sitting the province may access it during
this time, however, the original owner may cancel the sitting, after
the initial period (3 days) is over
-Province sitting will end when the player a) runs out of credits, b)
runs out of maximum allowable number of days, or c) cancels the
province sitting

You'll see where you can purchase this in your main account.
Currently, it accepts Paypal but we have premium SMS on the way in a
few days.

2. Province Moving

Province moving is now official but STRICTLY limited per round:

-The maximum number of moves allowed *per account* is 3
-The maximum number of moves *per KD* is 3

You can physically move your province into another KD with the
following conditions in place:

-The moved province will revert to its initial state, with initial
resources/cash, and 3 days of protection
-You cannot move province if there is no space in the KD
-The Monarch in the receiving KD must always approve the move

3. Province Trading

Province trading is now official but STRICTLY limited per round. Just
to be completely clear, province trading is taking over a province
which used to belong to another player. The rules are as follows (all
on a per round basis unless otherwise specified):

- You can switch provinces with another person - provinces don't
move, only the player controlling the province changes

-The maximum number of trades allowed per province is 3
-The maximum number of trades allowed per account is 3
-The maximum number of trades allowed per KD is 3

Province trading behaviour is as follows:

- You can take over someone else's province, and destroy your own in
the process
- You can take over someone else's province, and leave your old
province in the Monarch's control - who can then assign it or let it
be destroyed, but not log into it

- KDs can earn bonus trades. Note that this system is experimental.
We want to allow people sufficient freedom to trade, but also prevent
abuse of the system, with people creating farm KDs.

This system will be tweaked over time, with player input. Initially,
it will work like this:

Every month:
-Each KD will get 1 bonus trade

Every 2 weeks
-The top 50 KDs in terms of NW/Honor will get an additional 1 trade

Every 3 weeks:
-The top 100 KDs in terms of NW/Honor will get an additional 1 trade

Every 4 weeks
-The top 250 KDs in terms of NW/Honor will get an additional 1 trade

Additional Bonus Trade Behavior

- if you rank for both NW and Honor, you will only be allocated *1*
bonus trade
- if you qualified for the last round of bonus trades, you will not
be selected for the next e.g., if you are in the top 50, you will be
automatically disqualified for the next top 100 and top 250 rewards

Enjoy the read!

Yes, I do like that whole 'rewarding people who whore, camp, and don't war'-part.
It makes perfect sense, I assure you.

Is that your suggestion or is that stated somewhere?

Check your emails...kd mate got this from omac

and yes i dont like the idea rewarding top kd's with more trade credits,i mean what do they need it for???

3 trades per kingdom maximum per age is already 3 too many, don't go offering more around.

Yes this was the official newsletter - do check your emails (or your spam filter)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VT2

Yes, I do like that whole 'rewarding people who whore, camp, and don't war'-part.
It makes perfect sense, I assure you.

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honestly, i totally agree... most useful post ever by VT2

also, it looks to me like if you're top 50 from age start to end, you get 3 trades + 1 every 2 weeks... thats insane!

I definitely didn't get one...

When was it sent out?

What, this is a SERIOUS suggestion?

Oh god, it gets worse.

About 2 hours ago.

I'm sure this won't be abused or hated at all, and convinced it will be embraced completely by the community, without a single threat of leaving, no whining, and absolutely no complaining whatsoever.

I didn't get one =[

OMAC better send me my Activation Code next age...

Lmao, even my monarch, who is pro-the-trading idea thinks this is diabolical.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Halfling

This system will be tweaked over time, with player input. Initially,
it will work like this:

Every month:
-Each KD will get 1 bonus trade

Every 2 weeks
-The top 50 KDs in terms of NW/Honor will get an additional 1 trade

Every 3 weeks:
-The top 100 KDs in terms of NW/Honor will get an additional 1 trade

Every 4 weeks
-The top 250 KDs in terms of NW/Honor will get an additional 1 trade

Additional Bonus Trade Behavior

- if you rank for both NW and Honor, you will only be allocated *1*
bonus trade
- if you qualified for the last round of bonus trades, you will not
be selected for the next e.g., if you are in the top 50, you will be
automatically disqualified for the next top 100 and top 250 rewards

---

I'm so disappointed. Why not give the bottom a chance to create a solid kingdom on equal terms?

The sitting proposal concerns me. You can now legally swap out all weak players during all wars of the round easily and essentially run wars with a group of 15 players or so. Hope this will be changed next round.

OK, so let's see. For people who know what they're doing, building a good kd now takes less than one age (easy to stay in top 50 and get enough trades).

To be a really good warring kd, you only need 13 good, active players, and 12 friends who help keep the provs alive when you're not in war.

$5 per age for those 13 players, and you'll in reality be sitting with only 13 good players, but ingame, for 7 wars (counting them as average 72 hours) that age, you'll be sitting with 25 good players.

If this is what the plan was from OMAC's side, then go ahead. if not, you need to seriously rethink this proposition

All i can say is:

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

i hope everyone will stick to the old fashioned proxy way of playing just to not give them revenues from this idiocy. Heck, i might just as well write a guide on how to do it properly.

Kds are gonna have to use them anyway since just 3 moves at beginning of the age hardly will be enough anyway.. guess for later ages you can save up credits to use late age, but still meh.

Quote:

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- You can take over someone else's province, and leave your old
province in the Monarch's control - who can then assign it or let it
be destroyed, but not log into it

---

I assume that it will cost a credit to do so?

of all the possible systems you chose to make a stupid one...
1. its confusing with all the junk.
2. its not very well thought out.
3. the sitting option is going to cause problems, it will mean its better to simply continue "sitting" the old way and xlog when you need to.
4. you dont mention your new account management system, and its benefits when moving to this new trading/sitting system.

anyway i now agree with the people saying legal trading is bad, simply because you have made it confusing -.-, while limited trading could be good, in the suggested form its not :)
maybe next time dont try to copy catwalks suggestion :P

Catty, you already did that.
Afraid someone's going to own you, because they can now legally cheat as much as you've done for years now?

Actually, this whole thing proves that the management should NEVER listen to catty's stupid suggestions, for any reason, or any other pro-trading suggestions, for that matter.

Guess I'll have to call up some people, and prepare to make my kingdom better, all in the legal, good intention to compete as well the next age as I did this one.

Shame, and I had such a good, fun time stringing my old one together over several ages.
Oh, well - guess the 7/7 record will have to be counted as our peak.

VT2 is making sense. Catwalk shouted and screamed for this change and look what's happened.

What a shame :(

yeah, kors i taket as we say in swedia.

I've never posted here before, but I think Omac needs to look at everyone's situation before giving kingdoms that farm or are in ABS a large advantage over others.

I'll admit that I haven't played in the top at all, but I'm a very dedicated and active player trying to build a decent kingdom. We're an above average kingdom for activity per player, but we are still lacking in dedicated players. This kingdom has improved every age due to the dedication of me and my monarch. We have several players who used to play in top kingdoms who seem moderately happy here. I worry that these players will look to play elsewhere now that they can legally trade to any kingdom that wants them. They still have friends in top kingdoms, so it wouldn't surprise me if we lost a good chunk of our players.

What irritates me the most is that top kingdoms are allowed more trades than middle of the road to bottom kingdoms. Why the hell is this? They are typically already at 25 so why do they need more trades than a 15 or 20 man kingdom? The rest of us are just going to end up with their leftovers or players that aren't so good. How the hell does this make any sense? We already have enough problems trying to compete if we don't have a damn alliance tag; this just makes things considerably harder.

I feel like a small market baseball team that's about to lose my best players to the Red Sox and Yankees. My monarch and I poured a lot of effort into this kingdom for the past few ages only to potentially have it ripped from us so a few of the cheaters on top can be happy. We already have enough problems with good players disappearing with illegal trading. I just hope someone in my kingdom who decides to stay has a few dedicated friends that want in to my little experiment or I'm going to be looking for a new kingdom soon.

The trading system may need some work, but deserves to be tested (I'd be inclined to agree that it's not very fair to give top kd's more trades, they're not the ones who need the help). The issue is the sitting system

Yeah, all the hard work Kingdoms have done to build a team has been wiped away and flushed down the toilet in a single action...

I thought that's what the game was about... clearly the new team don't give a flying about that and just about ad revenue.

Cheech
This will hardly change anything for ABS tbh, at least not in any positive way. Not that i care really, just dont get it :)

But i gotta say, im genuinly sorry for you and the rest of the players who actually play this game on the level its supposed to be played with all that comes with it. I dont think youll lose most of your players to top kds though but to friendly kds sitting around here and there with 5-6 old friends or so just kicking back. (Fun part is that these kds however are still gonna cheat the old way to play together even though they really do no harm to anyone or anything game wise)

Quote:

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What irritates me the most is that top kingdoms are allowed more trades than middle of the road to bottom kingdoms.

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couldnt agree more. i think i know the reason behind it, but even so its totally retarded.

anyways, as i said.. i feel sorry for you.. i really do.

Everyone should thank Catwalk nicely for shouting so loudly about trading et al, and congratulate him on his idea which has been implemented this round, and thank all the others who immediately jumped on the bandwagon to add their voices to his.

I think the private invite-only cosy OMAC IRC chats have all been entirely with the wrong people.

We have a game, people, it just doesn't happen to be Utopia any more.

Thanks, Catwalk.

Just a shame for those who enjoyed Utopia, isn't it?

what server is the email coming from? swirve.com? jolt.co.uk? i dont have anything either and i used to get the news letters

Whoever this catwalk guy is, thanks a lot you jerk. He probably plays in some top 20 kingdom and benefits the most from this while he dumps some of his sub-par players on to the rest of us while taking away my best players.

cheech
according to himself he doesnt even play anymore (he sits provs if needed) and just runs his kd. and ironically enough his kd is actually #20 ;>

Sweetiepie
couldnt agree more.

I'm sorry but Cheech is totally correct here. This is speaking as a player in one of the top kingdoms in the game. Why are you rewarding top kingdoms with extra trades when it's the top kingdoms that already have twenty-five players? How does that make any sense? If trading is really going to be made legal than it is the kingdoms that aren't doing well that need trades so that they can band together players who want to work together and improve. The way the current system is set up, it simply creates an oligarchy of top kingdoms that will discourage competition and the general player base. The game is practically non-competitive and boring as it is. Please don't compound this through the current proposed changes.

Trading will be the demise of the game.

Period.

With the flux in players all over the server, do you honestly think this makes player/mulit/farm monitoring easier?

Allowing trading all age long and at the start of every age takes away someone's fear of being deleted and not being able to join the same kingdom, deletion has no purposeful meaning now, especially near the start of the age.

Just create another account and get invited back.

Are you guys telling me a system which allows massive player flux, encourage the use of multis much greater than the system we have now?

Granted there are player trading and multi now, 80% of utopia players are legit players, maybe even more.

With this system we're going to bring the number of legit players down even more.

As far as i know there were 3 players who encouraged this new system,

Catwalk

MorbidAngel

Ezzerland


Only they see the light in this trading system.


Greatly.


They're probably getting ready to ship a few of the other accounts they control into the same kingdom, ( They only really have time for 1 account, a few more takes up too much of their time) or maybe cluster together in one kingdom ( The 3 of them ) and make merry fun all day and night.

Cheers

Raki, I've been sitting for quite some time now (all of this round and most of last round) as we've been behind on recruiting. So for all practical purposes, I'm playing. I'd still prefer not having to manage a province.

Cheech, take a moment to look at the implications of this. What has been going on for the last 10 years? Kingdoms trade. Rampantly. From time to time Mehul tried to fix that with deletions, which was blatantly unsuccesful. It drove players away, and it failed utterly at stopping trading. The situation is no different today, except Swirve largely stopped deleting for trading. Most likely after realizing that they really couldn't afford losing more players.

The situation is the same today. This measure won't have many implications for top kingdoms, other than a little less hassle with managing account information, proxies and recruiting from the right countries. I'm looking forward to avoiding that hassle, but it will have minimal game and performance consequences.

Now look at the implications for your kingdom. You get additional tools at your disposal that you most likely had limited or no access to previously. Not only can you now recruit players from any country, you also don't need to supply accounts for up to 3 players per round. Provided that you wish to use those tools to strengthen and develop your kingdom, you are far better off than previously.

To my knowledge, I came up with the idea of basing invitation limitations on chart ranking and I stand by it. Let's first look at a few alternative implementations:
1) 3 invitations per round for all
Highly unlikely that the rules would be respected, meaning we would still be in the curent situation. Lower ranked kingdoms would still be slightly better off compared to previously (same as now), situation unchanged for higher ranked kingdoms other than the hassle.
2) 10+ invitations per round for all
With this many invitations available at any level, there are two risks. First risk is that poor monarchs would refuse to take in random players, preferring only to take in friends even though that harms the kingdom in the long run. Second risk is power hungry new monarchs jumping in to monopolize kingdoms, potentially purging a good part of the kingdom in the process.

One of the charms of Utopia is that it is played on many levels. It is natural for players to want to team up with a group of people who share their ambitions and competence. It is not healthy for kingdoms to have too large gaps between the best and the worst players. That will frequently lead to frustration and defection. A guy who applied to join my kingdom today after playing with one of my players on Genesis said that he was frustrated with a turnout of 3 players for a wave that had been planned 2 weeks in advance. What should I tell that guy? To go back and keep playing in a kingdom where he isn't having fun? To spend weeks defecting around, possibly without finding a kingdom that matches his interests? Does his kingdom have a birth right to force that player to stay there?

As for your example, you said yourself they have played in top kingdoms before. If they wanted to return there, they would most likely have done so already. Chances are they're satisfied with playing at a lower ambition level with correspondingly lower requirements. If a player is motivated for playing at a higher level than your kingdom can offer, you usually won't be able to keep him. Keeping your players is a challenge for any kingdom, at any level.

I think it's fair that players band together at different ambition levels. Players differ a lot in how they view the game and how competitive they are. Building and maintaining a kingdom with top ambitions is quite a bit more demanding than building and maintaining a lower ranked one. While I've given all random players who land here a fair chance, most simply aren't interested in or capable of playing here on our terms. Would you rather have us kill off 10 newbies who might fit into a lower ranked kingdom or recruit one player who's motivated for playing at our level?

I'll make you a concession, I don't like preying on lower ranked kingdoms for players. If a player is dissatisfied with his kingdom and wishes to leave then he's fair game. If he's being headhunted by a top kingdom and convinced to be dissatisfied with his kingdom, he might end up making the wrong decision.

I suggest that you keep building up your kingdom, have serious talks with your best players about ambition levels to get an indication of whether or not any are dissatisfied and start using the new tools available to you to bring friends of your players into the kingdom. You said you're in need of dedicated players, that's often a good way to get more.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by poei

Trading will be the demise of the game.

Period.

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Trading was a part of the game before this legalization, and it would have stayed so even without a legalization. OMAC just legalized something that been going on for years. To ignore the existence of trading and it's beneficial part on the kingdoms is like ignore the existence of utopia angel - it's simply not possible. It wouldn't have been possible to turn a blind eye to the trading and trying to stop it wouldn't have been possible either.... cause in the end, everyone trades. even the small kd's... even the ones screaming the most in the forum about it's despicable nature. Even your kingdom poei.

Catwalk

Quote:

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Raki, I've been sitting for quite some time now (all of this round and most of last round) as we've been behind on recruiting. So for all practical purposes, I'm still playing. I'd still prefer not having to manage a province.

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isnt that what i said more or less? either way, i just forwarded what you wrote like a week ago or so :)

Quote:

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Not only can you now recruit players from any country, you also don't need to supply accounts for up to 3 players per round. Provided that you wish to use those tools to strengthen and develop your kingdom, you are far better off than previously.

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That is little good to those who lose more players than they can get back using these tools. There are plenty of kds that do well today that will lose +3 core players to better kds simply because trading will increase and more and more players will move up to the top cluster. If we could assume these kds could do the same and pick up good players from the kds below them things wouldnt be as bad, however this is hardly the case. And either way you look at it in the end people have to be taken from somewhere and far from everyone will be able to compensate for the lost players.. thats was one of my main objections then and still is.. it simply doesnt benefit anyone below middle-top. especially now that i cant even create a kd with my friends and play for fun even if i wnated too (without cheating) but the top can snatch players away at will more or less.

heck, even a legalized merger system wouldve been better than this. and mergers suck by definition =)

Quote:

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A guy who applied to join my kingdom today after playing with one of my players on Genesis said that he was frustrated with a turnout of 3 players for a wave that had been planned 2 weeks in advance. What should I tell that guy? To go back and keep playing in a kingdom where he isn't having fun? To spend weeks defecting around, possibly without finding a kingdom that matches his interests? Does his kingdom have a birth right to force that player to stay there?

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What should we tell the people in the game that has functioning kds that due to this change will basically crash because large parts of their top end players will be traded out? You seem to ignore these or live in the illusion that these kds can trade in new players to compensate, because quite frankly they cant.

Quote:

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As for your example, you said yourself they have played in top kingdoms before. If they wanted to return there, they would most likely have done so already. Chances are they're satisfied with playing at a lower ambition level with correspondingly lower requirements.

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Agreed. However i feel these players are being punished by not being allowed to group together and play together at a lower level where they could do wonders to the game and the players they ended up together with. I guess this could be resolved by OMAC though by allowing some form of special treatment if one applies for it somehow. Doubt it will happen though. Cause quite honestly i think there are quite a lot of players that actually would be interested in playing with 7-8 old friends in a ghetto and just having fun. Something that would benefit everyone in the game and pretty much harm no one.

Stella
That trading occurs and legalizing therefore changes nothing is a stupid thing to say tbh.

"according to himself he doesnt even play anymore (he sits provs if needed) and just runs his kd. and ironically enough his kd is actually #20 ;>"

LOL he's beware? That explains everything from the damn cheater. That whole xlogging kingdom deserves to be deleted and none of them should be allowed to play again. My monarch pointed out to me to keep an eye on them when they were warring BIO, and it was obvious they were all xlogging. Plus a bunch kept getting deleted and reinstated.

Catwalk - I don't think you quite understand the hassel this is going to be. I think most of my core that has been around a few ages is loyal enough to stay, but I'm going to have to now talk to all of them to make sure we're still good go. Then there's the newbs that we are training to be good players. They'll probably still be around, since they wouldn't know where else to go and have fun. What I'm worried about are some of the players that defected or joined mid age who haven't had a full age with us under their belt. Some of them have proven to be very dedicated. Losing some of them would set us back greatly.

Another concern I have is a kingdom with 20-23 or so good players who war us early, beat us silly, and then grab some of the best war performers. You never know how someone who says they are loyal will act when they get the chance to join a better kingdom, especially someone that wouldn't know how to get in contact with another kingdom if it wasn't for a poor war choice. This magnifies every hostile we get in early, knowing that a kingdom could grab some people and set us back further.

Another problem is that we're carrying a good amount of people with kids and long hours at work. I wouldn't want to have to dump these players who have been around with us for a while to get a competitive advantage. They add some charm to our little kingdom. They make their 2 hits a day, but they'll often miss hours or just run bad provinces in general. I'd had to have to see them go to appease the masses who threaten to move on elsewhere.

Making it so easy to leave, especially for top kingdoms to scoop up whoever they please, is a huge problem for those of us not in a top 20 kingdom. I worked very hard for this and would hate to lose even a couple of players that we've groomed well. We're at a point where every lost player and every gained player is magnified. Right now, I just don't see any way how we can replace some people unless we beat on a weaker kingdom and take away their best players. If your goal was to make utopia more dog-eat-dog, then you accomplished it. It must be nice to be a kingdom where you don't have to worry about this.

I was actually hoping that with creation of new trade system they might make it so ppl wouldn't have to force players to give up account info...

lol, I was wrong :)

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

I don't think so. Players what to play with friends more than they want to play in a top kd. Frankly, I do not want to play in a top kd. Faaaaar tooooooo competitive for me. Too much hassle as well. Win a few wars here and there and maybe nip into the top 100 for something.

I imagine there are plenty of good players wanting the above.