Noob protection, seriously? [factual discussion]

    • Noob protection, seriously? [factual discussion]

      Ok, so I'm going to be honest here.
      I started Origin being pretty sure that this version was going to be awful, and I wasn't wrong.
      I started Origin relatively late in the day, and therefore had my homeworld placed at the end of G3. In about a day and half of playing (without geeking, just in case), most of the people around me were all classified as newbies. The only players against whom I can actually engage with in an "honorable fight" are the ones I crash myself against, or at least as far as I can see until now. I haven't even built a single rocket launcher in the first 3 days, and when I say no one, I mean NO ONE has attacked me. I was top 2000 on a x4, for heaven's sake! I should have been attacked at least 30 times a day! I should wake up in the morning and see about 40 odd messages of espionnage and attack in my mailbox, and I barely get 5, and still they're only espionnage. OGame is supposed to be a tactical game. Who says tactical, says a game where you actually need to think 3 minutes about how to play so as to avoid being brought down by other player. This new version is only profitable for players who DO NOT play tactically. As far as I can tell, the people complaining about the noob protection not being strong enough are the ones who complain because they got attacked when they didn't fleetsave. I mean, seriously? You didn't fleetsave and you think you should still have a fleet anyway? What's the point of playing if the game plays itself? Sure, create a universe that only has miners, that way you're sure they'll get bored because they won't have to defend themselves from raiders, they'll be useless because their won't be any raiders to sell deuterium to, and the universe will die in what... 3 months? I thought the object of GF was to keep universes active, and that was what fusionating the universes was about. This version goes completely to the opposite of that, it's plain ridiculous. You only learn by making mistakes, and it's not by babying the newbies up until they're top 100 they're going to learn. They'll get bored because there IS nothing to learn.
      And do I really have to point out how idiotic tactical retreat is?? So according to you, a fleet behind bunker shouldn't be attackable without tactical retreat kicking in?! How does that make sense? You're encouraging players to build BUNKERS here, the ONE thing that basically kills universes unless everybody has a huge bunch of RIPs. And if everybody has a fleet of RIPs, then tactical retreat is useless as it doesn't apply to RIPs in the first place. As already said, OGame is about tactics, so what is the point of the game if the "tactical" part is done by the computer on it's own? At that point, get a bot to clic on the "upgrade mine" button on it's own, and it'll be round about the same thing.

      The only bright side to this new version is the fact that the mine percentages are on the same page as the mines themselves, which is a lot more practical. I also liked the speed being maxed out at the beginning, and then being slowed down. It gives the universe a jump start and makes the "tedious" part go by a lot faster, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't part of the V.3, just a way to see how it worked out faster.


      The only people who can actually believe this version is halfway decent are the people who don't know how to play and who rely on the game playing it's self because they don't want to learn how to play. If GF plans on losing all the good players, then way to go!

    • At this moment, we're not at the point where new changes even kick in. Right now beginners actually have less protection than they used to, because ratio is 1:10 now instead of 1:5.
      The difference will start to kick in about the time when top1000 folks will pass 5k mark. Before, at that point they'd lose protection from everyone, that includes the top raiders who massacre everything that is profitable and constitute most of the raids despite themselves being in small number. Now, they're still going to be protected from the top guys...for a while. Still plenty of mid-tier raiders capable of attacking them, but those mid-tier guys don't fly that much anyway, so I guess noobs life will be easier to some degree.

      P.S.> No idea, why you haven't been farmed on top 2k. I attacked guys like that like 70 times a day, must be a nice galaxy section you have there :)

      Tactical retreat....sucks. I guess I could live with that if it always was 1:5, but the admiral ratios are just ridiculous. The skill of balancing success rate \ deuterium cost \ fleet losses when deciding on fleet composition got even harder, and some strategies might've been eliminated (such as pure-BC low deuterium\losses when crushing a small fleet with superior force in mid-game, for example).
      There at least should be a way to see their current tactical retreat setting(please don't suggest attacking a colony with cargos first just to check the ratio...it's taking more time and complicates things and there's even a custom setting for every planet). Better yet, remove the admiral effect altogether.

    • In my opinion, Newbie protection should only exist to protect newbies. What I mean by "newbie", is someone who is just starting out and new to the game. This new protection system is simply protecting everybody from everything. The first 5k points use to give you the time to figure out how to be unattractive to higher players. Now their's no need to be unattractive, the higher players can't attack you anyway... For people who actually know ho to play, there is no sense in having a noob protection.

      And for honour points, how is the top 1 ever going to have positive honour points? He's obviously going to be the bad guy and attack people weaker than himself (oh how strange), and most top 100 fleets are not attractive to any single player without a group attack, by which time I imagine tactical retreat will kick in.
      I'm also still not clear on whether tactical retreat is based on the amount of fleet or the power of the fleet...

    • 1. Tactical retreat is supposed to solve problem of people leaving game because they lost whole fleet before they'd learned how to save their fleet. So IMHO it would be better if there were percentage of fleet which manages to flee (possibly with some tweaks depending on honour, strength, some randomization maybe). And this percentage could be limited from bottom and top. From bottom --- to save some fleet even after series of attacks. From top --- to force players to start learning other ways of saving fleet than using only tactical retreat. It could be modeled inside combat, e.g. if one side is loosing, its ships would flee after n-th round of fight --- good for a fleeter newbie encountering an ambush for the first time.

      2. Newbie protection (in form of impossibility of attack on a too weak player) --- it could also be gradually changing. Till 5k it could be the old 20% of points diff max, then till e.g. 50k it could be 15% and till 500k 10%. This way real newbies would see two steps in intensity of attacks before the noob protection would be removed completely. And the 5k, 50k, 500k and 10%, 15%, 20% are only as an example, I think that it should be thoroughly checked in logs of different servers at which level people still do very stupid things commonly.

    • Just have to qoute myself, from another tread i posted in today...

      Unfortunatly this new flee system makes the new Ogame to a Miners Paradis.
      Later in game, when miners and turtles are barried behind their huge defence, there's nothing you can do. They can have their 10.000 s of large cargos safe behind their huge defences, without ever fleetsaving.
      The only thing you can do is to make enough fleet, to go throug the defence, and grap a few ress.... And that's not really what Ogame is about, I think...
      I know a guy, that has the record..? in rl defence. He has 2.000.000 rl + a lot of other defence. Now, you need a serious fleet to get through that defence. and without beeing abel to take down the NOT FLEET SAVED cargos.. do I need to say anymore?
      It might be okay with the new military system, but defence HAS to be calculated into the ratio. Otherwise Ogame soon will be only for miners.
      I find it very odd that a player ranked 50 ranks above me( I'm rank 120), is in the "soft noob protection", a white player, as I call them, which means if I attack, it will be a dishonourble fight. And what ever he has of fleet, will flee. I still haven't found out how that system works.... why he is a "soft noob" enen though he's 50 ranks above me. And another player 300 rank under me, is a yellow player. Now I know that this early in game, there's not a big defference in points between us, but still. A higer rank player is "hands off" while a much low rank player is "go ahead"

      Here I wnat to ask a question, my self. In the combat report is says
      "(Please note that death stars, espionage probes, solar satellites and held fleets cannot flee. Even during honourable battles, no fleet escape will take place. An escape may also have been manually deactivated or prevented by a lack of deuterium.) "

      Does that mean that if it is a yellow player, even though my fleet is more than 1:5 agains his, his fleet will not flee?


      Now if GF had taken the time to look at Francolinos BRILLIANT suggestion a year ago, THAT noob protection could have benefit ALL. Noobs, miners and off course fleeters. But STILL - you have to take care of the acc, otherwise you'll get crashed.

      Use the lost resources of a combat

      When I made a discusien at my home-board, 99% of the people just LOVED the idea. One didn't, but he doesn't like any improvements. he hats acs, he hates BC, he hates... well you get the idea...

      Ogame IS a game, where you HAVE to be active from time to time. You can't "save the game and leave the game until next time you bother to pop in"
      So people that complains about getting attacked becourse they were off line a few days.... :lol:

      In the old Ogame (also re-design) you have to take care of the acc, but with the new system, you don't have to, if you're a miner - and after a short while, when the fleeters finds out that it's almost impossble to get to thoses 10.000's of cargos, they leave the game - and soon it's a miners paradis.

      Of course you have the fights between fleeters, but if you ARE a fleeter, you also know how to take care of your fleet, and to catch a good fleeter, he has to "be a sleep" to make a bad move - and then you have to be so lucky to discover this - in time.
      I'm not saing that fleeters only goes after miners, because THEY'RE NOT.
      This it just some thoughts about the defence not beeing calculated into the ratio, that the fleet can flee at all - instead of like Francolino suggested, the normal 30% goes to the attacker, 50% back to the defender, and the last 20%... flies out to random people - or get lost totally.





    • razuls wrote:

      1. Tactical retreat is supposed to solve problem of people leaving game because they lost whole fleet before they'd learned how to save their fleet. So IMHO it would be better if there were percentage of fleet which manages to flee (possibly with some tweaks depending on honour, strength, some randomization maybe). And this percentage could be limited from bottom and top. From bottom --- to save some fleet even after series of attacks. From top --- to force players to start learning other ways of saving fleet than using only tactical retreat. It could be modeled inside combat, e.g. if one side is loosing, its ships would flee after n-th round of fight --- good for a fleeter newbie encountering an ambush for the first time.
      Well, about a year ago this fantastic idea was made, and that would for sure have helped the newbies, without hurting the fleeters - or anybody else..

      http://board.origin.ogame.de/board6-orig…es-of-a-combat/