Another goodbye

Rob,

1. TA should indeed be the source of natural resource.
We are close to adding two new natural resources to TA and three new major products in Simcountry that will use these resources.
Most work is already done.

2. The cost of weapons is falling. long term and currently the cost was falling much more. Profit levels in most countries allow players to build strong armies. The cost is now much lower and the stories about the extreme cost are just not true. They do not reflect current pricing.

The case you describe is the result of that same use of an error that enabled several players to amass huge amounts of weapons and ammunition.

Armies should be large if you want to wage war but not the size that became possible due to this error.
Also you are forced to have a huge army. Much larger than before.
This is a problem for everyone.

There are small and large armies in Simcountry but as I said before, some are too large and were created by using cheats. These armies could not have been created any other way.

That is very unfortunate but it exposed the absurdity and forces action.
Once they are back to a normal size more players will have the chance of using their army.
Even without any action from our side, (Until now we are only talking about it), they are falling over their own size and are leaking resources very quickly while we did not make any change at all.

We see a dwindling empire that is as we see it, beyond repair unless they just discard weapons and wind farms.

We have done some balancing of the defensive vs. offensive game it is now much more balanced than it used to be.
We will do another round of tuning in the coming weeks.

There are many things we need to improve, small and large.
It is unfortunate that we are now busy with the results of cheating that by the way, was our fault in the first place.

The changes we will introduce are not requiring much work.
The fixing of the wind energy issues (pricing and maintenance), is also clear and also almost done.

we will shortly be on our way to do the things we really need.

In a couple of months, all this will be remembered as the large cheat incident.
It will be resolved, and unfortunately, we might loose several players who become very frustrated about their cheat fortunes leading to a disaster. For now, they are not gone but rather make efforts to save their empire.

Also others who did not use this cheat might not like maintenance cost in enterprises.

I will remind you of a previous incident some time ago:

Building military units used to be much easier.
the command helping you in doing it, accepted any number of units you wanted.

A long time players one day, accused the gamemaster of stealing all his money.
He was shouting a cursing and was of course joined by several others who were also cheated by the gamemaster every single day.

We discovered that the layer ordered many military units and did not realize how much money was involved. he had several hundred billions and ended up with a large loan.

The cursing ended when he left for ever.

At the time, we removed the command because there were others who did not realize what happens when you order 50 units or more at once. That command placed immediate orders for all the weapons and ammo needed for all these units at once.
Building military units became much more difficult.

Later, at the request of players, we brought this command back but now, as it is today, you can automatically build ONE unit and then after that, if cash allows, use it again.

Andy you still miss the point.

You say: "2. The cost of weapons is falling. long term and currently the cost was falling much more. Profit levels in most countries allow players to build strong armies. The cost is now much lower and the stories about the extreme cost are just not true. They do not reflect current pricing."

If it's affordable, fun, and encouraged by the game, why do almost no players have armies? I see no new players moving toward war level 3. I see no new players learning even basic warfare. Where is the disconnect? That's what you should be focusing on.

TA in concept is a fun idea. In reality, it's clicks to acquire a resource you can use to tediously make weapons. These weapons don't really impact wars (I've fought against them several times). So few wars get fought anyways. Also - the idea of some unbeatable master weapon only favors wealthy and strong players anyways. New players certainly will be even more disadvantaged by players who acquire targon etc. One minute you complain that players with weapons in their CEOs are at a huge advantage over new players, and the next you talk about the benefits of Tiny Atlas, which are to get weapons that give you a huge advantage over new players.

If TA was so good though, you'd have players playing it. You don't have that. Tell yourself it's great all you want but your players aren't interested and don't find it helpful or fun for their account so far. Again, there are two players on Tiny Atlas. Two.

I'm also not clear why you're spending your time discussing some random "cheaters" that no one knows who they are here and using it to prove some point (what is your point?).

Game instructions are extraordinarily bad. If people don't understand immediate order creates big debt, that's partially on them and partially on the GMs for having almost no text or instructions about it. All it says is in tiny text at the bottom is "BEWARE. This feature will place many immediate orders for weapons and ammo." It says NOTHING about debt.

New players likely *have no concept of what immediate orders mean in terms of expenses.* How would they know? We ask for better instructions, better updates, and better documentation regularly. The response is to ignore the requests and just blame players for not understanding how the game works.

This is all very juvenile. There aren't players of note who share the GM's view on any of this. Arguing about it is pointless.

I have over 70,000 wind farms that I purchased over a period of many months, because for an extremely long time (well over a year), wind farms were insanely profitable. All of my wind farms can be destroyed today and I'll still have profited to an obscene point. Maintaining them is irrelevant. I'm not sure what bringing up and arguing about players buying lots of wind farms is about either.

What's the argument or point you're trying to prove here Andy? It seems like random arguments about things your players simply don't enjoy or agree with. Perhaps you have something you're trying to express but I don't see any of us players who gets it.

Thanks for your response Andy, Let's all just take a deep breath and see how things work out. I will work within the system developed.
Rob

Look I have not been in the game for long but a "cheat incident"? Bro people have been doing it for what like 20 years? That's not a cheat, it's just a game mechanic and that point.

I also like how your argument against TA is literally "we are adding more dev time into TA" really great comeback, I am sure the 2 people will be very happy.

Lastly like was kinda said you don't seem to understand the underlying issue with the corp maintenance thing because yes you are making people destroy assets because they won't be able to sell them off fast enough, they will be forced to destroy a ton of assets, you are punishing people for doing something that has been fine for 20 years and you don't see why they are upset? Come on now, be real.

Mr. Corleone stated that he was on the fence of leaving and your response to his reasoning as to why his stance is such way is "Fake News" and then stating what you believe is the right way forward and possible evidence as signs of the movement you are taking simcountry is the correct course, is reasonably debatable.

I understand this. I myself been playing simcountry on and off since 2008 (started playing in a hotel room while my sister was competing in the Olympics at the time *side flex*)

I was never deep hardcore into the game, but I do know that what Mr. Corleone has said is correct, the logic to "punish" players for a weirdly implemented mechanic that they have utilized THE WAY it was coded and, on any paper, intended, is wrong. The economic game is literally looking for market gaps and documents and all the sorts and seeking to get the most amount of profit from any given asset or assets. To state that players have done this too successfully and therefore it was done with either malicious intent or exploitive of the game is bad posturing by those who design it. You are not in the wrong Andy on many things when it comes to this which is why players are even more frustrated about the situation because we DO see your reasoning... you are in the wrong because of the way you are scrambling to course correct the ship that already missed port. I am FOR maintaining windfarms and the way it is set up (I am biased cause I have tons of turbine corps, but shh). I believe however that transportation index should be renamed infrastructure, I believe that once a windfarm is built it should be maintained by a WORKFORCE, and that workforce should be maybe 45 highlevel workers per farm (idk) taking the monthly maintenance of turbines out of the picture and only an asset to MAKE windfarms. (sorry for the suggestion in a goodbye send off, but this post has already fell into the conversation of windfarms etc). This suggestion will not only stop the feeling of punishment and the destruction of assets, but also change the educational landscape while having maintenance be tied to a quantity of workforce availability. This will give somewhat of a cap for windfarms due to a workforce requirement, MUCH like schools, universities, and hospitals which LIKE windfarms are assets that can not be sold, but destroyed, so lets use the same mechanic.

Oh, I also do want to point out because I realized it sounds like I may be trying to be on the side of guys that have 10s of thousands of windfarms. I am not I think that is pretty silly (I myself have less than 200)
I do believe though adding workforce requirement like universities, hospitals, and schools and moving windfarms (the asset) into transportation and renaming transportation index into infrastructure would solve alot while still having those guys needing to solve their many windfarms or face labor shortages. Idk, I am fine with anything to be honest.

(sorry for double post)

I fail to find here any arguments for why it is wrong to have maintenance cost for weapons stored in enterprises except for "It has been so for 20 year".
or we have been cheating for 20 years.

The scale of what happened exposed the problems and we will fix them.

While the maintenance cost of weapons might increase, the reduction in the cost of weapons and ammunition will more than compensate for it.
Most countries, with a reasonable size army will benefit a lot.

Some players avoid the war game. true. but if they suddenly discover the cost went down by 50%, and new players, will they fight even less?
They might not change their mind about it, or they will.

New players don't have that.
They will start building an army and decide for themselves if it is too expensive or not.


And TA.
It took some time to set all kinds of parameters and find the time to continue.
there are now a few players but if there are new options to use, and new opportunities that involve TA it will quickly change.
Sure, not for everyone, but there will be incentives to produce these materials and a large potential profit and we will probably shift into more of these new products (Electrical vehicles, automotive industries and sun energy) to mention some.

when we introduced the wind turbines, there were a lot of arguments against it and some players wanted to remove them with many many requests to add the remove command to be able to get rid of them.
Now, it is a major function that provides income to many countries and an established part of the game.

And yes, we agreed many times, there is a lot more to improve.

Andy, I don't speak up often, but from what I can see the game is in a slow decline, I don't know it you are surrounded by yes men but you are ignoring and dismissing the passionate player base that is willing to spend money.

I know you care about this game but the Lack of transparency is not helping.
the community is trying to help, but it feels like you are letting pride cloud you're sight on problems and neglect.

I feel that there isn't a plan but reactionary fixes to the game.
many core mechanics are outdated and newer players will find difficult to understand.

what will happen when the players that are willing to help newer players leave? you say that new players come in but how many stay and consider going to a premium account?

On TA I feel that you are counting the chickens before they hatch on that, it's to well taxing to work with it in the larger scale of things with the outdated UI of space management and shipping.

Lioncoeur,

Lots of things to improve indeed.
It will help however if you will give some specific examples.
many problems were solved here when players informed us about them.

I do not see what the connection is to the two large issues we now decided to fix:
the maintenance of the army and
the maintenance of wind farms that is in place, but the wind turbines that are needed for it are not being purchased.

Several long time players, and we hope to keep them all here, with huge armies, object to our decision to fix the problem.

This is not because they care about the game.
They care about their own account that profited from this omission and made it possible for some players to have an army 500 times bigger than the average. It made many others leave the war game.

This is in fact, the main reason most players are not interested in the war game.
What sense does it make if there is a giant next to you who can wipe you out in one minute and everything you have built is gone.

The large players are counting they victories but the victim is tiny and hopeless.

Then I am told, people do not want to play the war game.
Before this happened, we had many more players joining the war game.
Unfortunately, we did not realize how bad the problem is until this "exploit" exposed how ridiculous it became.

Is that good for the other players?
good for Simcountry?
what argument do they have against it except for "it will reduce my huge profits a bit and I just don't want it""

We think that a fair level of maintenance cost for the army, and a lower cost to build one, will reduce the impossible size gap and in time, will attract more players to the war game.
It will not happen overnight.

Some more tuning of the defensive/offensive power of weapons will help too but from what I see, the numbers now are much more balance than before.

I am sorry.
I removed a message by a player claiming that our ambition is to destroy the assets of new players.

after everything I said.
destroy assets of new players? They do not have any. and why should we?

Citation:

Andy, it's clear that your motive isn't to help new players but to destroy their assets.

Please don't place any garbage here.

The message was clear! It's equally not garbage too. You delete everything that's contrary to your motives. You've done this countless times, so I'm not surprised.. Why would you be sorry. It's your game do what makes you happy bro.. this my last message on this forum!

Thanks for your responses Andy
Sorry to see you leave Eeeeeooooo

Bullies beware!!! Days up!!!!

Andy, I'm concerned that you're not even listening to the players who have been here forever! You say there are new players joining. Where are they? You say they are leaving because they can't compete with bigger players. That doesn't make much sense to me. When I arrived, there were big players all over this game. I received guidance from other players that helped me learn the game. I think you're missing the problem. New players aren't leaving because big players have weapons stored in their CEOs. I think that's BS, that's my opinion there. New players are leaving because the "game" has failed them. You're taxing veteran players because the game has failed to properly teach other players how to succeed in this game. While you continue to alienate your loyal player base for newer players who have no intentions of sticking around, it's a crazy strategy. Over the years, there have been plenty of great suggestions, and barely any of those wonderful ideas have been implemented. Nowhere did I see suggestions of creating an entire new planet for rare resources. You all came up with that yourselves instead of actually listening to what players wanted. I am also on my way out the door. It's mainly because of your attitude and stance on receiving criticism and failing to implement new popular ideas that would make this game more enjoyable. I can only offer advice at this point. Create a suggestions tab on the general page. Have everyone write their ideas. Read the ideas and reply to each one, explaining whether or not you can implement it. I think if everyone can see that their ideas are at least being considered, it would be helpful. However, focusing on weapons storage in enterprises is out of touch with the majority of the player base. TA is out of touch. You are single-handedly putting wind farms out of touch. Most of your proposed updates are out of touch. I have made some good friends in this game, and it's a shame to see them leave one by one. For you to be defensive on every post is disheartening and is a clear indication that there is no major change coming to this game.

Thanks,

Joel

"I fail to find here any arguments for why it is wrong to have maintenance cost for weapons stored in enterprises except for "It has been so for 20 year".
or we have been cheating for 20 years."

Andy, people experienced with the war game have made the argument that you need large stockpiles of offensive weapons than can be reasonably stored and maintained in a country, just to win a single offensive war against a strongly defended nation.

Your argument that that people don't play the war game because of these giant stockpil3s is hollow. The war game is scary for new players as it is not well taught how to play it in game, and the risk which you yourself have identified of losing your entire nation/empire by losing. Removal of the large stockpiles of major players is not going to see most players suddenly be comfortable in war. Most players won't even know it's happening. I'm not saying it's not true that some new players have fought an experienced larger empire and got destroyed because of it. But that is not the average experience of a new player in simcountry. Not even close.

There are also many ways to fix the problem of unfair wars without pissing off your veteran playerbase. Which is really what the main problem with this is. You claim the mechanic of storing weapons in CEOs is cheating, but to the players who use this, it's a game mechanic and strategy. People have spent years buying, upgrading, and building large reserves of military upkeep. You now want to destroy years of effort players have put into the game.

I have no weapons in CEO storage, or a large empire that would be hurt by this in any way. I will still be not renewing my premium membership if this goes through. The threat that years of my planning and effort could be punished or removed on a whim by you is very concerning. That is the precedent you set by this.

Andy, will say from my experience there aren’t significant number of new players, at least on fearless blue… I mean that are active….will definitely make it more interesting….


From my own end, it is fair that weapons in enterprises are taxed OR even better still there should no weapons in enterprises, just not logical.

Except maybe thinking of enterprises is like Lockheed Martin etc - then yes they have a cost on weapons in storage.
Personally if I knew about storing weapons in enterprises I would have done same and made a killing on my country profits….

Listen out to your paying customer base to see what is feasible as per Joel, a tough one but i see your points particularly on weapons.

For my part, I've already stepped away. Andy's behavior as the representative of Simcountry, from what is basically amounting to a tantrum to the frequent deletion of dissenting opinions from his own (of which I expect this likely will be deleted as well), has no place in a position of leadership and responsibility for earning the game revenue to enable its continued future.

The true issues facing Simcountry are frequently presented and just as frequently ignored. We're not talking issues with game mechanics, we're talking issues with game management. The GM with regularity completely disappears from the game for days or even weeks at a time with no notice at all.

There is a constant stream of undocumented game changes that have meaningful impact on the game, these changes known only to the GM until another player discovers it (most of the time accidentally or because of an unexpected change in their situation). This is doubly a problem when the GM is also a player, and maintains a high position on leaderboards - reducing the rewards that are advertised as available to other players.

Simple maintenance of game documentation is woefully ignored. Even established players sometimes have difficulty with game mechanics because of a combination of the frequent undocumented changes and poorly explained mechanics. The Game News, the primary location every game change should be documented, has infamously not been updated for almost a full year and that update about a year ago only came after excessive requests from myself that the GM update players. Requests that saw me forum banned and the Game News updated and backlogged for the previous ~ year to look as if it had been properly maintained the entire time.

One of the most critical issues right now has to be the excessive 'nerfing'. Again, not a mechanics issue, but a management issue. Balance changes absolutely have to be made in every game, that is fully understandable. It has however absolutely gone too far. This is a 'slow burn' game where players have to plan and operate today for results months from now. The nerfs have changed no mechanics, they merely drastically harm players for using the 'best' strategies. Veteran paying players have been completely alienated and brushed aside, under the guise that these new taxes of sorts are being implemented on them for the sake of the 'newer player'. Having players build up for months, or years even, to have the rug pulled out from under them, doesn't help new players. It only alienates existing players. The implemented and proposed changes don't do anything to help the new player, they only harm the existing. And they send the message to the new player that if they stick around long enough, the rug will be pulled out from under them as well.

Balancing the scales between new and established players is always a challenge. There is no answer that makes everyone happy, but the most universally accepted way to maintain both existing players and promote new ones is 'power creep'. You don't straight up take away from your existing players, as has been your answer at every opportunity, you just provide the tools for newer players to get more. You increase the value of some of the other corporations by adjusting their base price up, not by adjusting the bae price of their supplies down. You increase beginner bonuses. You increase spending space. A player one month into their time will never and should never be at the same level as a player one year into their time. The new player needs opportunity, but the established player needs to be able to see what they have built and achieved. You make changes such that the new player at their one month mark has more than the established player had at their one month mark. It produces a sense of drive for the established player because they have to keep playing to stay ahead, and it produces a sense of drive for the new player because they can achieve in say 8 months what the previous player took 12 months to achieve; so they are in essence catching up.

These are basic concepts. Easy concepts. The vast majority of requests made of the GM, especially by these established players that have already hit the exit or are actively heading towards it, are extremely reasonable and are much more management based than mechanics based. Players saying they are considering leaving is taken as a threat instead of the opportunity that those statements really are. A disgruntled player who is truly lost will just leave. Someone who expresses their displeasure with the direction is giving the GM the opportunity to correct the ship. Not by caving to mechanics changes, as seems to always be implied by the GM, but by at least listening to and discussing the game management concepts that are presented like actually being consistently present and improving communication with those who pay to keep the servers going.

Why do you have so much oil, that’s worse than that time I had to pave my streets with plutonium.

Some people just want to see the world burn. So I hoarded all the oil I could to prevent them. That and I was overproducing so much that oil went into a surplus, so I contracted all oil production to myself.

It does happen, plutonium as well.

Ok, you wanted more details Andy.

one. new players don't stay because they don't know how to play and they loose interest because they run in to the problem where they fall into the circle of Debt and decaying growth and can't build new corps.

two. newer players don't know where to go for advice or know how to navigate the massive documentation of the Game do to the UI layout and that they can go to the forums if they want to try and get advice or help.

Three. TA is such a hassle to deal with that it is not worth or even a big interest for the players that can afford to set up operations on that planet.
the space UI and management is nothing more than click chick click and so over micro manage that it's mostly not worth using to new players, if and when they decide to stay if they stay to pay for the premium account.

four. the lack of transparency from the dev team is also a big problem that causes you to think that the community and the player customer base is attacking when they try and tell you something that can help develop the game for community growth.

five. the worry that veteran players stockpile war gear isn't a problem and you want players to use it? Newer players get so bogged down with the spastic economy that they can't afford to make units to fight pvp let alone fight an C3 if they wanted to Maintenance costs alone could brake a newer country cash flow.

what you can do is try and set up some kind of polling for what the community thinks their is a problem and what can be improved or retooled for a smother player experience, their are plenty of players that could give you data or other information that could help the Sim-country team.

you could try and listening to those that can give constructive criticism instead of taking it to heart.

Calling using game mechanics cheating is just pathetic. It seems you don't even know the game mechanics. Also from abandoning my empire and leaving defenses up (defenses that were affordable) the offense took huge amounts of weapons to take down, more than any country could afford to stock. And that's with being AFK as the defender. No free storage of weapons no ability to carry out an effective offense, the game is built on asset security not communication and conflict.