de Champlain wrote:
If its too convoluted, you can ignore the extra parts and make it a flat fee. The other parts are add on ideas.Regarding people logging in just to stay active and get gold. I think we need a whole new inactivity system not based on just logging in, which is a stupid idea. There should be a measure of idle build ques and/or detect if stockpiles are accumulating. You can say its convoluted, but it is necessary. If there were a maximum limit of substitute games you could be in, like 1 or 2 that would help.
As another idea, deposits could have a house cut. Say 25%. Deposit 1000, and 750 can be gotten back.
If it's too convoluted, that's too bad, because it is absolutely necessary. As it stands the simple system we have now, one is allowed to join a game and never look at it again and then there is an inactive country in that game for 11 days. He can also join many games and do the same without penalty.
My current game on 100 player world map has 0 free slots. In North America there is the following inactive countries that joined on day 1 or 2, and it is now day 11 and they have not performed any action. The admin has not kicked them yet (is admin inactive too?).
Inactive in North America:
Illinois, Ontario, Quebec, New England, Texas, Northwest USA, North Mexico, South Mexico.
First, if an admin goes inactive, then another player automatically becomes the admin.
Second, stockpiling is not a bad thing. A smart player will try to save up crucial key resources for the late game if they can. I try always to stockpile Oil and Metal for late game Heavy Tanks. Or, maybe I've saved up tons of money so I can buy out all the key resources and then low-ball everyone else in sales of non-key resources....driving the market way down and then setting up a ton of purchase orders. Doing that also can gain me a great amount of resources.
Third, a lot of what you are describing -- from a programmer's perspective -- is likely too complicated as to be worth it from Bytro's point of view. However, keeping it simple, like I said before, may be the best way for you to gain traction with this idea.
I actually kind of like the principle of what you are proposing and I've tried to spur you in another direction with it. But you won't bite. So, here's my attempt to modify your idea with one of my own.
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Spoiler
Instead of having a buy-in deposit of Gold, why not request that Bytro set up a simple "token" Gold payouts for staying? Bytro isn't fond of giving away Gold just willy-nilly. However, if an incentive for staying in a match and staying "active" could be had, even if it's just a tiny amount of Gold, it could make a difference. But this still doesn't prevent people from just barely staying active to get the Gold. So, this next example of how it would work will hopefully alleviate that.For example, maybe Bytro would allow a weekly stipend of Gold based on a percentage of your total Gold savings. This would prevent Bytro from having to overly reward the freebies while actually offering a decent reward to those whom pay for the Gold. But, to qualify, you have to remain active for the whole week. So, if you go lax and just check in once in a while, you will likely miss the Gold payouts and this would encourage users to really stay in it to win it. Once a player has less than 1% of the total provinces of the map their match is in (basically meaning they've virtually lost) they would cease to qualify for Gold payouts. This would also be a good incentive to fight to remain powerful enough to retain a sufficient number of provinces.
The percentage payouts of your Gold Assets should probably be just 1% and it would actually be reasonable to lower it as low as 0.1% if you get daily payouts instead of weekly ones. The weekly ones would be slightly more valuable, but they may not be practical for programming purposes.
Given those percentages, if one has 14,000 Gold in the bank, they would receive only 140 Gold for staying in a match for a week. But I suspect that even that is too much in Bytro's eyes, so they would likely lower the percentage even more. But, at the same time, if someone pays for Gold, and they bought 500,000 Gold, then -- given the same percentages -- their weekly payout for a match would be 5,000 Gold. And Bytro might even think that's worth it since the purchaser who purchases so much Gold will likely be well-encouraged to do so again if they think they are getting a good deal (and this isn't even taking into account the occasional randomized Gold special offers which push sales).
Now, if one has purchased a lot of Gold but spent most of it before the payout award time, then they'd get less. That'd teach them to save Gold until after the payout, and so the weekly payout scheme might create a trend where Gold "Coiners" spend a bunch of Gold during any given matches' days of 8, 15, 22, 29, etc. This would be unavoidable, but not necessarily a bad thing.
Hopefully, you can see that changing an idea is not necessarily a bad thing. I've critiqued your plan and I've critiqued my own in part. I welcome yours and anyone else's criticism.
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It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.
The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.
R.I.P. Snickers <3
