Dear Martin and the rest of the crew, it's almost 4 years now since the first Universe mergers within the project, most of which have given an inspiring boost to the local events, yet unfortunately, the pattern which your team has followed while doing those, has also brought a feeling of ridicule and fraud towards your most dedicated, long-time standard 1x Universe players.
Apparently, it wasn't done due to some prepense malign intent, but at the same time, the harm it has caused to the balance of the standard 1x Universes, is irreversible. The source of the problem lied in the idea that in order to increase the overall community's activity, it's all green-lights to combine the standard, 1x/30% debris Universes with those of a Special, distinct economy/debris or speed origin.
Unfortunately, as the majority of us, year 2005 veterans knows, this isn't anything close to truth or capabilities equality. We've been observing this over and over at Infuza, have seen dozens of unknown "top" nicknames popping literally out of nowhere simply because at some point back in time, you haven't said: "Dear customers, we have thought about it and deem that it'll be fair if we'll be merging the Universes according to their initial settings, where anything special will keep pace with realms of the same basic criteria" (just like it did recently with the Universe 35.org > Quantum.org migration, where everything turned out all-right).
And since you preferred to sacrifice this rational scheme in the name of facilitating a more carefree own team's environment, it reflected in the form of spawning hundreds of pushed right-to-the-top accounts, where the staff in charge of the mergers obtained a token of the most-renowned pushers across the project. It's my sincere belief that it was more an overlook than a deliberate decision, yet at the same time, it's a little bit hard to accept for those who have stayed in the game for over 10 years to simply find themselves outraced in the common and fleet points by the accounts relocated from the Special Universes by values which can't be called anything else, but ridiculous (3 times stronger in fleets, account's economy or both at once). And ironically, the game's portal itself does maintain this kind of ladder, meaning it's acknowledged as an official classification table, where the purpose, I believe, is watch after a certain player's skill, and not his ability to settle within the right, Special Realm in order for it to be merged into the Standard, Universe 1 cluster some time after. Unless it's your company's official outlook on how one should blaze his trail to the World's top 1... Sure enough that in the end, it all can simply be referred to as "virtual numbers" and "a good source of income", but paying a certain share of respect to the balancing design aspect, it's just not the way how things should logically be advanced forward.
It's all about your team's choice in the end, but please, do considerate the fact that those who were your loyal playerbase for more than 10 years are more than aware of the actual game mechanics inherent to standard Universes, and ultimately, every time you merge a Special Universe into the Standard one, they feel as if Gameforge contradicts the original OGame spirit introduced by Alexander Rösner.
There may be some who will inquire why it was also addressed to the Development team, the reason is, actually, very simple: in the scope of highlighted facts, I'm also filing in the proposal to adjust the Unifusion tool on the program level the way so that it'll simply disallow any non-standard (differing from x1 speed, x1 economy, x1 flight times & 30% debris fields) Universes to be integrated with those of aforementioned parameters, so that the tool itself will have a certain recognition mechanism of what should or should not be done regardless of who exactly supervises the merger, let's call it a balance-upholding protection. For example, it'll know that 5x Universes can only be merged with the same, 5x speed Universes, but, it can allow them to include certain distinctions such as admissible 30%-40% difference in the debris fields. At the same time, the script will restrict certain undesirable, imbalanced actions such as attempts to merge a realm with 60% debris loot into the standard x1 Universe with 30% debris drops, as it recently happened with the Spanish Kassiopeia which was moved into Andromeda. It might require some additional time to implement a feature like this, but in the long run, it'll be tremendously helpful in terms of maintaining a rational game balance.
Thanks for the attention.
Apparently, it wasn't done due to some prepense malign intent, but at the same time, the harm it has caused to the balance of the standard 1x Universes, is irreversible. The source of the problem lied in the idea that in order to increase the overall community's activity, it's all green-lights to combine the standard, 1x/30% debris Universes with those of a Special, distinct economy/debris or speed origin.
Unfortunately, as the majority of us, year 2005 veterans knows, this isn't anything close to truth or capabilities equality. We've been observing this over and over at Infuza, have seen dozens of unknown "top" nicknames popping literally out of nowhere simply because at some point back in time, you haven't said: "Dear customers, we have thought about it and deem that it'll be fair if we'll be merging the Universes according to their initial settings, where anything special will keep pace with realms of the same basic criteria" (just like it did recently with the Universe 35.org > Quantum.org migration, where everything turned out all-right).
And since you preferred to sacrifice this rational scheme in the name of facilitating a more carefree own team's environment, it reflected in the form of spawning hundreds of pushed right-to-the-top accounts, where the staff in charge of the mergers obtained a token of the most-renowned pushers across the project. It's my sincere belief that it was more an overlook than a deliberate decision, yet at the same time, it's a little bit hard to accept for those who have stayed in the game for over 10 years to simply find themselves outraced in the common and fleet points by the accounts relocated from the Special Universes by values which can't be called anything else, but ridiculous (3 times stronger in fleets, account's economy or both at once). And ironically, the game's portal itself does maintain this kind of ladder, meaning it's acknowledged as an official classification table, where the purpose, I believe, is watch after a certain player's skill, and not his ability to settle within the right, Special Realm in order for it to be merged into the Standard, Universe 1 cluster some time after. Unless it's your company's official outlook on how one should blaze his trail to the World's top 1... Sure enough that in the end, it all can simply be referred to as "virtual numbers" and "a good source of income", but paying a certain share of respect to the balancing design aspect, it's just not the way how things should logically be advanced forward.
It's all about your team's choice in the end, but please, do considerate the fact that those who were your loyal playerbase for more than 10 years are more than aware of the actual game mechanics inherent to standard Universes, and ultimately, every time you merge a Special Universe into the Standard one, they feel as if Gameforge contradicts the original OGame spirit introduced by Alexander Rösner.
There may be some who will inquire why it was also addressed to the Development team, the reason is, actually, very simple: in the scope of highlighted facts, I'm also filing in the proposal to adjust the Unifusion tool on the program level the way so that it'll simply disallow any non-standard (differing from x1 speed, x1 economy, x1 flight times & 30% debris fields) Universes to be integrated with those of aforementioned parameters, so that the tool itself will have a certain recognition mechanism of what should or should not be done regardless of who exactly supervises the merger, let's call it a balance-upholding protection. For example, it'll know that 5x Universes can only be merged with the same, 5x speed Universes, but, it can allow them to include certain distinctions such as admissible 30%-40% difference in the debris fields. At the same time, the script will restrict certain undesirable, imbalanced actions such as attempts to merge a realm with 60% debris loot into the standard x1 Universe with 30% debris drops, as it recently happened with the Spanish Kassiopeia which was moved into Andromeda. It might require some additional time to implement a feature like this, but in the long run, it'll be tremendously helpful in terms of maintaining a rational game balance.
Thanks for the attention.
The post was edited 3 times, last by Smoke Nightvogue ().