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


GL has action limits so that the most anyone can be hacked or raided if they refrain from PvP is 5 times per 24 hour period. disabling any ship gains xp, so eventually, the player ranks up. the battle tab has a scaling rank range. so everything that WoW did to reduce 'twinking' is already being done in Galaxy Legion. maybe the rank ranges could be reduced, but other than that, i don't see any urgent problem here.

Games do not typically ruin themselves, rather the community that plays them. What has changed in GL since the game was first introduced?

I did not have a problem with twinks in Warcraft, because you could simply skip the first rank of PVP. There is no avoiding them in GL, and again you are forcibly reminded on your Stats screen.

Everybody gets disabled. Even the "impossibly tough" ships get disabled. If getting disabled ruins your day, as much as I hate to say this, GL may not be the game for you. The only way out of disables is to never attack another player, never invade a planet, and check in every six hours after applying Calming Amp+Halc. And sorry, but anybody who would pass up a nice planet because they don't want to break their halc is beyond foolish.

Now, if getting disabled by people you have no chance of badging back without 999 repair nanos and/or artifacts/tri-Matrix refills is a day-ruining problem for you, I'd advise joining a large legion that offers good daily payout, advice, and support. Many are friendly, and will accept lower rank ships, especially if they are Aerlen Fixer. It will take time, but anybody who does this, remains active, and follows directions can eventually build a ship that's strong enough to take out all (or at least very nearly all?) other ship in their rank range without using artifacts. Will you be as strong/hard to kill as everybody in your range? Certainly not, but build your planets and grow your ship properly, and you'll have the energy on hand to at least make everybody on your BT "killable" if you set your mind to it.

Slight amendment to Pongo's post.....Everyone who actually plays the game will eventually get disabled. We have at least 4 or 5 undefeated ships in my legion.....all of them with at least a year in the game and all of them below rank 30 or so. The thing with playing this way is they are always afraid to actually do anything because they don't want to risk ranking and maybe accidentally get disabled. Some players get so hung-up on that stat that they let it dictate their whole game and they miss out on a lot.

There is also no guarantee you won't be disabled even if you employ the do-nothing strategy. A couple weeks ago one of our do-nothings hit someone and got alerted....no real reason for the alert he was just doing standard badging but whoever he hit was apparently tired of being bullied by his type. Anyway a couple much higher ranks in the other legion took him out a couple times and ended his undefeated strategy after over a year of carefully doing very little. He was quite upset....I thought it was hilarious

But, yeah, if you actually play the game you'll get disabled sooner or later. Don't let fear of that ruin any chance you have of actually playing and enjoying the game.

IMO, what's changed is newer players realize that they can never realistically reach any of the leaderboards that are completely populated by people who have a 4 or 5 year head start on them. Since they can't compete for any of that they settle for trying to have the toughest ship at their rank, remain undefeated, etc. which leads to staying mostly inactive because they don't want to accidentally rank and be exposed to tougher ships.

I think an interesting twist would be to keep the existing, all-time leaderboards, but also have another set of leaderboards that resets monthly so more ships would have a shot at placing on them from time-to-time.

this is true. I will never be able to bump ICBLF or any of the other guys off for that matter. Maybe a leaderboard for those under 500, and another for those above 500 and up to 1k plus the existing one for the nosebleeds we have now.

I completely disagree about the leaderboards being impossible to get to for new players.
If they want it they will work at it, if not why should they care? They shouldn't be easy.

I think people may over-estimate the importance of the leaderboards to what is probably the vast majority of players.
Just a personal example, I'd already been playing for 6 months and around 250 ranks before I even looked at them.
Effect it had on my enjoyment and longevity in the game? Absolutely zero.

I think a monthly leaderboard would be a cool way to represent who is being active. But I couldn't care less about the rankings and am not discouraged in any way by players I'll never catch... and I don't think my "who cares?" view of the leaderboards is uncommon (see Deigobene's post).

for those who do not care about leaderboards, no biggie. but there are plenty of players who will keep logging in (the point of this topic) in order to get themselves onto one and steadily climb it. the current all-time leaderboards require months if not years of effort to even make an appearance, something that might deter some players from sticking around.

the medal points sort of help track your progress, but other than posting a few of the notable achievements on your facebook feed, there is no place to really show off. that is why a 30-day leaderboard might work for those players who want to be competitive right from the get go.

Yup, agreed. It's a good idea

Agree 100% with all of this. No one is saying do away with the all-time leaderboards - those people worked very hard for a very long time to get there. But I think it would be a relatively simple addition to add a monthly version in conjunction with the all-time ones. True, some might never look at leaderboards and may not care; but some will. And anything that stimulates players, especially new ones, to be active is a good thing, imo. I can easily see new players saying "you know what the leaderboard for xxxx is a long, long way away...if ever for me, but I enjoy (fill in favorite leaderboard category here) so I'm going to make a run for the monthly in that category while I work towards the all-time ones.

I think we need a loser board. Like how ESPN does worst ten plays of the week. If you've been disables over 30 times, you MIGHT be worst ship in the galaxy for the week. Special prize: 1 rescued prisoner to improve your ship.

C'mon Man! .....lol

nice virtual Chris Carter ref

That would be an awesome way for us established legions to identify/hand pick the next ships for legion recruitment

If anything should be done with the leaderboard, It should be a hall of fame. Hate seeing fabulous players just gone with no mark made on game.

My 2 cents into a belabored discussion on how to build/rebuild GL for another 5 years of growth and fun.
1. More Advertisement
2. Training system that effectively intros players into game
3. Somehow dealing with SSB/freeze rank abuse of new players (it's a slow dead end and less fun version of playing the game imo btw)
4. Starting alternate universes that allowed existing players to "replay" (new things grow faster and better than established things, People joining something new is more likely, by "replay" i mean- existing players could start anew without jeopardizing existing and could enable them to recruit new people to start with them since they will be on level footing. Alternately, big ships could spin off into a new galaxy where they "replay" without losing their gains.)

#1....+1, and +1 again. and again.
#2....+1 (hopefully this new training legion thing Dan's coming out with will take care of that)
#3....I agree it's a less fun way to play, but not a huge issue imo
#4....-1 (There's another game I also play, Starfleet Commander. This is what they have done there, and yeah, it gets a little uptick momentarily, but ultimately the player base in all Universes continues to decline, and also spreads out users over several Universes, instead of having them all in 1. It used to have over 100k players. Now it's got less than 10k I think between all 6+? versions of the game. The one I play has less than 1k active players. I don't want to see that happen here.)

You say that like it'd be a bad thing. Yet more incentive for new players to actually play, make the monthly leader boards and get recruited to legions that'd likely never look at admitting a new players otherwise. Win/win from where I'm sitting. New players who actually make an effort and play the game get rewarded and the better legions out there all vie to recruit active new players with at least a little bit of a proven track record.

P.S. Hall of Fame is an awesome idea

For some of the leaderboards, sure. For the PvP ones this is completely untrue. We've seen people plough their way onto the kills, hacks and raids leaderboards out of nowhere in the past.

I agree with 1, 2 and 3. I think 4 will kill the game.