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Is Trade Wars Dying?
https://mail.black-squirrel.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31908		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  Dr Doog [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 11:59 am ]
Post subject:  Is Trade Wars Dying?
I know I have not been a serious player in a long time, but recently I have had the itch to play. It seems that this game is not what it was years ago despite JP's new release, or am I missing something?

I don't want this game to disappear, as I'm sure none of you do either. Does anybody have any ideas to breathe new life into this game?
Author:  Promethius [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 12:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
Dr Doog wrote:
I know I have not been a serious player in a long time, but recently I have had the itch to play. It seems that this game is not what it was years ago despite JP's new release, or am I missing something?

I don't want this game to disappear, as I'm sure none of you do either. Does anybody have any ideas to breathe new life into this game?


Short answer is yes compared to when River Rat's and Vader's servers were running, and we had serious players going at it. I think when the "eye candy" games started coming online we saw a lot of very good players move on that were keeping the game alive.

As for breathing new life, i.e., people who have never played before, I think that may be difficult unless there is a helper designed with a visual aspect. The player base will probably be those who played it years ago and remember the old ways of playing. These players will most likely run into today's game and find it is no longer played the same - most will not adapt and will leave as fast as they returned. There may be a select few who are hardheaded and will stay through the podding/SDs and learn what it takes to compete. The new TWGS may make it easier for the transition by using the new settings though.
Author:  John Pritchett [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 1:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
Yeah, that's my hope. I've heard from many people who have come back and been disappointed by how the game is played today. So a big part of what I'm doing with v2 is allowing ops to better support old-school and new style games. With v1, many settings were server-wide, so an op didn't have a choice but to choose either new or old-style games. Some very advanced ops managed to do a pretty good job of supporting old-style games, but their options were seriously limited.

There will never be as much activity as the game saw back in the mid 90s. But I see no reason why the game can't be as active as it was in the mid 2000s, based on what other text-based games see these days. I really believe it's more a matter of the game not being fun to as many people as it used to be than people just looking for more graphics in games. People who come back looking for the game know it's text-based, so it's not the lack of graphics that disappoints them.

I'm able to track activity of v2 servers so it'll be much more obvious whether the game is being actively played or not. At this moment, there are 62 servers active on the net. This week there have been 98 active servers. I don't currently track player activity, and when I do, that'll be an opt-in option so the numbers won't be inclusive, but before long I will have an idea how many players there are. It's always important to remember that most players are not interested in public games where the style of play tends to be brutal.
Author:  Cruncher [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 2:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
Dr Doog wrote:
I know I have not been a serious player in a long time, but recently I have had the itch to play. It seems that this game is not what it was years ago despite JP's new release, or am I missing something?

I don't want this game to disappear, as I'm sure none of you do either. Does anybody have any ideas to breathe new life into this game?



Do you remember when you left and why? And how did you come to realize that the game was still being played today?

For me, I left in 2002 when AFK attack/defense scripts were becoming popular. I came back after I found the TW page on facebook and learned that JP was in development again.

So yeah, I'm hoping some of the new settings will help bring back a style of play that's been all but lost. Or at the very least allow a bridge to those who wish to move on to the highly scripted play but need a buffer zone to get up to speed with.

What I'm seeing are three distinct playing styles.

1) Modern high scripted bot play - Popular in the 2k's, for AFK bot players - Brutal - win at all costs, Unlimited time/turn games are popular. Some of these games are played start to finish in one weekend!

2) Old School - popular in the 90's, for players who are ATK's - Strategy & War, we still play to win but don't use AFK attack or defense scripts to do so. These players prefer low turn time limit games. Some script writters developed methods to alert them to game activity while sitting outside the game at the menu. We can now delay or totally block in-game information to those on the outside.

3) Truce/Builders games - Popular in the 2k's for very casual players. Otherwise referred to as TradeHugs. But beware, I've seen some of these games become nothing more than guppy tanks attracking ruthless sharks. Requires a lot of sysop intervention to "baby-sit" these types of games. Hopefully some of the new settings will help sysops who want to offer these games as well.
Author:  Dr Doog [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 3:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
Cruncher wrote:
Do you remember when you left and why? And how did you come to realize that the game was still being played today?


The main reason why I stopped playing was it required too much time. I tended to play the unlimited turned games truce or no truce. I liked either or. Unfortunately, it is difficult to maintain a healthy relationship with a member of the opposite sex while playing Trade Wars... unless your name is Prometheus.

I will say that JP has done a bang up job in the new version. Have you considered adding a "Truce Mode" within tedit? Perhaps preventing players from attacking other players before a certain time. I remember people bashing Sage for hosting games with several days of truce, but the fact of the matter was he had one of the most popular servers. I thought about writing a sever side tedit script to help with truces, but I think it would cause more problems than it would fix.
Author:  Singularity [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 3:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
Dr Doog wrote:
The main reason why I stopped playing was it required too much time. I tended to play the unlimited turned games truce or no truce. I liked either or. Unfortunately, it is difficult to maintain a healthy relationship with a member of the opposite sex while playing Trade Wars... unless your name is Prometheus.


This is the #1 reason why people leave the game today. You are absolutely 100% correct, you cannot maintain a healthy life (work, spouse, family, children, friends) and play TW turny style. Most of the people I know that play TW do so because they've lost their job. As soon as they find another one, they go poof again. This creates a strange TW cycle where people come and go, it also creates a huge advantage for people who work from home, have flexible jobs, or can play TW from work.

JP is planning a truce mode, IIRC. The exact details have yet to be worked out. But we have a new mode that just came out, and I hope it will help with this. It has the ability to shut down the game for certain hours, so that the game can run from 7pm to 11pm (or whenever) and then shut down from 11pm thru the next day.
Author:  Cruncher [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 4:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
Singularity wrote:
This is the #1 reason why people leave the game today. You are absolutely 100% correct, you cannot maintain a healthy life (work, spouse, family, children, friends) and play TW turny style. Most of the people I know that play TW do so because they've lost their job. As soon as they find another one, they go poof again. This creates a strange TW cycle where people come and go, it also creates a huge advantage for people who work from home, have flexible jobs, or can play TW from work.

JP is planning a truce mode, IIRC. The exact details have yet to be worked out. But we have a new mode that just came out, and I hope it will help with this. It has the ability to shut down the game for certain hours, so that the game can run from 7pm to 11pm (or whenever) and then shut down from 11pm thru the next day.


That will be nice - the "working man's" edit :)

Time is a factor, while my schedule is flexible I prefer the low turn time limit games for just that reason.
Author:  John Pritchett [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 5:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
I think it's also important to note that this is traditionally a dead time of the year for the game. People just have better things to be doing. Come winter time, I usually see a spike in activity.
Author:  Promethius [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 5:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
Dr Doog wrote:
Cruncher wrote:
Do you remember when you left and why? And how did you come to realize that the game was still being played today?


Unfortunately, it is difficult to maintain a healthy relationship with a member of the opposite sex while playing Trade Wars... unless your name is Prometheus.

quote]

AFK scripts are great! ;)
Author:  Micro [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 5:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
You know, this whole relationship thing is overated :)
Author:  Singularity [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 8:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
If JP is okay with it, I'd like to host a turny this fall on classic using the new hourly lock settings. Open at 6pm, close at 11:30pm (right before extern), or something to that effect. I would love to see how scripts evolve to work around the time restrictions, and I think it would attract a lot of more casual players.
Author:  mob [ Sat Jul 23, 2011 8:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
LOL....

Love it...was funny because when I started back with Stormrider on Data's server I had just got married and my wife even came online and chatted with a few players in game. She even did some jobs for me while I was at work, Stormrider was a slave driver. To you point I did meet my wife during my 5 yr retirement..hehe

I also agree summer is a down time for this game. When winter swings around everyone is snowed in up north, and us southerners are too thin blooded to go outside in the frigid 50 degree weather :P

Great conversations that end up in yahoo/google searches never hurt!
Author:  John Pritchett [ Mon Jul 25, 2011 8:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Is Trade Wars Dying?
Sing, sure, I'm looking foward to seeing what you can come up with to use this feature.

I can't actually release this latest version until I'm back from vacation in 2 1/2 weeks. So I'm still hoping to get some testing done on the feature at the beta server. Nothing else to do :)
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