Alliance Options

"legal" automation may not be evil, but it relegates what could be the domain of player skill instead to be nothing more than notches on the RPG-stats ladder.  That's not exactly aspiring to greatness, either as a game or as participants in it.  Consider the MMO Guild Wars:  I played it almost from the beginning, and though characters maxed out at level 20 and top equipment and level were attainable in just a few months, I never stopped improving and developing my talent as a player over the 3-4 years I played it.  When I finally peaked at the top of my craft, I also tired of the game and stopped playing.  But the game lasted as long as it did because there was so much room for growth and development not in numeric stats/achievements to attain, but in skill at assembling the base components available into effective and unique party strategy and player/inter-player tactics.

And, in anticipation of the inevitable debate over convenience and scheduling constraints:  time management is very much a player skill, along with effective/accurate planning and efficient mapping of schedules (and use of account sitting).  This includes things like quick thinking to correct for missed launch deadlines, turnaround time from idea to execution, and accuracy of coordinated activities across multiple locations, party speeds, players, and even time zones--all of which goes away if the player is not always required to be front-and-center at the wheel.

Every feature that goes "in-game" becomes a standardized baseline you now share in common with everyone else...one less thing that was capable of distinguishing you apart from your peers and competitors.  Everything not incorporated into the game becomes a factor more substantially influenced by your intellect, choices, and the methods or organizational patterns you develop or use (thinking specifically of time management and the use of alarms, spreadsheets, travel time calculators or even just regular calculators, calendaring systems and 3rd party organizational tools, etc.)--all of which inject lots of variety into the game and how people play it.  "People" is very much the keyword here, and the more you can depend on delegation of tasks, the less your own ability to accomplish tasks counts.  Even leadership skills don't count for much if what you are leading are in-game elements that never make mistakes, disobey, or have an independent thought.

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I feel less strongly about in-game methods of sharing census data, as here a baseline is helpful for many but not going to replace more talented information management.  Ultimately alliances will find mere current troop numbers quite inadequate and need more powerful data management (historic records and timelines, metadata that classifies armies or players, or support for other unique organizational patterns and methods).  So communication and information-sharing tools (or at least manual processes) will be developed anyway and organizational variety will thrive.


Edited by HonoredMule - 09 Jun 2010 at 02:31

The summary ideas are already covered (in the admittedly vague) item on the Current Dev list:

ALLIANCE PLAYER ACTIVITY REPORTS

• Allowing Alliances to pool and share member histories

This actually means "current" things as well as "history" and so would include all inbound and outbound attacks (except those under Covert Ops/Stealth, which is the point of those currently slightly pointless skills), as well as historic data (such as scout and spy reports - so you could eg click on a town and see what your last alliance-wide information about that town actually was).

The "Rally point" ideas might be on the hidden, top-secret, ultra-hushhush dev list  already; but would be *highly* unlikely to automate troop movement functions.  We frown massively on automation of ingame "action" functions.

Having said that, I'm always pleased when players suggest things that are already on the lists; shows we're thinking in the right directions!

Best,

SC

Well at the least the summary pages.