What is being done to increase player base

[Pillz]

I think for me, mostly the loser/winner mechanism.

There is not enough win-win in the game.

It's a competitive online game. By nature, it can't be designed so everyone wins. But if you don't suck, you can often lose less badly or even 'win' with a loss, ie: strategic withdrawals, or smashing someone into war after they paid you too much attention.

But who am I kidding, of course the masses who can't play want to win when they lose. Just like they want to ignore changes and refuse to learn how to play.

[StratOcastle]

Win-win is in the game if players are perceptive to symbiosis vs pride.

For instance, when a whoring kingdom strikes down to take acres and you retaliate with abduction. Both sides should be sporting a Mona Lisa grin. Explore, rinse, repeat. Same goes for elite converters.

Emeriti withdrawing from Frost Giants war was an example in a competive environment.

[Excalibus]

What i think the game needs is a mix of old timers AND new blood, for the game to grow in the future new blood is what is needed most, but not new blood for the sake of being cannon fodder for the vets

[Fero]

Problem with this game is that you sooner or later Wanna move on to better kds and when doing so you realize you have to give up so much of Your other lifeactivities to stay active for Your Kd all day and night. So even IF tjis game could attract new players, many of them Will Quit after a Few ages Cuz the kd demand to much of you and you dont wanna step down to a lesser kd and get eaten by the top..its just not fun. I hope this game Will grow but i doubt it ever will, cuz a textbased game is not what ppl in general is looking for in 2017.

[hylandor]

I can easily get some friends to play, mostly people I work with. The problem is that I know they'd prefer to play in the same Kingdom. I however am reluctant to do that because I've been roasted by IP restrictions in the past during war. I'm in a pretty competitive kingdom and that is something I can't afford in war. Because they'd be work buddies, we play on the same public IP, unless we are exclusively playing on our phones... which the game isn't really targeted for. I assume others are in the same boat.

[thejudge]

The game needs to introduce automatic penalties for kingdoms that have a sub (97%) average (war) opponent relative size and stack significant penalties on attacks into kingdoms below 95% of their own kingdom networth. If both of these are achieved then we may stem the flow of people leaving the game. Basically the mods need to stem the flow of farming and bottom feeding.

[Madchess]

hits oor are already penalized as is hitting smaller kingdoms.

Total Attacks Made 49
Total Wins 39
Wins Against Larger Opponents 17
Average Relative Opponent Networth 98%
Total Land Gained in Combat 3035
Attacks Suffered 60
Times Defeated 56
Total Land Lost in Combat 2330

Even with getting abducted more than I abduct this is a significant diffrence in land lost vs land gained, and not all can be explained from -30% gans due to gs. If you do not run gs and get hit a lot from bigger kingdoms you are doing things wrong, you can't count on not getting harassed, so you should chose your strategy according to what works in those situations and not what works if everyone leave you alone. I expect to be outnumbered and/or outmatched and plan accordingly.

- In war numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power. Sun Tsu

[thejudge]

By enlarge 95% (and I'm being generous with the 5%) of attacks into our kingdom is by kingdoms 20% larger than us knowing that we won't press the button.

Why would players our kingdom, such as myself, continue to play? I imagine at the end of this age (if we make it that far) another 5 players or so will call it a day if this aspect of the game isn't addressed in the changes.

hits oor are already penalized as is hitting smaller kingdoms.

Total Attacks Made 49
Total Wins 39
Wins Against Larger Opponents 17
Average Relative Opponent Networth 98%
Total Land Gained in Combat 3035
Attacks Suffered 60
Times Defeated 56
Total Land Lost in Combat 2330

Even with getting abducted more than I abduct this is a significant diffrence in land lost vs land gained, and not all can be explained from -30% gans due to gs. If you do not run gs and get hit a lot from bigger kingdoms you are doing things wrong, you can't count on not getting harassed, so you should chose your strategy according to what works in those situations and not what works if everyone leave you alone. I expect to be outnumbered and/or outmatched and plan accordingly.

- In war numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power. Sun Tsu

[DavidC]

By enlarge 95% (and I'm being generous with the 5%) of attacks into our kingdom is by kingdoms 20% larger than us knowing that we won't press the button.

Why would players our kingdom, such as myself, continue to play? I imagine at the end of this age (if we make it that far) another 5 players or so will call it a day if this aspect of the game isn't addressed in the changes.

Are you aware of the Kingdom Relative Networth modifier that already exists in the gains formula?
There are already significant disadvantages for Kingdoms attacking Kingdoms of lower strength while at the same time the smaller Kingdoms have no penalties for retaliating (i.e. no negative modifier on gains).

I don't want you to think I'm just blowing off your statement, but what would your suggestion be to resolve the issue you're stating? Keeping in mind, large kingdoms hitting a small kingdom can receive as much as a -34% penalty in gains just from Kingdom nw difference.

[thejudge]

Yes, I'm aware but that hasn't solved the issue, it's more prevalent now than ever with the reduced number of kingdoms in range, a consequence of low player numbers.

Personally I'd like to see a retal amplifier introduced. So if a kingdom over X% of your kingdom size (20%?) then for ever retal the lesser kingdom gets +X% gains (34%?). The gains amplifier would only be in play up to war meter equivalency.

Maybe the gains penalty and amplifier could be stronger that 30 odd%. I'd like to see something that really deters the bullying mentality of utopia.

Are you aware of the Kingdom Relative Networth modifier that already exists in the gains formula?
There are already significant disadvantages for Kingdoms attacking Kingdoms of lower strength while at the same time the smaller Kingdoms have no penalties for retaliating (i.e. no negative modifier on gains).

I don't want you to think I'm just blowing off your statement, but what would your suggestion be to resolve the issue you're stating? Keeping in mind, large kingdoms hitting a small kingdom can receive as much as a -34% penalty in gains just from Kingdom nw difference.

[Mad_Scottish]

It has been mentioned a fair bit - the main issue for utopia is that unfortunately, there are a lot of people that like to play online game but hate the fact that when you are offline you province and kingdom can get smashed. People like the plug and play of being able to log on and off and know that when you do and log back in that your character/province or whatever is in a similar state. Utopia is a very time consuming game if you want to do well and that is what a lot of people I don't think can cope with.

A lot of the multi players are all hack and slack but you get a sense that you are constantly progressing. With utopia you can login, do an attack, think ok good, but then get 3 or 4 times as a retal and be miles back from where you were trying to get to.

I love that, always have, I have played this game for bloody ever but that is going to be the biggest struggle for a lot of new users/players.

There isn't really a solution because this is the game and it is going to take people that like playing this style and dealing with it. However, this is also a little bit of putting the cart before the horse because we need players to begin with.

My above points could be absolute crap if we ended up with more players and they all turned around and said actually no, I love this, it feels more alive and more real and the to and fro makes it more interesting.

Right now in terms of the game, I know if you type utopia it doesn't come up in a search. Is there a way to feed/advertise where if you are googling *games online to play* that utopia would pull up in the search? Right now is there any way for anyone to actually "stumble" on the game?

[octobrev]

I'm not sure why my completely on-topic and insightful posts are being removed while all of these posts that will do nothing for the game are allowed to remain intact. We have been changing mechanics for over a decade and it has never served to increase the player base. Perhaps one of the mods was too cognitively feeble to differentiate a legitimately useful idea from trolling but without knowing which one, I can't very well educate him or her via PM.

Targeting the developing world is the only path. That's where old things are still pretty nice.

[StratOcastle]

You have to type "Utopia Game" and it comes up. I never bookmarked Utopia so I use active search when I'm using a couple screens in war.

[CCanes420]

If you all really want to increase the player count, then post the link with a witty description on University engineering/science/etc department bulletin boards. Do this at several dozen campuses globally and I guarantee you'd see decent numbers. Small stuff like this is what will keep Utopia alive.

Cheers.

PS: The players need to write up a much more cohesive guide. As it stands, new players still have little to no idea what they are doing.

[newatthis]

This is the screenshot that can give you the idea of how hard it is to teach new players to play. He is a player from a game that is similar than utopia so he is somewhat familiar about the game. But since utopia menu is complicated, i had to take the som from my prov and told him to the very details in what he had to do to attack the target. Because teaching him about how to take som would take even longer time and I didn't have time for that at that moment.
And also Idu why browser that has munkbot on, will take my stealths while I am taking som but show no result whether or not it is successful. So I HV to check kd page to see if I was successful or not, n if I am successful I could check the target def in his kd page. If I am not successful, I have to go back to thievery page n repeat everything until I can see enemy defense on his kd page. Then if I attack my target, I can't see the result either. So I HV to check kd news n go back to war room page again if I want to do more taps on my enemy. It is so frustrating to play utopia especially on the phone :(