Petition: Don’t change the game to Alliances of Messed up Changes

home title Posted by admin on Dec 20th, 2009 | 11 comments home title

Hello. Christmas is just around the corner, this christmas our present from Alliances at War is the name change to Alliances of Messed up Changes. Jamzi and myself will in this post comment the latest age preview where fame gets two friends named Toughness and Industry.

Here is the preview post to make sure everyone is up to speed:

Fame, toughness and industry are a reflection of how you play.

The playing style you use will influence what kind of score that you have in each. The actions you take, and the events that happen to you, will have a effect through these three rankings on the relevant goals and needs of your tribe.

Fame

  • Return offense bonus to 1% per 1000
  • Remove population bonus
  • Add 1% extra guild space per 1000
  • Add 1% extra hideout space per 1000
  • Fame gains and losses work slightly differently. You gain fame independently of the fame you take, so you can gain fame from someone who doesn’t have any fame. However, if the person has more fame relative to yours, you still gain more as usual. Losses themselves will be halved.
  • Everyone will keep the fame they have now. However, the fame that you inherit or otherwise begin with, will change. After dying you will keep 7.5% of the fame you had at the time of your death.

Toughness

  • +1% defense per 1000
  • +1% resistance to magic per 1000
  • +1% protection from thievery per 1000
  • Toughness is gained whenever your buildings are destroyed, you take military losses, your land is seized, or your resources are destroyed. The gains are independent from your fame lost from these things.
  • Toughness is lost by exploring, training military, and other actions that boost industry. The losses are independent from your industry gains for these things.
  • People playing currently will start with 0 toughness. After dying of old age, you will keep 5% of the toughness you had at the time of your death. After being killed, you will keep 10% of the toughness you had before your death.

Industry

  • +1% population per 1000
  • +1% production bonus to mines, farms and yards per 1000
  • Exploring (regularly or via land grabs), training military, raiding, pillaging and performing thief self ops gives you industry
  • Performing some aggressive actions makes you lose industry. The industry you lose is independent from the fame you may gain from these actions.
  • People playing currently will start with 0 industry. After dying of old age, you will keep 10% of the industry you had at the time of your death. After being killed, you will keep 5% of the industry you had before your death.
  • It will be possible to have negative fame, toughness or industry. An attribute which has gone into the negative will give a penalty instead of a bonus
  • Due to the above, there is no minimum bonus on any of the three, in the way that there is a minimum bonus to fame now
  • As a bonus for creating an account, you will start with some points in each attribute. Restarting your account will give you 0 of each instead.
  • Due to the nature of the gains and losses, it will be possible to accumulate high rankings in two of the attributes at the expense of the third. It will not be possible to have high rankings in all three (though in some cases you might be able to get medium scores in all three). Your playing style will determine which two attributes are the highest.

This list of changes is apparently as Iluros puts it:

They have a purpose, social engineering if you will, and they needed to happen.
~ Iluros

Adding Toughness and Industry is apparently aatw’s way of solving the old problem of bigger ppl hurting smaller ppl who can’t do anything about it, this is kind of a huge change. Here is Jamzi’s take on it:

Despite our playerbase for AATW and Classic being relativly small to other games of a similar nature, we do have some of the most passionate players and staff. This has long been one of the virtues of Orkfia over the other games. However in the last few months it has seemed to myself and others that the development staff in AatW have become a bit over-excited by their responsibilities and wildy throwing anything that enters their heads into the game.

Change is not necessarily a bad thing. We all encounter change every day and some changes in the game in the recent past have been great. Such as tidying up the way spells/ops are casted, improving the range of ops/spells/attacks available has spiced things up too. However the reason Orkfia was popular in the first place was because it was a fun game to play. The simple game mechanics made it one of those games that was simple-to-learn but hard-to-master against other real life people.

I know people think I and those who think like me are set in our ways, but whatever happened to the old “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”?? The changes are easy for you to understand if you invented them i’m sure so you might not see my point but to explain what I mean let’s take the game of Chess. Let’s imagine you have been playing for many years in a Chess league and then at the start of the season you turn up and find some notices pinned on the wall. If it’s a tuesday then Kings can move 4 spaces at a time, if it’s between 4:45pm and 5:17pm all pawns can move backwards… If your name has a J in it you do not have bishops. This sounds stupid maybe but this is how AatW feels to me at the moment. There are so many strange rules in AatW now that I have long ago given up trying to keep up with them and I know others who have said the same to me so I am certain I am far from being the only one who feels this way.

I have even heard a theory that perhaps this is Iluros’s continuation of a campaign he had against AatW when his alliance quit and this is the revenge – to sabotage what is left for the rest of us. I don’t believe this is true but I can see why people may think that.

It is a fundamental concept of business that keeping things simple is the way to go (Keep It Simple Stupid – the KISS principle). AatW needs to go back to it’s Orkfia roots and declutter.
~Jamzi

That sums up what I think about it pretty much aswell. Ive been hosting Orkfia Classic for over a year now, been somewhat responsible for it even longer, some of the very first misstakes I did was to change stuff just cause I could, thats a lesson most people thats responsible for development has to learn, some quicker then other, my own misstakes cost me some great staff and some great players.

This is what I see happening in aatw atm aswell, there has been some huge changes done lately, the most noticable is the interface changes and I really like that bit, the things I don’t like tho is where it looks like dev is sitting and looking at the game thinking “What more can we add”, not due to “We have this problem, what would be the best solution” but more cause “Well why not, the more stuff the merrier”.

I would like to clearify that this is no witchhunt for a individual staffmember nor is it a personal attack on aatw from me since Im running Orkfia Classic, Im a active player in aatw aswell and even if less clever development might get more players into Classic Id be really annoyed to have a game Im playing ruined.

Now then lets have a look at the problem they are trying to solve, are they trying to solve the problem itself or are they adressing the effects of the problem? What will these changes do?

First of this seems to be the definition of the problem according to the Lord of Development in aatw:

The reasons they have been (badly) needed has to do with the way the game is played now, and how that has made much of the people who used to play quit.

The fame rape thing that Origin points out is actually one of the main problems these changes were designed to fix, at least in regard to toughness. The new people in smaller alliances which get beat up by the big alliances will accumulate toughness, giving them an advantage against the top alliances who are left alone by most players due to their dangerous nature. Those new players, in gaining toughness, will have a reason to stay, whereas before they just got beat up.

The other issue that has plagued aatw since its creation, is the arm’s race between explorers and attackers, each becoming increasingly troopfat relative to one another in order to grow. With toughness and industry implemented, it is likely that this problem will cease to exist. Actions that previously were a gamble by themselves will be fruitful. If you do an explore and have it grabbed, you lost the resources that you put into that explore but gained a boost that will help you down the line. This means that growth will be easier for players who will no longer be as hesitant to take risks, and interaction between players will increase.

Will putting your time into growth make you lose some of the toughness you gain? Yes. But certainly not all. You will keep most of the toughness you gain, and the industry you gain will be more than the toughness you lose. In this way it’s quite possible to have both, albeit one higher than the other.

~ Iluros

The first section mentions famerape, this is where people would attack targets to increase their own fame bonuses on a regular basis, the optimal target would be someone with low thievery or magic defense and somewhat high fame. This could be classed as harrasment if you’d like. Lets have a look at why it happens.

Famerape

There is as I see it two reasons why someone would famerape.

1. To get even more out of the fame bonuses, which atm is:

  • +0.75% offense per each 1000 fame.
  • +1% population per each 1000 fame.

These bonuses is quite tasty when you in full warmode can famerape someone for almost 1000 fame every 8 hours or something which is why fameraping can do quite alot for you, now if these bonuses or fame gains would be smaller would this kind of famerape still be at the same level? The answer is no cause then players would focus their attention on something else more awarding.

2. Cause you can / To piss people off.

This is more like proper harrasment, you target ppl just cause you can and to either piss the target of or to entertain yourself. This kind of harrasment won’t stop no matter what you do, if someone dislikes another person in a game then they will find another way to do it.

These two reasons is kind of what I believe is why people are doing it. (Yes the famegain do vary depending on a few variables but its still possible to gain loads of fame.

What will the new way of Fame, Industry and Toughness do about famerape?

It will be usefull for the most extreme sides of the table, the ones continuously targeted will get more def but unless its overpowered it wont stop famerape if its the second kind of famerape. The first kind of famerape kinda disapears tho, the offbonus are best for attackers (obviously) and they will keep gaining their fame through attacking and also gain industry cause of the new bonuses. This makes it actually better for attackers, which looking at the changes last few months have been improved time and time again, the % of bonuses they are recieving is getting quite big.

Back to the actual point, will this stop the fameraping? It might lower the ammount of famerape but people will just find another way to do their harrasments, its still a war game where the goal is to kill and war other alliances, (”Alliances at War”).

Conclusion: These changes is partly an attempt in preventing harrasment as in fameraping. Will it work? highly unlikely since its threating the effects not the underlying cause. Not only is ut unlikely to work as intentioned it is also highly likely to cause unwanted bieffects that will take an age or two to find, get abused and hopefully fixed.

The idea as a concept isnt so stupid, its almost clever but its hard to implement and I don’t believe its something Orkfia should get to complicate things even more.

The ammount of variables needed to calc attacking and killing is getting huge, tiny % here and there, some not even mentioned in the guide, even the attackcalcs are getting huge.

Lets move on to the other issue thats apparently is a part of why these changes are planned, the race between explorers and attackers. Apparently being troopfat is a huge problem in todays aatw, to fix this problem they are adding the Industry to give population bonuses when you explore and when you grab. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw that was that the ones getting rewarded the most by these changes are the landfarms, you explore, gets industry bonuses, you get grabbed due to low def and gets toughness bonuses, just keep doing that for one age and recieve the % heritage mentioned above and you have some sort of head start.

Another thing this causes is that Industry will be highest amongst the biggest tribes since they have explored the most and grabbed the most on their way up to the top, which means that the top tribes will be even harder to kill.

Now lets have a look at where this troopfatness comes from. Suprise it comes from a long line of race changes and game changes that ended up with the current situation. Instead of sorting the source where racce changes keeps producing imba races (Im not saying its easy to balance races, its a huge job, but the result is still that each age more imba races keeps poping up from the changes).

The gains and losses of these different sections are still to be seen but not only are the actual numbers mentioned risky the whole idea of adding them is all from obvious.

Are these changes really wanted? Just cause it looks cool doesnt mean it should be added. There is just so much stuff you can do to a game before it losses it roots and transforms into a new one. Maybe a new game is what everyone wants, or is it? Ive experienced it first hand with Classic, some stuff was so poor in our view atleast and needed to be changed, but for every change you add you really need to think more then once or twice about if its really something we need, why do we need it, what will the outcome be. How will the players deal with it?

This is our petition to Alliances at War, please don’t lose sight of what aatw is. If you would like to join us in our petition just contact me and I’ll add your name to the bottom. I’ll end this post with a quote from the age preview topic.

Whether the changes are good or not for a more dynamic, fun and complex game is not really the question. The question is really are if these type of changes will actually IMPROVE the game, and maintain it’s players. I really don’t see how it could be.

In short I don’t think the changes are BAD, I just don’t think they will help Alliances at War at all. Just make HaRRy do unnecessary work :P
~ Canto

The whole topic with the age preview can be found here: http://www.alliancesatwar.com/forums/game/216501/0-25.

So, what we want to achieve with this petition is to bring the people running and developing aatw to see this from our point of view, a view that sees loads of changes, little reasons, lots of bugs and a lost sense of direction.

This petition has been signed by:

  • Acwder
  • Jamzi
  • BiltesKrieg
  • EM
  • Martel
  • Robokop
  • Cecil
home title 11 Responses home title
  1. EM says:
    December 20, 2009 at 17:24

    I too think these changes are frivolous.

  2. fuckthispetition says:
    December 20, 2009 at 17:47

    this is stupid, everone complains about problems then complains again when anyone tries to fix it. i personally think these changes are for the better.

    get your head out your ass and give it a chance.

  3. Martel says:
    December 20, 2009 at 17:49

    This is why development posts changes up for preview, for comments based on gut-feeling and not only number crunching.

    http://www.alliancesatwar.com/guide/fame_toughness_industry.php?chapter=1

    Read that one too though, make sure it’s not just the numbers in the official preview that are too daunting.

    ~petition signed
    Martel

  4. robokop says:
    December 20, 2009 at 18:12

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  5. Sonic says:
    December 20, 2009 at 18:35

    Im not liking the look of these new changes at all.

  6. Bolle says:
    December 20, 2009 at 19:39

    Pfff…

    the changes are neat though they oughtn’t be implemented yet.. still a lot of stuff to balance, simplify things, and it’s all perfect.

    Anyway, you ought to make a petition on attackers. Listen to Darkwing!

    Petition not signed, cause I don’t see a lost sense of direction and many reasons ;) The question is if the reasons apply at the changes sufficiently.

  7. Bolle says:
    December 20, 2009 at 19:41

    Oh I forgot to add I’m against pulling heritage into the toughness etc thingy, it ought to be kept out ^^

  8. Cecil says:
    December 20, 2009 at 20:03

    changes are once again too drastic and as repeatedly stated by many other too complicated for the casual player to understand quickly

    want to sign petition but see no button to press

  9. Iluros says:
    December 21, 2009 at 02:24

    The main premise of your argument against toughness, that it’s supposed to ’stop’ harassment, is wrong.

    We’re counting on the fact that players will continue to harass other players, counting on the fact that people will still choose targets who are less dangerous for their fame and land.

    Harassment will continue, but it won’t be one-sided anymore. Those who get harassed will get something out of it, making the harassment itself less devastating. And when that’s the case, they’ll no longer be compelled to quit.

    It’s true that industry will tend to favor larger tribes. But this itself will not make the top alliances harder to kill. Growing too often will mean taking toughness losses, making the top alliance overall *more* vulnerable, not less. And while the population bonus from fame now almost completely favors attackers (because the attacker’s means of growth is directly tied to fame gain, unlike explorers), industry will favor explorers (attackers will still have access to it, but will gain it more slowly).

    It’s easy for people to say that these changes are just ‘ideas that entered dev’s mind’ without the context of what they are meant to address. The fact is, they do solve two of the most serious problems that are present in the game currently. They have been thought out, contrary to suggestions otherwise, and it’s really pretty petty to make such suggestions.

    But this was my favorite:
    “I have even heard a theory that perhaps this is Iluros’s continuation of a campaign he had against AatW when his alliance quit and this is the revenge – to sabotage what is left for the rest of us. I don’t believe this is true but I can see why people may think that.”

    This is a classic propaganda technique for attacking a person’s character while making yourself look innocent. The simple thing about this Jamzi is, if you don’t believe it, why mention it at all?

  10. Jamzii says:
    December 21, 2009 at 18:16

    You’re right – I was being polite.

    Although I didn’t first think of the revenge-theory, when I heard it it made sense to me and I do believe this is part of your previous alliance’s vendetta against Orkfia.. logic dictates it must be as when you eliminate all other reasons for the changes in the past few months (improvement, desire in the community) the only thing left is you must be mad.

    Hope that makes you feel better.

  11. Iluros says:
    December 22, 2009 at 00:58

    Well, you’re wrong in any case.

    I’ve already listed the reasons why I believe that these changes will be an improvement to the game. You may not agree, but then, you’ve never made an actual argument against the changes themselves. Only the vague complaints against complexity and your usual intellectual dishonesty.

    If it were the case that anyone tried to appeal to logic and reason in this ‘petition,’ I might be inclined to listen. But instead there’s emotional overreaction. Dev has given you its reasoning and you respond by accusations of me having plots of revenge. The only person to come even close to making a valid criticism is Acwder, and those are flimsy at best.

    So, I really don’t see this whole behavior as being constructive to Orkfia at all. Especially the part where you attack members of Dev personally.

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