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Beyljr
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Joined: 12 Mar 2014 Status: Offline Points: 157 |
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Topic: MinistersPosted: 08 Jan 2015 at 14:32 |
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Rill:
I can definitely see your point about the minister to automate harvesting, versus a reward for doing the harvesting yourself. And in this respect the harvesting minister is probably not a good one to have. But please realize that my suggestion was to add ministers, not to add a particular set of ministers. The possible ministers that I listed was just that, a possible set. Something to give people an understanding of what I was talking about when I talked about adding ministers, and that was all. Any of those particular ministers may be desired or not by certain people, and certainly almost nobody would like them all. But I think the idea of adding ministers of some kind is a very good idea. What kind of ministers are added would have to be decided by the developers. I personally would prefer more time to deal with people, and less time taken up doing the mundane repetitive junk. But I can achieve that as far as the resource harvesting by simply not bothering to do it, and buying my resources, which I have already switched to for the most part, as have many others. But this removes us from that part of the game, instead of making that part of the game more tolerable. But as I said, that is only 1 example of a possible minister, not really part of the suggestion to add ministers. Also, please realize that I in no way feel that someone should be able to play for 10 minutes a day, nor an hour a day. On an average day I am online for about 8 hours, spent between 4 accounts in this game (main, alt, and 2 sat accounts) and 1 in a different game. That in itself should answer that. I also stated that ministers should blindly do what they are told, not be intelligent, and never give an advantage. They are convenience, not substitute players. Their intention is to allow people to be freed from the mundane repetitive junk to be able to be more involved with the meaningful stuff. Anyone spending less than 10 minutes a day will be extremely easy pickings during any type of war, and are generally referred to as cannon fodder. But at the same time, if somebody wishes to support the game for everyone else by being their cannon fodders, then great, man the cannons. To each their own, and each plays an important part in the game as a whole. Captain Kindly:I am not finding fault in what you are saying. I agree with it. In fact I find most people are in the same boat, they don’t want to risk a sitter reading older posts in their inbox. This is probably the biggest problem with the sitter feature today. My only point was that this removes “get a sitter” as a solve-all solution, and brings us back to “let’s add the ability for things to be more convenient”. Brandmeister:You seem to miss the whole point here. The whole purpose of the war minister, or any other minister is to “allow a person to do the same thing that they can already do, but more conveniently”. They are not intended to do anything that can’t already be done. But thank you for checking to make sure that they meet their goal of not adding any advantages. Angrim: Right on! Well said! |
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Angrim
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Joined: 02 Nov 2011 Location: Laoshin Status: Offline Points: 1173 |
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Posted: 25 Dec 2014 at 19:36 |
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unsurprisingly, i find myself in the minority, as i think reducing time spent interacting with the interface frees time to interact with players, and that convenience is not only a good thing for players to pay for, it is the *best possible* basis for paid features in illy. instantly completing buildings, speeding caravans to a needy ally, granting fiat bonuses to army strength--in short, the advantages we currently enjoy from prestige--are all granting material advantages that can shift the balance from one side of a conflict to another. all of these would be "pay to win" if weren't for the fact that small amounts of prestige are granted players through logging in. the prestige features that could never be perceived in this way--avatar changes, city graphics changes--are purely cosmetic, and these sorts of uses, imo, ought to be encouraged. a building queue expansion falls in this category because queuing four upgrades takes just as much time as queuing two twice. queuing a military launch takes *more* time than an immediate dispatch; it simply allows a player to determine when to spend that time with regard to the real world clock. *if* sitters offer the same advantage, then we take away an impediment to play for those who do not wish to have sitters, and collect some theoretical income for illy. is that so bad?
some of these ministers i find unworkable or undesirable for one reason or another (see my prior posts), but the concept of paying for convenience ought to be embraced by the community because it allows illyriad to make a revenue stream which does not unbalance the game. i should not need to remind anyone that the current revenue stream has not supported, to date: meaningful quest lines (as were predicted for Broken Lands), faction ai, new schools of magic, pathfinding, naval units... (/me trails off meaningfully.) progress draws new players and excites old ones. without progress, illy languishes. so i like "free as in beer" as much as anyone, but irl there are practical considerations to be served. as an example, illytools was fantastically successful in one sense...so successful, in fact, that some players might now wish that they'd paid something for it to keep it running. change almost inevitably makes winners and losers. in this case, some players who are either very busy irl or lack the training to play at the highest level of expertise "win", but they do so by supporting the game for everyone. those with much time on their hands or who have plumbed illy's secrets "lose", relatively speaking. having time irl is an arbitrary advantage that should probably be eliminated, especially if eliminating it earns revenue to support the game; curiosity and diligence will be advantages regardless of any changes discussed here. |
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Brandmeister
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Joined: 12 Oct 2012 Location: Laoshin Status: Offline Points: 2396 |
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Posted: 25 Dec 2014 at 16:05 |
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I have a similar situation. As a trader, I have transactions with quite a number of players, and I have many messages archived. I wouldn't let just anyone casually peruse those, although I have several people whom I would trust. I am also cautious about invitation rights to the alliance (although 90% of my sitters would be eCrow anyway).
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Captain Kindly
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Joined: 19 Aug 2011 Location: Fremorn Status: Offline Points: 276 |
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Posted: 25 Dec 2014 at 10:31 |
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The reason I am picky at sitters is because of my mailbox (which goes over 3 years back), not for war reasons. Note I am not in a war alliance. For the rest, what Brandmeister said about rolling over.
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Brandmeister
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Joined: 12 Oct 2012 Location: Laoshin Status: Offline Points: 2396 |
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Posted: 24 Dec 2014 at 20:29 |
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That is Captain Kindly's personal preference. It is not universal. Most players in an alliance have several sitters that they can trust. The challenge is more for alliance leaders, as their account includes access to many alliance functions. But an alliance without trustworthy members is hardly an alliance worth joining. The war minister feature seems primarily of interest in a war (not a tournament). If you cannot trust your comrades enough in a war to grant them temporary control of your account, I suggest you either find better comrades or else surrender.
As has been stated repeatedly on these forums, you can change army speeds and therefore launch times with a single piece of equipment. Your argument seems to boil down to: 1. you don't feel like investing the effort to learn how to time armies correctly, and 2. you don't feel like you can trust anyone to sit your account and launch armies on your behalf. Therefore you want a tool to do it for you automatically. There are plenty of people in this game who work for a living, don't stay up until 3 a.m., and still manage to launch armies on time by using their brains and a little careful planning. While the auto-launch concept may have merit, many of the arguments you have presented in its favor do not. |
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Rill
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Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 6903 |
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Posted: 24 Dec 2014 at 19:49 |
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Beyljr, I don't see a lot of people advocating for "stay up late to win." Most people agree that being able to send out an army a bit in advance would be a helpful option.
However, I do see people advocating that people should be rewarded for time spent interacting with the game, particularly in terms of collecting certain resources. Some resources are generated automatically in our cities: clay, iron, wood, stone, gold, etc. Others must be harvested from the world map through an interaction. It seems like one of your proposals is to automate this interaction too, and to me this sort of defeats the purpose of having these resources being out in the world and requiring interaction. The game is explicitly not pay to win, but "not requiring effort or sacrifice to win" is not anywhere in the game developers' stated values. Illy already does not have a lot of requirements for spending time character leveling or other aspects that characterize some other games. Your contention seems to be that if a player is willing to pay for it, he/she should be able to gain equivalent advantages from being online for under 10 minutes that other players might need to spend an hour or more to accomplish. I think this would lead to less interactions between players, which many people find to be one of the more satisfying parts of the game. Illy is at its heart, imo, two things: 1) a community and 2) a time-management strategy challenge -- both managing how to fit things into real time and how to fit things into the time one has to play Illy. Too much automation interferes with both those things.
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Beyljr
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Joined: 12 Mar 2014 Status: Offline Points: 157 |
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Posted: 24 Dec 2014 at 17:09 |
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I don't know where you got "imposing a template" from. This suggestion NEVER suggested imposing a template, or anything else for that matter. And there is a HUGE difference between a "spirit of adventure", and having whoever doesn't have to work for a living and therefore can stay up until 3 AM is the winner. I don't think that this game really wants to tell those that work for a living, and therefore can afford to pay for the prestige, that they are going to suffer a handicap because they can not afford to stay up until 3 AM to launch their army. That is not winning by strategy. All you have done is replaced "pay to win" with "stay up late to win". And that means that those that don't pay have the advantage over those that do, since it is those that don't pay because they are not employed, that can afford to stay up late. I am really amazed at how many people here favor a "stay up late to win" process. I personally don't see how that is any better than pay to win. If anything it is worse because it not only favors a select few, but does so at the expense of the game's finances. |
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Beyljr
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Posted: 24 Dec 2014 at 16:59 |
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So if I understand this correctly, the solution to "convenience" that people are giving here is "get a sitter", and getting a sitter "is mostly expected", yet they also realize that getting a sitter is not a "trusted" solution. Am I the only one that sees that these statements don't add up? |
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Albatross
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Joined: 11 May 2011 Status: Offline Points: 1118 |
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Posted: 23 Dec 2014 at 17:29 |
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Can this question be answered within the framework of the developer's own intentions for how the game should be played? I think the information is already out there (from about 3-4 years ago).
Aside from that, I have mixed feelings about automation. In no particular order:
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Captain Kindly
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Joined: 19 Aug 2011 Location: Fremorn Status: Offline Points: 276 |
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Posted: 23 Dec 2014 at 16:25 |
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You do not need a minister to dodge an attack late at night for you. As soon as an attack is sent, you get notified. If that army hits at, say, 3am you can give the order before going to bed, and occupy for a few hours. This is already common business now.
The only gain I see is for sending armies in a concerted war action. True war alliances have mastered the art of having their armies landing within seconds after each other. I know H? and NC did, I'm pretty sure T-O does, and some more alliances as well. That planning and devotion is what sets them apart, and I think it's a part of winning battles. It gives them an edge over less devoted alliances, and setting a minister to do it for you because the time is inconvenient takes part of that away from them. The same might go up in tournaments, but in a lesser way. Being late or early by a few hours has a lesser impact on tourney spots (in fact, I remember EE's first tournament where we won a spot exactly because a few players sent out 6+ hours late), because reaction time in tournaments is way longer than it is with a siege. So a war minister isn't needed there. As for sitters, if you are against using them I can understand that. There is currently only one player left in this game who I trust with sitting my account. But if that is a problem, you might want to stay out of military alliances, because having a sitter during operations is mostly expected there if you can't send on designated times. :) |
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