The strong and the weak

[Arctic]

I am still new, and have not yet had the opportunity to engage or defend in player combat. I do however know that one of the biggest problems new games have with getting off the ground is trying to keep people interested, and keep people playing. The usual thing you see in every new game is that there are a handful of people that have been around since the beginning, and buy time newer people come in, they pretty much get crushed before they can achieve anything significant, then move on to try a different game.

I'm not sure the enjoyment some stronger players have over completely devouring the weak, but it's a common attribute of many online gamers. But, if the people truly enjoy playing the game, then they need to make sure the game is successful by seeing the player population growing and becoming more involved.

One method that can be used to discourage older players from scaring away newer players can be a form of diminishing returns. What this means is that if a player with a very high power rating goes after someone with a much less power rating, then the reward from the encounter will be diminished. Thus, making the expense of pulling off such an annihilation not worth the reward. You can picture it as attacking something with excessive technology will lead to vaporizing your enemy as opposed to dismantling and occupying their resources for looting. Now, there will still always be those that will wipe out a smaller player just because they get some strange kick out of it, but it can help make sure that players try to stick more to fighting their own tier for a more enjoyable challenge.

I know there will be the argument of the food chain and Darwinism, but the basic fact is the game will only survive if people play. I would say at least 80+ percent of the games I've been a part of beta testing have not withstood the test of time.

Arctic

[JamJulLison]

1. Emi already did an update making it so people get less from looting then the total there.  So returns are already diminished.

2. In order to effectively attack weaker targets, we have to power down our ships to lower the attack time. Otherwise it gives the other person lots of time to react.  Example being my raiding ship.  I usually power it down to about 11-12k power when raiding mines.  This means not many lasers powered up and not many shields if any at all. So if the person being raided happened to come online during that time it wouldn't be hard to get a ship there and do some damage to my raiding ship.  Of course if the attacker were to notice you the attack timer would increase and they likely would power up more.  This of course gives you plenty of time to get your mines off the planet or at least unload them and get out of there.  This is provided of course they don't hit you when you are offline.

3. A lot of the people even raiding in Sol actively now and in 0,0 are other newbies.

4. Let me also say this. When I joined there were people already a lot stronger then me. Including a few other pirates. Now I am stronger then the both of them.

5. Newbies already now have 30 days of protection unless they get above 20k points or attack someone.

6. It is pretty easy to be a newbie now. If you follow the tips I posted up on here you should do fine.

[Arctic]

Rock on. I did not know the diminishing returns thing was already in effect, I guess that makes this post unneeded. Thanks for the info on that!

Arctic

[JamJulLison]

Rock on. I did not know the diminishing returns thing was already in effect, I guess that makes this post unneeded. Thanks for the info on that!

Arctic

Your welcome.  the update it occurred in happened in december. The only thing a player can use to dominate with a larger ship a lot really is speeding up attacks with QP.  If someone is looking for profit they are not likely going to want to do that.

http://forum.astro-galaxy.com/index.php/topic,8272.0.html