You can post a summary with feedback from your national community here.

Replies in progress !

OK, WeTeHa said I should post feedback from ogame.org discussion here at Origin and that he will see it.... so sorry for the wall-o-text!

Early Feedback on the noob protection plans from ogame.org community:

This is a summary of some of the points raised in the first 200 replies of the discussion of the new protection proposals at ogame.org with inclusion of a few of my own thoughts.

Commonly used comment “this is not OGame!” Funniest “this is not Farmville!”

Generally people agreed that some changes were required to the noob protection, but are in shock at the extent of the changes proposed. Some people await the trials with interest. There’s a feeling of let’s test it and then vote on it (not the majority feeling though).

Many people have expressed their disappointment at the lack of visible progress with the Universe merger plans and current bug fixes and the fact that the programmers have apparently instead been concentrating on these elaborate noob protection features.

A lot of people have been happy with the merger proposals announcement and they really felt as though GF were listening to the users, but this modified protection has now left them fearful that changes will occur that the vast majority of the community do not want and that GF does not care for their needs. I’m confident that GF listens and that’s why I’m compiling this summary for them.


Older Universes:
Serious concerns about this being implemented in the older universes. People want assurances that it won’t happen. There are concerns that this becomes a scenario where the developers are looking after 2 codes and that eventually prompts a unification process where the older universes get the new features. As I understand it, this is not the case and these features will be included in the code with an on/off switch? So in effect the older universes will already have it in their game, but just not enabled. If this is the case then people may become more optimistic that these will not be implemented in the older universes.



Fleet Escape:
This feature has attracted the vast majority of negative feedback of all the proposed changes. Comments often reflect on the point that OGame survives on the no fleetsave=no fleet principle and that this idea kills that basic component of the gameplay. They say this will kill fleeters and fleetsaving, making players lazy about fleetsaving and preventing the new players from ever learning the “proper way to play”. There is a strong feeling that this shows bias toward turtles and miners. Some feel that the fleeters will be forced into playing as miners and get bored and leave.

Someone took a look through one of the HOF sections and pointed out that there was not one single hit posted there that was within the 5:1 fleet escape category and it was also noted that many early CR’s for a new universe would also be affected. Many people are concerned by this ratio and the fleeters are all concerned that it will kill fleeting. Those who show some consideration of the idea suggest that the ratio is increased to benefit the fleeter. How was this ratio determined? Did it take into consideration the fleet required for zero losses in a battle? I think we need to give some proper working examples of how this will work, examples where a fleeter can still gain and also examples of how costly it will be for the defender in terms of deut.

There are many arguments in favour of including defensive structures into the ratio. Turtle miners will be protected. One person proposed an adjustment to the ratio that was weighted for different types of defense, so some defensive strutures have more value in adjusting the ratio than others. This would need some thought though to get right. Another suggested weighting the proportion of fleet that can escape in proportion to the relative strengths of the attacker and defender. So more closely matched opponent in the ranking system= Least amount of fleet escapes.

It was pointed out that IPM assaults will become more commonplace because the defense is not included in the 5:1 ratio. Players finding their defences totally wiped are more likely to become demoralised and quit than those who had a 70% rebuild after an attack. Possibly the fleeters would not be prepared to take the cost of the IPM assault and that would deter the attack but in reality only time will tell of that.

There are strong complaints about the Admiral being able to adjust the ratio.


Ranking system:
More in-depth explanation of the military ranking please. People are intrigued by this but it is not clear enough how it will work.


Hideouts:
Having looked at how the hideouts work in a newly registered account, I have myself concerns that the cost:benefit ratio is not well-considered. The idea of these is that they are supposed to benefit new players. However, I would not be willing to invest 14k of resource to simply protect 1.2k of deut early in the game. I predict that they will only be built later on in the gameplay when people are already well-established in gameplay. Those resources are better invested in other things at that early stage of the game. I agree however with them not taking any field space since the new design has smaller planets. I’d like to see a full breakdown of how much each level will cost and what it will protect and where the upper cap will be (if there is one).

Others have called for this to use field spaces and also for an upper limit to be placed on how much can be protected.


Honour system:
Not many comments, some people like the idea .. A few have included it in their dislikes. There was a suggestion to only reward the “good” people rather than the evil bullies.


Noob protection ratio:
Some people have suggested that it should be a broader ratio, e.g. 20:1 so fleeters have more targets. Others think there should still be some upper limit at which the protection goes completely.

Someone suggested that you capthe protection on a relative position in the universe. E.g Top 25% can all attack each other but below that the 1:10 applies.
Some simply like the idea of instead increasing the current noob protection 5k cap to over 100k points (eg. 500k). Concurrent with that, others have suggested allowing an option to switch off your noob protection (for the confident “pro” players)


Other interesting ideas:
GF should think of more ways to educate the new players in gameplay tactics etc. Someone suggested including a regular fleetsave mission as part of the tutorial, e.g Send a fleet on a mission of 8hours+ duration for 3 consecutive days; this would help teach some fleetsave principles. Reward with something like 1 week commander or a good amount of DM.

Another proposal was to allow a delayed auto-fleet rebuild for a new player who got attacked. Some percentage of their fleet recovered after an attack (e.g 30%) while they are within a noob protected category. There would need to be a limit placed on how long this protection occurs (Delayed rebuild to prevent waves, perhaps holding in space for upto 24hrs with a recall button for the defender, if they are not called back within 24hrs of the attack then they are lost?). You could utilise the Admiral to increase the percentage of fleet recovered.


I hope I have covered most of the points raised and general feelings, the other .org admins will hopefully fill any gaps in my interpretation.

Replies for OGame.org - in progress


General / Early Feedback on the noob protection plans from ogame.org community:

• Uni fusion (Ogame 2.0) and protection of weaker users (Ogame 3.0) are two separated, independent developments. The uni fusion development is at the end, and a couple of bugfixes is coming soon.
  
  

Older Universes:

• Sure things :
  - The complete new feature "protection of weaker user" with all the settings and details comes only to new universes, not to existing ones.
  - All existing universes won't get the complete new feature "protection of weaker user" with all the settings and details.
  
  
• What does this mean for current existing universes ?
  - First, they keep the current noob protection for a longer time, cause GF want to collect the experiences from the testserver and the first live universes with this feature to make the final decision.
  - Then there are two possible decisions :
  -- The universes keep the old noob protection as it is without any change. Like all the other features (Speed, DF ratio, .... ) all settings for the old and new noob protection are changeable - and switchable, so they don't need two code versions.
  -- These universes get some parts of the new feature, but in the case of the protection functions with much reduced settings. For example the permanent protection ratio will set to 1:100 instead of 1:10.
  

Hideouts:

• The capacity depends on the universe speed, cause the formula includes the current production per hour of a mine (with the same level as the hideout has)
  
  
• They are very expensive in comparison to their capacity. Therefore they don't need planet fields or a limit and they have no effect in the later game.
  
  
• Costs (metal) and capacity of a metal & crystal hideout in a normal speed universe :
  Level 1 - cost 2.645 - cap. 660
  Level 5 - cost 74.017 - cap. 4.820
  Level 10 - cost 4.764.047 - cap. 15.560
  Level 15 - cost 306.630.520 - cap. 37.580
  The crystal hideout needs also crystal to build it, 50% of the metal costs.
  
  
• Costs (metal) and capacity of a deuterium hideout in a normal speed universe :
  Level 1 - cost 2.645 - cap. 440
  Level 5 - cost 74.017 - cap. 3.200
  Level 10 - cost 4.764.047 - cap. 10.360
  Level 15 - cost 306.630.520 - cap. 25.040
  The deuterium hideout needs also crystal to build it, same as the metal costs.
  

Noob protection ratio:

• --