Lol...i fail to see the 'improvements in the experience for players' part.Originally Posted by Grunkz
And 'whingeing wankers'...what is that?
Lol...i fail to see the 'improvements in the experience for players' part.
And 'whingeing wankers'...what is that?
If the Devs are so keen and speedy about implementing changes, how about updating the game rules for crying out loud?
QUoting from game rules
Your Account
You may create only one account in the Utopia gaming environment. You may maintain only your own account: under no circumstances should your account be accessed by anyone other than you. In the event that a third party is deemed to be accessing your account, both you and the third party will be considered in violation of the Code of Conduct.
Persistent creation and deletion of accounts is not allowed under any circumstances.
Should your account be suspended, the creation of a new account will be considered a breach of the Code of Conduct.
If other players legitimately access Utopia from your internet connection, you must take steps to gain inclusion on our whitelist. This will help avoid the relevant game accounts being flagged as cheaters. Please see this thread for details.
Until the agreement has been changed, I do not see how the devs can expect to implement this without massive contradictions in their own rules that they write if you forgot already
That was Jolt/Omacs doing not Sean nor Brians.. get at least some facts straight.(since their utopia kingdoms project failed spectacularly)
whatever man, one thing is straight as AIDS - they want us to give them money. YAY for pay-to-win games!
Like you whining about pay to win is anything on topic for this thread..Grunkz, if you can't say anything on the topic, you better stay out of this thread. There are enough kids around anyways, we don't need one more to tell us how we are supposed to suck it up and live with it.
Certainly they want money so they can keep on providing this game for us. There isnt a single pay to win feature in the game.whatever man, one thing is straight as AIDS - they want us to give them money. YAY for pay-to-win games!
*yawn*
Some 5+ pages of whine, and its all about the same damn thing. Haters gonna hate.
Now, here are some points to consider.
1) Under Mehul's reign, wife/husband/family members playing in the same kingdom would be deleted when detected.
No exceptions, as far as I remember. Under the new anticheat system, you can STILL play in the same kingdom, you just cannot interact directly with one another. You want to play together, you have to deal with the fallout. Life's not fair - you don't always get to have your cake and eat it too.
2) 2 people playing in the same kingdom has an advantage over solo players
My kingdom gets waved, so I get my brother who plays in the same kingdom to log online and retal as well. That's 2 insta retals instead of 1. And let's not even talk about the extra stealth/mana you can contribute to the kd's pool.
3) If you multi, you get deleted
Simple, ey? Obviously Bishop will not release the full details of the cheat detection system being used, because that will allow cheaters to circumvent these. Also, using public proxies will raise a flag because... why would you play on a public proxy? To wait, I know, bouncewave banks down?
4) This is very much still a 'free game'
Unlike some games, you DON'T have to pay in order to win in utopia. To win, pretty much you just need a leader or handful of leaders and players who know what they are doing to be willing to be organized and form a defined leadership structure. You need the ability to diplo as well as war. Utopia is very much a game based on meritocracy and diplomacy, and I've heard (unsure if it's true) that the devs pay for this game to remain online out of their own pockets. So yes, if you are going to cut your noses off to spite your faces and whine/boycott the game, well... whose attention are you trying to gain? Jeez.
Disadvantages
Yes, you can't chain the same province. So? Semi chain or chain down two provinces instead. One province hitting out of a chain isn't a war breaker. If you tell me you're going to lose your war because one province cannot hit in a chain well... you have bigger problems. If this annoys you to no end, you can play in different kingdoms.
Don't say that you won't derive any satisfaction playing in different kingdoms. You get exposed to a variety of leadership and communities by doing so, and you can even talk uto in your spare time should you so wish. You could even discuss what to do if one of you was in war and another was pumping! Whereas if you both play in the same kingdom, there isn't much variation in the topics of conversation since you'll both be in the same state anyway.
Utopian 5 Sept 2005 - 5 Sept 2013
Korp, Puppy, go back in the posts and see where I said that I agree this change COULD do some good, if done properly. It's not just about "you can't chain the same province". After a while in a war you CANNOT hit at all, because both people opped/hit/intel'd the whole kingdom and cannot interact with any province anymore. More then that - it's bugged to the extend where you can't hit the same province you hit earlier. Yes, there is "pay-to-win" option in the game and it's called SITTING. Officially allowed, paid option for crosslogging. Oh, you can't do more then one, shoot. Well, 12 players can. Most top kingdoms can get about that much players nowdays.
That's BS... Cheaters will cheat, nobody can stop that, but lame changes will drive people away. Why we got free invites anyway? Wasn't that to get some fresh blood in the game? Okay, so there was some fresh blood joining, people invited their friends and family in their kingdoms. Now, kingdoms with more then 1 couple are forced to change their general strategy. With these bugs not being fixed soon (well nobody can say when they will be fixed except the devs which wont show up here), this makes 4+ provinces useless in war. So.... take that "advantage" and replace it in a total disadvantage, to the extend where you can't do **** in war. This is not gonna force cheaters out, it will create more cheaters.
Also, Korp, I said more then enough in this thread.
You clearly don't know how war works.
Yes, it is a very big deal. If you can't chain, you can't war. If you remove one province from your chain, your effectiveness is directly and significantly reduced. The more couples you have in your kingdom, the more mostly useless provinces you have. It's not a minor hindrance, it's a direct penalty and major disadvantage for any kingdom that has couples, and especially the couples themselves. They'll get kicked out and no one will want to play with them. How's any of that fair, I wonder?
I'm glad I'm not the only one that sees this. Very hypocritical and misleading isn't it.
Good leaders shouldn't have to play around security policies. Cheaters should. 'Adapting' to such a thing is not satisfying at all, and very arbitrary. It's not professional or respectable. Unlucky kingdoms with dedicated players shouldn't have to 'adapt' to an unfair disadvantage. You're inflicting the very thing you set out to cure, and you're doing it on a much more massive scale. You're putting more priority on the cheaters than on the players, and that's not right.
Telling us in advance doesn't help us. It causes the same perpetual issues either way. Avoiding 'those cases' IS the problem. It's how the game is meant to be played.
Yes, of course they have an advantage. That's the point. Cooperation and communication gives you a VERY significant advantage. That's why we have IRC, pimp, phones, voices. They add to the game, not detract.
The more coordinated your kingdom is, the better. If you and your wife or brother or friend want to play a fun little text game together, helping each other out and working together, you should be more than allowed to. That's what makes the game fun, that's what it's all about. You should be allowed to go to your friend's house with your laptop and teach him a new game. You should be allowed to team up with three college buddy dorm mates and play together. That's why we have kingdoms. It's a team game.
You could have 25 people living in the same house and kingdom for all I care. I'd say, wow, that shows dedication! They are really determined to do well, and must be very coordinated! More power to them. Of course it should give you an advantage. Why wouldn't you want to reward communication? Saying one kind of communication is 'unfair' versus another one is stupid.. it's what the game is based on. That's the whole point. Don't you get it? You're punishing the innocent players that look for the best the game has to offer.
You think pro gamer teams that are allowed to sit in the same room in a tournament have an unfair advantage? That they should only be allowed to use text chat from separate rooms? Don't you see how stupid, irrelevant and distracting that is?
Where did you come up with such an arbitrary, damaging, shortsighted and unsatisfying concept of fairness anyway?
You guys are totally missing why people play the game. Your policies are horrible and injust. You are pushing people out, not making your game more attractive. You're undermining it's best aspects.
You must have no experience running an MMO if the players can so easily see why this is a bad choice and you can't. You might want to listen to them, if you care about the game.
Last edited by Aru; 03-12-2011 at 13:31.
+1
I couldn't have said it better, bro!! Me and my poor english :D
Our kingdom has 4 players affected directly, the monarch and his wife, and myself and my daughter. Yes we saw the changes were coming and did what we could to minimize expected problems the monarch and my daughter went t/m, his wife and I went attacker. The change was implemented two weeks into a slugfest of a war we were in. Attackers on both side were pretty well beat to a pulp and our kingdom was working on beating the last of their attackers down so we could move onto breaking down their t/m provinces as though they were obviously down on nw and land and only up a bit on honor because it had gone to their t/m who we hadnt gotten around to leveling yet. So although i had been chained to the point of 200 acres and about no def, was working my way back up and still pulling off quads, log in at midnight and line up my attack even managing to get fresh som/sot on target with my .2tpa i had left after all the macs i had eaten. troops get in just before the tick and I hurry to get them back out before MS and NS can eat into my offense, go to war room, try to launch my quad on the poor sap and find i am blocked from attacking him. So far as my daughter or I can tell she didnt so much as take intel on that province in over 24 hours let alone op or hit the guy, she is a halfer and had been busy dealing with enemy halfers and elves. so i lost a bit of my remaining offense to meteors as I didnt have time to find an alternate target before the tick. Fortunately I found one i knew I could quad on his max def and didnt really need to know if he had troops out as if they were home i could still oversend and the better to kill his elites, so while he may not have been the best target, he caught the quad.
We will likely work out something to avoid that sort of problem for remainder of the round, but likely his wife and my daughter wont be playing with us next round unless it goes better than expected. I could argue that the change gives an unfair advangage to kingdoms who dont have family members playing in the same kingdom as they can focus all their attention on one province when needed where we have to tap dance to make sure that 4 of us dont trip over the same target in any way. My daughter had played in other kingdoms in early rounds before trading was legal as while many ignored the rule, we actually play by the rules or dont play at all. She only came back to the game because the kingdom had a vacancy and she figured it might be fun to play in a kingdom with me and we have enjoyed it.
As to taking unfair advantage of family members being allowed to play together we went out of our way to not abuse the opportunity. If one of us had to be away we wouldnt even sit each others province let alone x-log it, we bought credits and would get someone else to sit it for us so we wouldnt take a chance of in some way breaking the rules. I expect not all whitelisted players went that far, but I can't speak for them. I have left kingdoms and alliances over disagreement on bending and breaking the rules.
Do I think management, or anyone else for that matter will care that some long term players will likely be leaving the game over this? Not really, just taking the time to vent my dislike for the change. I doubt it will do much to eliminate cheaters, its kind of like Christ's observation on the poor, that the poor will be with us always. With all the attempts to eliminate it over the years I have yet to notice a marked reduction in folks willing to find another way to get around the rules. Not even suggesting that management shouldnt work to stop it to the extent they can just think that this is more likely to impact those who follow the rules than those who don't.
I have always found mangements position, or my impression of it that they are doing the players a favor to run the game and that we should be greatful to them for taking on the burden out of the kindness of their hearts and if you dont like it, dont let the door hit you on the way out a bit offensive (not that that approach is unique to the current management, it was pretty much the same when Mehul ran the game). That was part of the reason I did end up leaving the game for several years. Was surprised when I decided to check the game out a few years later to see if it was still around and found while it was it appeared thousands of others had also decided to go out the door and most hadnt come back.
I am undecided still how long I will stay with the game and its not all about the changes or feeling underappreciated by management as a customer. At 55, about to turn 56 the idea of getting up in the middle of the night because my army is due back and I need to stay army in/army out just doesnt thrill me like it used to. Who knows, the game is pretty addictive and I may still be around till the game goes belly up or I do and am not vain enough to think that management will much care if I am or not.
Last edited by watchman; 03-12-2011 at 13:18.
+ 1
- "He's kinda awesome..."
+1 also
the key word in all this is prevention i believe.
because as i see it u fixing a minor advantage (couples logging for each other - i think there are better ways to do it than this) with the price of kd gameplay, cooperation, etc (in the kingdoms that have one couple ex-whitelisted, more coulples or above 2 sounds like a disaster :P) and this has always been what this game was all about.
and there are more examples that the one given that can are bad for a kd:
- the situation is when the 2 are top offence in war and need to lead the chain
- they are both chained down and have only one or two province in range in the other kd (or can break only one). or even more, this does not change the situation much, you all know how you must spread hits when you're chained
- one is UB and one should be the designated prov to be pumped (sometimes there are not so many choices of province that you can pump)
i tried to give some examples (i'm sure that more can be found, someone before posted of a suicide, that because of a prior intel taking could not be reatalled) of unexpected situations that cannot be taken into consideration with an "adaptation of strategy" in the start of an age.
also i'm puzzled of something in the blog article:
"players playing from the same location will be prevented from interacting with each other or with common targets." Am i reading: "...interacting with each other or interacting?? with common targets"? such as if prov C from the enemy kd attacks A (A,B share ip in the same kd) then B cannot attack C??? because this is very,very exploitable if you have knowledge about A,B situation (with all the irc chatter, friends, ex kdmates, ex alies, etc this knowledge is extended and interaction means action in both ways as far an my english goes).
so, i really don't know, should be in your books somewhere ... do people who quit from being GB-ed by multis (is there any??) covers for the posibility of losing the people who invest money in order to play with each other (how many??). this is the only question i can reasonably ask since i have no idea how the prevention thing works for you.
all others aspects of cheating remain the same since as one of the mods (Bishop i think) said you will still have to look into other forms of cheating same as before (might be even more time -consuming as somebody was pointing out).
sorry for the poor english.
Last edited by dreaku; 03-12-2011 at 14:34.
Playing from a proxy is not allowed, and has not been allowed for some time. That has nothing to do with being able to play from a phone. Half of my kingdom plays from their phone, now you are just yelling about things for no reason.
And to those of continuing to state that chaining is now impossible, that is simply a ridiculous notion, period. I could pick any person in my kingdom and decide we aren't going to interact whatsoever, and it would only take a minor adjustment and wouldn't affect the outcome of the war as I've planned around it in advance.
The point is, you are all complaining about something you haven't even tried to play with yet. It's the same as every single rule change in Uto history, strategies adapt.
Last edited by DHaran; 03-12-2011 at 14:36.
S E C R E T S
Two people playing in the same household is not an unfair advantage DHaran. That is ridiculous. What has always kept this game going is the relationships between players. Friends playing with friends. Couples are often the closest of friends. Implementing a system where white-listing is allowed and letting people play together, maybe even in the same kingdom, and then turning around and not letting them interact any longer is definitely going to have some backlash. The way the current system is set up, people will literally have to leave their kingdom and not play with their friends anymore because normal war strategies are no longer viable for them. They can no longer contribute properly to the war effort because of 'restrictions'. As for what the consequences will be for this type of change, we will see. Of course it's great that you are trying to find a way to eliminate the ability of someone to xlog script a ton of provs to kill a bank, but can't you do it without penalizing legitimate players that have been following your rules? From what I'm reading you already have your minds made up and are telling most of the players that it's their problem and not yours. You allowed white listing in the first place and made them comfortable with what was going on so you at least partially caused the problem devs. If it affects phones then the game is really in trouble and, imo, it won't survive. Hope you're happy that you have for sure wrecked some people's game experience entirely and potentially many more if it affects phones. I know this is not what you all were going for. Please find another way to deal with this issue.
Last edited by Pale; 03-12-2011 at 15:53.
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