Speedrounds? WE WANT MORE! but not right now :(

the first 2 on reg worlds were good with no freeze the frontline game froze

I did not get to experience a speedround, but I would like to. I spend way too much time playing this game. I do think that the simple 8x speed increase is not enough for us addicts. I propose a 60x increase, where everything that takes an hour at regular speed takes a minute at 60x speed. That would condense a 30 day span into 12 hours.

I am sure that gold use would be less, as there is little incentive to save half a minute by spending gold, so I expect that such an event would cost gold to join. Especially with the server load that a 60x game would require.

I can see that it would take a commitment to such a game, and I would not want all games to be that speed as I do enjoy being able to check in and send orders and add to the build queue a couple times a day.

I think that a 60x speed might do more to hold the interest of beginners as well. You might dump folks into a 60x training game as a freebie the first time and you might hold their interest more than 5 minutes. Once you get them addicted then their choice is either regular speed where a High Command subscription is desirable, or pay gold up front to join another 60x speed round. I am sure that a lot of newbies lose interest in this game when their first ocean crossing says "arrival in 2 days 6 hours" and so they plan to check again in two or three days and see what is happening. The modern attention span is about as long as a gnat.

VorlonFCW wrote:

I did not get to experience a speedround, but I would like to. I spend way too much time playing this game. I do think that the simple 8x speed increase is not enough for us addicts. I propose a 60x increase, where everything that takes an hour at regular speed takes a minute at 60x speed. That would condense a 30 day span into 12 hours

also it would give new players the idea that game as supposed to have this pace, rather than the normal pace most game have, i wouldnt recoomend new players start on even just *8 because it would be misleading

What we need is to make this game adaptable for players who only play in the morning and night sadly not everyone has time to play

Dramos wrote:

What we need is to make this game adaptable for players who only play in the morning and night sadly not everyone has time to play

If you are at work or asleep, an enemy can do a lot of damage before the next time you get on.

The Speed Rounds are a great variation to the game, however (you knew there would be a "however") there are some things that could be done to improve the experience.

1. 100 player maps take hours to fill. One had to be constantly checking for when it had started.

Suggestion - Set a time for game start.

2. Some games started quite late in relation to CEST. Player attacks started whilst most europeans (in that game) were asleep. I woke up to being reduced to two provinces in one game

Suggestion - Set a time for game start. Players will join a game where fighting will start when they are awake for a good long period.

3. Some players labelled maps they had started as Speed rounds leading some people to join rounds that were not in fact Speed Rounds.

Suggestion - Use Gold bar label (as for Gold games) in addition to labelling Speed Rounds as Speed. Mods should search for the fake Speed games and discipline the creators.

4. All timings given by the game were still on the normal non speed clock. So the game would tell u it would take 16 hours to travel from A to B when in fact it would be 4. I appreciate we can divide everything by 4 but come on . This is probably a small point compared to other game issues that the devs might be fixing but perhaps it can be dealt with at same time.

Suggestion - show real game timings

5. Consider faster game timings - 20x or 30x which would make the game run like almost like a RTS. A whole game fitted into 2-4 hours would be great provided u knew when the game would start.

I look forward to the next batch. Hopefully it won't take long.

Hi Clanpred, thank you very much for the feedback. These are all valid points and I am sure that we will tackle at least some of the before the next speed map event. Regarding your last suggestion ("even faster game timings"), I have to disappoint you, though: our experiments with 20x or 30x accelerated games were somehow unsatisfactory since they tended to break the game or put too much stress on both the servers and clients. A small increase above 4x speed would be an option, though.

For me, the biggest problem was the time, or more specifically, how the in-game timers didn't synchronize with the 4X speed. It made it incredibly difficult to know how much I was producing, when research would be done, or even when my troops would arrive at a destination. While it wasn't the only problem, (see Clanpred's post) it was, in my opinion, the worst.

But outside of that, I really enjoyed this event, and hope to see it more refined in the future.

I can see how the in-game time / real-life time asynchronity can confuse players. You basically have to play with a calculator in hand - which is not exactly how we like it. So we will look into that before starting another round of speed maps in the future.