Next step: just allow is to ps ourselves. Get rid of the annoyance of finding a land trading partner to abuse game mechanics with. Just let everyone hit themselves it's just as stupid and requires the same level of skill

Pang & Co were FULLY aware of what reintroducing ghost acres meant when they put them in. Do you fluffing whiners seriously believe that this constitutes "abuse" when the developers of this game were fully aware of this alleged "abuse" before they introduced it?

Incorrect.

dear people who claim landtrading players have no skill

have you tried it??

have you reached 100K doing it??

this is the same stupid arguement that was in ffa

The problem with this is, most of those skilled players you speak of are fantastic bottom feeders. Those are the ones who usually do well.

There are the few players who can do it with midfeeding. I was able to follow Biscuit and Something one set, and they were showing me how they net. They helped me pick targets, and I had my highest finish ever. But there are many few people who can do that. Most of those skilled people are bottom feeders.

Bottom feeding isnt particularly skilled netgaining, but it is more skilled in that there are more variables than land trading which is tantamount to hitting explore with the knowledge you'll get a couple of earthquakes.

And no matter how many posts people make about accepting midfeeding, when it comes down to it, the leaders of any alliance being midfed always claim you're bullying them and do stupid fluff, resulting in war, resulting in more claims of bullying and ruining the game.

At this stage there really is no good answer, just varying levels of bad ones. Of which in my opinion the worst answer is land tradding.

There is one good answer... More players. That is the root problem here.

Until NPCs are introduced there is no solution. If the NPC API was shared... =P

Luckily, RD is back!

would it make everyone feel better if landtraders spied their targets themselves, calced the break themselves and made the grabs without coordinating with the other play in IRC?

what if someone grabbed the same country once every day? is that considered land trading? when does it become landtrading and not landgrabbing?

Well if you retal that country you have just completed a land trade... maybe the solution is a retal policy shift to not being allowed to retal for yourself. Then we can definitely stamp out land trading!

You haven't seen my FFA method of landtrading then, Detmer. A grabs D, B grabs A, C grabs B, D grabs C.

I guess the real solution to eliminating landtrading would then have to be that any country that gets attacked is not allowed to attack anyone. That would be a great policy, right?

Very good point Rockman!

That policy does seem to be the clear solution!

ok so new rule, no retals? if you do you will be considered a land trader?

i like it

ah earthquakes, i did landtrading and every time i got an eathquake id think oh no thats half a days growth wasted rebuilding my buildings

the actual amount of time wasted varies on land and bpt of course

I suppose if you hit your target into 100% Ghost Acre DR with bounced SS/PS and/or GS/BR/AB before you retal, then retalling would be acceptable.

fluff it, guys. Let's just eliminate Standard and Planned Strikes altogether! Problem solved.

If we remove ghost acres, then bottomfeeding gains will be cut to about 1/3rd of their current amount. Will that really make you bottomfeeders happy to grow at 1/3rd of that rate you currently do, just so that people can't landtrade?

If we do that, we need to put in ghost bushels on GS attacks, so that people can enlarge their stockpiles by GSing each other.

*shrugs*

I'll respond to this from both an admin and player perspective! :p

As an admin...
I want to add in additional layers to DR or make a few changes to DR to negatively impact landtraders AND those who mega-farm small countries. Neither takes enough skill to warrant the returns you get compared to those who play more... let's say... moderately. We've discussed this and have thought about how to roll it into other larger war-focused changes (changing the returns curve to make quick walling more effective).

Remember that the goal of ghost acres was to make the game a place where grabbing is a net-positive, not a net-negative like it used to be (no land created, but you lose military doing the hit exchange). Obviously our goal wasn't to make it so that people can find a buddy and play grabbing tag to get to the top 10, but at the same time, we realized that was going to be a byproduct of the initial implementation. It's not the worst thing in the world to see players working together to achieve high finishes -- this server is meant to be somewhat cooperative.

From an ingame perspective...
It's kinda funny to see Ivan threatening alliances that were being woo'ed by SoF as recently as a week ago. Does Ivan really think SoF has their 'side' shored up enough to start making more enemies? Or is this just Ivan's most recent blind action which ends up causing headaches for SoF's other leaders? If you don't want to host SoF's site anymore, I'd be happy to put it on the Boxcar box. You don't need to try and steer SoF into the ditch to get out of hosting it. :-)

I believe most of the folks who are using landtrading (that I know of) are enjoying it more for the learning experience of making grabs without the threat of being retal'ed by jerks (Evo and LaF back when I was doing FA) who shave their NW (or sandbag their retals, as I call it! :p) to max returns and make sure the attacker loses out on non-agreed upon exchanges. I think that sort of attitude -- that all grabs must be retal'ed with the most malice possible -- is the reason some alliances needed to move to a landtrading model to teach their members how to grab effectively.

Don't blame the mechanics, don't blame folks for looking inward to learn about grabbing, blame the jerk ass netting alliances who have turned this server into a place where the sky is falling when fragile countries absorb a single hit. Why are we sticking with the politics of failure which made the land situation what is it today? (i.e., fluffty)

LOL the land trading argument makes its way to the Alliance server. See "self farming" on FFA.

i don't see how warring PDM or RD will solve anything - you will just infuriate a new set of players, so that they are forced to play the game how you think it should be played.

i don't agree with landtrading; but surely you can come up with something more creative than "we will destroy you".

what is destoying this game - are the attitudes of a few that think they run this game. give me a break. i'd rather see pdm/rd doing what they want, than join up with a couple of bully boys.

rock it would only be 66% at max since the networth ghost acres would be removed too

and it would actually be higher than 66 since you would have to average hits done at higher than 0 dr


"(changing the returns curve to make quick walling more effective)"

i assume you mean changing it so smaller groups of people hitting staggered throughout the day can actually get a kill rather than 0v0 kill wars becoming common, or people calling in allies just to get a kill

in other words lowering entry barriers to playing

keep in mind with retalling malice you have grabbing malice, which in my opinion is anyone grabbing me who isnt a dict or has more mil strat tech than i do adjusted for land differential

sometimes I think enshula is too smart to be playing this game.

come to PDM and make your dreams come true!

enshula should join PDM

Pang edited his post!

i dont think the bottomfeeders could complain if they put ghost acres back to where it use to be.. the countries just wouldnt be as big.. same strat.. just less acres smaller finish

I still edited it before you posted yours!

see, this is what happens when we're not coordinating our post-trading.

The increased DR for ghost acres for both bottom feeders and landtraders sounds good to me. That would be best included with an idea that increases the likelihood of people grabbing... other then using the bonus system to do that I havn't come up with any great ideas myself :P

i think a real problem that only ivan has brought up is the combination of landtrading + alliance retal policies that allow landtraders to sit on 200k turrets with 50k+ acres and get away with it because every time they get grabbed, it would be a net gain for them. people just need to stop pacting or allowing L:L for that. at least bottomfeeders buy up enough defense to prevent pathetically easy grabs on them (for the most part).

So now it is a problem that random grabs are beneficial?

Its a problem that you are intentionally not reading what he said properly.

People should try to make this an idea generating thread instead of coming up with retarded scenarios and obviously intentionally misreading what others write -_-

I don't think it was intentional if I didn't understand his intention... it sounds to me that he considers it to be a problem that if you grab someone who has been land trading that it helps them since you are still allowing them to generate ghost acres...

There's an ingame method of solving the "landtrading problem". If you have an issue with it, kill the fluffing countries doing it.

Crying to the admins to solve your problems so you don't have to take a set off from farming alliances out of the game and fighting useless grudge wars is beyond pathetic.

His comment was on land to land in relation to land traders

So basically the point is you want to punish land traders and not allowing them to fully retal for themselves is the proposed mechanism.

I think from the other view PDM are those jerks who makes bad hits and have low land so they topfeed all-x players and buy up to 6M turrets. PDM doesn't care about how they finish, they don't care that their attacks are hurting them and us, they just "want to have fun." So yes, if I have to spend my stock to retal you, I'm going to make the most of it. From this POV PDM is the jerk ass alliance who can't net that ruins everyone else's set for their own fun. Poor PDM, right?

Thats his idea. It would be an alliance way of dealing with it rather than admin. And if you disagreed you could fight the offending clan but yah... This thread is becoming pointless anyways. Only Pang has posted a suggestion and the rest made posts such as

Pain
Member
Posts: 2,325 Oct 29th 2011, 14:50:00
ok so new rule, no retals? if you do you will be considered a land trader?

i like it


Thats productive. Perhaps make a suggestion on how to make landgrabbing beneficial without making landtrading an option. At least between a small number of countries. Any system with beneficial grabbing will always have the option to do trade if you did it on a big enough scale...

Tertius, you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Very, very few people in PDM "buy up" after they make a hit. PDMers know and welcome retals, because not buying up turrets means lower expenses and continued attacking opportunities. Also, buying up turrets increases the NW too much and can potentially ruin opportunities to match NW for maximum lg gains.

Also, there's no such thing as "topfeeding". It is a fabricated rule to assuage concerns of netgaining countries. AND the old, traditional response to "topfeeding" was land:land - which is what we do anyway, if it's country:country.

Right TAN, I don't know what I'm talking about. Then what about those hits by PDM where they gain 500 acres because they have 5M+ turrets and their NW is way too high and they hit an all-x who then has to buy up and retal them for 1500+? It's in the news from this set, not even a week ago. Hint: I see a few with KSF alone.

Of course there is such a thing as topfeeding. You even go on to say it is a rule made by netgainers... Anyways, I'm not complaining about your retal policy, I was commenting on Pang's diatribe against the netters he used to love and how they are so full of malice.

You are wrong. Pang is right.

Get over it.

Wow, your debate skills are amazing Detmer. You have really opened my eyes. Thank you for your excellent contribution to this thread.

ok, teritus... we'll keep making those hits on you instead of trying to find ways that we don't have to mess up other people's countries while our members try to learn about how to grab properly, k?

ps. i say this all the time... but most of those "ruin your round" hits you evo folks complain about are the DIRECT result of those players running their mouths to PDM'ers ingame. it's a common theme with Evo :p

Wow Pang, LOL your a joke anyhow I havnt hosted SoFs server for over a year now or so but then never thought youd actually check facts before you make silly accusations

Seriously pang, sof would rather quit the game and leave then be hosted by you since you cant be trusted worth a crap we created our own site to begin with because gamerstown had the same problem by being hosted by asshats.

As usual a lot of people here talk out of their ass without knowing what they are talking about, I have no issues with people grabbing each other or grabbing different tags what I have issues with is when 2 countries in different tags plan to hit each other in advance and repeat it several times a day that definately DOES NOT TAKE SKILL nor does it teach anyone how to grab its just lame and despicable and the same fluff ss inter alliance farming and is something SoF will bring up internally and externally when pacting time comes

Anyhow im sure land trading will be brought up when pacting season comes up again and thats that

<3 Pang

i think voiding L:L retals for landtraders is actually a good solution.

it will balance and add more skill to landtrading (namely you need to carry enough defense while still having enough resources to landtrade with ur partner)

@Pang: I'm not in Evo...

My name is Tertius...

I know you'll keep making your crappy grabs like how you personally topfed Osso (or on another note, how you siphon reps to LaF by sending a missile and a DH). I am saying that's why netters will make max "malicious" retals on you. Even when I was in Evo we rarely attacked you, it was usually just retals. Obviously if it makes you unhappy, you guys can hit someone else who can't retal effectively.

I obviously don't see in game conversations, and I doubt you have them for proof, but I'm pretty sure our 60k acres guys are not asking to be hit by you...

You guys are awfully defensive in this thread (and I haven't even said anything about land-trading) but you think that everyone is out to get you and ruin your fun, but when you use up all of your stock to topfeed a guy who is going to get top 10 and then buy up 20M turrets because you know you don't have a chance, it does not make you any friends in the netter community.

diez agrees

topfeeding isnt a rule, its a grabbing concept

grab with the intent of benefiting after a pre known number (or x% land:land including or not buildings either way or both) of retals that are largely expected to succeed

everything in a game is about getting an advantage, thats what makes it a game

some things are more obviously 0 sum than others but theres only ever 1 person at rank 1

what we should discuss is the way to make it the most fun playing, id argue that a game where everyone has to landtrade to go for rank 1 is worse than one where everyone has to bottomfeed or midfeed (by definition you cant really go for number one if your topfeeding)

mainly because the entry barrier is higher, but theres also less benefit from getting ahead of the pack

when i was looking at landtrading i wanted it to work so you could only hit someone that would get back enough from you, but you would do it without discussion, what seems to have happened sounds one step closer to me landtrading with myself in ffa

bots + countryspecificdr + cslosstuning + exploretuning + increasedpenaltyongrabberfornearinstantretals = potential to balance everything

one other thing which might be worth tuning in countryspecificdr besides what i assume people are thinking about, ghost acre reduction, is if someone has grabbed you then you can retal them without standard DR, why should someone who farms everyone be protected from being retalled?

a hits b c d e f g h i j k 3 times each, 30 times total

by 10 retals a is at 10% or so returns, instead if hit by k then k should get to hit with 0 dr, cap it at land lost if you want though i dont think thats necessary

if someone was farmed into heavy dr then retals successfully they should not then become a DR free target for the original farmer though, but the protection should only apply for a limited time, if they decided to wait 2 weeks stock then retal/suicide the free dr should apply

you can't claim that you don't like evo's 60k acre guys being hit and then say it's all ok for LaF's 60k acre guys to be hit in one breath without dripping full of hypocrisy

imo i don't think any 60k+ guys should get hit ;) but that's just me hahha

i think the game will benefit if we collectively figured out a way to integrate landtrading as a strategy.

gives players more options (they can bottomfeed, midfeed, all-x, or landtrade) and as long as our policies regarding to that balances all of them we will have more players (more options = more people happy = more players not leaving).

and like i said voiding L:L on landtrading countries is a good step in that direction. it's a compromise for those who don't like landtrading by balancing it while still allowing those who want to landtrade the capability to do so without pissing half the community off.