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Magicman657

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Blog Entries posted by Magicman657

  1. Magicman657
    Someone had posted a topic about trying to figure out what's driving players away from CN and after responding, I thought it would make a good blog entry. If you've been following along, you'll know that there's good reason to believe the not-TE resource system (which admin has stated will be fixed, yaaaay!) was definitely a contributing factor, but I'm sure we all know it's not the ONLY factor. Thus, I sat and thought about it for a bit and I came up with this answer.
    The first step is always to try and identify the problem, and in this case, it seems to be Seniority. However, it's a hard one to fix, because it's not a direct, in game problem like the resource issue. Seniority manifests itself in many different forms, but I think we can agree that two of the biggest ones are through [Wonders] and [Technology]. While it might seem like removing the 30 day waiting period for wonders might at least somewhat address that part (which I will be considering and possibly crusading for at some point in the near future), the technology issue is a lot more complicated and there isn't an easy answer to it like there was with resources. If we want to revitalize CN, we'll need to give it some thought and come up with a good system that preserves the player cooperation aspects of tech dealing while also addressing the never ending benefits of toasters problem.
    So just how do we remove or at least limit the effects of seniority? Start by looking at the biggest problems caused by it. Once we can agree that it's a problem (which it IS, there's no denying that), we can work on ideas that can address it. So with this in mind, I ask you to think about it. Tell others about it. Brainstorm up some ideas. Just, whatever you do, don't ignore the issue and expect it to resolve itself, or even worse, absolutely don't deny that seniority is hurting CN. If you want to shoot down an idea, that's fine, but I challenge you to come up with an alternative that still fixes the problem. The first step is always to recognize the issue at hand and we need to start giving this some serious consideration for the good of the game.
    ~Magicman657
  2. Magicman657

    Ship-Shipping

    By Magicman657,

    One of my new favorite pastimes now is to write letters to my alliance leader, Princess Regnant Herooftime55, and post them on the United Equestria forums. Last night on our channel some interesting things happened that spawned a facebook status and a letter. I will share them below so you can have just a tiny glimpse into the insanity that is United Equestria (lol). One thing I will say, if ship-shipping is not a real thing, it SHOULD be.
    Status
    ------
    So because I got tired of people shipping ponies in United Equestria's irc channel, another member and I started a parody "ship shipping" in which the Titanic and the Britanic got romantically involved, and the Britanic actually directed the Titanic into an iceberg (spoiler if you haven't seen Titanic) for insurance money. Yea.
    Letter
    ------
    Dear Princess Herooftime,
    Today I learned a valuable lesson about love. Love comes in many different types and can be between many different types of creatures, be they ponies, animals, or even large metallic ships, but the one thing that remains constant is the feeling between them. Your love for your friends will guide you through dark patches of life where you need somepony to rely on and be there for you. Your family love will always reassure you and let you know that no matter where you end up, there will always be a place you can call home with ponies that truly care about you. Then there is also romantic love, which can only be described by experience. No matter what kind of love it is, you should always be careful with whom you share it. While love is an amazing thing to share with somepony, it leaves you vulnerable and so it should be exercised with the utmost caution (lest someship takes out a life insurance policy on you, seduces you, and directs you to an icy grave)! I know that I will always have many different kinds of love in my life and that I am so very lucky to have it!
    Your Faithful Student,
    Magicman657
  3. Magicman657
    Some of you may have noticed that I've been gone from Cyber Nations for quite some time. Many of you probably didn't. And of the former, a few of you might wonder why it is that upon my return to the game, I've spent nearly all my time lobbying for changes in the way resources are generated. I mean, for someone who supposedly doesn't care about his nation, I sure complain a lot, right?
    Well, here's the deal. As it stands now, I am not playing this game because I want to. I specifically refuse to do so until the resource issue gets addressed. I have zero interest in a game where critical aspects of it are broken and ignored by the developers. If it gets addressed, I might be more inclined to actually care about CN again, but not a moment sooner. I am playing the game for the sole purpose of helping out a RL friend of mine, Herooftime55, with United Equestria. I am very much a brony and a loyal friend, so it is only natural for me to want to assist him in this effort. Still, that doesn't explain why I have such contempt for what others might trivialize as an insignificant issue. So, sit back and I'll tell you the tale of Magi Nation and perhaps you might start to understand why it is I feel the way I do.
    I started playing Cyber Nations at the request of Herooftime55 back in the days of the Nintendo Outsider Alliance, 'gtfoutsider.com' (I actually had to look up the name because it's been so long ). While I can't claim to remember every single step I took in the last 4 and a half years, I do remember that Outsider had very little idea what they were doing and at no point did anyone ever bother to explain the full details of the resource system. After what had to have been somewhere between a few months to a year, I ended up joining the League of Small Superpowers, aka LoSS. I had gotten particularly interested in nation development at that point and made it a goal to research as much as possibly could about nation optimization. I spent quite some time with LoSS, it was and I imagine it still is an amazing group of people and I will never forget all the amazing times I was there for. During my time there, I made some very excellent progress on my optimization research, becoming particularly interested in all the subtleties of each resource and bonus resource. I eventually gained & adopted the unofficial nickname of Trade Guildmaster and offered my expertise to anyone interested. It was around this time I first realized I'd need to work pretty hard to play around my nation's resources, as Rubber wasn't a 3BR resource and Silver wasn't a popular choice for 5BR. (Later on I would carry dual membership with LoSS and Herooftime55's new project, 64Digits, though eventually I was forced to make the full transition over to 64Digits.) I did my best for the year or so that followed trying to keep a working trade circle of 5BR with Silver, and I had varying levels of success. Ultimately, I realized that my resources were just becoming a ridiculous pain to me. It was especially bad during times of war when I needed Uranium and couldn't swap out Silver for it. At one point I was replacing trades every two to three days, and I finally got to the point where I just stopped trying. This was well after I had broken 12,000 infra, so it's not like I hadn't been trying to deal with it. When the next war rolled around, I just quit bothering with my trades, letting them fall out as they inevitably would (with the exception of one or two kind souls). I started logging in every 2-3 weeks purely to keep my nation alive and after many months of doing this, I ended up amassing nearly 2 billion dollars. I had one war after that, where I dropped about 500 mil over the course of three weeks, and I've been just sending out money and tech at Herooftime55's request since then, not even bothering to fully repair Magi Nation. As a nation over 4 years old, I've bought literally every single wonder I can possibly own at this point. I still have over 1 billion dollars left and no intention of bothering to do anything with it besides send it out in aid every 10 days. I've drained out all my tech and just buy it 300 at a time for the benefit of my alliance.
    It's taken quite some time but what I've come to accept is that as long as I am forced to stick with Rubber and Silver, which I've come to utterly despise, I will never be able to have reliable trades or be as financially powerful as nations with better resources than myself, so I don't see the point in even trying. I've tried pushing the issue for resource reform before, but it always went ignored by admin and the problem persisted. I really WANT it to be fixed. Not just because it would benefit me though, but because the current system is horrible. As a programmer, it offends me that such a terrible system for resource generation has existed for this long without any sort of reform. From a design perspective, the system is set up in such a way that it actually encourages the precious few new players CN gets to NOT play the game for however long it takes them to get a good set of resources, and completely screws over those not lucky enough to know about the resource system when they made their nations.
    That's why I really want to see this get addressed. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't partially for my personal satisfaction, but really it's something that should be changed for the benefit of everyone - new players, old players, and even admin (more new players = more potential donations). So with that in mind, I hope you will forgive me for the overzealous protesting, but please, click below and help put an end to this atrocity of a resource generation issue. I've made a very clean and easy proposal that I'd love to get support on so that just maybe admin will actually do something about it.
    http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=92255&view=findpost&p=2783681
    And if you've actually bothered to read through this entire rant, you have my personal thanks.
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