Closing Islands ?

[Azerax]

I would prefer to lose a 2 character island over a 1 character island.

[^ban^]

I don't think the numbering and pathing is such a serious issue. Add a digit as a continental identifier, and voilà. There wouldn't be any more ferry routes, and sea zones don't look overly complicated to code.

I will personally find and murder anyone that attempts to do this to the database.

[Chenier]

The merging of the continents, by increasing the number of neighbors everyone has, should increase potential interactions and thus fun for everyone, in turn, hopefully, improve retention.

I'm also not sold on the whole freeze idea... so many stories just left suspended? Will any of those stories ever truly come back, even if the continent is ever unfrozen? The players won't all be there anymore, and those that aren't won't remember properly what they were doing. It would probably be awkward.

Maybe I'm being too insistent (do tell me), but I think leaving things dynamic and in the hands of players, as much as possible, would be best. Rogue spawns (make them cover a whole continent if necessary, hopefully as a result of an abuse of scrolls of summons) would help achieve this: too few players in the game would make reclaiming and then defending these regions from the rogues impossible, and only with enough surplus nobles on the other continents could a colonization effort become viable. If there is ever a great surplus of nobles, then forging new realms would become quite feasible, while attempting it with a low noble density would be it quite risky and likely to fail. Essentially turning a continent (or two) into a new wild frontier, much like Dwilight's western half was for quite some time. Doing something the Zuma were supposed to do but would never be able to.

Personally, I think players would be less sore to see their whole continent roamed by rogues than having it permanently frozen or blighted or sunk. At least, overrun, they can still entertain the hope of mounting efforts to recolonize it. It might bring a lot of PvE, though... so I guess BT would be the ideal first target, since that's the #1 PvE continent. But still, plenty of ways to keep it as much PvP as possible.

[Vellos]

I'll just put an idea out there I've suggested before:

Rotating freeze. Don't freeze a continent forever. Here's a hypothetical schedule for freezing:
Every 6 months, the player count will be reviewed.
For every 150 players who logged in, one continent will be kept open for the next 6 months.
Continents will be frozen or unfrozen on a regular, rotating schedule.

So, say our schedule is:

Dwilight, EC, Atamara, Beluaterra, Colonies, FEI

If we discover that we need to freeze two continents this next period, we freeze Dwilight and EC.

Then in 6 months, we review again. If we find we still need to freeze two continents, we unfreeze Dwilight and EC, and freeze Atamara and Beluaterra. If the next time we find, hey, we only need to freeze one, we unfreeze Atamara and Beluaterra, and freeze the colonies. And so on around and around.

This would have several effects:
1. Feud would be regularly put on pause, giving players some "cooldown time."
2. Everybody would get frozen eventually, and have an incentive to make new characters on new continents they haven't played before.
3. "New" continents would constantly be opening, i.e. every year or two a continent would be gone for 6 months, and, when it came back, people would be excited to get involved in it again.
4. Many players would be super pissed off I'm sure that, despite possibly having an awesome plotline or a popular realm or continent, their spot got frozen.

Somebody will be upset no matter how we do this. But I think we should avoid just putting a continent into cold-storage, effectively ending all those plotlines for the forseeable future. Rather, we can reduce the number of active continents, and rotate which continent has to back up for a breather.

Imagine the tension if you knew your continent was next up for a freeze and you were in a war with one month to go. I think instances of the use of the phrase "Winter is coming" would increase fifty-fold, and many people would see it as kind of a "natural chapter marker." We could add to in-game calendars with "The Freeze of Irombro's Secession" or whatever. It would give players an endgame with a pause afterwards where they could escalate to a climactic moment of violence and backstabbing, then back off for thought and commentary and planning for six months.

[Ketchum]

I like the freeze option suggested. In this way, indirectly we help the players to hang on and stay tuned for the next plot unfold, the story to be continue... :)

By the way, do you all know why people prefer Colonies island 1 turn a day? Because it is slow moving and suit us who like to play slow paced game 8)

[Zakilevo]

ICE AGE!

[Jaden]

I also thought of something like a Sleeping Beauty analogy, where every person in the kingdom is stopped in time.
I had second thoughts about it because of the difficulties of keeping all the history in tact. Once the island reopens, it will be hard for people to remember how things were back then and all the realm history unless there is a crazy amount of documentation of everything..

[Eduardo Almighty]

Another way to make people give up and seek another game.

There's no way to build up a history for your character if they will pause them against their will to make them join another island with fresh characters... again against their will. Characters that with this "freeze" will need more than the years we already have to spend to build up something.

We already have a turn-based game... now, impose turns with more than a month is absurd. I doubt most of us have patience, impetus or desire to plan something for 6 months. It's like to play Risk with a slug.

By the way, do you all know why people prefer Colonies island 1 turn a day? Because it is slow moving and suit us who like to play slow paced game 

Yes, but I played there and I had to wait for weeks for a battle, and not a battle we can compare with another battles in another continents. We have just one island with one turn, and I doubt there is more slow players than people engaged in two-turns wars.

[Geronus]

Another way to make people give up and seek another game.

There's no way to build up a history for your character if they will pause them against their will to make them join another island with fresh characters... again against their will. Characters that with this "freeze" will need more than the years we already have to spend to build up something.

We already have a turn-based game... now, impose turns with more than a month is absurd. I doubt most of us have patience, impetus or desire to plan something for 6 months. It's like to play Risk with a slug.

Do you prefer one of the other alternatives? Or is this the least bad option?

[Foundation]

I don't think there will be any plans for periodic rotating freezing of islands. If freezing is done, it will be indefinitely to single islands. As Tom said, a criteria for reopening could be a minimum player count.

If you disagree with this original flavour of freezing in favour of some other solution, please voice your opinion. I will say that I doubt that any type of merging can be seriously considered due to the sheer dev effort required.

[Wolfang]

freezing is good

[Jaden]

I think there's 3 main choices now? (please add more yourself)
Blighting regions (through whatever means)
pros: will keep history of realms and island intact, minimal distruption to most players out of all option (disputable)
cons: makes islands smaller and possibly less dynamic, may effect balance of power in the island, difficulty of choosing which       regions to blight

Freezing islands
Pros: realms and history will not be destroyed, balance of map of all other islands preserved
cons: medium disruption, difficulty of keeping realm culture and history through passage of time, may end up as being the same as closing an island if player count does not increase

Closing islands
Pros: ease of implementation, balance of map in other island preserved
cons: huge disruption, destroying realms and histories

Freezing islands will be much more preferable to closing islands, i dont see any reason to close an island instead of freezing it..
But then freezing islands will still cause a substantial amount of distruption to players...

[Foxglove]

Freezing I don't like. As Jaron said, it may end up being the same as closing an island if player count does not increase. If freezing takes place, it's probably going to be years until any unfreezing is considered, and by that time the freeze would be pointless because a lot of players would have moved on and no-one will be able to remember what was happening anyway. If we go with the freezing option, you may as well combine it with a reset for the island involved.

I'm honestly not wild about any of the options so far discussed, but I am trying hard to think of an alternative. What we need is an idea that won't cause players to leave the game or feel disgruntled enough to lose interest in playing regularly. Closing or freezing an island might not even have the desired effect of boosting player density on other islands because people may still not choose to move characters or create new ones on an island that's still open.

[Valast]

Instead of dropping regions off the map... why not allow the culture of one island to occupy those same regions?

In other words if we are going to take regions from the realms on a island anyway...why not to it in a way that allows for another islands population to occupy those regions with their culture and history?  It could be done with a dropping of a veil in a cataclysmic event reducing both islands in size but forcing them together.

*shrug* I have no idea how much work that would be.  Could be it is almost the same as opening a new island completely.  That work load is something that needs to be considered... If it is going to take 1000 hours of coding to do it...then just sink and island and reward those families with something for the burden.

Um...one more thing on density... Let everyone have an infiltrator as a new non noble class... :-)  wishful thinking?

[Forbes Family]

Freezing I don't like. As Jaron said, it may end up being the same as closing an island if player count does not increase. If freezing takes place, it's probably going to be years until any unfreezing is considered, and by that time the freeze would be pointless because a lot of players would have moved on and no-one will be able to remember what was happening anyway. If we go with the freezing option, you may as well combine it with a reset for the island involved.

I'm honestly not wild about any of the options so far discussed, but I am trying hard to think of an alternative. What we need is an idea that won't cause players to leave the game or feel disgruntled enough to lose interest in playing regularly. Closing or freezing an island might not even have the desired effect of boosting player density on other islands because people may still not choose to move characters or create new ones on an island that's still open.

I agree with Foxglove. Although I would probably stay and create new characters many probably would not. Even a marginal loss is a loss and I don't think we can handle loosing players like this.

What we are looking at is cutting when we should be looking at increasing our recruitment/retention. Here is an idea:

When a new player joins the game they are given the option of islands to start off in. How about limiting this option and placing them all on one island until that island is populated then moving on to another island and populating that one.