Originally Posted by
Returner
I am awared that the current development team has done a lot of changes to the game. Compared to those in the wasted few years ago, they did a good job more on others. But sad to say, it isn't enough.
Ritual has been introduced, aid in acres has been introduced, Paladin has been introduced, these features are good but it is not enough to make the game play more strategic. Players are still gangbang-ing in wars, chaining one province heavily and then move to others in order to achieve war wins.
How do you know when you are successful in making Utopia more in strategic playing? --> When you see players are no longer gangbang-ing a single prov heavily in wars in order to win.
Even though I have kept on mentioning this point over and over again, there are improvements made in this direction yes, but the team doesn't really has a clear vision or understand the basic, fundamental completely, to what does strategic playing means.
What strategical fights mean is, put it like it is a chess. There will be Queen, Bishop, Rook, Knight, Pawn and the King. You do not see gangbang in chess game in order to win. You do not see multiple chess piece chasing or killing a particular piece in order to win.
A chess game is, every moves you made, there is an opening, a strength, a trick, a trap, a sacrifice, that nothing in that board of chess is predictable.
You used a lot of brain when you played a chess game. In Utopia, you used a lot of activity to play a war - waking in the midnight more hardworking than the others, be more active than the others.
You have to get rid of this man, this way of warring pattern is not going to last very long. It is outdated, tiresome and will sooner or later, be abandoned by the players.
Proposed Idea no 1:
One of the way to make the game more unpredictable, is to introduced a "war-stance". Forget about the Dragon, that feature needed to be funded with a lot of gold and if one kingdom has no gold, they have no dragon. No dragon, no effect, no strategies could be used.
Make the war stance free, only available to Monarch, but set a time framed needed for it to activate, for example, it takes 6 or 12 hours to activate. How short a kingdom can activate new war stance depends on their honor point, war wins, or so on, damage done, acres gained, troops killed, whatever, or so on.
The point of this war stance feature is, it has to be flexible -- Let's say a maximum of 3 features could be picked in a war stance. Every features in those Dragons, Emerald or Ruby, individually can be selected and put into a war stance, which will be activated in 6-12 hours.
The opponent will NOT know what war stance the other kd picked. They will only know it when it is been activated. Now, that is called "strategy".
Rituals is the same. Don't cast any mana and runes anymore. Just let the Monarch of the kd decide what benefit they should be using.
The last and most important point about war stances or rituals is -- For god's sake, they have to be many. A lot. Tons of options to be picked from. The variety must be a lot. It should not even be less than 20 options.
Proposed Idea no 2:
Interaction between provinces in a kingdom are too low. If you want to make everyone can be broken in a war, just introduce the combination of 2 provinces forced joined together to break on a target.
When we are thinking about war, even game is something that is coded and many things are restricted and fixed, our job is to make sure it is flexible as possible so it doesn't look so "fix".
Why nowadays the word "Open-World" mmorpg is so hot? Players who are interested to play an mmorpg, they are more attracted to the game that is open-world. Even though the game is still fixed, but it is more flexible compared to other mmorpg.
The more flexible your game is, not fixed in a box with a few patterns, the more popular it will be. This is the current trend in the gaming world now.
So what does war looks like? Many ideas will come upon. 25 provinces in a kingdom, naturally their forces could be joined together.
When one province been attacked, other province can even help him to ambush.
Anything that comes in mind, all about team work, tricks, traps, forces, support from the tm, everything counts.
Proposed Idea no 3:
Get rid of the aid trade balance in war.
This is not a crazy idea. Players misused this feature to pump their prov in a fake war. It could be encountered.
Any aid that is sent to a province, will be removed at the end of the war. You can send 10m gc to a prov, 10k soldiers, trained into units and so on, it will be removed all when the war ends.
Every aid inside the war, are only "temporarily".
So let's say a prov enter a war with 1000 acres and 20k troops. If he receive a total of 1m gc and 2k soldiers, trained into units, all these will disappeared once the war end. The only thing to do is to record it into the database.
Aided stuffs should be put into another category. They function together as whole in war, but does not take any effect after the war. The gold will be separated, the troops, all of them, it doesn't matter if you use the gold to build your acres, to explore inside the war, to train troops, because they are all separated in another page, all of them will disappear when war ends.
Try to make the game, based on team work, more strategic calls, rather than gangbang. Don't make Utopia war goes by gangbang for long. This pattern is not being appreciated in many web games, mobile games nowadays.
When you build up your acres and lose them in an instant in war, many gamer do not like that. They feel their effort are being put to a waste for nothing for all the time they invested.
You do not need to fight a war like that. All they want is a brilliant, brain stormed, tensed and strategic play. If they want for actions, they could for FPS or MMORPG. If a player is addicted to FarmVilla, they aren't looking for actions. They are looking for building stuffs, owning something.
Utopia is a warring game. So, what does a gamer who look for warring wants? Try to think it that way.
