Rebalancing the gameplay to improve the newbie experience

[Jason8]

I was in a discussion with a bunch of rulers from around Bob today about the 18th War of Argent Relevancy and how there's such a disadvantage for new players entering the game (by design), but how it really hurts the game, especially during a war.  Month old nations can get attacked by decade old nations with full wonders and not stand a chance.  A few ideas have floated around:

 

• Shift the declaration range up, and possibly remove the upper bounds (say, 90% of NS to 200% of NS, or removed upper bound)
• Create a new wonder with dramatic benefits, but with an expiration and benefit loss as it ages, with price scaled to the number of wonders owned (0 wonders = $6m, 30+ wonders = $10b+)
• Assigning a NS value for each wonder to keep more developed nations out of range of less developed nations (2,000 NS added for each wonder, maybe?)

 

It was a good discussion, so I wanted to bring it to the forums for all to discuss.  The idea would be to allow new nations to either grow faster or have more evenly matched fights.

Thoughts?

[berbers]

I think those suggestions make sense, everyone acknowledges that we want to retain new players and wrecking all their stuff in 1 round of war from a 2000 day old nation (I do it too, no judgement, but it's not fun for the newbie). The wonder helps with that.

 

I also like the idea of removing the upper declaration range, I feel like it would allow new strategies for interacting with the god tier other than PM or getting beaten out of range in 1 round.

[Lollerobot]

It could be interesting to increase the defensive slots of the upper tier if attacked by a much lower tier as well. Make it so that small nations could properly gank a huge one, ants vs antlion style.

[Wobblies]

"Assigning a NS value for each wonder to keep more developed nations out of range of less developed nations"

I don't like this idea. I've seen plenty of nations thousands of days old with very little wonders. They should not be rewarded  for not taking the time to build thier nation.

[darkfox]

9 hours ago, Jason8 said:

Assigning a NS value for each wonder to keep more developed nations out of range of less developed nations (2,000 NS added for each wonder, maybe?)

 

Some wonders such as WRC could give more.

[Jason8]

On 12/20/2022 at 11:30 PM, darkfox said:

 

Some wonders such as WRC could give more.

I like this idea as well.  Could definitely help.  Military improvements add more NS, econ improvements add less NS.

Another suggestion that came up was allowing nukes to destroy wonders, or possibly an extremely expensive nuke type that could destroy wonders.

[SeaBeeGipson]

I think there would need to be a lot of rebalance to be more noob friendly imo, but anything is a start.

On 12/20/2022 at 1:53 PM, Jason8 said:

Shift the declaration range up, and possibly remove the upper bounds (say, 90% of NS to 200% of NS, or removed upper bound)

 

I don't personally see how this effects new players, rather than changing the war tactics of established nations. Beyond that, I imagine removing the upper bound would be horrible for players like Jerel. Some kid starts a nation, sees he can declare war on the #1 guy, and does so. Jerel would be flooded with war declares from random people. I don't know about him personally, but I'd eventually get annoyed. It'd also only serve to move tech and land upwards. New players wouldn't have nukes, but would lose near every GA, moving their tech and land to the larger nation. I think 200% is far more reasonable than removing it entirely.

 

On 12/20/2022 at 1:53 PM, Jason8 said:

Create a new wonder with dramatic benefits, but with an expiration and benefit loss as it ages, with price scaled to the number of wonders owned (0 wonders = $6m, 30+ wonders = $10b+)

My issue with this comes from my issue with wonders and aid in general. It is 2022, almost 2023. People don't want to stand in line for more than 2 minutes. They surely don't want to wait 10 days to receive/send aid, and wait an entire month to buy their next wonder. Sometime to fast track at least the initial growth of a nation would be great. Nations under say 100-200 days old have half the timer for receiving aid (doing this with sending aid could probably be abused for fast tech upward), no wonder timer, and much more gracious starting amount. I'm not sure what nations start with, but based on new nations seeming to always jump to 500 tech, 1k infrastructure, I'd wager maybe $50,000,000? Up this to say $200,000,000. Allow them to buy wonders instantly, and really get them fast tracked. We don't need to fast track them to like 400K NS, but getting them to say a 20K-30K range or even 50K-60K could reshape the game a lot in my opinion.

 

This, however, could decrease the amount of tech sellers. Everyone grows to tech buying range. Fixing that would require a rework of the aid system with math that I just haven't done. Could be worth discussing. I just don't want to do math and discuss all this for it to fall on deaf ears and never get implemented.

 

On 12/20/2022 at 1:53 PM, Jason8 said:

Assigning a NS value for each wonder to keep more developed nations out of range of less developed nations (2,000 NS added for each wonder, maybe?)

I like this idea a lot. Maybe 2,000 per military wonder (WRC, Manhattan Project, Pentagon, Foreign Bases), and maybe 500 per economic? I don't see much use to an economc wonder throwing people high up. It could result in another imbalance of an economically heavy wonder nation having little military wonders and getting rolled over by a heavily militarized nation. Still should have an NS value, but maybe a lower value.

 

I do think the donation bonuses are great where they are. 2k infra, 2k land, 300 tech. However, maybe special deals? Most games I play have the EA effect of microtransactions. Beyond that, there are some crazy whales that spend $10,000+ a month on some weird ass games. $1 deals for this, $20 deals for that. The $200,000,000 starting bonus above could be implemented here. "New nation bonus, $10 for $150,000,000, 2k infra, free (select) wonder, etc - 1 time offer" On one hand, admin would make money and be encouraged to toss some updates our way. I'm sure at a $10 threshold, plenty would buy it. Even nations that only exist for a little while. On the other, new nations would have access to a neat deal for those that do stay and get that initial thrust into the game.

 

Outside of recoding a lot of the game though, I don't see many ways to balance the warfare without completely changing it. The easiest solution imo is to try and fast track new nations to be competitive. I don't want to see any nations leave the game. I think we all benefit from having our enemies, it adds spice to the game. Rolling a nation to dust, bankrupting them, is much harder for more established nations but pretty easy to do to some little guys. You can bill lock a nation while at war and they have to wait every 10 days to get aid to fight for what, 2, 3 days before they are out of cash again? I truly believe fast tracking new players to avoid this outcome, unless they are terribly stupid with their money/growth, could add more life. We see from tracking the player count in another thread, we get anywhere from 100-200 new nations created every 7-10 days. Retaining even a few of those could boost more life over time.

 

Lastly, to end my soapbox, I haven't created a nation in nearly a decade. I do not remember if we have a "Welcome to CyberNations" automated message. If we do, it surely must be outdated. I'd be more than happy to collaborate with anyone to write a new one and offer it to admin. A message with a quick guide for players, encouraging them to join an alliance, benefits of alliances, how to reach the community on the forums / discord, etc.

 

Apologize for the long post, but this thread I think is really great to discuss how to keep players and make the game more noob friendly.

 

[Jason8]

18 hours ago, SeaBeeGipson said:

I think there would need to be a lot of rebalance to be more noob friendly imo, but anything is a start.

 

<snip>

 

I agree with a lot of what you're saying and appreciate you taking the time to write the long post.  I've been seeing a lot of agreement with assigning NS values to wonders and a staggered approach to econ vs war wonders seems like a great move.

 

The updeclare range removal is an interesting suggestion that I wanted to put out because it could totally change the way wars are fought.  In my opinion, an upper limit is still needed, but it should be larger than the downdeclare range.  This would allow for more even fights and if it is lopsided, it would be the attacker's choice and the benefit would go to the defender.

Newbies typically sign up and blow all their money, THEN end up seeking out trades, guides, and alliances.  A bigger starting amount would probably not help the situation.  But I do like where your mind is at.  I'd be curious if a nation without improvements and trades even breaks even at say, 4,000 infrastructure. By raising the starting amount, nations could end up bill-locked right from the start, discouraging them from continued play.  Nevertheless, to be truly competitive, it requires an alliance and other players that also want to min/max every aspect of the game, and there's no way to really "fix" that part of it all, nor should it be "fixed".  Perhaps instead of an increase in starting cash, new nations could start with a non-purchasable wonder that's like the space wonders that gives +10 happiness or something that gradually degrades and wears off after 180 days to prevent bill lock from happening.  That might be a good way to keep newbies from hurting themselves too much.

 

A cheap "First Donation" offer sounds like a good idea, too.  $5 or $10 to get the $30 benefit or something.  After that, all donations are normal priced.  It could get people in the habit of donating, which would be good for the game.

[Lord Hershey]

Why not implement $3,000,000 daily bonus immediately for newbies rather than logging in daily for two years to reap the coveted $3,000,000 daily bonus. It is at least a good start, I’d say.

[Wolfbite]

As a returning player with a small nation, I will offer what I have experinced returning.

 

 

First thing I had within 2days of joining was a war was declared on me(non-alliance). For me I am lucky that I have experience to deal with this. A new player with no experience would struggle and would likely be put rapidly off the game. During this time I joined an Alliance, was sent 6mil/4k troops. This boosted my NS range up and allowed a larger nation in the War to declare on me. At this point I had a couple of improvements. The nation that declared had full military improvements and a couple of wonders.

 

 

This instantly had me in a position where options are limited. The alliance I am in pumped aid and troops into my nation. This had no real benefit, if anything it made the problem worse. As it allowed the attacking nation to take more from my nation during GA. In the end I did a $30 donation to put me in a position to stand a chance.

 

From the above my recommendations would be:

• Nations under 1 week cant be declared on. This will give new players a chance to get in an alliance and assistance.
• Aid time needs cutting down to 5 days, this means smaller nations can get more aid, as their warchests are smaller and will rapidly deplete - your not going to easily fix the problem with nations with more improvements and wonders, it will always be something to deal with during war.

 

Other than that, I personally dont think there is much that can be done to rebalance things to help a new nation.

[SeaBeeGipson]

On 12/25/2022 at 10:49 PM, Lord Hershey said:

Why not implement $3,000,000 daily bonus immediately for newbies rather than logging in daily for two years to reap the coveted $3,000,000 daily bonus. It is at least a good start, I’d say.

I'm halfway there and getting about $135,000 a day. I could see a rework benefitting new nations for sure.

 

 

On 12/23/2022 at 4:13 PM, Jason8 said:

In my opinion, an upper limit is still needed, but it should be larger than the downdeclare range.

Agreed.

 

On 12/23/2022 at 4:13 PM, Jason8 said:

Newbies typically sign up and blow all their money, THEN end up seeking out trades, guides, and alliances.  A bigger starting amount would probably not help the situation.  But I do like where your mind is at.  I'd be curious if a nation without improvements and trades even breaks even at say, 4,000 infrastructure. By raising the starting amount, nations could end up bill-locked right from the start, discouraging them from continued play.  Nevertheless, to be truly competitive, it requires an alliance and other players that also want to min/max every aspect of the game, and there's no way to really "fix" that part of it all, nor should it be "fixed".  Perhaps instead of an increase in starting cash, new nations could start with a non-purchasable wonder that's like the space wonders that gives +10 happiness or something that gradually degrades and wears off after 180 days to prevent bill lock from happening.  That might be a good way to keep newbies from hurting themselves too much.

I completely get what you are saying here, and think the "default" wonder is a great thing. I think coupling that with decreasing the wonder timer would be great.
We still have wonders like Foreign Naval Base (20,000 Infra requirement) and EMP (5,000 tech) that would take alot of nation developing to get. Preventing a new nation from quickly getting aid and maxing wonders if we reduced the wonder timer.