I have read some nice replies here (Who is this Broom? 12 posts and nice post). I realize how dearly, some of you, desire battle upgrades. We will press ourselves to deliver faster on this part. I was happy to read solutions and problem identifications. We will keep all of them in mind, or try to at least as the information already posted is plentiful.
Therefore, let's limit the initial scope; let's nail the exact problem we want to solve in priority. Many problems exist and this is why we need to prioritize. One step at a time.
Let's forget about voodoo and ships and focus to what I call toxic gameplay. I have seen examples of such in the past. Such examples, most commonly end with one of the players abandoning the game. Obviously, this is our main issue here; we do not want players to leave, especially veterans.
We mostly care for the gameplay part here as people might leave for a gazillion of reasons. They will be replenished anyway (hey, have you seen Broom's post btw?
) sooner or later by fresh blood. We cannot really control the rest of the reasons so let's focus to what we can control.
Here are two parts of the game that currently allow
toxic gameplay:
1)Ability to indefinitely attack someone through any wayYou need to understand, in case you are not yet aware, that as long as you are active, you can be a real pain to anyone if you know what to do. Sure you can be limited and kept at bay but for how long one will lose his daily time to do this?
The number #1 way to attack is VOODOO. Cheap voodoo can be very annoying which gives the aggressor the upper hand. So, if someone wants to grief someone, he cans. That's something that should stop.
2)Frequent grieving between same enemiesLet's assume that there are two players hating each other. They end up fighting frequently. At some point, it is only natural that at least one of the side gets tired of this. Still, there is no real way out. Even if you fix #1 and people are not able to attack indefinitely each other, you will still not solve this part. Frequent strife against the same person can be toxic as well.
We need to be realistic though and acknowledge that both indefinitely and frequent attacks are rare.
What is not rare though, is the no-risk gameplay which if fixed, can further limit the above scenarios. The no-risk gameplay also creates frustration as those running on risk, are often discouraged.
To be fair, the obvious no-risk gameplay is not so right. Someone running on risk, has greater returns and accumulates more wealth without strife. Someone running at no risk, has less returns and he needs to create strife in order to get more. The latest action alone, is very hard indeed so its not really an issue. What is an issue, at those that sit on no risk but in the same time they do not seek to accumulate wealth but instead, they seek to create strife for other reasons.
It is pretty hard though to even call them out for this, as they obviously have a reason for doing so. I have not brought this discussion up to blame anyone. Everyone should be able to play as he can and remember that every player has his style which is usually relative to the time he has at hand.
What we want to do here, as devs, is to help everyone, including Witch Doctors. Create the game in a way that all sides will have more options. Options were risk will be probably easier to manage, therefore it will worth the trouble.
Right now, the top stake in wars, are ships. So what players do, they get rid of ships when things get troublesome. This is something we could improve.
Lately, we have updated the Sink Chances. We have gave scraps from each level lost. In fact, we have reduced ships risk and increased profit from the other players losses. This made ships risk management easier.
Perhaps the next step forward, is to add more risk that derives from ships. This could be voodoo cards inventory being vulnerable to attacks. Here is the idea I sketched earlier with more details (just an idea):
New Feature: Witch Doctor HuntingVia Plunder Page
Rules:
-Consume X turns for a Y chance to steal a voodoo card from target enemy.
-Use Power index of ships value to determine Y
For Power index of 45M or more -> Y is 0%
For Power index of 1M or less -> Y is 100%
-Use daily attempts to define X
Minimum 6 turns per attempt.
For every attempt, increase X by 4.
(Sample proposal, more rules can be used to define X,Y,rarity,etc)
New ability: Voodoo Card Pillagingvia PvP Battles
Rules:
-Whenever a fleet wins a battle, it has a chance to steal a voodoo card.
The chance can be relative to past successes or own fleet size (the more ships you got, the better) or enemy fleet size or a combination of these, etc.
Or we could add this as a
Ship Ability and trigger it on
ship win rather on fleet win.
Mainly, we are looking for ideas to increase risk beyond the traditional scope of damage via voodoo to everything and damage from ships to ships.
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I do not recall ever naming Hideouts as invincible. Anyway though, I was not referring to buildings destruction. I said pillaging and I mostly had resources in mind. Still, to be honest, hideouts are not designed for raids. We could create another facility for such usage and most probably, such facilities should be either owned by guilds (a good way to increase guild cooperation) or nations. They can be strongholds/castles/keeps and will be port based of course. Let me not continue this as I will step completely off topic and I have already written a ton.
