I NEED your Response

[Brekk]

Hello Valued Players,

I hope you're all enjoying your adventures in the world of Alamaze. Today, I come to you with an exciting idea that could potentially reshape our gaming experience, and I'm eager to hear your thoughts.

As you've probably noticed, Alamaze has gradually shifted from a strategic war game to one focused on resource management, particularly gold. What if we made a significant change? What if elements like troops, mages, and buildings still used gold and food, but your "court," consisting of emissaries, agents, high priestesses, and others, no longer required gold and simply consumed an order instead?

This shift could have several advantages. First, it would allow you to continue playing even if you lose your "gold" from PCs and keep you engaged in the game, even in challenging situations. Second, it might reduce the drop-offs we've seen lately.

Now, I understand that gold loss is tied to population centers, cities, towns, and villages. This is a critical aspect of the game, and we don't want to disregard it. However, we can explore ways to balance this, perhaps by adjusting how these losses impact gold and incorporating new mechanics to ensure that resource management remains vital without overwhelming new players.

Moreover, simplifying gold management to focus mainly on recruiting, troop maintenance, and construction could make Alamaze more accessible to new players. We want to ensure that newcomers find our game easy to pick up without sacrificing its complexity.

I understand that this is a pretty bold move away from the current state of Alamaze. I'd love for you to think about the potential benefits and drawbacks of this idea, especially in light of the gold loss tied to population centers. Alamaze's future depends on our ability to evolve and welcome new players, but we also want to maintain the unique depth and challenge that make this game so special.

Your feedback and insights are incredibly valuable as we contemplate these changes. Let's work together to keep Alamaze exciting, engaging, and open to everyone.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

John

[Strylian]

I think it would be a good idea because it would allow players to use all their orders even once they ran out of resources. It might speed up the action on the game.

[Strongwill]

I like

[Wookie Panz]

Hello Valued Players,

I hope you're all enjoying your adventures in the world of Alamaze. Today, I come to you with an exciting idea that could potentially reshape our gaming experience, and I'm eager to hear your thoughts.

As you've probably noticed, Alamaze has gradually shifted from a strategic war game to one focused on resource management, particularly gold. What if we made a significant change? What if elements like troops, mages, and buildings still used gold and food, but your "court," consisting of emissaries, agents, high priestesses, and others, no longer required gold and simply consumed an order instead?

This shift could have several advantages. First, it would allow you to continue playing even if you lose your "gold" from PCs and keep you engaged in the game, even in challenging situations. Second, it might reduce the drop-offs we've seen lately.

Now, I understand that gold loss is tied to population centers, cities, towns, and villages. This is a critical aspect of the game, and we don't want to disregard it. However, we can explore ways to balance this, perhaps by adjusting how these losses impact gold and incorporating new mechanics to ensure that resource management remains vital without overwhelming new players.

Moreover, simplifying gold management to focus mainly on recruiting, troop maintenance, and construction could make Alamaze more accessible to new players. We want to ensure that newcomers find our game easy to pick up without sacrificing its complexity.

I understand that this is a pretty bold move away from the current state of Alamaze. I'd love for you to think about the potential benefits and drawbacks of this idea, especially in light of the gold loss tied to population centers. Alamaze's future depends on our ability to evolve and welcome new players, but we also want to maintain the unique depth and challenge that make this game so special.

Your feedback and insights are incredibly valuable as we contemplate these changes. Let's work together to keep Alamaze exciting, engaging, and open to everyone.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

John

I like the thought behind this and I see it as a positive move to simplify the economic side of the game. 

 I'm not sure if making agent actions free does not do too much to help an already strong Underworld kingdom?  They would get their training and missions for free plus make income from everyone else's training and that could be too much help for them.

Nice work John.

[Maximus Dominus]

I am a HUGE advocate of this proposed change. I dislike what I term the gold dependency that Alamaze is currently saddled with, for the very same reason that I disliked it in Fall of Rome, and even before that, in Middle-earth PBM. Middle-earth PBM actually suffers from a greater degree of gold dependency than Alamaze does, in that kingdoms in Middle-earth PBM can go full blown bankruptcy (which, if memory serves me correctly, was also an approach that Fall of Rome embraced, way back when). See this link, to verify that kingdoms in Middle-earth PBM can go bankrupt. The page linked to covers bankruptcy in-game in four different questions that pertain to it.

The problem with gold dependency is that, when a kingdom in Alamaze has an economy that is getting hammered, whether by war or by poor gameplay by the player, their gold supply either begins to shrink, or it simply doesn't grow. And the lack of gold manifests itself in different ways in the game's design, including (unfortunately) inhibiting and constraining a player's ability to issue orders to their characters, among other things.

In Hyborian War and in Middle-earth PBM, for two different comparisons to Alamaze, characters are arguably the portions of those two games that players tend to become the most emotionally vested in. In Alamaze, do you latch on more emotionally to your characters or to your troops. Sure, big and powerful armies (groups in Alamaze) can be quite memorable, I'm sure (not that I've ever had one, yet), but what about the specific troop types? Characters have names, and names are a personal touch for characters in any game. Whether you name them or not, names are a tool of personalization, and personalization is a quintessential human thing.

In Tolkien's setting of Middle-earth, who do you remember and identify with the most? The unnamed individuals of various populations, races, and species? Or the figures of renown who Tolkien bestowed names upon? Gandalf, Frodo, Boromir, Legolas, Gimli, Sauron - these and other names are the stars of the books and the movies.

In Alamaze, if your kingdom runs out of gold, to the point where it directly and immediately negatively impacts your ability to issue orders for your characters, how fun is Alamaze at that point in time? If you run out of gold, how does the player continue to fight back in-game, even and especially if they have the will to continue to resist?

Recent player drops that I am aware of, notably several individuals who I persuaded to give Alamaze a try, likely didn't quit playing Alamaze, because of the gold dependency issue. For the most part, they didn't really seem to play. Most likely, they simply didn't issue turn orders for three turns in a row, and the Alamaze system gave them the boot, and dropped them, rather than them specifically requesting to be dropped from the games that they signed up for.

From my perspective, it's really about how do you make Alamaze fun for players who end up in situations where they're getting beat. How do you provide viable mechanisms for them to carry on the good fight, and to live to fight another day? If you can't issue orders to your characters, or said another way, if your characters can't carry out orders that you issue to them, and all because your kingdom is suffering a beat down and losing its primary gold sources (aka population centers), where is the fun in that? Winning is its own reward, and that reward is an intangible thing. It just plain feels good to win. It's a nice feeling to kick that other's guy's ass in a game. It's competitive exultation!

But can you make Alamaze a more fun game for those who aren't winning, and for those who don't win?

Game balance is a game design consideration that has value. But game balance in game design is not more important than the competing consideration that a game be fun to play. When both the winners and the losers, both the winning and the losing, have fun, then that's a real win for everyone involved in playing Alamaze.

Is gold dependency the primary reason why Alamaze's player base has grown as slow as it has? From my perspective, the answer to that particular question is no. But if you are able to succeed in growing the Alamaze player base, and more people end up playing the game, what will also happen is that more players will then begin to experience the gold dependency dilemma more and more - and that is when gold dependency will begin to impact player retention more and more, also.

When I play learning games of Alamaze, six of which I am in right now, I try to experience various facets of the game's design first-hand. I'm quite familiar with what gold dependency as a game design component is, and I am aware of what it looks like, as it begins manifesting itself. I challenge one and all to try and play a game of Alamaze without issuing orders for your characters, and see how fun that you think Alamaze is, when your characters can't issue orders. Gold dependency sucks the life out of the fun side of the game, when your kingdom runs out of gold.

Sure, if your kingdom has plenty of gold, then gold dependency doesn't really impact you to any real degree, as you're playing Alamaze. But what if things turn South for you, mid-game? What if multiple kingdoms are snatching your population centers out from beneath your nose, and your gold situation turns to one of despair? May the better man win, yes - but the better man doesn't always win. And what if the better man finds himself in dire straits, economically? Being the better man doesn't mean that you can control forces beyond your control, and even the better man gets ganged up on, sometimes.

In sum, a lack of gold can cripple - utterly cripple - a player's ability to continue playing Alamaze to any real effect.

When wizards do magical research, it costs gold (lots of gold, actually). When wizards cast spells, does it cost gold? If not, why not? Because casting spells is a learned thing?

What about agents? When they attempt to carry out assassinations, is assassination a learned thing, also? Would it be fun if the casting of spells by wizards were attached to gold dependency, also? And just imagine how fun that wizards would be, if you couldn't cast their spells, because your kingdom simply didn't have enough gold to do so. And what if your kingdom couldn't issue enough orders to its characters, in order to try and turn things around?

Gold dependency can effectuate death spirals for kingdoms. And death spirals are bad for player retention. Being able to issue orders to characters is better for player retention and player fun than death spirals, any day of the week.

Many different games, and not just PBM games, feature various forms of gold dependency. In Starcraft, players can suffer from mineral dependency and vespene gas dependency. In Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 (games that I used to play a ton), gold dependency and wood dependency are very real things. Isn't it just great, when you can't build units that you want to build? Yes, it's all a part of game design, and yes, games can still be fun, even when gold dependency or other dependency are a part of the game. However, when you're on the losing end of things, such built-in, designed-in dependencies can - and quite frequently do - suck really bad.

Destroying the enemy's economy is routinely a part of a wide variety of war games. The real issue here, though, is player growth and player retention for Alamaze, not for every wargame in existence. Transforming Alamaze into a game that is easier to slide right into with zero knowledge of the game requires, I think, a transformative mindset. Gold, itself, does not have to be eliminated from Alamaze's game design, entirely, in order to address certain gold dependency shortcomings. Indeed, to the contrary, the acquisition and hoarding of gold can easily be transformed into a goal or an objective, in and of itself. Aren't dragons and dwarves, especially, supposed to love accumulating gold in vast quantities?

I characterize myself as a gamer who prefers to play to have fun, than one who plays to win. My experience over the decades in Hyborian War demonstrated to me that even losing can be fun - and in some instances, even more fun than winning. Having won game HW-165 as the kingdom of Keshan, I found winning in Hyborian War to be a very anti-climactic experience. It has been my experience that having fun is a more memorable and enjoyable experience than winning.

Thus, I vote in favor of this proposed change.

[Maximus Dominus]

Don't forget to vote in the poll, gentlemen!

[Brekk]

Hello Valued Players,

I hope you're all enjoying your adventures in the world of Alamaze. Today, I come to you with an exciting idea that could potentially reshape our gaming experience, and I'm eager to hear your thoughts.

As you've probably noticed, Alamaze has gradually shifted from a strategic war game to one focused on resource management, particularly gold. What if we made a significant change? What if elements like troops, mages, and buildings still used gold and food, but your "court," consisting of emissaries, agents, high priestesses, and others, no longer required gold and simply consumed an order instead?

This shift could have several advantages. First, it would allow you to continue playing even if you lose your "gold" from PCs and keep you engaged in the game, even in challenging situations. Second, it might reduce the drop-offs we've seen lately.

Now, I understand that gold loss is tied to population centers, cities, towns, and villages. This is a critical aspect of the game, and we don't want to disregard it. However, we can explore ways to balance this, perhaps by adjusting how these losses impact gold and incorporating new mechanics to ensure that resource management remains vital without overwhelming new players.

Moreover, simplifying gold management to focus mainly on recruiting, troop maintenance, and construction could make Alamaze more accessible to new players. We want to ensure that newcomers find our game easy to pick up without sacrificing its complexity.

I understand that this is a pretty bold move away from the current state of Alamaze. I'd love for you to think about the potential benefits and drawbacks of this idea, especially in light of the gold loss tied to population centers. Alamaze's future depends on our ability to evolve and welcome new players, but we also want to maintain the unique depth and challenge that make this game so special.

Your feedback and insights are incredibly valuable as we contemplate these changes. Let's work together to keep Alamaze exciting, engaging, and open to everyone.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

John

I like the thought behind this and I see it as a positive move to simplify the economic side of the game. 

 I'm not sure if making agent actions free does not do too much to help an already strong Underworld kingdom?  They would get their training and missions for free plus make income from everyone else's training and that could be too much help for them.

Nice work John.

Wookie, 

I think it would definitely impact some kingdoms more than others and like I said things will need to be adjusted.  I cant take credit for this idea its actually from another who can claim it if he likes I wont call him out.  I had to think about it a lot but honestly like a lot of other ideas I have on my mind I dont see this harming the game, but enhancing it.  
Please vote even if you havent, you dont have to post anything here, but I WOULD love if you did.

[luty]

I don't have an opinion as to whether it would be a good change or not. It would definitely enhance the power of the political/covert figures relative to status quo.

[admin]

I don't have an opinion as to whether it would be a good change or not. It would definitely enhance the power of the political/covert figures relative to status quo.

Yes, it will greatly add to the strength of some kingdoms like Ancients, Demon Princes, Atlanteans, and others.  I would likely look to implement the change with adjustments and keep adjusting as needed.

[VballMichael]

I voted yes but I am very afraid of unforeseen results lol.