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An actual plan to help CN


GeniusInc

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+1 to your ideas Caladin

 

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One thing I would add is that if there's to be some large push for new players, the game needs its UI updated, a lot. There's no reason for it to be stuck in the 20th century, almost like an active "defense" to repel fresh blood from entering the game.

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How would this work? We keep our current nations, but recreate new ones on the new planet for the sake of politics?

 

Or give more things to do on the moon/mars for those who have built colonies - a mini-CN so to speak

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Attempts to make it something it is not, to appeal to a crowd it does not appeal to, will simply drive away those that DO enjoy the game.

 

Small changes could actually help, sure. The double update idea probably wouldnt suck, at a glance. But a wipe? All that would do is kill it much quicker. Drive away most of your current players without affecting new player recruitment and retention in the slightest.

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How would this work? We keep our current nations, but recreate new ones on the new planet for the sake of politics?

Planet Bill? :v

Also I agree with Terekhov, the UI certainly could use an overhaul. Logo changes every couple of years and some new bar graphs just aren't enough (although the effort is appreciated).
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Other games do it.. just the two are supposed to be unrelated.. brand new nations/alliances/etc for all. Basically TE without an end date.

 

I wish we all could do that, but we've seen how, when CN alliances move to other places, we tend to group together in the same ways and create the same politics.  Oh, I wish we could get a CN World 2 and really do something special, but that seems difficult for our community.

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Also I agree with Terekhov, the UI certainly could use an overhaul. Logo changes every couple of years and some new bar graphs just aren't enough (although the effort is appreciated).

Please no. This fad of changing the UI every 6 months is going to be remembered as the plague of the early 21st century. The last thing anyone wants to see is CN crossbred with Windows8 or GNOME.

The graphs are a nice touch. But they also dont really break anything (although they would be better if they had alt tags). 'Overhauls' are all about breaking lots of stuff, on purpose. Edited by Sigrun Vapneir
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What I believe needs to be done is increase the abilities of younger nations to compete, without destroying the advantage that ancient nations have worked for (though severely reducing it)
I can see this done through four game changes.
Implement a logarithmic tech return; the more you have, the smaller the boost each individual unit gives you
Implement a logarithmic land return; the more you have, the smaller the boost each individual unit gives you
Reduce the wonder clock for the first dozen wonders
Add some improvements that function only for nations under one year old and are significantly more useful than a standard improvement.

Implement these and younger nations will be able to grow faster, obtain wonders faster and compete on a more even footing with ancient nations, without making the work they have put into the game over the years redundant.

 

These would really be interesting, its incredibly difficult to get anyone interested in the game when you tell them #1 it is text based and #2 that it'll take you over a year in real time for your nation to be anywhere near competitive with the ancient nations. Otherwise all we have to offer is the promise that if someone is active enough, they might just get interested enough in the RP alliance portion of the game. Giving new nations a sort of quick start would defiantly make the game more fun and playable for new members. 

 

UI changes would be welcome, the few logo changes that are straight out of word art doesn't really cut it. 

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Old player complains about changes that don't affect his ability to keep playing the game, insists that everything stay absolutely the same so that he can keep on pressing buttons once a day without worrying about the world falling apart around him.

On one hand, there is only so much turd polishing you can do before you realise it's a waste of time. As an overwhelmingly outdated niche game, cybernations can't do that much to rejuvenate itself without a complete redesign & recoding.  On the other, there's plenty of small things that would encourage players to return, or even encourage new members to keep playing. Just a few changes would make a significant difference, even if it only delays the inevitable community death. I brought up a suggestion or two related to this recently, which seemed to receive a positive overall reception, so I'm glad there are people still talking about reform .

 

Personally, changes specifically to wonder development intervals might be a bit too late to bring me back from self-imposed inactivation, but it would have made a big difference 16 or so months ago when I started. Closing the wonder gap is a lot harder within a micro when you don't have free aid to rely upon. If I'm a returning player that wants to just hang with a few buds, I don't want to be forced to join up with an AA I don't to just so I can reduce the length of time spent catching up on wonders from 18 months to 12. I hate it when a game like this dictates playing style by convention and unfortunately, it's yet another thing that discourages diversity within the community.

Wonder build lag-time is one of the nails in CN's coffin. Doesn't mean the other flaws of CN disappear if it's fixed, but any effort to decrease time from founding to parity  is a step in the right direction as far as longevity is concerned.

Edited by RevolutionaryRebel
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Instead of a reset can we not have anot her "planet" simultaneously running?

This is not going to solve our problem completly, but it would be a great idea, and it would even possibly help member retention with current members.  Give us more things to do, and let us have a completely different scenario to start in.  Maybe that world would have a futuristic aspect, or have to do with aliens.  I think an exact replica wouldn't do a whole lot, but with some changes, it would be even greater.

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What I believe needs to be done is increase the abilities of younger nations to compete

 

This would make sense if younger nations faced significant barriers to 'competition'. They do not.

 

Consider: My current nation is 57 days old. As of fifteen seconds ago, my NS places me in the top 59% of nations. At the same time, my nation (ranked 7269/9520 in terms of age) is in the bottom quarter in terms of its age.

 

The only barrier to 'competition' is whether or not one joins an alliance that helps one grow, and/or whether or not one is willing to follow advice about nation growth. That's it.

 

But look at my nation age-ranking again. About 24% of nations are the same age or younger than mine. Since the number of extant nations between August 10 (my creation date) and today has been roughly the same, give or take a couple of hundred, what does this mean? People sign up, try CN for a short while, and then they quit. That's what's happening.

 

Fun fact: Nearly half of extant CN nations (about 45%) have been created within the last year.

 

No, the problem is with the game itself, and there's little that can be done about it. CN consists of about two minutes of mouse-clicking once per day, and about fifteen minutes' worth of frenetic mouse-clicking when there's a war on. As we all know, the 'real' activity takes place on forums. (It used to be IRC, but as someone who's just come back after a long absence, that place seems like a graveyard.) But that activity is limited to things like arranging tech deals, asking for aid to grow, and posting random nonsense in spam forums. The game itself has become secondary to a very large number of us.

 

In terms of competitiveness with other browser games, CN reached its BBD some time ago. A reset will not fix that, and quite honestly....if I were a player who had invested money in this game over several years, a reset would convince me to quit and not come back. As long as Admin (PBUH) has a pulse, as long as people contribute financially and as long as income>expenses, CN will continue to operate. That's it.

 

In the meantime, relax and enjoy yourself.

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You miss something, Zog. There is a need to differentiate between economic development (ie; NS, tech, infra) - which isn't hard for a new nation to break into, and military development which (unless you're raiding/attacking targets of a similar age) is. An opponent a year or two older than you would be able to dish out more damage but (more importantly) would take far less in return. Small things like better defences against CMs, higher aircraft deployment, reduced nuke anarchy time, etc give a wonder-rich nation a large total wartime advantage. You'd be in a situation where you'd need a warchest ten times greater (min) to survive, and there'd be very little return on that investment.

 

War is where the fun is in CN once tech deals and pixel-counting lose their charm. That's the only real incentive for a new nation to keep building up after the first few months in-game, having gotten themselves in range of the bulk of nuke-capable nations. Reforms that make it faster and easier to move from a new nation to one that's competitive militarily would certainly encourage nations under a year old to continue playing.

 

The other part of the puzzle is the increasing deadlock and stagnation that boosts the lag time between 'global wars', but there's not much that can be done about that as far as mechanics is concerned.

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I miss nothing.

 

There was a time when people waited months before getting a Wonder, and getting one was a big deal that some would actually announce on this forum. (Well, the old invisionfree forum, anyway.) In this iteration, I had my first Wonder within less than a month and it was no big deal. The only reason I don't have another right now is courtesy of my own decision to buy a bunch of infrastructure. I'll soon be buying at the rate of one per month, and so my disadvantage in wartime will disappear over time, which is as it should be.

 

Generally speaking, the outcome of a war is known within minutes of its commencement. *yawn* So I disagree that war is fun, but that could be because I've seen so many of them. I'd argue there hasn't been an "interesting" war since 2009. If we had fewer "pile-on" wars then yes, things might be more interesting. However, we're unlikely ever to see an era where that's the norm rather than the exception.

 

It all comes back to game mechanics and community. Those of us who have been here a while know three very important things:

  1. The game mechanics make the game boring, and nothing can fix that.
  2. The main forum is a cesspool; an asylum run by the inmates.
  3. Alliance forums and IRC are where you'll meet interesting people and form the bonds that will keep you in the game or, in my case, keep you coming back. (Although many of my favorite CN folks are gone, so that's less of a draw now.)

All of this (except, perhaps, #2) has been true since the beginning, but new players used to be inclined to put up with it for a longer period of time. Is there a fix for that? Well, I suppose we could hope for some grand Luddite movement against the digital delivery of new games and/or quality free games in favor of text-based browser gamers, but short of that I think what we can expect is a long, slow decline.

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The other part of the puzzle is the increasing deadlock and stagnation that boosts the lag time between 'global wars', but there's not much that can be done about that as far as mechanics is concerned.

 

...Which is probably the only thing that could actually be worked on which would pique peoples interest.

 

The game itself is boring and will remain boring no matter what changes are implemented. All mechanics changes do is change the time period between staring and getting bored - whether they make it shorter or longer or not, you still end up with the same thing. People being bored.

 

Unless the positive personalities of each alliance decide to come out of the woodworks and into this cesspit of a forum, nothing is going to change any time soon, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

All of this discussion of change is futile. For all we can really say, we can change a few mechanics and push a few recruitment drives to get people back, then when it goes back to boring we will wish we hadn't made the changes. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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If NoR stopped playing CN or a significant number of members were on another game, I would delete. I would really only miss the NG forums and a handful of folk on the OWF and diplomats on our own forums.


I'd just give you access to the NG forums if you wanted to BS with us lot dude.
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That's good to know Stewie, cheers.

I guess the game has to be boring by its nature. If it was all guns blazing action, it would be too time consuming and impossible to function across international time zones. I do think it could be tweaked to add a geographical element to reduce the 0500hrs madness of update. It should also make it far more difficult for nations based in say Africa to attack across a continent with conventional means. It's just absurd that I can fling my army across time and space. This would also lead to regional powers and blocs that would change the game mechanics by virtue of members/AAs being geographically remote from the main powerbase. Politics would have to account for vulnerabilities in isolated AAs on a different continent. Treaties would change to increase strike capabilities abroad.

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What if we have admin modify the welcome message to tell people to get started on the ingame IRC applet and we each have an hour we are assigned to #cybernations during which we speak to every new person as they sign up... there's literally 100 times in the last few months where I've seen people join that channel, say something, get no response and leave.. never to be seen again.

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And that's what these threads have boiled down to over the last half decade: "Man somebody should do X and Y to encourage new member retention and increase activity. I mean, not me because I'm busy with stuff, but somebody!"

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