Thank you for the suggestion, it seems like a good idea

Vacation mode is not meant to be used instead of fleetsaving, I think GameForge can use this idea to make something out of it but let's see

Totally agreed with this (almost all), I am sick of these players that pop in and out every 2 days. They can pop out and hit someone making a great profit then jump right back into vmode to protect themselves from retaliation. This is unjustified and has been going on way to long. I think if you hit vmode then you must wait 5 days before you can come out of vmode, this will give the weekly worker who does not have the time to play during the week but can play on weekends. But no matter something must be done about this because it is unfair to many players.

I suggest to implement this idea in a more simple way ........... decide an amounts of time that is possible to start v-mode in a year (no matter for how long you will stay in v-mode).

So for example number could be 365/7 = 52 (or less)

Yes a limitation on how many times you can go into v-mode is a good idea, if you play normally and fleetsave then a lot of v-mode is not necessary anyway so it will keep people from abusing it

And if they need more v-mode when they have runned out, then maybe they can write to a GO with a reason on why they need some more v-mode so the GO can put them into v-mode if the reason is good enough

That's the only downside, that people will try to abuse it anyway and then when they really need a v-mode then they have runned out of it

I have a better idea: leave everything associated with V-Mode alone and not involve the Dev Team into delivering another needless V-Mode-affecting feature (such as the inability to monitor the Galaxy) which will, in the end, decrease the number of active fleetrunners in aging Universes. The only outcome I can foresee from the expressed is less thrilling battles, and less action overall.

Maybe there will be less battles, but there will be less clever and less players that think to be power becose use v-mode instead of fleetsave

If they're playing like that, they're obviously doing it for a reason, which is most-likely the lack of time to meet the returning fleetsaves everyday. I simply don't see a proper reason of driving a players group of certain age (30+) out of the game because someone feels like those are ought to fleetsave day-by-day. No, they're not: this is the game and everyone develops his/her play style according to own busyness and convenience.

Yes they are doing it for a reason, 1 to save on deut (when you have a huge fleet to FS even in same system) 2 to use it for protection (after popping out of vmode & hit someone then jump back into vmode) most of these players do this knowing that they will sleep well at night knowing as long as they are in vmode no one can do anything to them and then every 2 days when they do pop out they stay on ALL day long untill they vmode again making it "completely" impossible for anyone to get revenge. If you become a simple bully (or thug) then you will be on most players poop list and need to worry but if the game is played as it was designed to be played and you play "correctly" then you have no need to worry like most of us.
Here is another thought, you can not vmode more then once a week......Period

I must say this is the best idea for the vmode I heard so far. I would just change the duration a bit. 110 Days in vmode should be ok, that way you could vmode each weekend. But the vmodesavers still couldn't abuse it because it doesn't give them that much time to spend in vmode.
I know multiple player that just simply vmode on the weekend because they just want to have free time and not need to check for their fleets/moons to still be alive.

As I said other times, I like anything like this that goes in this direction. I don't know if here, or in Spanish community, I already proposed the idea of a certain number of times allowed to exit vmode (in my suggestion it was 4 per month). My suggestion was not even to give some mandatory time on v-mode, just 4 times allowed to exit v-mode per month. So one might want to use those carefully. After the fourth time is used, no one can leave v-mode until next month. Even allowing someone to put v-mode for 4h and let them start being active again could be okey, but they just burned one ticket, only three left per month. No need for that, still the 24h forced could be okey, but it was in that direction.

As someone said, that could be also yearly (may be debate what makes more sense, 4 monthly, or 52 yearly, for instance).

Also, the proposed in this thread is nice: to find a better “rule” or “algorithm” of how v-mode works to ensure a more active game is taken for more people.

There's only a but (that this forum discussed some time ago): in the past one of the things that I think were the most important to the game was the fact that one could fleetsave for 8h for very little price (recycling to own coordinates) being sure that a moon wouldn't pop in that time. That was essential.

If we force people to play active, we need to give players that security again in some way.

The change would be that would be less moon pops probably, and less fleetsaves seeing during the night, but the rest of the day will be similar. x4 or x5 fleet speed universes “worked” even with x4-x5 fleetspeed because there was no insta-click at the beginning, and that did still provide some security, but nowadays a moon can be popped in 1h or a bit more, and that IS what stops people from playing actively.

So YES to this suggestion (or the one with a limited number of times to exit vmode per month/year), but don't forget that people play that way NOT ONLY because of laziness, but because the current game makes it impossible to survive in some cases. So give back the security players once had, and then remove that power that the current vmode has by limiting its use


EDIT: I just thought a bit about this suggestion... and I think it's too violent. It forces people to play but does not respect those that might want to actually v-mode. Lets say I decide to stop playing an universe, but I still know people there, I still like to be curious about the ranking, I still like my account (just for some reason stopped playing in that universe), and in my case I'm a miner. That means that I cannot log in for more than 110 days in a year because otherwise my account would be kicked out of v-mode? I think that's actually a problem and doesn't ensure I will go back to being active. (Just an example to show that this people exist, not the best example, but they exist, people that are not abusing v-mode but still need to be in v-mode, I hope you understand)

In that regard, I think the X times per Y amount of time is better, and less harmless. It hits more near the right spot, I think.
And also thinking about 52 times per year or 4-5 times per month, I think it's better 4-5 times per month. Not only good for the universe, but also good for gameforge. If one lets the users use 52 freely, some might abuse them right at the beginning and might be forced to leave the account off for months, if just 4-5 per month are allowed, people are surely able to play at least every month.

In that case it could be also allowed to pile up until say 6-7 for players that don't put v-mode, so they can get up to 6-7 for one month (not more, that would be abuse) and that way people that are active are rewarded so if after 6 months without v-mode they hit a few days of personal problems they could use more than 4-5 that month (after using all, the counter resets, and starts again from 4-5 per month). Just to say ideas in many directions.

In any case, the intention of this change is GREAT!

Yes in high speed universes the deathstar can travel fast enough, so it's easier to do moon destructions that way and it might be the reason for people to use v-mode more often. We could also make some kind of survey to get some data on why people use vacation mode so often instead of fleetsaving, I think maybe it could help develop a good solution to the v-mode abuse problem for everyone, just an idea

This is a great idea, anything is better then what you have now. The 48 hour rule accomplished nothing.

Yeah, the "scrapped due to general discomfort & the lack of desire to continue playing a fleeter" option will achieve much more, and that's what my predicted outcome of the suggested scheme is. I really don't understand why someone stands under the impression she's able introducing surefire assumptions of how often do I enter V-Mode or visit a v-modded account to acquire economy boosters, which I'm doing on about 4 of those "blued out" ones on a constant basis (about 250+ days a year), moving out of V-Mode just to perform some casual raids or level-up mines.

The ending result will be more scrapped fleets, although if there's certain doubt from some poster's side - go ahead and convince "the guys with the button" it's a brilliant idea, just to see one year later how it all reverberates. And no, I'm not an actively-fleeting v-modder, but really, that has no relation to the expressed by myself herein, it's just so that "the 7 days of inactivity checker" concept is bad.

As overall I agree with the idea, I think that Smoke Nightvogue is right about inactivity checker. My suggestion here would be to maybe instead to check if player is inactive for 7 days, to check if player is constantly in vmode for 7 days. This is because I don't think that lots of vmode players are staying vmode for over 7 days. I have seen some of vmode players in Bermuda, and I am constantly observing their behavior which is usually vmode for 2 days then attack and back to vmode. I also think that the counter for vmode length should base on inactivity. For example here, about month ago I was ill and I knew that I wont be able to play ogame, so I have entered vacation mode. Even through I been on vacation mode and I generally felt very badly, I tried to log in every day from my phone to acquire items, so I do not lose as much when I am ill. I am sure that there will be other players that are entering vmode for similar reason - illness, family reasons, job or anything else which I can't think of. And I am also sure that among those players there will be the ones that will login everyday to acquire daily items, or to send message to their alliance members.

I already wrote to OP by private to not add too much to this thread, but to @vakus and @Smoke Nightvogue: what do you think about the concept of limiting the amount of times someone can disable v-mode per month? That way, if you already went active from v-mode more than 4 or 5 times that month, the next time you put v-mode you won't be able to disable v-mode until next month. That doesn't hurt those in this particular situation (being in v-mode, but not actually “abusing v-mode” per se).

If someone is actually active, he will moderate their abuse of those “ticket to exit v-mode” and won't put v-mode that often; and that way the time in v-mode is not the key point to determine wether someone is active or not. In that case if someone plays more than 4 days a month, that guy will need not to abuse v-mode, because he will only be able to play just 4 days a month otherwise.

But I agree with you both that NOT any player that logs in every day is an active player.
Still, I feel like a change in this direction is needed, an incentive to come back to the “active life” of OGame would be great.
Of course, that needs a change in the game; it's not that people don't have time for the game, but that people don't have time for the current situation of OGame due to many changes over the years.

EDIT: Oh, I just reread, and to @TGWo and @ErikFyr: the problem you found by yourself is solved by not limiting the amount of times one puts v-mode, but the amount of times one leaves v-mode. That little change solves it

@Minion Well I think that your suggestion sounds reasonable, and I would be happy myself to see it implemented

I think we had a similar discussion many years ago within the specified thread: if there's anything to be amended in how V-Mode functions in the existing form, I personally would have tried to follow the outlines provided by Kwinse, with brought-in simplification that time required to be spent in V-Mode trivially increases by 24 hours each time it's utilized throughout the month (2 days, 3 days, etc.), with a cap of 120 hours which translates into 5 days. And after 30 days have passed, that counter gets reset to the standard 2 days.