As funny and ridiculous how this post went on arguing who is right and what not, I actually took the time to read most of it's content and really try to recall how good earth2025 once was..

Was the govt really that balanced?

Was there ghost acres?

How was the politics in the alliance (then Game A if I'm not mistaken)

And so on..

And I'm pretty sure those who gave out the most opinions have actually been through the earth2025 era..

Which let me made the assumption.. most of us here are more than 30 y/o.. lol

There was ghost acres for a short period of time then Mehul took them out when people abused it. FYI

@Iamminghui

I don't think anyone is arguing that Vincey won, not even Requiem.

What half the people here is arguing about is the general stance that landtrading is fast becoming the ONLY way to win, and that this is unhealthy - opinions vary of course. The half-life DR changes have only served to strengthen landtrading relatively compared to other ways of gaining land.

Sure, the rules encourage landtrading. That doesn't mean it is good. Hey, Diablo 3 encouraged you to use the Auction House when it first came out, did that mean it was good for the game? Heck no, the D3 AH severely undermined the spirit of the game, the game changed from item hunting which was fun, to "gold farming to buy that thing on AH". This is exactly what landtrading in EE does, SAM_DANGER had a good post earlier, that it has undermined the game "FROM BEING A COMPETITIVE NUMBER-CRUNCHER'S GAME, TO JUST A NUMBER-CRUNCHER'S GAME". The fact is, gaining land used to be competitive (someone loses something for you to gain), now it is cooperative (both sides gain something) - that is a whole big difference, the FEEL of the game is different.

(Yes I am over 30 years old.)

The governments then and now aren't much different. Dict was 120% bonus instead of 125%, Dict didn't have the ghost acre bonus, Fascism oil bonus was different, that's mostly it. Governments themselves are fairly ok, each one has its own strengths, some are more war oriented, some are more netting oriented.

Ghost acres existed, but not in the current form. They existed only as additional buildings gained which are not empty acres, and not the huge amounts you see now.

Politics were quite different though, because of A) The number of countries (up into 5 digit country numbers) B) The number of RD bots. Coalitions were far more common as well because of this.

@tella, the top finisher definitely had a large amount of FA, he physically could not have made the stock he did off his acreage and turns based on market ops at various intervals.

Its not a disputed thing.

Qz you should change the rules to stop FA of more than X, Y or Z in any one package.

Arsenal, FA is a noob way to aid anyways. Everyone knows the proper way to do it is market aid... How will you stop that?

post spy ops or any proof that you have instead of running your mouth off

Oh god.. I'm really not that tempted to win any arguments here.. thanks for all the clarifications.. I'm sure you are still trying to make a point for both of you here..

But I'm really just an innocent passer-by (wading through the crowd of angry men proving their point) who just wanna congratulate a friend who won a game here.. ;)

Welcome to the internets :P

Remember when TTR was the only way to win? People were so greedy and had to outjump their retals, then their alliance-mates suffered because the defending alliance wanted their land back, so someone else would take a hit because the TTR was out of range. Not a very good way to play unless you were incredibly selfish..I remember SMz in particular, jeez he was pushy and selfish, but always ended up in top 10...not sure that's the behavior and play style that I'd want to promote.



It actually is still competitive...people are trying to trade better and faster than others, much like people would try to bottomfeed faster and better than others.

If things went back to how they were, hanging on to the same old principles and netting strats, with this much lower amount of countries, you'd only be able to have 2-3 people who will get a high acreage, making the top 10 look completely skewed with 10s of millions of net difference between #3 and #4..that won't prove who's a pro, it just shows who was lucky enough to get to the neutrals first and keep camping their DR, or who was jerk enough to outjump retals and punish their alliance instead. The average player doesn't have time to camp the exact second a country comes out of DR, but that doesn't mean they don't know the game and the formulas or how best to utilize their acres.

I'm not trying to win an argument. That's silly, on the Internet. :P

I'm just providing a different viewpoint. My point, summarized, is that the feel of the game is now very different, due to developments in landtrading over the last year, and I compared it akin to the Real Money Auction House in D3.

That's exactly how I want it. Someone still loses something in order for you to gain something. For you to come out ahead, someone else has to lose out, this is usually the target being hit, but it could also very well be your own clanmate (who might get suicided or topfed in response). None of this sissy "everyone wins" trading.

I want to create more hostile competition, not more cooperation-based competition.


Addendum:
Also, I want to point out that TTR was the "only way to win" in the past because of internal clan policies. It was obvious to anyone that a large clan cannot support more than maybe 3-4 countries running TTRs farming weak clans, so clans restricted their members to the best few players running that strat. In fact, this usually arose out of necessity anyway, because if you weren't the first to start clan-WR farming, you would be 1-2 days behind, and become retal food and be buffer for the first guy to start farming, with him becoming even more ahead. Countries beyond the first 3 or 4 wouldn't even consider to start WR-hitting, because it was impossible for them to avoid the retal at that point after the target clan's top retaller starts pumping jets. (And because that clan's land is now all in DR.)

The whole point though, is other clan members got retalled/topfed/suicided in return, sometimes resulting in minor wars. it wasn't a free ride like landtrading now is.

So to break it all down, you want bullying...not only bullying other alliances, but one's own alliance-mates who take the fall when another tag is hit and can't retal. That makes things even less competitive, and discourages more people to join the EE ranks.

Try outgaining someone when you're at the same acreage, it only proves your technical prowess even more. It's one of the most obvious things that someone who's farming without recompense will end up a lot higher than someone going all-x or got a few hits in and is half of the other's acreage. Hell, at that point you don't even have to worry too much about maximizing your country's potential because the land will naturally produce more in the end. You end up top 5, piece of cake.
Where's the skill in that?

Missed that little gem...how nice and encouraging it would be to hear your leaders telling you that you can't do something with your own country and that you're going to take the fall and can't contribute as much to the alliance because this guy's going to do it all. Trading allows for more people to contribute more to the avg net, allowing people to feel it's worth playing the game personally as well as being part of the clan. It's not an avg net based on a couple people at 200M net balancing out everyone else who's at 30-40M, it's everyone contributing 70-100M together.

I understand the need for competition, but i also understand the need for simplicity in a low player base game. I dont see where the problems lie here. Sure the last minute trades were, meh and probably unneeded in the end. With the amount of players we have, its clear that removing ghost acres wont improve the game at all. If people arent land trading with a mutual partner, they are forcing trades on another. It all works out the same in the end.

It has been pointed out that raising EVERYONE's avg net due to external landtrading doesn't contribute to relative standings. If EVERY clan's Avg NW increased proportionately, then the clan's relative standing didn't change. I've pointed out that I likely won't play (and haven't been playing for the last few resets) unless LaF allows internal trading - this would allow LaF to fully maximize potential internally instead of having to do it externally and non-optimally.

Note my contradictory stance. As a game designer, I firmly stand in the camp that landtrading is bad from a design standpoint. As a player that wants to improve my clan, I would only support landtrading if we go all out for it (internal trade). From a selfish solo player standpoint, I'll rather ghost acres don't exist at all.

/disagree

It was the trend toward L:L retal policies that broke the game more than land trading. The recent nerf to bottom feeding was also a blow to the game's design. Land trading in itself creates advantages by taking risks and still comes at a cost. It's retal policies that close off those weaknesses.

The mechanics that make land trading possible have always been around. It's not a new concept and those who complain about it clearly haven't played a competitive enough game for a long enough time to recognize a metagame shift. It fluffing happens and guess what? It's going to happen again (sans developers patching the fluff out of mechanics).

Or worse yet, hitting your own players when their large stocks are at home. Whats to stop the next set everyone in one tag farming each other? The top 10 guys in an alliance farm everyone else and steal their stocks? say steal 500 million bushels in X amount of grabs on your own tag? Whats to stop players from doing this? Negate the acres gained, and just look at tech stolen, food sitting on hand and cash???? Easily transfer millions of NW to one player.

*grabs popcorn while watching the crowd of angry men proving their point*

Why do they all have to be men? Check your privilege!

Hey I'm proud of my 25k 235m country. Hate if you want to.

two things- if laf does that, may i please join? :P

and you remove ghost acres, and fifteen people will fight amongst each other to time their grabs for the nominal available bottomfeeding targets, or worse 10-20 member alliances are going to get picked apart by, well, you guys and other larger netting tags (md i doubt would, but they very well may be left with zero choice, and then goodbye all of us smaller tags)

haven't we all played, and didn't a great deal of us quit the all explore earth 2025 game? all explore EE couldn't possibly be very much more fun than any previous installments.. i couldn't imagine many people would want to return to it..

now i'll posit a question:
is there no way to keep GA, keep land trading, but to make it not so.. insanely profitable? increase country:country dr to absurd loss of GA after the first trade between two countries, lessen the effect but still decrease potential GA for any further trades/grabs within the 24h period.. that way we can't sit there and go back and forth even twice, really, or with a group all go at it quickly.. i don't know, i'm just thinking out loud mostly..

It's because ppl generalize both genders as 'man' as a species in whole..

U don't see things like man-and-woman-kind (in replacement of 'mankind') or human and huwoman..

Just saying..

And a quick survey.. are they any female counterparts 'participating in the debate' here?

locket is a girl



(:P)

OK, how about all tags play a little game and allow internal trading, mass internal FA, tech leaching, landfarms, everything that an alliance can do to propel one player to the highest possible NW. No holds barred, pull out the stops and lets see how it goes. I am betting that it would not end the game, in fact, I bet it would be the most fun set in a long time. How high can the bar be set if an alliance puts away the egos for a common cause?

I love how its always the Laf guys that are opposed to shaking up the game. They have so much invested in a set of strats from years ago and they are desperately clinging to the past. Its a game, let loose and play it like one.

laf and md would fluffing dominate, archaic :P
but it would be fun to watch

braden is a braden

Sorry, Xin, times are changing beyond the "bully everyone else around so you can claim you're the best". Every other "noob" that actually isn't one is now getting their chance to prove how well they can net with as much land as hogs like the ones you're wanting to defend..they'll have to suck it up, or leave alliance as it seems that was the only choice for you since things were no longer going your way and you don't feel like adapting. I'm kinda sad for you..

this is how it goes..

old game rules encourages bullying, ppl leaving the game, so some shout out that the game need to be repaired to discourage bullying to bring in more players

current game rules encourages diplomatic land trades, ppl leaving game cos this method is lame and discourages bullying and now shout out to game developers to repair the game to discourage lame landtrading and encourage bullying..

gamers logic..

Giant FFA server?

Not really, one player one country = herding cats.

we, like most people, try our best, but often come up short :(

http://www.interaksyon.com/...change-needed-ecclestone/

even changes in the formula 1 scene made a group of fans and some formula 1 teams unhappy..

the idea is: nothing stays the same.. things change, embrace it.. and we can never please everyone..

I'll admit land trading gives fairly average netters such as myself a decent finish. But I've had far more fun chatting while setting up trades than I ever did bottom feeding in Earth2025. So I'm ok with land trading.

I do agree that the crazy back to back hits in just a few minutes is kind of abusing the system. But I'm not gonna sweat that since I'm personally not desperate for a top 10 finish.

To be honest though, I just like making the big hits without getting reamed by retal policies for topfeeding.

lol

Honestly, trading is good for the game. I still think it's a bit too strong right now, but qz has been thinking of how to need it a bit more already. If you have suggestions, send them to qz or post on sugs forum.

As both a player and an fa, I love the open list system. It protects all-x players from abuse, encourages cooperation and communication between players, and still has lots of room for skill. I agree with requiem up to a point, however. It wasn't until the past two sets that people began messaging their breaks and really coordinating between each other. I may be hypocritical because I do it too, but I think it is a bit gamey. I prefer what we've been doing with pdm for almost 3 years now: you have a list of opted in players who are eligible to be hit, and some baseline rules to follow. That's it. Nothing about strats, sending your break or anything like that. It works, it doesn't leave people with a bad taste, and it's still fun.

This type of setup is not mindless. If it were, alliances like tie wouldn't decide to stop trading with us because we always seem to get ahead in trades. The best players will always rise to the top.

Also, candyman, an average player who get a higher nw than before via trading will still be average. How is that different??

Oh. Why did I read all of these?

Have you ever looked at the score list when laf land traded? If anything it aids laf more than anyone else, the difference is most people in laf actually like competitive game play, I personally do not want to click create country, click explore, click explore 2.0, and take rank 1, which is essentially all it would take right now, hence why i've refused to landtrade thus far.
Of course that leads to comments of "blablabla do it then", and the longer land trading doesn't go nerfed i guess the closer I get to doing it, maybe the only way to get things changed is to waste my time illustrating how fluff the current system is since people dont seem to understand game mechanics well enough to understand it without 2 months worth of proof.

I wish 1a would have picked up land trading back when llaar got it nerfed. The amount of insanity that would have arisen, from people having million acre countries would make this thread look dull.

Exactly what Solidsnake said. I don't want to participate in it unless internal trading is allowed, if only to "waste 2 months" to proof how the whole thing is just "Explore 2.0". The whole premise of being the best through political and warring means (as in the past before landtrading) is being undermined to become a large friendly circle jerk.

The game has always been about risk vs reward. Right now, landtrading is "low risk high reward", which is why it is broken, compared to Explore 1.0, which is "low risk low reward" as intended.

The removal of Defense Allies on Express server is also something I disagreed with because it removed the risk vs reward factor of landgrabbing. You risked bouncing by saving turns on not doing an ally-spy, and/or spying on the allies. That is now gone.

Game design has always been tricky, a good game mechanic need not necessarily be what most players are clamouring for.

Lol xinhuan is a funny guy, the part he disagreed with was people having to use 2 more turns to spy for lgs, instead of the same circle of friends doubling each others defense, making it so they could lg 99% of the server with impunity. Now its high risk, high reward, before it was extremely low risk, high reward

landtrading did exist in 1a... and all the alliances doing it got killed for it. The problem now is that with the admins pushing it and most alliances on the server accepting it, no one is big enough to fight it alone anymore. And a coalition would only lead to more cries of bullying and running people from the server anyhow.

You realize that the 150% PS factor already accounts for the Def allies right? If anything, a top country bottomfeeding on a country 1/12 its size on Express, the bottom country still can't retal irregardless of Def allies. All this only serves to make land cheaper to grab for the top country. Less turns needed (no spying allies needed), way less jets and oil needed (especially with the increased bottomfeeding losses, this is _significant_), and the top country just gets even further ahead.

Edit: There are already some talks about reducing the PS bonus from 150% to maybe 125% on Express to account for the no D-allies temporarily until D-allies are reinstated.

I need more popcorn

Yes because 1.5 = 2, when most people are already running at least 2x as many turrets as jets, most infact are more like 10x more turrets then jets when bottomfeeding. So with def allies, the only way to retal was to be even bigger then they were, or be a dict.

I hate quoting myself but,



Cry me a fluffing river SS.

Is this against the rules?
Or are ya'all just jealous?
Or are you mad that you didn't think of it?
Or is it becuase they talk funny?
Or does this have to do with me stealing your girlfriend in the 5th grade.?
Or.... wait .... uhm... wth are we talking about?

Congrats Vincey!

Archaic remind me at what point you gained any degree of netgaining competence to even be able to have an informed opinion.

To answer your first point, lowering the ghosts won't really hurt bottomfeeders because they're the ones who repeatedly hit a country and by the time the bottomfeeders pass 30k-50k acres, most targets will be in deep country:country DR anyway such that most grabs will already entail 0 ghost acres. Therefore a ghost acre nerf at large land size won't hurt bottomfeeders.

Smaller countries won't catch up to the larger countries unless they're allowed to make lopsided landtrades. This won't happen in today's pacting environment which calls for more or less equal land gain if people are to trade. You see cases where small countries hit larger countries and the larger country will get two retals for one topfeed so that both gain roughly equal amounts of ghosts.

The simple argument I'm making is landtrading is not win-win. It's still win lose couched in the illusion that both are gaining ghost acres. People in this game are too dumb to realize that gaining land will only help you win relative to your competition if you gain more relatively to those you're trading against. So in aggregate, you'll have the sharp guys who landtrade well and get more ghosts than others for a t10 finish and the win, the middle of the pack guys who landtrade reasonably well and make t100, and then the folks who play all-explore or bottomfeed who get facepwned because the game structure doesn't support their viability. On top of that, landtrading is only really supportive of two strats: casher and farmer. Indy fails, techer fails (because by end of the reset tech always always crashes), oiler already fails, and MB already fails. If you look at the t10 this reset just look at the strat makeup to see for yourselves.

You can take a look at the reset that Xinhuan finished with 365mm nw on a 22k techer, but 1.) that was an absurd techer set where prices were uber-high the whole reset. they could get that high if we have an absurd number of landtraders I suppose but even so for the land it's much much much harder to finish that high. Rockman played an all explore techer that reset that finished 180mm which is pretty high for an all explore which is illustration of the favorable tech prices all set that set. 2.) Xinhuan beasted the markets that reset. I think there were multiple peaks and he hit them all. The point is it takes way way way more work for that to happen and on top of that a favorable market environment for a country to compete with fat landtraders. If you want to repeat that performance consistently it would take a tremendous amount of skill and also luck with the markets, both playing them and having serendipitous conditions.

We're now in an environment where only a couple strats are viable to do well. I don't think this is where we want to take the game. LaF and I could show everyone ourselves how silly things still are if we landtraded, but I think the game has gradually become a non-challenge and is really not fun so why bother.