Should units have a shelf life?

[Agent Orange]

J

I'd say you have 6 months, then all units older that 18 months (6 months warning plus 12 months anniversary) all units in your inventory older than 18 months go. Then the rolling 12 month shelf life on units kicks in.
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Otherwise I'd say get your fork, this game is done.

Given grees track record for screwing even simple things up do you really think something as potentially complicated as this would work. Also if up till now gree did not tag units with an in service date how would they back date older non tagged units.

In fact the more I think of it the more I would bet that units may not be tagged with a creation date other then the one when first designed by the artist so imaging how messed up it will be when units like valor units disappear the second you drop them in inventory.

Please please please put a fork in this idea before some greenius actually tries to impliment it.

[Helios Von Elisar]

Newbies always have a chance. They are not competing against the whales, unless it's WD and they are fortunate enough to get into a faction that will be battling them. But then again, what whale wants to hit a newbie for minimal points.

I have a lot of indestructible units, I prefer they live up to their name.

[sstuutss]

I don't like the idea. New players get some major advantages because of stat inflation. Most of the LLPs I've created in the past month are catching up stat wise to my 3 year ols LLPs raw stat wise. I do suspect that something unit or graphic wise in my oldest player accounts is what keeps triggering lock outs but expirey dates on units probably would not fix this.

So your current players are catching up with your inactive players, and thats a bad thing? (well it is in one sense as it is an example of the hyper inf it would be nice to put a stop to), Just how long do you think inactive players shouldnstay in front?

Though you are talking about raw stats. It's more about the perm boosts. How are your noobies going v your 3 years olds re boosts? and how are your noobies doing against active players?
Though as I siad earlier I think.its to late for ths sort of change now. If there had never been perm boosts no one would known any different. Now they will squeal like stuck pigs if they are taken away. Not so sure I'd blame them, but failing that I only see one other outcome.

Sadly I again on the chances of gree rolling this out without a major gree-up, but its not like we've not dealt with gree-ups in pretty much every other thing they do.

[Agent Orange]

So your current players are catching up with your inactive players, and thats a bad thing? (well it is in one sense as it is an example of the hyper inf it would be nice to put a stop to), Just how long do you think inactive players shouldnstay in front?

Though you are talking about raw stats. It's more about the perm boosts. How are your noobies going v your 3 years olds re boosts? and how are your noobies doing against active players?
Though as I siad earlier I think.its to late for ths sort of change now. If there had never been perm boosts no one would known any different. Now they will squeal like stuck pigs if they are taken away. Not so sure I'd blame them, but failing that I only see one other outcome.

Sadly I again on the chances of gree rolling this out without a major gree-up, but its not like we've not dealt with gree-ups in pretty much every other thing they do.

Heck no! If my theories are correct I can score more WD points using equivalent stat LLPs that are at a much much lower level. Oddly though that hasn't exactly been the case where I thought i would have had massive WD points when a L30 takes out a L150 it was on average only 350-450 points. I would have expected much higher points given how much some of the top teams are scoring and how WD points were distributed up till now. My L280 takes down L50s and gets 150 WD points.

I do fire up all my players to farm FLTQs though so they are not totally inactive. Plus the fact that linking causes lockouts so I wind up having them stuck on a fleet of iPods and old iPads. I wish I had thought to put them on a few Memo pads instead.

I think those with older boost units would rightfully have a GREEvance since they would have likely spent real money to get them. Way back I did spend a small amount when I felt the goal was worth it which were boost units. As indifferent as I am now I am loath to GREE suddenly changing yet another aspect of the game without thinking through the consequences.

And yes the likelyhood of this working is pretty slim especially if up to now they didn't tag the units with an 'in use' date and why would they since it would have just been extra data to track that wasn't nessessary.

Now another potential negative aspect of this is when would the game scan for expired units. My guess would be on startup of the app and we already suspect that part of the current slow load time is because gree is scanning for illegal units and other abnormalities with the account. So how much more overhead would this use?

Also image what would happen if your boost units suddenly expired during WD and you didn't know it! No there is just too much downside to this idea.

[Ajk]

It's been tried before in the aspect of "temporary bonuses". Not sure that went over very well since you essentially had to pay for something that would disappear in a couple weeks. Short answer is NO. BAD IDEA.

[good gawd noooo]

There are 2 things wrong though. The new boost buildings provide really large boost. That with 20 levels provides 80% to my unit boost, which are large. Another thing that may work is completely remove ALL units from that epic boss and compensate all the players with gold for them. Something like 5 gold a unit, which would be fair since a lot of use spend the whole 6 day event farming. Those 2 things are the problem. I would even go as far to say nerf the new unit buildings and reduce the levels to 10 and also compensate those players.

As for new players, I was thinking maybe start them off with a unit worth 5 or 10 billion attack and defense and let them go from there.

no matter HOW you try to slice It people have to give up something as for new boost buildings personally I love my defense increase but really that is another of the biggest problems all the new boost buildings need to be pulled or reduced(at the very least) to just one. Pidge I have talked with you before and I actualy think your a kool guy.. but reality of current game is everyone is either going to lose everything(game shuts down) or the players are going to lose some things(to balance out the field). I unfortunately believe that the way things have turned out has been gree's plan all along.. they are not in for long haul just fast profit and burn to ground and do it again with different game... but seriously this game could live another year or longer if some serious triage was done.. and no matter how you slice it all but the newest players would have to sacrifice some serious stats and boost and maybe even units/buildings to give new players a reason to even think of picking up this game.. as stated before current environment for newbs is like one man with knife fighting a countrys army with all the high tech gear possible.. and NO PLACE TO HIDE to try stealth work

[SneekyCarrot]

When changing the game, I think the guiding principle should be: "Adding decisions that the player can make without making the game more difficult to understand". That is to say, if there is always an obvious right answer, there isn't much depth to the game. At the same time, it should be pretty obvious the benefits and the consequences of an action such that the player can decide what they want to risk.

With that in mind, losing units over time makes sense to me but I think I'd prefer it to be a function of losses to battle as opposed to losses due to an arbitrary time. If I were king for a day, I would remove the invulnerable tag from all units and only apply bonuses for units in the active army. This would allow a few things to happen:
- Decisions would have to be made for risk vs benefit. Do you risk having one of your energy regen units available for loss while you increase energy regen for your FLTQ?
- More/better bonuses could be available since there wouldn't be endless stacking. It would still be painful to lose a +5% health unit, but it wouldn't be end of the world since the ability to get another one could be in reach.
- Top players still have something to reach for, without unlimited bonuses that +10% from masters makes a meaningful difference over getting 5% for prestige.
- New players aren't forever behind since attrition over time will hold everyone back
- More decisions about PVP elements. Attacking someone means risking something you care about.

[Speed ump]

Orange, I agree about trying to add a new elemnt like that to the game. We all know the track record for introducing new elements, and it's not been pretty, nor successful in the majority of the cases. I can only imagine what adding something like that would do. Here's a mental image. Remeber the movie dr strange love? Remeber the guy riding the bomb down? Get the feeling that guy is you/us? Lol

[Danger Mouse]

Orange, I agree about trying to add a new elemnt like that to the game. We all know the track record for introducing new elements, and it's not been pretty, nor successful in the majority of the cases. I can only imagine what adding something like that would do. Here's a mental image. Remeber the movie dr strange love? Remeber the guy riding the bomb down? Get the feeling that guy is you/us? Lol

Dude, don't know if you realise this, but you're already waving your hat and yeehawing into oblivion.
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I'm just trying to think of a way to avoid that. What's you're suggestion? Sticking your head in the sand and pretending nothing needs to change isn't an option.

[Danger Mouse]

When changing the game, I think the guiding principle should be: "Adding decisions that the player can make without making the game more difficult to understand". That is to say, if there is always an obvious right answer, there isn't much depth to the game. At the same time, it should be pretty obvious the benefits and the consequences of an action such that the player can decide what they want to risk.

With that in mind, losing units over time makes sense to me but I think I'd prefer it to be a function of losses to battle as opposed to losses due to an arbitrary time. If I were king for a day, I would remove the invulnerable tag from all units and only apply bonuses for units in the active army. This would allow a few things to happen:
- Decisions would have to be made for risk vs benefit. Do you risk having one of your energy regen units available for loss while you increase energy regen for your FLTQ?
- More/better bonuses could be available since there wouldn't be endless stacking. It would still be painful to lose a +5% health unit, but it wouldn't be end of the world since the ability to get another one could be in reach.
- Top players still have something to reach for, without unlimited bonuses that +10% from masters makes a meaningful difference over getting 5% for prestige.
- New players aren't forever behind since attrition over time will hold everyone back
- More decisions about PVP elements. Attacking someone means risking something you care about.

A fixed timeframe is best. Who would spend gold to get a unit and then risk losing it in the next 30 seconds? That'd kill the game deader than a dodo in about 2 days flat as revenue falls off a cliff.

[Pidgeot]

no matter HOW you try to slice It people have to give up something as for new boost buildings personally I love my defense increase but really that is another of the biggest problems all the new boost buildings need to be pulled or reduced(at the very least) to just one. Pidge I have talked with you before and I actualy think your a kool guy.. but reality of current game is everyone is either going to lose everything(game shuts down) or the players are going to lose some things(to balance out the field). I unfortunately believe that the way things have turned out has been gree's plan all along.. they are not in for long haul just fast profit and burn to ground and do it again with different game... but seriously this game could live another year or longer if some serious triage was done.. and no matter how you slice it all but the newest players would have to sacrifice some serious stats and boost and maybe even units/buildings to give new players a reason to even think of picking up this game.. as stated before current environment for newbs is like one man with knife fighting a countrys army with all the high tech gear possible.. and NO PLACE TO HIDE to try stealth work

I understand that but the biggest problems were epic boss loot and the combination of the new boost buildings. With my boost, every 26m air unit I got ended up adding 850m attack. I have 189 of that unit, not counting the other units from raid boss. A 26m unit went to 850m with the aid of the boost building. Get rid or those and or nerf them and stats go down. I think new players can still get into the game but they dont have much opportunity for decent boost.