BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => Locals => Dwilight => Topic started by: Gustav Kuriga on April 08, 2014, 06:23:55 PM
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I've seen several characters get paused indefinitely, and an account deletion. Considering you can only have one noble per player on Dwilight, this isn't a good sign. Barca used to be growing at a rapid pace when it came to number of nobles, but now we're slowly shrinking. Honestly I think the devs should have paid more attention to which realms were densely populated, rather than relying on vague polls or arbitrarily deciding to nuke the west because it started out uncolonized.
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Like they said "Whats done is done", no point in talking about it and get this thread also closed.
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Don't really care at this point. Many of the players in Barca and Asylon do not visit the forums, so what can I do but help show the frustration that many of them feel.
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If we can keep the thread objective and constructive, there's no reason it needs to be locked. If it devolves into arbitrary accusations and unfounded paranoia, then it will get locked.
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When the dev team sat down and decided to make a determination of how to achieve our goals, we set out a clear policy that we would not consider political boundaries when setting policy. There was a suggestion or two that perhaps the event could be used to help reshape the politics of some islands. We quickly, and almost unanimously, decided that this was not desirable. We do not want to sit down and say "These realms are good, and we should preserve them. These realms are bad, and should be destroyed." This subjective decision process is bad for the game and the players. Who wants to be the player that has the dev team come down and say "For the good of the game, we have decided that your realm, specifically, has to be eliminated."
Part of the assumption that you're making is that, if we would have tried to use political boundaries and specific realm traits to determine which realms should die, that we would have of course agreed that your realm would be saved. You have no guarantee that this is the case. Perhaps we would have closed the north. Or the south. Or the outside of both halves. Or pared the north and south down by 25% of the map size. Or maybe we would have blown a huge hole in the middle of both the eastern and western halves. Who knows? In any case, there's no guarantee that Barca, or Asylon, or Niselur, or Astrum, or any other specific realm would have survived the decision process.
So in the end, we decided to go with island history, and revert the western half to a monster-riddled wilderness. I'm sorry that some realms had to be destroyed in the process. But at least, in the end, every player knows that what was done was not done in an effort to specifically target any individual realm or alliance. This is true of the decisions made regarding all islands.
You have my personal promise on that fact. And if the personal promise of the dev team is not good enough for you, then there is absolutely nothing that can be done to convince you of how things were done, and why they had to be done that way.
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We've had a net loss of about 6 nobles since we began leaving the West. It seems a decent amount were account deletions, but without looking back I can't be sure. I believe most of these were players who enjoyed playing the game without investing too much time. For the most part we've kept all of our involved players. To be honest, I'm surprised at the amount we've been able to retain without any real regions.
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Indirik, in all calmness, I believe that most players do not argue what you say and especially not those who are not of the forum.
I think - from what I hear right and left - that most players are actually unhappy about the solution at all because of instead one realm, many realms of them are affected and would just hear from the dev team an honest "ok that didn't work out as we wanted, we should just have done better something else".
While I agree on the other hand that it might be too early to have final results on how this will end, I believe the dev team should develop as well a failure management and accept that possibly some decisions may have not been the best in case that at some point it will turn out that more players left due to this current decision instead of another.
Questions like from Foxglove about a count on deletions vs new accounts in these phase should be monitored and also answered.
I wonder actually that you are not doing this.
That is more important than repeating in everythread the same thing. This is exhausting for you and for the players its sounds like they are not taken seriously or listened to.
It's very important to evaluate and monitor such changes in order to improve.
I think that in general that would make many discussions here avoidable.
Sometimes it's ok to be wrong - if you are wrong, that is not decided yet, but for most, with the limited information given, it sounds like this. That is the bias of the player, but you have to take it seriously, cause without the player there is no game. That is the dependancy here.
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I think - from what I hear right and left - that most players are actually unhappy about the solution at all because of instead one realm, many realms of them are affected and would just hear from the dev team an honest "ok that didn't work out as we wanted, we should just have done better something else".
Yes, that's always what people want you to say when they think you're wrong.
But what about when they're wrong—or, at best, very premature in their assessment?
An event like this is guaranteed to produce those feelings in a large number of people, no matter how we choose the regions to remove. And the other alternative—simply doing nothing—is also not viable. Sure, it doesn't piss lots of people off and make them leave now—but it also doesn't make the game engaging and exciting in the future, which will, over time, cause a lot of people to leave nonetheless.
if you are wrong, that is not decided yet,
This is the key here.
but for most, with the limited information given, it sounds like this.
Limited, biased, non-scientific information—and, ultimately, however accurate it is, all of it is simply giving the result we knew would happen: Some people who are being affected by the ice and the monsters are leaving the game. During the event and a period immediately following it, I would be shocked to find that account deletions did not outpace account creations.
The point is not, and never was, for the shrinking itself to create more interest and bring in more people. We tried to come up with ways to fluff and manage the shrinking that would help to mitigate the damage, but there's no way we can completely eliminate it.
The point of these actions was never about making things better now. It was always about making things better in the future.
The sooner you all realize that, and stop looking at the results in the present as "proof" that our actions were wrong, the sooner you can all get back to playing the game, and we can get back to improving it, rather than having to spend vast amounts of time on the forum each day refuting the same tired arguments over and over again.
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Wasn't one of the main ideas behind Dwilight that density would always be low and that the map would never be fully conquerable? I thought people were upset that so much land had been taken as it was.
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Wasn't one of the main ideas behind Dwilight that density would always be low and that the map would never be fully conquerable?
Not really. If it's "never fully conquerable", then once you cut off the "unconquerable" part, all you really have is a smaller map that is fully conquerable.
No, Dwilight was just another new continent, that happened to be quite large, and thus take a lot of nobles to fully conquer. It went through a "frontier" period like every other new continent, but that's not inherent to the island. The only "main idea" behind Dwilight that was ever intended to remain fixed is SMA.
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When the dev team sat down and decided to make a determination of how to achieve our goals, we set out a clear policy that we would not consider political boundaries when setting policy. There was a suggestion or two that perhaps the event could be used to help reshape the politics of some islands. We quickly, and almost unanimously, decided that this was not desirable. We do not want to sit down and say "These realms are good, and we should preserve them. These realms are bad, and should be destroyed." This subjective decision process is bad for the game and the players. Who wants to be the player that has the dev team come down and say "For the good of the game, we have decided that your realm, specifically, has to be eliminated."
Part of the assumption that you're making is that, if we would have tried to use political boundaries and specific realm traits to determine which realms should die, that we would have of course agreed that your realm would be saved. You have no guarantee that this is the case. Perhaps we would have closed the north. Or the south. Or the outside of both halves. Or pared the north and south down by 25% of the map size. Or maybe we would have blown a huge hole in the middle of both the eastern and western halves. Who knows? In any case, there's no guarantee that Barca, or Asylon, or Niselur, or Astrum, or any other specific realm would have survived the decision process.
So in the end, we decided to go with island history, and revert the western half to a monster-riddled wilderness. I'm sorry that some realms had to be destroyed in the process. But at least, in the end, every player knows that what was done was not done in an effort to specifically target any individual realm or alliance. This is true of the decisions made regarding all islands.
You have my personal promise on that fact. And if the personal promise of the dev team is not good enough for you, then there is absolutely nothing that can be done to convince you of how things were done, and why they had to be done that way.
Indirik. Please, for the love of god, read my posts before you try and assume I wanted politics to be taken into account. Where have I said that? Point to it, and I will admit it, but I do believe that I never, ever asked that it be judged by politics. Now I want you to read this carefully, because repeating myself is getting very, very tiring.
What I was saying is this: If we must remove a part of Dwilight, or any other Island for that matter, we should look at ways to ensure that you remove land with as little affect to your player base as possible. This means cutting out swathes of land that are not densely populated by nobles. Until recently losing several regions from what I assume were monster attacks, Morek had what I have to believe is the worst population density of a major realm in the entire game. They only had 1 noble per region. Probably because of recent events Morek has been getting a couple of nobles from the west, but they still are spread entirely too thin.
I want the main factor to that is taken into account to be realm noble density as compared to amount of regions, not politics, or an arbitrary reason that is no longer relevant (the realms in the west were just as stable as those in the east, so that kind of reasoning is just flavor text for a !@#$ situation).
Does that make more sense now Indirik? Can we please stop assuming I'm infuriated because the political situation was inconvenient? (I'm looking at you Glaumring)
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Indirik. Please, for the love of god, read my posts before you try and assume I wanted politics to be taken into account. Where have I said that? Point to it, and I will admit it, but I do believe that I never, ever asked that it be judged by politics. Now I want you to read this carefully, because repeating myself is getting very, very tiring.
What I was saying is this: If we must remove a part of Dwilight, or any other Island for that matter, we should look at ways to ensure that you remove land with as little affect to your player base as possible. This means cutting out swathes of land that are not densely populated by nobles. Until recently losing several regions from what I assume were monster attacks, Morek had what I have to believe is the worst population density of a major realm in the entire game. They only had 1 noble per region. Probably because of recent events Morek has been getting a couple of nobles from the west, but they still are spread entirely too thin.
I want the main factor to that is taken into account to be realm noble density as compared to amount of regions, not politics, or an arbitrary reason that is no longer relevant (the realms in the west were just as stable as those in the east, so that kind of reasoning is just flavor text for a !@#$ situation).
Does that make more sense now Indirik? Can we please stop assuming I'm infuriated because the political situation was inconvenient? (I'm looking at you Glaumring)
Take some of your own advice there. While he stated politics specifically, he also said determining it by any other realm trait because you are still asking for realms to be targeted.
When the dev team sat down and decided to make a determination of how to achieve our goals, we set out a clear policy that we would not consider political boundaries when setting policy. There was a suggestion or two that perhaps the event could be used to help reshape the politics of some islands. We quickly, and almost unanimously, decided that this was not desirable. We do not want to sit down and say "These realms are good, and we should preserve them. These realms are bad, and should be destroyed." This subjective decision process is bad for the game and the players. Who wants to be the player that has the dev team come down and say "For the good of the game, we have decided that your realm, specifically, has to be eliminated."
Part of the assumption that you're making is that, if we would have tried to use political boundaries and specific realm traits to determine which realms should die, that we would have of course agreed that your realm would be saved. You have no guarantee that this is the case. Perhaps we would have closed the north. Or the south. Or the outside of both halves. Or pared the north and south down by 25% of the map size. Or maybe we would have blown a huge hole in the middle of both the eastern and western halves. Who knows? In any case, there's no guarantee that Barca, or Asylon, or Niselur, or Astrum, or any other specific realm would have survived the decision process.
So in the end, we decided to go with island history, and revert the western half to a monster-riddled wilderness. I'm sorry that some realms had to be destroyed in the process. But at least, in the end, every player knows that what was done was not done in an effort to specifically target any individual realm or alliance. This is true of the decisions made regarding all islands.
You have my personal promise on that fact. And if the personal promise of the dev team is not good enough for you, then there is absolutely nothing that can be done to convince you of how things were done, and why they had to be done that way.
Specific relevant parts have been added bold.
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Indirik. Please, for the love of god, read my posts before you try and assume I wanted politics to be taken into account.
Gustav,
You are misunderstanding what Indirik says when he talks about "taking politics into account".
Looking at any aspects of actual realms occupying the land that is getting removed is taking politics into account.
Furthermore, if you want some actual data on noble-per-region density before the event started...Asylon was definitely below the average. Niselur and Barca were high, true, but so were Swordfell and Fissoa. The density definitely does not paint a clear, convincing picture that says, "The West must survive!"
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Well people chose which part to freeze without knowing. So partly, players had some input in the matter.
We are not really losing nobles any faster as far as I know. We've been losing 20 players per month and that hasn't changed so the change should increase the noble density once the ice stops though with us constantly losing players the ice might advance even farther.
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To be honest, I'm surprised at the amount we've been able to retain without any real regions.
Grimrog gives a hell of a speech.
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Gustav,
You are misunderstanding what Indirik says when he talks about "taking politics into account".
Looking at any aspects of actual realms occupying the land that is getting removed is taking politics into account.
Furthermore, if you want some actual data on noble-per-region density before the event started...Asylon was definitely below the average. Niselur and Barca were high, true, but so were Swordfell and Fissoa. The density definitely does not paint a clear, convincing picture that says, "The West must survive!"
Really? Asylon was below average? Would you please look at this thread: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5511.0.html (http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5511.0.html). I actually did the mathwork. Guess what, Asylon was well above the average. Swordfell is a rather small realm, meaning that while it is very densely populated, that doesn't really mean as much. The smaller a realm, the easier it is for the population ratio to be high. The larger, the harder. Morek is what happens when a realm is spread way too thin and should really think about splitting up into separate realms just so that things can be kept interesting for the players.
Besides which, why does a noble-per-region density have to take out regions based on realm? If we looked at the map, barring Niselur the North was very, very thinly spread, so taking out those regions would still have compressed the continent while also keeping the two island dynamic that makes Dwilight so very unique.
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Really? Asylon was below average? Would you please look at this thread: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5511.0.html (http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5511.0.html). I actually did the mathwork. Guess what, Asylon was well above the average.
It's possible that it rose and fell some. The figures I was looking at weren't at the exact same time as that thread.
The data I was looking at clearly show that Asylon was in the bottom half of the realms on the continent as far as noble density goes, at that point in time.
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It's possible that it rose and fell some. The figures I was looking at weren't at the exact same time as that thread.
The data I was looking at clearly show that Asylon was in the bottom half of the realms on the continent as far as noble density goes, at that point in time.
Our density is sky high now!
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It's possible that it rose and fell some. The figures I was looking at weren't at the exact same time as that thread.
The data I was looking at clearly show that Asylon was in the bottom half of the realms on the continent as far as noble density goes, at that point in time.
How old is your data? even back in January Asylon had at the least 42 active nobles, which went up to 47, and then crashed (along with every other realm on Dwilight) on February 5th. Back to 42. The lowest I see them at is their current total, 40, which isn't surprising considering their situation. Barca is currently down to 38 nobles. The two realms are two of the top three (if you discount Luria Nova, which had a huge injection of nobles from Niselur) in total nobles in Dwilight, with Morek having the 2nd most (but so many regions that it makes it largely meaningless for them).
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How old is your data? even back in January Asylon had at the least 42 active nobles, which went up to 47, and then crashed (along with every other realm on Dwilight) on February 5th. Back to 42. The lowest I see them at is their current total, 40, which isn't surprising considering their situation. Barca is currently down to 38 nobles. The two realms are two of the top three (if you discount Luria Nova, which had a huge injection of nobles from Niselur) in total nobles in Dwilight, with Morek having the 2nd most (but so many regions that it makes it largely meaningless for them).
Don't forget. It is not just about your noble numbers. The density calculation is probably based on your realm size as well. For Asylon's realm size, its density was probably low.
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Indirik. Please, for the love of god, read my posts before you try and assume I wanted politics to be taken into account. Where have I said that? Point to it, and I will admit it, but I do believe that I never, ever asked that it be judged by politics.
From this here:
Honestly I think the devs should have paid more attention to which realms were densely populated,
In other words, you wanted us to take arbitrary realm political boundaries into account when decided what we should get rid of. IOW: You wanted us to make a subjective judgment as to which realms should be saved and removed.
We specifically, and for good reason, deliberately removed all IG political criteria from the determination. This includes realm boundaries, alliances, player satisfaction, activity, etc., etc. Our determination for how much to shrink was based on the number of characters on the island vs the number of regions. Determination for what part to remove was based on the available history/backstory/geography of the island. For BT/AT that was the pre-existing snowy regions. For Dwilight, that was the monster-riddled western subcontinent.
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I think - from what I hear right and left - that most players are actually unhappy about the solution at all because of instead one realm, many realms of them are affected and would just hear from the dev team an honest "ok that didn't work out as we wanted, we should just have done better something else".
First: Of course most players are unhappy. I'm unhappy about this whole thing myself. Hell, my own realm was destroyed by the ice. Do you think this makes me a happy camper?
Second: Should it turn out in the end that we made the wrong decision, I am quite willing to admit that we made the wrong decision. The results of that won't be known for quite a long time.
While I agree on the other hand that it might be too early to have final results on how this will end, I believe the dev team should develop as well a failure management and accept that possibly some decisions may have not been the best in case that at some point it will turn out that more players left due to this current decision instead of another.
Of course it's possible that, in retrospect, it may turn out that the wrong decision was made. As I said above, we won't know that for a long time. Possibly years.
That is more important than repeating in everythread the same thing. This is exhausting for you and for the players its sounds like they are not taken seriously or listened to.
The fact that we're still debating all this should be a good indicator that we're listening. The amount of time being invested into debating this is a good indication that we do take people seriously. At the same time, the players need to be willing to accept that the dev team did not undertake this change lightly. We made the best decision we could to deal with a bad situation.
Sometimes it's ok to be wrong - if you are wrong, that is not decided yet, but for most, with the limited information given, it sounds like this.
Should it turn out that we are wrong, we are quite willing to admit we are wrong.
And if you're going into this debate honestly, you also have to be willing to consider the possibility that you would be wrong, too. None of us, however, will know the true results of how this will turn out for quite a long time.
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Another thread going nowhere. Same old stories being told. Guessing another locked thread coming?
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Grimrog gives a hell of a speech.
Well, he is a mighty giant of a man that Grimrog ;).
On topic.
I understand that something had to be done and I am in no way trying to stir anything up or cause friction, I have accepted the situation and will carry on playing from it.
I am curious why the noble-density in the realms was such a major choice modifier?
Asylon might had a low noble-density, but we just took 5 new regions from Astrum and we had one of the larger populations ingame, I would have thought that would made a bigger choice modifier, but I am no dev, so there are aspects of the game that I do not understand =).
I also wonder how we will attract new players to the game now, because that is the real issue is it not?
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I am curious why the noble-density in the realms was such a major choice modifier?
Asylon might had a low noble-density, but we just took 5 new regions from Astrum and we had one of the larger populations ingame, I would have thought that would made a bigger choice modifier, but I am no dev, so there are aspects of the game that I do not understand =).
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "choice modifier," but...
The reason we were focusing on noble density is because that is a very strong predictor of two things: first, being able to find meaningful interaction, and second, being able to maintain your realm without dedicating a large proportion of the realm's nobility purely to that.
I also wonder how we will attract new players to the game now, because that is the real issue is it not?
We believe that the increased density will lead to more interaction, and more opportunity for war between the realms that are left, because there will be more nobles available who are not tied to region maintenance.
Both those things should increase overall fun, and thus retention.
However, we do have other plans in the works that we hope will also improve matters. Believe me, no one would be happier than me if we could implement all these changes and see a resulting rise in the player count that means we can immediately start "giving back" regions that we glaciated or...monster-ated. (Nom.)
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Ah, you understood my odd phrasing and gave me the answear I asked for, thanks.
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Don't forget. It is not just about your noble numbers. The density calculation is probably based on your realm size as well. For Asylon's realm size, its density was probably low.
For goodness sake, I've already done a thread comparing the densities of all the !@#$ing realms.
http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5511.msg126191.html#msg126191 (http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5511.msg126191.html#msg126191)
Please, for the love of god, take one look at that and tell me how Asylon could have ever been considered low in density at the time of the event starting? All of the Western realms were highly populated.
From this here:
In other words, you wanted us to take arbitrary realm political boundaries into account when decided what we should get rid of. IOW: You wanted us to make a subjective judgment as to which realms should be saved and removed.
We specifically, and for good reason, deliberately removed all IG political criteria from the determination. This includes realm boundaries, alliances, player satisfaction, activity, etc., etc. Our determination for how much to shrink was based on the number of characters on the island vs the number of regions. Determination for what part to remove was based on the available history/backstory/geography of the island. For BT/AT that was the pre-existing snowy regions. For Dwilight, that was the monster-riddled western subcontinent.
No, I never said to take realm political boundaries into consideration, I said that the noble density should be taken into consideration, which by necessity means we have to look at the populations of realms. From the numbers that I pulled up from in-game sources, the regions on the eastern continent were the least populated, the north-east especially. The areas with the least number of people were the Zuma lands (obviously), the northeast, central east, and southeast. There were entire areas of the eastern continent that weren't even being used. The Desert of Silhouettes and surrounding regions to the east of it were only ever used as a marching ground for troops, and a bad one at that. Almost the same case for the regions around Palm Sea, except they were at least decent enough marching grounds that your troops wouldn't starve for the most part.
The regions that Swordfell occupied were the only area in the east that was densely populated. I honestly don't see how you can sit there and say that the west wasn't very populated, when I've already provided evidence stating otherwise.
Wait... wait a minute. I just saw this... you discounted player satisfaction and activity? Those aren't even IC political considerations... those are OOC points that are very, very important to the whole success of this event. So you think to yourself, "Oh, these highly populated realms are intensely active and the players here see these as the best realms they've ever been a part of. No, I won't take that into consideration. I'm sure ruining the best the game has to offer won't hurt anything in the long run."
What the hell? Ok... yeah, I'm just going to throw my hands into the air and give up. I'll see what happens with Barca in the next few weeks and if the realm dies, I guess I'll go as well.
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Wait... wait a minute. I just saw this... you discounted player satisfaction and activity? Those aren't even IC political considerations... those are OOC points that are very, very important to the whole success of this event. So you think to yourself, "Oh, these highly populated realms are intensely active and the players here see these as the best realms they've ever been a part of. No, I won't take that into consideration. I'm sure ruining the best the game has to offer won't hurt anything in the long run."
As I have already stated in a lost, deleted or locked thread...almost all successful and winning realms/parties got (randomly of course) hit because they are the only ones who can fulfill the migration role. Only the best players don't quit and carry on during such an event. Be proud to be chosen and share the wealth now with the lesser ones.
I know this is not the truth, but I prefer it. It makes me playing on. :P
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The problem is the East was more populated than the West. If you look at the area being wiped clean, they don't affect middle island regions so I will consider them as a part of the East. The East had 170 nobles while West had 111. So techinically the East was about 50% more populated than the West so by this logic, the West was quite underpopulated.
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The problem is the East was more populated than the West. If you look at the area being wiped clean, they don't affect middle island regions so I will consider them as a part of the East. The East had 170 nobles while West had 111. So techinically the East was about 50% more populated than the West so by this logic, the West was quite underpopulated.
The middle wouldn't have been affected directly by the changes no matter whether it was West or East, so including it with one or the other is a false argument. What do you consider middle island by the way? I'm assuming you mean D'Hara and Fissoa. Not counting either one, I get 102 nobles (from back when I did my realm densities study, as that is more relevant than current noble numbers for answering your post) for the East side of the Island. For the West Side of Dwilight we get 128, again without including D'Hara or Fissoa. I included Astrum on the Western side, as they were affected directly by the event as well, making it 4 for the West and 4 for the East. Here we see that the Western side of Dwilight had more nobles, and thus players.
Ah, but I'm not finished. The Eastern side of Dwilight had 83 regions between the realms in question, again not including Fissoa and D'Hara. This gives you around 1.23 nobles per region. The Western side of Dwilight had 72 regions among all the realms I have included, which gives you around 1.78 nobles per region. As you can see, that is a significant increase compared to the East.
Just to be clear, all the numbers used were from March 8th, closer to when the event began so that it was more relevant to the info the devs had at the time rather than using the current statistics which would have been influenced severely by the event itself.
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This thread has devolved into more pointless arguing over whether the devs' decisions were justified. It has now been locked.