Ps- dont worry about over raping those people...soon the game will end due to them leaving...so might as well get your shots in now, right?

I just remembered that there are people out there that do multi actions to people to trade actions because they might ask for it and want to set a deal.

Not everyone that is having their actions taking away is mad about trading actions like this because some of them know they will get to get back their actions in return.

The real problem is people having difficulty trading actions due to low resources and a bad ship for pvp.

Perhaps galaxy legion has too many tedious things to do that are too difficult with a reward that is satisfying enough.

In this case, we need better rewards, preferably a daily, for lower ranked people that they can complete to increase their production.

Maybe adding production boosting artifacts to the daily rewards we collect every day would be nice or just adding other different rewards to it to surprise newer players.

lets be serious:
the game needs a major interest from Dan and even bigger change - a new sequel or something to continue as core story with strong PvP portion...
missions and npc hunts, that is nothing new. great storyline, that something else!
NB: the fantasy rules/formulas should be adjusted as well.

I've been playing for years now and getting frustrated enough to quit. Seems like I'm on someone's battle tab every 2 hours. Yesterday, a ship 300 levels above attacked me and set off my halc trap. Then two hours later, he was able to disable me. So if I'm refreshed on their battle tab every two hours, I have no chance of advancing in the game. I'm just going to be a constant farm for higher rank ships. So if this isn't corrected or the calming amplifier and halycon trap aren't adjusted for this, I'm pretty much going to quit this game.

Aaron,

Welcome to the big leagues man. Being seen by higher ranked ships has always been in play and not bound to change. Many people have reset or focused their efforts on restricting deck space in order to be more painful to attack, thus discouraging being hit as often.

As far as being disabled by the same guy, the bt can cycle rather quickly depending on what SCAN the person is running, how often they are bumping or attacking people, and if they switch out scan items during the day. Also he could have 'tabbed' you and simply come back in 2 hours to collect his bounty. I don't bother with this, but many people use it for efficient hunting.

Hope you elect to stay, but regarding pvp, it will annoy you but doesn't keep you from playing.

I am sorry you are frustrated. I don't understand this, though.

Getting disabled can be a nuisance, can feel deflating, and depending on the situation and/or person(s) involved, it be downright infuriating.

It does not, however, have any bearing on your ability to advance in the game. It doesn't steal experience, does it? Repair nanos aren't exactly hard to come by, either, and even if they were, you should be able to do a credit repair with no problem.

Even the very strongest ships get disabled. And the higher your rank, the thinner the BT gets and the more dedicated players you'll run into. +300 can be a big difference at rank 900, but when you are rank 1200, you'll be on the menu for people who are 800 ranks above you.

If you hate getting disabled, PVP to the point where you are "Insane" in combat rep (lotsa players only target ships who aren't "Insane"), work on your arti production, maximize your ship's defenses, and avoid adding decks for anything but essential items. You'll still get disabled, of course, but it will happen less often

Ok, long-time lurker/first time poster, so what better way to start than to wade into this topic.....lol.

As I see it GL suffers from a few basic flaws; some that could be easily fixed others less easily- if they could be fixed at all...

1) The freeze ranking/ slow ranking SSB thing has just gotten totally out of control. I know of no other game that rewards "players" for doing pretty-much nothing. In my current legion we have probably a half-dozen players who are under rank 30 and have been playing the game for over a year ....if you call that playing. That's just a recipe for having players ultimately quit entirely since they only "play" at a very minimal level anyway.

When I first started I ended my day at rank 16 IIRC. That's right DAY..... We currently have 3 players in my legion with over 1 year of game-time who haven't reached my rank after one day. I blame the game mechanics for this.... The secret is out....if you want to be really tough for your rank; just stay at your rank forever, do basically nothing, and keep the resources pouring in....easy peasy.

I don't really blame the players. It's either do that or be willing to take the punishment from all the other "players" who do that. My solution for this would be to place a hard limit on the number of crew that you may have per deck. All of these players that have 10,000 crew of each type per deck......where the heck are they putting them? Mods take up space; why not crew? If you wanted to get really fancy with your programming you could have some sort of optimal-level of crew per deck and, beyond this, they decrease in efficiency until the hard cap is finally reached.

With this system you could benefit, to a degree, by going slowly if that is your desire but after a certain point there would be no real advantage to freezing forever and maybe people would actually play the game.

2). Reset accounts who somehow magically retain all their awesome planets...... This is just plain BS and cheating, imo, but I know of no easy way to stop it (unfortunately). Same with multis, errr, excuse me friends/girlfriend/brothers/cousins/ etc/ etc who have multiple feeder accounts to create a super tough ship on one main account. This is pretty-much a problem in every other game I play as well, so this issue isn't unique to GL (unlike the do-nothing, freeze ranking issue).

3). Tutorial needs re-worked.....'nuff said.

4). Game needs to be more mobile friendly x1 quinzillion......

5). Legions.....Can be a great part of the game, or a source of frustration if you end-up in a crappy one. How is a beginning player to know which is which? When I first started I wasn't clear on the importance of legions and didn't join one until around rank 50 (mistake 1). The tutorial could be more helpful in this regard unless it has changed since I last saw it.

After joining a legion I (through complete luck of the draw) happened to choose a legion that was stagnant and eventually folded. Without knowing the established legions in the game (and new players are unlikely to) this is an easy mistake to make. The legion was nearly full when I joined and made all the usual promises....seemed like a good enough place....turned-out to only hinder my development. I stayed far longer than I should have out of a mis-guided sense of loyalty and received little to help my development in return (mistake 2).

All-in-all I actually do quite enjoy GL; it's just frustrating to me that there are obvious flaws that need addressing....

Anyway, my .02 YMMV.

The thing is, they're not being rewarded compared to other players.

They really can't do anything, and their ships are laughably weak for time invested in the game. Real players will pass these "tough" preschoolers and make them irrelevant soon enough. If you actually play the game and grow your ship, these "players" (I use the term loosely) are nothing to worry about.

The best thing to do with slow rank leaches who just sit, collect, and dishearten new players is kick them until they can't find a decent home anywhere. Unfortunately, there are too many legions who are all-too-happy to let a worthless player suckle on their base's arti-teat in exchange for 2% cloak.

welcome to de.lurk.land Roddenberry. sadly, you de.lurked to post nonsense regarding freeze rankers.

you posted that you 'understand' why some of the freeze rankers do what they do, but it is very clear that you do NOT understand. absolute strength means NOTHING in the PvP aspect of this game except when it comes to conquering planets. so if you want to be involved in PvP at all, you have to look at relative strength. in those terms, freeze rankers win hands down. it is basic math.

every rank up nets you 5 rank points, and some extra resource storage capacity. every 4 rank ups nets you another planet slot. that's it. a freeze ranker in an arti legion can collect their 80k base shipment and get 2 rescued prisoners which net 6 rank points, and can do that repeatedly without ranking up. once they have their research sufficiently done, they can get access to the ct.lab and polychoron vaults for extra resource storage capacity. so, the only element where they are hindered is in the number of planet slots (and thus, overall arti production).

you state that freeze rankers can pummel anyone in their badging range ... but if they go for the disables, that xp forces them to rank up. so SMART freeze rankers will focus on hacking and raiding, saving disables for after rank 600 when the juicy ctp npc's have disappeared.

so is playing as a freeze.ranker particularly fun ? not for me. i just got the nostalgic voyage medal and solynia ally yesterday at rank 847. the minimum rank requirement for it is 400, so i ranked twice as fast as i could have .. hence i am a very BAD at slow.ranking, unlike some of my colleagues at Ancient Untouchables ... but i am happy with the choices i have made to date. that said, i completely understand why someone would freeze rank and support their right to play the game however they wish ... their game choices do not affect how i play the game one iota.

the meat of the game is up to rank 2000, but the majority of the choices that determine how your gameplay will evolve are made in the rank 100-500 range. that includes all the race unlocks, the one.off npc's (caelon, silthion), legion missions (rank 400 seems to be the target to access all of them), and daily missions. freeze rankers can build their ship for PvP strength and make more informed choices about how they want to progress thru the meaty part of the game, than those who seek to rush thru the available content.

this will never be a mass market game. no game that has so many players using spreadsheets to track their progress can ever be mass market. there are plenty of games that force you along a track ... GL is different and MUCH BETTER for not following that development path and allowing players to make choices that MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

so yes, there are issues with the game, but freeze rankers are not even close to #1 on the list of reasons why the number of players might be dropping. bigger is NOT by any stretch better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Wars:


i think GL has managed to hold onto more than 1.1% of its users since 2010 ?

Hey, Sen.....How ya doing? Was wondering when the resident "Defender of the Faith" was going to show-up

First of all there may have been a little confusion about my post.... I know I numbered my "issues" with the game and that I put freeze ranking/SSBs as number 1 on the list. I should have clarified that the list was in no particular order. My bad. I simply put freeze ranking SSBs as number one because I wanted to advance my proposal and I didn't have any specific proposals for the other items on my list.

If you must know I'd put poor optimization for play on mobile devices as my personal #1, but other's will likely have other issues as their #1 pet peeve.

Having said that I DO think freeze ranking SSBs are a huge issue with the game. All that strategy does is teach new players that the way to get ahead is to do basically as little as possible. If they already aren't doing much it's only a small step to get to doing nothing at all and quitting. I think if you want to retain new players we should actually be encouraging them to be active, not inactive. It's not good for them (from a retention standpoint) and it's not good for others who are noobs just starting the game and get harassed by these guys.

First of all.....YOU SUCK....lol. From a freeze-ranking point-of-view, that is If your numbers are accurate for getting your medal, you are ranking at about .75 rank/day. Hardly what I'm talking about. Secondly, I know from other of your posts that you postulate that you do a lot of other things to contribute to the game while not ranking. Without belaboring the point, that is also hardly what the "typical" new player who decides to become a freeze-ranker does. The typical freeze ranker does next to nothing, logs-in, collects base resources, gets a couple raids or hacks and is done for the day. wash/rinse/repeat times infinity.

Time for a couple quick looks at anecdotal evidence from my own legion.... We have one player whose been in the legion for 13 months.....still rank 25...went inactive nearly 2 weeks ago and is unlikely to be back. We have yet another player who has played for 512 days and is rank 14.... Those are the types of players I'm talking about.

During his time in the game the rank 14 guy has "amassed" 23 kills, 23 raids, and 722 hacks. He's averaging 1 kill/raid every 22 days. and 1.4 hacks per day. During that time he has also killed a whopping 3 NPCs and completed 16 missions. Is this player really playing? He averages gaining 1 rank every 36.5 days. To answer my own question "No" he is not playing the game. He just announced he is going to be going MIA for awhile because he has found a new game.

These are the types of players that I'm talking about and this is what the, perhaps mis-understood, application of the idea of freeze-ranking to "get ahead" breeds.

You state that the "meat" of the game is roughly at rank 100-500. Not saying that I agree with that (I personally think it starts somewhat higher than rank 100, maybe rank 200 imo, but I'm not going to quibble). Given our rank 14 guys' rate of advancement he'll get to the meat of the game (by your definition) in roughly 10 years. Is he really going to stick around that long at his play-style? Is anyone?

Illogically, he was just asking the other day when he could get velox thrusters for his ship. After we did the math for him, given his current rate of ranking, we told him it would take him 19.9 years to achieve the minimum rank required to get them. Less than a week later he has announced he's going to be MIA for awhile.

I don't this these players are atypical for freeze-ranking SSB players who are just starting-out. The get some enjoyment for awhile from doing nothing, gaining strength, and harassing newer players who aren't or haven't yet froze. Then they get bored of that after awhile since they really aren't doing much and end up just quitting before they even reach rank 50.

This is a lose/lose proposition. They make the game less enjoyable for those who are actually trying to play, then they eventually quit themselves since doing pretty-much nothing day after day gets old after awhile.

Are they within their rights to play this way? Absolutely. Is it good for the game and helping bring-in and retain new players? Absolutely not.

Now....about the issue of relative versus absolute strength.... I disagree with your premise (not surprisingly). You state that the freeze rankers have the right to play that way and that you support it. Fine. They aren't breaking any rules. You presumably then would have no issue that if I were ever the leader of a legion again and we established a policy of having our new guys auto-alert any freeze-ranking SSB so the higher-up, more powerful ships in our legion could pound them. I'm not breaking any rules, right? And absolute power doesn't matter for PvP (by your account) right? If freeze-ranking to bully the new guys is OK, then presumably giving the freeze-rankers a taste of their own medicine is OK too, yes?

i have ALWAYS said ... actions are there to be taken.

thing is, i do not think low.level freeze rankers are such a big deal. anyone ranking ''''normally'''' will rank well past them soon enough and they will not be able to put on enough scan to find anyone with even an ounce of cloak. if they are busy freezing instead of killing, they are not affecting new players at all. so they are basically casual players that will never be converted.

i agree that mobile-friendliness is a much better pick for a #1 issue to address.

as for the 'meat' references, by that i mean the 'point of no return' where the xp you burn on some things means that you preclude other things. you can always catch up later, but you give up other things at that time. so, if you neglect PvP in those key ranks, you will be behind the 8.ball when you try to collect reds for the badge mods (and new Darmos ally). if you neglect npc slots ... you will miss out on a bunch of npc's when your bt gets locked up by elites. if you neglect scanning boosts ... you will have to pray to the RNG for a semi.decent planet.

once you get to rank 1k, you will have the npc slots and decks to equip the scan mods, but you will be further back of those who made different decisions in those areas. so that is what i meant when i said that what you do in those key ranks will determine how you fare in the rank 1k world, and why many folks reset once they realize they followed a path that did not lead them to where they wanted to end up. smart freeze rankers will have spent the time to figure out how they want to proceed on the FIRST go.round. it is those choices that make this game more interesting than Mafia Wars type games where the biggest (or oldest) gang just rampages over everyone else. so many bad memories of evony ...

Many slow rankers and freeze rankers are in prosperous legions because some of them have difficulty gaining production. They are missing out on a lot of content as a result, but if they could somehow get a lot of production early on by themselves, they would more likely move on. Some legion mates can even help them increase their production in order to get them to rank.

People would definitely be more likely to rank faster if they feel that they got efficient production for the next couple of ranks or are prepared to rank. However some of them are motivated to rank because some new modules are worth it to keep forever and never lose their shelf-life.

No real secret to gaining production..... RANK! Gain planet slots, colonize/invade, fill slots, rank again....repeat....

I agree with Sen (wtf? lol) that individually freeze-rankers are not a problem to overcome. The problem is there are droves of them out there. In terms of new players entering the game I don't even want to speculate how many slow/freeze rankers they have to navigate their way through. And, heaven help them if they should actually try to retaliate....

I disagree, however, that if you rank normally you'll soon be out of their range altogether.... Just starting out and rank 20? Good luck, TONS of freeze rankers there; some having played for easily over a year. Rank 30? same deal. Rank 50? Probably looking at going up against freeze/slow rankers who have been playing for 2 years by now. Rank 100? Same.... Basically goes on forever....

There should be some way to encourage the casual player (Sen's words) to be more involved in the game and actually do more than compete to do as little as possible with the sole goal of making the game unpleasant for the unlucky new player who would actually like to play the game and enjoy all it has to offer.

Sen also says this is a spreadsheet game and you're never going to make that popular with the masses. I disagree. Note to self.....the first time I ever consider using spreadsheets to "enhance" my gameplay is the LAST day I play GL. I play for fun; for enjoyment. Do I miss out on squeezing every last bit of capability out of my ship/planets/production..... without a doubt. I guess I'm the type of casual player that the game will never appeal to....

That's really what this thread started out about......"How do we make the game more attractive to the new (and presumably) casual players". My solution..... find some way that they can enjoy all the game has to offer without having to worry about being bullied by all the freeze-rankers out there who believe they are playing optimally and either convince other new players to follow that path or hound them mercilessly until they just abandon the game....

I agreed with Pongoloid. While freeze rankers may spank people in low level bt ranges.. they are basically useless in general. I don't mind them doing that for the most part. They cannot help in legion missions, bases, and in generally suck on planet invades. That leaves all that stuff for us people who don't slow rank. That said, I say play how you like. I applaud slow rankers...they know what they want and there is plenty of competition for them. Once you pass the lower 500 ranks it's more a free for all. Everyone, like in real life, should pursue what they feel is fun, enjoyable, and makes them happy.

There are some slow rankers who are very strong and now that they have the arti prod are very dangerous. Again, i say kudos.

The point i would concur with you is new, truly new players. They need a better wiki and tutorial. Joining a legion is key, and a good one. Wrong choices early don't doom you, but they do COST you. HAving sage advice from seasoned players is like mana from heaven.

The slow ranking doesn't go on forever. I see people with great kills/death that i spank hard. You just have to hang in there. Knowing what the game mechanics are, play to your forte!!! VIVA!

Add 1 to the damage cap for every day played after creating/resetting your account.

Damage cap = 1/2 decks --or-- 1/2 rank +19 --or-- # of days played, whichever is highest.

Some of those SSB slow rankers you're talking about who have been playing 2 years without passing rank 50 will be in for a nasty surprise.

New player here (just over a month), and I can see how it might be frustrating (to some) to be disabled every time you log on. But actually having to repair your ship is not the real issue. The real problem lies in the stats screen.

Why is Deaths by Player a stat? Raided by Player / Hacked by Player / Planets Lost to Players seem to not be on there. Having to be reminded of how far behind you are in the community of a long standing game every single time you check how you are doing, makes the hill seem too steep to bother.

decent question. the bigger issue to me, is that there is no easy way for a new player to be COMPETITIVE on the current leaderboards without putting a lot of time in. a monthly (last 30 days) set of leaderboards would 'reward' ongoing activity.

i recently got back into a game that i had dropped 3 years ago (probably once i got into Galaxy Legion lol). the only reason i got back in again ? i was still 15th on a couple of leaderboards. the chance to be competitive is a great motivator. the only reason i was competitive was because those particular leaderboards were based on stat per population, and i maintained a small city by design.

if there were a GL leaderboard for kills per rank, that would be VERY different from the current kills leaderboard.

I do agree that more frequent leaderboards would still allow the slow builders to do their thing while still reaping the benefit they want - which is obviously a high k/d ratio. I guarantee removing the Deaths by Player stat would eliminate the sense of failing from new players.

You can compete relatively as a new player... I have 185 kills and 25 deaths. But I looked for a Legion almost immediately and skimmed the forums for what is what. What is happening in this game, is known in RPGs as Twinking, and had such a profound effect on new players in games such as World of Warcraft that it was completely eliminated from being possible.

Personally, I refuse to remove the other 90% of the game simply to have good PVP stats. I am doing the 'build Tact officers' with nearly all my points, but I am also not hesitating to level up and reach the good parts this game has to offer - planets, race changes, race abilities, expanding NPC slots, etc.