Echoes

[Devari]

Dead around here, eh? Anyone thought of a push to get members back?

[Shadow I]

If you want the opinion of a member who has been and gone a few times: the reason people leave is because the game never changes. After a few rounds, there really is no variety, and it gets boring. If someone had the time to code in some changes to each bfr round to make it exciting, people might be more motivated to play.

[ohmyjapan16]

If you want the opinion of a member who has been and gone a few times: the reason people leave is because the game never changes. After a few rounds, there really is no variety, and it gets boring. If someone had the time to code in some changes to each bfr round to make it exciting, people might be more motivated to play.

TRUTH

but.... tis understandable considering the programmers here have much more going on in their lives than programming FAF.

[Freenhult]

What would we change?

[Shadow I]

Give each round a theme, such as an emp account to be broken, or restrictions that make people come up with new strats. A fun one is to not allow people to have one structure type on more than 50% of their land. Basically anything that makes people adapt and forces them to rethink their tried and true strategies.

I've said it before, but race specific spells add a lot by themselves as well.

[The Beatles]

We had an idea going to make each round a specific variation, like Capture the Flag, Duels, etc.

In fact, we could have just this setup: one long-term game (WOA), one active game, and one game dormant for two weeks, set to launch when the next month begins.

[Death]

I am enjoying the little 40-90 player Prom I play quite nicely. All you have to do is break away from the general Promisance community and find a theme that works. Well and have a game that is fun to play, but aside from how easy landlocks are here you guys have that part well covered.

Here's a helpful hint though, new players are interested in empire management and diplomacy, not scraping land and losing it 30 minutes later.

[Devari]

That's the thing: we certainly need to be open to new ideas, not just keep things the way they are because "we've always done things that way". As cool as new features are, perhaps the emphasis should be on tweaking what we already have in order to increase the fun-factor - it's also less likely to die in development hell if we're not getting too ambitious right away.

One idea would be to work on a new theme idea. That's not to say that we'd ditch our old one completely, but it could be fun to work with some new ideas. It might even revitalise the "oldbie" community a bit - send out a mass email and get people involved.

Death, want to expand for the general audience on what we can do to make things more fun? How, in your opinion, can we shift towards empire management and diplomacy?

[Devari]

Oh, yeah, I agree on the "theme-game" idea. Rotating rounds of different game types. What do we have, anyway?

Quick idea: Accounts that sit at the top for too long (4 days?) get an automatic and significant BOUNTY placed on them. Hehehe.

Duels - Competing clans in a great big war. If numbers permit, I'd suggest that 4 teams is the ideal amount - mixing up diplomacy and alliances. Two is fun, but we shouldn't have that all the time. Three basically amounts to two ganging up one one for the beginning stages.
Outstanding issues/ideas: Dealing with account abandonment messing up the sides.
Dealing with "quick strikes" finishing the round too fast - if we want a good-sized round, perhaps a WOA-esque turn rate is best? This might increase the "epicness" and difficulty of kills - which is GOOD, in my opinion, as this makes it an actual accomplishment requiring teamwork and coordination. This also moves away from rewarding people who can run more times per day.

Capture the Flag - "Superaccounts" which need to be brought down.
Outstanding issues/ideas: Kill-stealing - do we actually want to deal with this?
Thought: Perhaps we could turn this into a team game some rounds? Could lead to an interesting dynamic - Clan X is making a run on the Flag, so Clan Y starts attacking Clan X in an effort to ruin their attempt. Lulz and interwub dramaz ensue.

NoLimits and Challenge - Unlimited turns and fixed amount of turns.
Outstanding issues/ideas: Not much fun, I'm afraid. Let it die.

Those are the only rounds I remember us playing. Other ideas were in this topic:
http://frostnflame.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=1376

Can we think of any other varieties?

[Slasher]

How about a different version of capture the flag... starts off with one emp account who has the flag, once that's killed - the person who killed it gets the flag and has to defend it, but should they be killed (or if that's too harsh, taken below 1k acres) then the person responsible for that has the flag...

[Shadow I]

All themes from over at RWL that could work here with a few tweaks:

List of Turbo Themes


No Leaders (last done August 2008)
Just what it sounds like. Huts are not able to be built, and thus no one in the game can have leaders, and can't perform any leader missions.

No Clans (last done August 2008)
Clans are not able to be created. Everyone is on their own.

No Mercs (last done May 2008)
No mercenaries. Income from the market is delayed from being added to your cash until you log in.

Duels
Everyone is divided up into two clans, and you can't leave.

Fire and Ice
Like Duels, except with super-Emperors for each clan.

Emperor (last done Jan/Feb 2008)
The admins create a super account with a ton of land, army, and resources, and the players try to take it down before the round ends. The super account won't fight back.

Succeeding Emperor (last done Sept 2008)
Like the Emperor round, except whoever kills the Emperor becomes the Emperor, with the power to tax and send messages to everyone in the game. Tax is 0-0.01% of cash and food per turn.

Storehouse (last done Apr 2008)
Players are sorted into three clans, and each clan has accessed to a storehouse, where they can store resources, which has it's goods multiplied by a small percentage each day. A week before the reset, the storehouse is distributed equally throughout the clan and everyone battles it out.

Half-Land (last done Dec 2007)
Players are not allowed to build any one building type on more than half their land. No cities, no demolishing to put a building type on more than half your land, and if you get attacked, and a building type ends up on more than half your land, the extra buildings are demolished and the acres are given back as free land.

Ladder System (last done Jan 2008)
There is a count down how long people are in the top ten, once someone has proved they can stay in the top ten for 3 days, the computer moves them north. The person the furthest north and highest ranks wins.

Race Ladder (last done Jun 2008)
Everyone starts as the same race, and revolt is disabled. Every three days, everyone's race will be changed to something a little more powerful, with a different ability.

War of the Shields (last done Oct 2008)
Everyone is divided into four clans: Targe, Pavise, Buckler, and Aspis. The object is keep a high attack and defense ratio to increase your clan rating. The clan with the highest clan rating gets a 10% attack/defense bonus, and the clan with the second highest rating gets a 5% attack/defense bonus.

Obviously I don't think stealing them directly is a good idea given how different the games are, but it's a starting point.

[Freenhult]

Wonderful, lets rip off RWL as much as possible. And not think of our own new ideas.

[The Beatles]

Not to mention those seem incredibly tame to me. No originality or spice or zest. Unlike Duels or CTF, which were fun at least for the first few couple of times we did them.

[Devari]

Yeah, they just kinda seem like you're adding arbitrary restrictions for the sake of it. Going with Death's suggestion, it's probably better to break free of what "other" promis are doing and try to be more original.

[windhound]

Well, FAF is a RWL splitoff from long ago

Borrowing ideas is normal
And as tame as some of those may seem, they work well and keep interest.

But yeah
The problem with promis is that it gets boring after a time. Most of them devolve into a simple net race and after a few rounds the fun wears thin.
Adding arbitrary restrictions can alter the game significantly and forces you to make changes to your strat, which is key. Most people find one thing that works for them and get into a rut. Forcing people out of their rut can make the game fresher and keeps interest.

The problem with originality is coming up with something.
Dont look at me, I aint got nothin'