Closing Islands ?

[Fleugs]

More realms will equal more war. An alternative would be to allow dukes to fight their own wars (against other dukes), but for all the years I've tried I was told it was too much coding... and I believe that. I believe people leave BM because it grows boring. Distant wars and less wars combined is not what people look for in BM. Roleplay and storyline is a nice aspect, but I think most prefer the risk-like style of the game... conquering regions, spitting upon enemies and burning down warehouses. Since realms seem to have the tendency now to grow a little larger than they used to, it now takes longer to travel to the frontline. The problem here is that you cannot change player mentality. You would have to coerce rulers of large realms to let their realm sort-of explode to create many more realms and strife. They won't do that. Ultimately large realms can completely implode, because they have very little fun to offer to their players.

I know that an invasion is out of the question, but I just wanted to state that I have enjoyed every invasion on the New World/BT very much. It also seemed to draw more players to the island because invasion caused a struggle for survival, which was fun, because it meant the enemy was almost continuously knocking at your front door. Daily fights were no exception. Should it be reconsidered, I liked the idea suggested earlier of the multi's. While I wouldn't allow people found guilty of being a multi do it, I'm sure there's plenty of interested people who would not mind being part of an "invasionary" force. This would only allow a small change in the rules so that on every island there can be a multi-account, invasion-style faction. Which is crazy of course, because a multi is bad, mkay.

[Kai]

Closing an island is the simplest and most practical solution.

[Revan]

Closing an island is the simplest and most practical solution.

After all this discussion, I think I've come to the same conclusion. These ideas for scrolls and blighting sounds like things that will be detrimental to the core BattleMaster experience. It wasn't the most well received thing even when it was done in the context of Beluaterran Invasions - and having seen what has happened to the geography of that island I'm not sure it has helped to make war any more certain or likely than before. In fact, it seems like on every occasion that territory has been re-jigged, removed or what have you on any continent on BattleMaster it has had very little effect on anything.

If it's really true that every single continent would need to be reduced by 70 regions (though I think that's skewed a bit by Dwilght being so big - Colonies doesn't even have 70 regions to start with!) to reach an ideal player density, it seems like efforts to blight regions and shrink continents here or there is dabbling on the sidelines. Although Beluaterra has already shrunk considerably on her former size (in part, presumably, to address this very problem), the situation of low density persists within the game.

Instead of all these contrived solutions perhaps it would be best to just close a continent and be done with it. Just make sure that characters do not go down with them. Whilst there are some fantastic realms out there, none have ever had a divine right to exist. They rise and fall all the time. Characters, on the other hand, are all but permanent. The beauty of BattleMaster is that no matter what happens to your realm, you can still play with the characters and players you always did. That should be the focus now. We need to find a way to ensure the players and characters of realms on a dead island aren't wrenched apart by the island's closure. Try and help keep them together in some way. But accept that we're probably going to lose an island.

[egamma]

In any case, I think merging the game worlds into one, where continents are traversable by sea zones, would be a good first step towards whatever other measures are required, though I suspect it would require a massive overhaul to the code and DB.

Yes, it would. Each island has island-specific region numbers--meaning that there is a region #1 on every continent. So your brave new would would require renumbering every-single-region. And then redoing the mapping between every-single-region and their neighbors. And then adding the sea zones, ferry routes, and the routes between worlds. It would take forever.

Also, it's possible to have a "Bob" on Atamara, and a "Bob" on FEI, and a "Bob" on EC. You'd have character name collisions--which character gets to keep their name, and which has to change their name?

And then, how do you deal with the judge "deport" option? Are you going to make is to their only option is to execute banned nobles? Or are you going to keep the Colonies separate, due to the one-turn-a-day, so that everyone deports to the Colonies?

[Foundation]

What about indefinitely freezing an island? Characters remaining on the island will go into a "frozen" state and not take up slots. No turns will run, no immigration/emigration.

Players can either choose to move their characters out before the freeze or create new ones afterwards.

[Foundation]

I don't think it is productive to continue discussing about ways of merging islands, as the ability to massively overhaul the code and DB is something we do not have right now.

[Azerax]

I haven't read this entire thread, but I like the idea.

Talk to players and find out which island would lose the least amount of players (by quitting) if it was closed.  Offer 'goodies' to those players for boarding a ship to another island.

Thanks,
Scott

[Revan]

What about indefinitely freezing an island? Characters remaining on the island will go into a "frozen" state and not take up slots. No turns will run, no immigration/emigration.

Players can either choose to move their characters out before the freeze or create new ones afterwards.

I like this one.

[Tom]

I've kind of come to the same conclusion.

I am thinking something along the lines of tying islands to player count. Say we close down two islands, stating very openly that once player count has increased to X again, we will open one of them back up, and if it increases to Y, we will open the second back up.

And second, I think that freezing them instead of deleting them is probably a really good idea. We would have to do a tiny bit of work, like making characters on frozen islands not count against the limits and stuff, but that is fairly easy to do.

[Blue Star]

So the discussion is about closing not simply one island, but two? Interesting, The plot thickens


Currently 538 + 490 = 1028 players, if pulling it from player list and simply adding them is correct.

[egamma]

http://battlemaster.org/Statistics.Players.php

1060 registered, 629 logged on in the past week.

[Revan]

Can a mod put a link to the Shrink Method topic in the first post of this thread? Seems that it is going to be a quasi-official method of judging what the player base desires on this.

And second, I think that freezing them instead of deleting them is probably a really good idea. We would have to do a tiny bit of work, like making characters on frozen islands not count against the limits and stuff, but that is fairly easy to do.

Would it also be possible to ensure that no character ages or loses their skills? Or is that something determined by whether turns are running or not?

[egamma]

Can a mod put a link to the Shrink Method topic in the first post of this thread? Seems that it is going to be a quasi-official method of judging what the player base wants now.

Would it also be possible to ensure that no character ages or loses their skills? Or is that something determined by whether turns are running or not?

You got it. they will be cave men, frozen in a glacier.

[Chenier]

Yes, it would. Each island has island-specific region numbers--meaning that there is a region #1 on every continent. So your brave new would would require renumbering every-single-region. And then redoing the mapping between every-single-region and their neighbors. And then adding the sea zones, ferry routes, and the routes between worlds. It would take forever.

Also, it's possible to have a "Bob" on Atamara, and a "Bob" on FEI, and a "Bob" on EC. You'd have character name collisions--which character gets to keep their name, and which has to change their name?

And then, how do you deal with the judge "deport" option? Are you going to make is to their only option is to execute banned nobles? Or are you going to keep the Colonies separate, due to the one-turn-a-day, so that everyone deports to the Colonies?

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.

What I think would take more time would be to recode stuff that were continent-specific, like number of character or title restrictions. New code could simulate in a fairly straightforward way, I think, but coding it might take some effort.

Your suggestion for deportation actually sounds good. Keep the colonies apart, merging it with two-turn continents wouldn't seem ideal. An alternative would be to quite simply mimic the current system: your actually deport a character to another island, despite it now being all in the same game world. If he wants to come back, he'll have to sail back.

Overall, I think there's plenty of solutions possible. Most of the work would likely go into adapting those mechanics, though, but the net gain would be suddenly granting everyone a whole bunch of new neighbors to interact with.

[Ender]

And second, I think that freezing them instead of deleting them is probably a really good idea. We would have to do a tiny bit of work, like making characters on frozen islands not count against the limits and stuff, but that is fairly easy to do.

This is probably the easiest and the friendliest solution. I don't envy having to choose which continent, but it's nice knowing it isnt gone forever, it's just can't be reached for some period time.

And for roleplay purposes we can always just say it's surrounded by an awful, impenetrable fog or something really simple like that.