BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => BM General Discussion => Topic started by: House Talratheon on June 27, 2012, 05:14:44 AM
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While we have regular continents that offer 2 turns per day, and the Colonies that offer 1 turn per day.
What if we had a continent not for the faint of virtual heart that offered 4 turns a day, i.e. 1 turn per six hours where everything would speed up and while it goes against the dogma if requiring only 15 minutes a day to play it would be a continent for the "more active" players. it would also be a place where it would be common to see battles involving the same characters occur up to 4 times a day and for people to be on their toes to succeed, since things can change so quickly.
What are your thoughts?
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I dislike the idea of even a continent with 3 turns a day because either you don't ever sleep or you are expecting for it to not require much involvement with the entire realm because with 4 turns a day you could never sleep for 6 hours a day if you were to be on every turn.
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It would be interesting. Probably a pretty different feel to the entire game.
Maybe if you could somehow bring us another 1500-2000 players, we could even think about it...
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...with 4 turns a day you could never sleep for 6 hours a day if you were to be on every turn.
Mrh? If the turns were 00/06/12/18, you could do a turn at 00:30, sleep until 11:30, then do the 06 and 12 turns in an hour, go back to sleep until 23:30, do two more turns in an hour, etc.... You could sleep 22 hours a day, and two turns in each of your waking two waking hours.
It would be hell for Marshals. :P You would definitely have to have a pretty large military committee to handle orders.
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Mrh? If the turns were 00/06/12/18, you could do a turn at 00:30, sleep until 11:30, then do the 06 and 12 turns in an hour, go back to sleep until 23:30, do two more turns in an hour, etc.... You could sleep 22 hours a day, and two turns in each of your waking two waking hours.
It would be hell for Marshals. :P You would definitely have to have a pretty large military committee to handle orders.
Ah, yes that is true, I am used to being on at the end of a turn and the beginning which is why I was thinking what I said but you are completely right.
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There are many ideas for new continents/islands: full mortality, not serious, clans allowed, fantasy, and so on. Maybe we could add them to the wish list wiki page.
That said, none will be opened in the near future for the devs have their hands full at the moment, if not by several other reasons.
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Find me 1000 additional players and we can talk about this.
Until then, any and all ideas including "new continent" will be flat out rejected, no matter what the idea is.
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The only issue I have with this is that it would advantage defense considerably over offense.
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Find me 1000 additional players and we can talk about this.
Until then, any and all ideas including "new continent" will be flat out rejected, no matter what the idea is.
What if we changed an existing continent to a 4 turn/day system?
Would this require increases in the game's infrastructure to support?
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Sorry, won't happen.
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Find me 1000 additional players and we can talk about this.
Until then, any and all ideas including "new continent" will be flat out rejected, no matter what the idea is.
Pretty sure it was 500 before when someone asked for another continent ;)
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maybe we lost 500 since? XD
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I'd love this. Most of the 15 people I recruited all quit because they felt the turns were too slow. :|
Most strategy war games I've played have turns every hour on the hour, while others have between 3-6 turns a day. This is by far the slowest strategy-war game I've ever played, individual turns baring a much higher load of responsibility and stopping power than most.
I'd be quite interested in a faster continent, even if its experimentally tiny in order to reduce server load. An experimental continent just to see if the idea picks up. I know my friends at least would be interested in it. Once I get my website back up I could muster up an additional 50-100 players in the coming months. Then again it doesn't depend on me - it depends on the community's will to play and even more-so on Tom's ability to support an extra server in all the manners such an addition would entail. Server load, attention, coding, so on and so forth.
That reminds me, I just dumped $150 on LOTRO, I might as well donate to BM again. This community is awesome and absolutely makes me love this game - despite certain pissy characters. :-P Its alright though, the RP wouldn't be the same without Crazy queens, mad-kings, overzealous priests, anti-religious crusaders, and all manner of insanity so becoming of Dwilight. <3
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Uh... BM is not Utopia or other resource gathering games. This is more of a RPG game.
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The slow pace is fully intentional.
I do, however, have a BM-like side-project that is not currently going anywhere, but would be a try at a slightly faster pace without making it another turn-junkie game. ETA: Unknown. It's a zero-budget game, so everything that brings me money comes first.
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Uh... BM is not Utopia or other resource gathering games. This is more of a RPG game.
No ones saying it should be anything like whatever this Utopia game is. (never played it, no idea)
All we're mentioning is the idea of a little more activity for us hyperactive Medieval lovers :-P Most medieval games are either PAINFULLY slow for hardcore RPers like myself (See Aelyria.com, the most epic fantasy HARDCORE-RP community ever, man I had fun there!) or streamlined fast for the idiot kiddies who don't RP and just want fast-paced clicking.
I think a middle-ground between activity and content would be great.
Also, Tom, I'd be quite interested in hearing more about this project. I know a few game programmers through my old RP website and perhaps your ideas might coincide with theirs. Most of them have random zero-income side-projects related to the genre and I figure if folks can work together than something might actually get done. <_<
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Have you tried the War Islands (http://war-islands.org)?
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I think a middle-ground between activity and content would be great.
Working on it. Well... not really working, but you get my drift.
Also, Tom, I'd be quite interested in hearing more about this project. I know a few game programmers through my old RP website and perhaps your ideas might coincide with theirs. Most of them have random zero-income side-projects related to the genre and I figure if folks can work together than something might actually get done. <_<
Not likely. The problem is that I have a vision. A very solid, fleshed-out vision. I don't want to bring others on board because they would bring their own vision. One of the reasons BM is so great and so messy at the same time is that so many people with different visions have worked on it over the years.
War Islands shows what a clean game you can actually do and FINISH when you have ONE vision.
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I respect that and was hoping that'd be your answer :-)
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I am actually thinking about starting a Kickstarter project and checking if there's enough interest.
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the map ip thing won't cause problems?
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the map ip thing won't cause problems?
For the side-project, for which I already have a map generator written, posted here (http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,2188.0.html).
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For the side-project, for which I already have a map generator written, posted here (http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,2188.0.html).
Simply beautiful :)
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You never told us what the side-project was about. I'd be very interested to know.
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If you get a Kickstarter going, I'd definitely be up for it. In the LEAST, by referencing BM as a past, current, and fully-functional game community you've worked on will bring curious glances in our direction, possibly gaining us a few new players. :-)
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I love those maps.
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I'm thinking about a kickstarter, but to be realistic, I'd need at least 20k because working on this would mean working a lot less on my company.
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I'm thinking about a kickstarter, but to be realistic, I'd need at least 20k because working on this would mean working a lot less on my company.
I've seen Kickstarters raise quite the sum. I think if you consider contributions from BM players, your friends/family, co-workers, and/or other people who know your work, 20k may be possible.
Especially if you are taking advantage of some of the "perks" that often come along with Kickstarter donations such as early beta testing membership in the game, some kind of in-game bonus once its out, your name on the game list of contributors, etc. etc. Things like that, get creative and you can think of rewards for donations that don't actually cost you anything.
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If it doesn't work out and you don't hit the goal, you at least garnered interest in the project and brought in more players. You can try again later once your project is more fleshed out. If it succeeds then hell, you've got 20 grand to work with. :-)
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Still thinking about it and doing some back-of-a-napkin calculations on what kinds of money I'd need.
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Serious question: How many people would help me out with spreading the word if I were to set up a kickstarter for this? Marketing is the most important part of such a project. If you don't get out the word to the people who'd enjoy something like this, there's no way to get the money.
Getting a posting on RPS would be a dream come true.
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Personally, I'd like to see a bounty kickstarter to pay some developers to take time off-work to fix BM bugs. Maybe get a price for each bug, the cheapest one is the funding level, and the additional bugs are stretch goals?
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Getting a posting on RPS would be a dream come true.
What's RPS?
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rock paper shotgun?
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Well that sounds seriously unfair.
I'd figure it'd be more Rock-Papers-Spock, because Spock defeats all.
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Well that sounds seriously unfair.
I'd figure it'd be more Rock-Papers-Spock, because Spock defeats all.
I think a shotgun could defeat Spock.
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I think a shotgun could defeat Spock.
He would bleed green blood all over the place.
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I'd figure it'd be more Rock-Papers-Spock, because Spock defeats all.
Pfft... How little you know. Paper disproves Spock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock
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Pfft... How little you know. Paper disproves Spock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock
!@#$ the rules! Spock defeats all!
I've seen a much-more complex version than that actually. The relationships between symbols are further confuddled.
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Well that sounds seriously unfair.
That's kind of the idea, I think.
RPS is indeed http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/
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Personally, I'd like to see a bounty kickstarter to pay some developers to take time off-work to fix BM bugs. Maybe get a price for each bug, the cheapest one is the funding level, and the additional bugs are stretch goals?
Problem here is as soon as it becomes monetary, you lose intrinsic motivation and it will take more money in the future to fix bugs, which is a very bad direction to go. Good thinking though, making random money on kickstarter seems surprisingly easy. :)
Also TIL RPS == Rock Paper Shotgun. :P
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I'd be willing to spread the word, because of BM, but I still don't know what you are planning, Tom.
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I know about commercial being a different animal, which is why BM stays free.
But I have something in mind that would not work as a hobby because the scale is too massive. And yes I know I have been light on the details. I'm writing down stuff ATM and will make it public soon.
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You can bet your shiny Admin Cap that we're looking forward to it. :-)
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I've written to a few sites in the past that cover roleplaying games and browser games, didn't see anything pop up sadly :(.
Maybe it would be beneficial if an admin or dev took the time to talk to the admin, explain the game. Give them an indepth tour of the history and crazy things that happen in the player generated history. I definitely recommend showing some stuff from Dwilight.
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It would be even cooler if a player did it. I think a game that's been in beta for almost 10 years would get some interest. If anyone manages to cause RPS to write an article about BM, I'll give him 5 years of free goodies.
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http://www.indiegogo.com/ is an alternative to Kickstarter. If I remember correctly they allow a funding model that doesn't require you to reach the set goal in order to actually get the money. That said Kickstarter and its like are not as easy as people seem to think. I watch them a lot, mostly because there are a lot of interesting games posted up on them. Many fail to reach even modest targets, one of the main reasons is a lack of updated to the Kickstarter page during the campaign. The successful projects usually have a great wow factor, nice in game videos (not exactly applicable to BM).
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Like everything, Kickstarter is not magic. I do like the "all or nothing" model, because it means that if the funding needed for the project doesn't come, you're probably better of not doing it anyways.
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It would be even cooler if a player did it. I think a game that's been in beta for almost 10 years would get some interest. If anyone manages to cause RPS to write an article about BM, I'll give him 5 years of free goodies.
Gamers and Games have changed in 10 years, and unfortunately I don't think for the better. The MUD I used to play is still up, but empty (Necromium), the other turn based strategy games that requires some thought (new1000ad) is bleeding players, while places like Facebook / Zynga have made an entire generation of people who don't really want to use their imagination or put an ounce of thought into one.
I don't know how many active players there are now vs even 2 years ago, but I suspect it's lower. Perhaps making the game available to more people would attract more players. Using something like Buzztouch (http://www.buzztouch.com/) to compile an android/IOS interface for the game (though you could compile a simply jquery app) wouldn't take long and make attract attention/more players.
I started playing BM because of an article posted on Slashdot a few years ago, but haven't seen any articles since. I know that the BM team is incredibly busy, maybe you should take applications for a PR person to help get stories on Slashdot/Blues News, etc.
Anyway, my two cents.
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I don't know how many active players there are now vs even 2 years ago, but I suspect it's lower. Perhaps making the game available to more people would attract more players. Using something like Buzztouch (http://www.buzztouch.com/) to compile an android/IOS interface for the game (though you could compile a simply jquery app) wouldn't take long and make attract attention/more players.
A mobile interface is underway, and will definitely improve the experience on iOS and Android when it's done.
I started playing BM because of an article posted on Slashdot a few years ago, but haven't seen any articles since. I know that the BM team is incredibly busy, maybe you should take applications for a PR person to help get stories on Slashdot/Blues News, etc.
I would prefer not to start a PR push until we have finished with at least the most important of the current slate of major improvements that the dev team has in mind. There are so many things that are currently half-broken or "yeah, we plan to replace that soon" that I'd really rather not introduce the game to large numbers of new players in this state.
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maybe you should take applications for a PR person to help get stories on Slashdot/Blues News, etc.
This sounds like a good idea.
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Like, say.... a Community Manager?
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Like, say.... a Community Manager?
Fixed that for you (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Community_Portal)
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A mobile interface is underway, and will definitely improve the experience on iOS and Android when it's done.
I would prefer not to start a PR push until we have finished with at least the most important of the current slate of major improvements that the dev team has in mind. There are so many things that are currently half-broken or "yeah, we plan to replace that soon" that I'd really rather not introduce the game to large numbers of new players in this state.
This is the first problem, Tom says he wants more players and you say you want to wait. Marketing is all about a consistent message. Honestly, it would take a month to develop a great on-line strategy, and then you can hold on to it. I speak from experience, my brother and I started a website (www.crosswinds.net) and we went from no traffic to over 100 million visitors per month based on a consistent marketing message, and lots of hours of promoting it online. As you'll see, it's nothing but a shell now, and where we failed was, we did not adapt to the changing atmosphere of the internet. People wanted a dumbed down version of what we had, and we refused to deliver it.
If you get 3 or 4 Community Managers, and they each spend 2-3 hours per day posting on forums of really popular boards (rockpapershotgun), and reference BM, you'll get a huge influx of players, 80% who will quit because it requires thought, but the 20% will be great.
Also, start a Facebook group. One (and I think the only) reason Faerytale thrives so much is because of their FB page. People want to play games with friends, and FB makes that stupid easy, even if it's just a group.
There's also voting sites, which I hate, but I have tried many of the top ranked sites there and they are really great (Supremacy 19114) . Many of these sites require less than 20 votes per day to to the #1 position, and they do drive traffic, even in small quantities. And yes, it is prostituting yourself to get users, but that's what marketing is, accept it or shut down.
Again, my 2 cents.
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We already have a facebook group. You can easily find it by typing battlemaster. I think we have what 99 people so far?
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This is the first problem, Tom says he wants more players and you say you want to wait.
Don't get me wrong, I want more players too. We need to keep getting more players all the time, or we will be bleeding slowly to death. I just don't think that right now is the right time for a major PR push, especially since it would necessarily take a certain amount of dev time (or at least Tom's time) to get Community Managers or other PR types vetted, set up and briefed.
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Well, I and many others i would think, aren't going to join the facebook page because BM is a very nerdy (*gasp*) passtime that they wouldn't like their friends laughing at them for. Just my two cents.
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Since when have nerds cared about FB? >_>
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I, for one, welcome no Facebook. :P
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I would prefer not to start a PR push until we have finished with at least the most important of the current slate of major improvements that the dev team has in mind. There are so many things that are currently half-broken or "yeah, we plan to replace that soon" that I'd really rather not introduce the game to large numbers of new players in this state.
Then again, I've kind of told myself that same line for years now.
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a game that's been in beta for almost 10 years
I would prefer not to start a PR push until we have finished with at least the most important of the current slate of major improvements that the dev team has in mind. There are so many things that are currently half-broken or "yeah, we plan to replace that soon" that I'd really rather not introduce the game to large numbers of new players in this state.
Don't get me wrong, I want more players too. We need to keep getting more players all the time, or we will be bleeding slowly to death. I just don't think that right now is the right time for a major PR push, especially since it would necessarily take a certain amount of dev time (or at least Tom's time) to get Community Managers or other PR types vetted, set up and briefed.
Then again, I've kind of told myself that same line for years now.
Exactly. I've been playing Battlemaster since 2008, and honestly I can't think of any time since I've been playing that could be plugged as a "perfect time" for a big PR push. Granted, I understand that currently there are quite a few big changes both underway and upcoming, and good changes at that, but these changes are always very fluid and usually drawn out because its Tom's personal time and Dev volunteer time. I mean, is there any realistic ETA for when this big push of changes will be done? I doubt it. It could be the end of this year, or it could be the end of next year. That's Battlemaster. It's both a positive thing about it (constantly changing and improving) and a negative (constantly changing, sometimes buggy, some unfinished features).
That being said, Battlemaster truly isn't for everyone and I don't see it ever being just some huge million player game or anything. However, adding a thousand or a couple thousand players would be pretty great and shouldn't be too hard with some time spent on it.
Just curious, are any records kept of the player base leves/numbers? If so, when was the high point? Low point? And how many players were those? Would be interesting to see/evaluate.
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Just curious, are any records kept of the player base leves/numbers? If so, when was the high point? Low point? And how many players were those? Would be interesting to see/evaluate.
Not really, no. From memory, I think the high point was about twice as many players as we have now.
I would absolutely love to have about 1000-2000 more players, as that would fill the game up to the capacity it is designed for.
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Indeed. I think this game can be spread to android or apple apps and I am sure some people are already playing over them. People just need to spread the words around in my opinion.
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Then again, I've kind of told myself that same line for years now.
Yeah, I can definitely see that. However, this time there's a difference: we're still in the middle of the Doctrine transition.
Once we can finish that, we will no longer be creating bizarre new bugs nearly every day, and it will free up a lot of dev resources for fixing existing bugs and implementing the new features we want.
So I'd really prefer to at least wait till that's done.
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Indeed. I think this game can be spread to android or apple apps and I am sure some people are already playing over them.
I don't think that a mobile app would be all that useful. A proper mobile site would be much more appropriate.
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I don't think that a mobile app would be all that useful. A proper mobile site would be much more appropriate.
You could do both with jquery (the IOS app would just be a webview pointing to the jquery mobile site)
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You could do both with jquery (the IOS app would just be a webview pointing to the jquery mobile site)
....What the crap would be the point of that?
You do know bookmarks can be added to the home screen, don't you?
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It should be mentioned that Featured Stories / Reviews can be bought. I sent an inquiry to RPS (did not mention BM) to get their rate card. When the time comes, it may be worth exploring, and if we could get enough people to chip in to pay for it I'd happily send in $20.
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....What the crap would be the point of that?
You do know bookmarks can be added to the home screen, don't you?
because Apple has turned an entire generation into retards who look for games in the App Store instead of opening Safari.
You go where the people are, not where you think they should be.
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because Apple has turned an entire generation into retards who look for games in the App Store instead of opening Safari.
You go where the people are, not where you think they should be.
Yeah...there's so much wrong with this I'm not even going to bother.
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Well, there is a small amount of truth in it. (Not the "retards" bit.)
However, apps that are just front-ends to web sites often get some very bad reviews from the users. Not to mention that spending time and effort on maintaining an app, and making sure it works on all the different platforms, would take precious time and effort away from the development of the game itself.
Also, people browsing the app store/marketplace for casual games aren't really the kind of people that are going to get into a persistent state MMORPG like BattleMaster. When you're on the app store/marketplace, that's not the kind of gaming experience your looking for.
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BM isn't a game you can really play on the phone, at least not constantly. You really want a real keyboard for those longer messages.
But something like a companion app, or website - something that allows you to check in on your character while you're on the road - that would be cool.
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BM isn't a game you can really play on the phone, at least not constantly. You really want a real keyboard for those longer messages.
But something like a companion app, or website - something that allows you to check in on your character while you're on the road - that would be cool.
Reading messages on the phone wouldn't be bad. If you could read them, and then star them (or mark them or whatever we ended up calling that) for later response, through a simple interface, that wouldn't be too bad.
And I would bet you serious money there are people here who would pay at least a small amount for an app that could give them push notifications when their characters got messages ;D
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BM isn't a game you can really play on the phone, at least not constantly. You really want a real keyboard for those longer messages.
I play on my phone *constantly*. Probably more than on a desktop, at this point. Luckily, my phone has a hardware keyboard. I wouldn't want to do it on one of those on-screen virtual keyboards.
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Rob so lucky. Me stuck virtual keyboard. :(
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And I would bet you serious money there are people here who would pay at least a small amount for an app that could give them push notifications when their characters got messages ;D
Yes, but I have a few hundred bucks up-front costs to make that happen.
What would be easier would be an e-mail gateway.
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I play on my phone *constantly*. Probably more than on a desktop, at this point. Luckily, my phone has a hardware keyboard. I wouldn't want to do it on one of those on-screen virtual keyboards.
I have spent weeks playing only on my iphone because I was travelling. I do it when I visit my in-laws, and during the 6 hour drive to get there.
If you have google analytics set up, they now report mobile devices.
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Yes, but I have a few hundred bucks up-front costs to make that happen.
What would be easier would be an e-mail gateway.
The e-mail gateway is cool, especially if it worked like LinkedIn. Someone sends you a message on LinkedIn and you get the message there, and emailed to you. You can reply to the message via email and it appears in your conversation history on LinkedIn. It's really handy.
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The e-mail gateway is cool, especially if it worked like LinkedIn. Someone sends you a message on LinkedIn and you get the message there, and emailed to you. You can reply to the message via email and it appears in your conversation history on LinkedIn. It's really handy.
That would be a lot trickier. I was thinking more along the lines of the usual "you have new messages in BattleMaster" notification.
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That would be a lot trickier. I was thinking more along the lines of the usual "you have new messages in BattleMaster" notification.
Actually, I've implemented something along those lines before. Provided you have cooperative email server software, it can work pretty well.
In this case, we would probably want to implement it along the lines of the ones that have auto-generated email addresses for each message or conversation, with a hash in the actual recipient address (or at least after the +) so that it gets into the right message stream.
Certainly, it's trickier than a simple "you have new messages" notification, but it's far from impossible.
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And if you screwed up the implementation, it would even be possible to send fake messages attributed to other people. :P
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And if you screwed up the implementation, it would even be possible to send fake messages attributed to other people. :P
Forged letters...cool, start some more wars!
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Forged letters sound *awesome*, though the mechanic must be limited. Perhaps a significant chance of it being discovered as false due to most folks recognizing a Lord's seal, which isn't exactly easy to recreate. (Signatures and seals were a BIG deal back then in terms of royal and noble correspondence.)
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A major problem with forging letters is it encourages people to use OOC forms of communication as IC communication isn't reliable.
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Forged letters sound *awesome*, though the mechanic must be limited. Perhaps a significant chance of it being discovered as false due to most folks recognizing a Lord's seal, which isn't exactly easy to recreate. (Signatures and seals were a BIG deal back then in terms of royal and noble correspondence.)
No thanks. We've discussed forgeries and message interception many times. They are both, IMNSHO, horrible ideas. As Foundation says, they create distrust in the message system. And since the message system is really the heart of the game, it creates distrust in the game itself. People will get around it by simply asking OOC, or asking the sender "did you *really* send that?" It really won't add anything worthwhile to the game.
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No thanks. We've discussed forgeries and message interception many times. They are both, IMNSHO, horrible ideas. As Foundation says, they create distrust in the message system. And since the message system is really the heart of the game, it creates distrust in the game itself. People will get around it by simply asking OOC, or asking the sender "did you *really* send that?" It really won't add anything worthwhile to the game.
You do have a very good point.
If the idea of forgeries is to spread misinformation / bad intel, what about bogus monters/undead/battle reports? (battle reports would be very easy to spot as fake as seeing your name in a battle you didn't participate in will be obvious). However, fake undead/monster reports may cause people to go investigate, which wastes their time. Scout reports could easily disprove the forged monster/undead reports.
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That would be a lot trickier. I was thinking more along the lines of the usual "you have new messages in BattleMaster" notification.
I'd just settle for a little pc ap that gave you a popup everytime you got a battlemaster message
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Forged letters sound *awesome*,
Only on paper. This has been rejected before, for the reasons Foundation posted. We do not want to encourage people to use OOC communications.