Activity Check

[Scaredgirl]

Activity Check
I took a look at the activity starts and the numbers do not look good. We have a couple of teams where the majority has pretty much given up and do not even bother to post their actions anymore. This is really bad because it leads to:

A) These teams getting wiped out
B) Nobody wanting to join these elements because of the disadvantage.

So basically we are starting to get a "rich get richer, poor get poorer" type of a scenario.

Also, the the overall activity per Day is now dangerously close to 50%, which is not good. It takes only about 5-10 minutes every 48 hours to post those actions, so the issue clearly is not lack of time, it's lack of motivation.

I am seriously contemplating on ending the beta soon and putting the event on hold for a few weeks, because the further we go with the current system, the wider the gap between elements will become. The 2 hours I spend on updating stuff every other day, could be used to develop the event by adding more content, fixing bugs, etc. I think that would be much more beneficial than grinding away while half the players are away.

I would also like to thank those who have been active, posting suggestions, helping others, etc. I know it's been a bit frustrating when there is still so much missing content and questions that are unanswered. So thanks.

One other thing I am considering is making a HUGE change to the core of WoE. This would be getting rid of the 13 teams and replacing them with 6-7 teams, each holding up to 24 players.

Hands down the biggest issue when developing WoE, is that fact that there are 13 teams. This is a nightmare because every single small change will have to be done 13 times. Tons of teams is also bad because we would need a lot of active players to keep those teams alive. For example right now we have some WoE teams who have not posted a single post in their secret section in over 10 (real life) days.

One way to do this would be to pair up elements. For example, something like this:

  = Destruction
  = Growth
  = Chaos
  = Shadow
etc.

Other option is to have 6 neutral "Underworlds", where no player belongs to any specific element, and everyone has the freedom to pick any skills etc. It would also mean that teams could give themselves any name they want, and they could also design their own banner. In other words, teams would not be based on elements.

The idea of having to start making big changes is not particularly appealing to me, but if it helps the workload in the long run, then that's exactly what we should do. Nothing is of course final yet, but I am sure that something must be done at this point to ensure that WoE will be a success, unless we suddenly happen to stumble on 50 super active players who want to join WoE.

Anyways, post your opinions and ideas here if you have any. Thanks.

[DarknessDemon]

i think you could make a waiting list. Keep it as 13 teams or whatever it is.

Pretty much people who sign up that dont get to get into a team are put onto a waiting list. First person on waiting list would get put into an opening spot unless they have an element preference.

People would get kicked from the event if they had not set a move in 3 WOE days.

[Jappert]

Losing the teams as they are now would make me very sad. The elemental teams are what gives WoE a big appeal to me.

I myself like the event as it is now since having bigger teams would make it a nightmare for me to organize my team and try to keep everyone active. I do agree however that the way it looks now the strong/rich are only getting richer/stronger and the morale is very low.

I don't agree with any form of penalty for inactivity cause it would only make people who are inactive already and get penalised quit for good. What do other PvP events on these forum do to prevent inactivity? Death/Elimination, PvP Parasite, Vault Penalties, experience decay (lose 1 exp for each inactive day), stuff like that.

WoE was meant to be non-hardcore and a laid back event, that's exactly what's happening. This causes the active motivated members to lose interest however...

[Bootsza]

Also, the the overall activity per Day is now dangerously close to 50%, which is not good. It takes only about 5-10 minutes every 48 hours to post those actions, so the issue clearly is not lack of time, it's lack of motivation.

This is very sad... sorry to hear it.  I wish we could blame War for owning people's time but your point about 5-10 minutes is spot on.  It really does not take a huge amount of time to submit your actions. 

[Kuroaitou]

i think you could make a waiting list. Keep it as 13 teams or whatever it is.

Pretty much people who sign up that dont get to get into a team are put onto a waiting list. First person on waiting list would get put into an opening spot unless they have an element preference.

People would get kicked from the event if they had not set a move in 3 WOE days.

The last sentence makes WoE seem to be a less 'casual' event... but then again, considering things such as War, I wonder if this type of event should be restricted to only those who -guarantee- that they'll be active enough to participate on a daily basis?

I seriously don't like the idea of having 'teams' being a free-for-all starting with '6 neutral underworld's' - how would you divide people? (As they are now?) Wouldn't the map and themes of the elements also have to 'change' because everyone technically starts off without any particular alignment? And the story of how the elements were divided...

The teams separated into 6 main categories (Order, Chaos, Destruction, Growth, Shadow, Illumination) for example would actually allow for some interesting strategies between elemental teams, and also improve communication and potentially activity if people knew that they would have a MUCH larger group willing to support them. On the other hand, it doesn't seem that the current teams (Fire and Death) would want to work with each other given past history...

...all in all, I'm pretty sad about the situation, and a tad bit frustrated with -several- players not helping out, but I guess that's how beta is.

[TheonlyrealBeef]

Inactive people make me sad, but I think just kicking people that are extremely inactive (post their actions less then 25% of all days or something) might be an option. Laid back is good and all, but clogging a team and doing nothing is not.

Making it less teams would also make it less attractive to me. What could be an option though is that as alliances are formed smaller teams merge into larger teams. Disadvantage is that such an alliance can't be broken overnight or it's even more of an organizational nightmare, but it'd be fun if the elements you share a team with are formed by alliances rather than just being your neighbor in the circle. Ironically, half of the teams you currently listed exist of teams that are currently massacring each other xD

[Jappert]

Several members already offered to help out aswel but there isn't much they can do without the required technical knowledge. (me for example)

I also think pairing up elements won't do much since it won't increase the activity. People would be equally inactive it's just the communication between the regular active members that increases. PvP Events on this forum seems to be doomed by inactivity.

A possible solution would be to assign a Commander in every team. The Commander can submit actions for every teammember (maybe only 3 AP/day). This combined with being able to sub on PvP fights on the 2nd day could result in a higher (visual) activity on the WoE playing field. Seems to be this would be a good solution to keep WoE a casual event but also maintain a certain level of activity.

p.s. Looking at how things are going now I think it'd be a great decision to halt the event for a couple of weeks and finetune/change/add a few things. Beta already gave the organizer(s) alot of info and things to work on, those things have priority now.
Resetting the entire event seems like a very drastic and regrettable thing to do however......

[Zaealix]

Yea...  and  started fighting,  and  were fighting. I think more because we just wanted to start gaining levels and skills than anything, but still.
Anyhow, smaller teams is a solution to the inactivity thing, but I think something that might help could be a 'prize' of some sort. Also, I feel like with smaller teams you might still get the issue of imbalanced activity.

[the dictator]

Hmm, could it be that the inactivity is related to the long days?

As in, having to wait 48 hours before you can do something that takes you 5-10 minutes, and that won't do that much at all.
If the days could be 24 days again I guess it would help to keep people interested, just because the whole process isn't going so s..l..o..w..l..y.
No offense on you SG, I know you have got to do lots of stuff to post a new day, and it takes a lot of time to do that, which makes it hard to keep the days short, but shorter days would certainly help. Also, the whole game in general is quite slow. Traveling from water capital back to dumbnar's fortress, where I was takes me three days (6 real days with 48 hours a day), and if I hadn't reset my character, I would have had to spend another 4 days (8 real days) working to get enough money for the cards need, that is 2 weeks after a single loss, which doesn't help to keep me really motivated, I'm still here, but I'm starting to lose interest, just because this whole game is designed really slowly.

Best option for me would be to cancel/put on hold the beta, take a few weeks/months to set everything up again, and to use those two hours a day to upgrade the event, maybe appoint 2 or 3 WoE organizers, everything to make WoE easy to organize and thus fast for both the players and the organizers. And then, when all that is done, to continue/restart and try again. All in all, try to speed it up, not only in organizing, but also in rules (for example, less discard when losing, to make sure you you don't lose to many cards = money = time when losing a single match).

Also, I would prefer smaller teams (6 people at max) over less teams, just because I feel each element should be an apart team (with fire and death in one alliance, team water can't try to get an alliance with team death to have them fight fire). Also, less people each team would support more teamwork, because you can't be everywhere, so you have to coöperate with your teammates, and actually talk with them about what everyone is doing, because with 12 people a team you can be more or less sure someone will do it.


Then again, I still like the idea of WoE but the actual gameplay will be to slow to keep me interested if we continue this way.

Well, that is all I had to say (I think), hope it helps,

The Dictator

[DarknessDemon]

i say each team could have a commander. Whoever has most forum posts or highest score on that team for instance. If a person stopped playing for lets say 2 WOE days then the commander can replace him with someone else. The person replacing that inactive person will pick up the other persons level and skills if he has any. That way appealing to new people so that way halfway through if someone just decides im not playing anymore. The person does not need to be a noob compared to everyone else.

The only other way to make them do it is to put a you wont be able to join the next WoE which is how people are kept active in the champion and beginner league.

[sebysebyseby]

I'm also very sad about inactives it would be a shame to put so much of your hard work to waste.

Maybe you could allow for someone to have some control over another player on their team as well? The more active players can get their activity fix this way too.

[YoungSot]

I agree with Dict that the slow pace of WoE contributes to the lack of interest in many players. I think keeping the event moving consistently would help a ton there, and should be one of the first priorities. Along those lines, I'm worried a week or two break would make the problem even worse, as many players will just stop caring and get involved in other projects and events. (I'm also kinda worried that a week long break will turn into a month long break. You're a busy person after all.)

The second big factor in high inactivity rates are players that are just not participating from the start. There should be a way to replace these players. I like the idea of having a "commander" on a team that may replace players that haven't submitted actions for a certain length of time. Combining a required level of activity with the discretion of the commander is a good system imo, that will replace consistently inactive players but allow players who are simply going on vacation some leeway by talking to the Commander.

As far as the teams go: Alliances are one of the most interesting parts of WoE so far, so I'd rather not diminish their role in the game by creating pre-formed partnerships. I think the real solution involves getting you (SG) out of doing all the work. WoE is gonna run a long time, so in order for it to succeed it is vital that we get other people doing the work. The event should run on it's own, while you concentrate on thinking up ways to improve it and/or work on other projects. I know it takes you some time to teach others, but there's no way around it. If we do take a break, I think it should be to train WoE gamemasters.



I'm pretty sure implementing the above 3 changes would solve the majority of problems with WoE currently, however there's another related issue that I think needs to be addressed: the supposedly "casual" nature of WoE.
WoE is advertised as casual, but in play a majority of the rules (capturing hexes, global quests, etc) encourage very competitive play. If we want to keep the possibility for casual play, we should perhaps put additional emphasis on non-nation related play. We could potentially reach a point where the Nations represent the competitive side of the game, but where you could choose to mostly ignore that part of the game and simply do your own thing if you wanted to be casual. Some ideas toward that end:

Add a "minimum wage" for the work action, so that nations with more casual players will still be able to function. [/li] Add more quests for a single character to compete, which can be done at their leisure and don't affect nations in any particular way.[/li] Make Capital cities unconquerable. This would ensure that, while one nation could certainly take over the majority of the hexes and wipe out all other towns, the other nations will still exist, and it will still be possible for a casual player within such a nation to continue playing relatively unhindered.[/li]

While there would still be imbalances within the competitive side of play, they would be diminished both by replacing inactive players and by the fact that "winning" with your nation would be only an optional goal, and the game could still be enjoyable in a weaker nation.