Zorg Empire

Gripes:

I've not played Zorg for very long, creating my account around the tail in of 2022 and putting it into Vacation mode not long after. For 444.3 (SO CLOSE) days I was in that mode. Here's what I experienced in my first 2 days of exiting.

Day 1: Nothing happened. I refamiliarized myself with my empire, did a bit of scouting and raiding and then fleet saved and went off to bed.

Day 2: Near disaster. I woke up to several scouts and attacks, my stocks had been sacked. I didn't lost much, just 26m metal and 100 Voyagers that i queued up before sleeping, forgetting about them. I left the metal since my fleet couldn't carry it all and I didn't want to leave Deuterium or Crystal behind for it. This was a setback, but not completely. My fleet landed before I woke up but it hadn't been crashed. Either by mercy or compete stroke of luck. Counting my blessings I sent my fleet off to another colony to raid from there for the day.

I have 200k overall score. My attacker? Someone 665x my score. Someone I have not a single chance in hell of catching up to or beating unless they stop playing for over a year. Now, I understand that this person has earned his score, and I am not at all upset that I was attacked by this person. That's the game, its fly or die. But is it fair? Of course not. In no way do I have any actual way to defend against that. Even if I had, from the very start, put everything into defense, it would not be enough.

From what I remember, protection for me ran out around 100k. But against 655x score? I may as well quit the game; which it seems many do. I see hundreds of accounts on permanent V-mode, accounts they are unlikely to ever return and can't be farmed or used by anyone else; ever.

The game lacks any sort of protection once you are out of the newbie protection, which is very easy to get out of without any understanding of what will happen to you once you do. I get it. The game's tag line is, or was "Home of the best, too intense for the rest", but is that good? No. A game needs players to be active, to be spending money constantly; but where is everyone?

In my time of playing Zorg, at the very most I have ever only encountered maybe 50 players, across all the servers I've been on. There's thousands of inactive accounts, hundreds of accounts locked in V mode for the rest of time. I see new accounts show up sometimes, and in a month they're gone, inactive. Barely progressing beyond 10k.

Playing Zorg in 2024 is pointless for new players. It's an effort in futility. By the time you reach 100k you are ill prepared to get visits by people well over 600x your points. If you leave resources they will be snatched; and I know, that's how the game works. If you leave resources they will get snatched up, but if that new player never learned to FS, what then? Will they take the time to build back up or will they quit after seeing the massive difference in strength? It seems most quit.

How I would change it:

Zorg doesn't need to change, but it should.

Something I've always wished for is sound, some sort of auditory response to what I do in game or happens. A sound for launching fleets, clicking buttons, fleet arriving at their destination, attacks succeeding, failing, or an alarm sound for being attacked or scouted. Not having any auditory feedback or output causes you to have to constantly tab in to Zorg and refresh the page in some way to find out if something happened. Having some sort of background music or auditory responses from the game to alert me what is going on would be extremely helpful while I'm tabbed out doing other things.

Letting me tab out or go afk isn't a bad thing, it's actually a really good thing. The ability to let me go do other things and not check Zorg religiously would be an absolute god send and keep me coming back to the site and playing when I'm told something finished or happened. Zorg as a browser game should never be my primary focus, its a really good background game to do while doing other things.

Rewarding players for logging in or completing actions is another huge thing to keep players playing. Give players a login bonus once per 24 hours, maybe resources, ships, or random bonuses maybe. Hell, maybe even a Ruby or two. Rewarding players for returning or playing gets them hooked on playing it a lot more than not holding their hand or rewarding. I know some people who play some games JUST for the login rewards, even if they don't play the game much.

Letting the players Earn Rubies in some way by watching Ads or doing some sort of achievement system would be extremely beneficial in retaining the player's interest and giving them some sort of goal to achieve outside of growing their empire. Which its self is a double edged sword.

Preventing a player from doing a task that would take them out of protection without them confirming to do so would be a great benefit. If i were to build something, for example, and that would put me over my protection, the game alerting me to it with a pop up saying "You're about to leave protection, are you sure you're ready?" would give me some pause. It would let me know if I progress my protection is over, and it should tell me the ramifications of that choice.

Expanding the protections for players is possibly the best course of action, and the worst. I think for Reloaded it's 100k+ and you're free to be dog piled by anyone, or 10x up or down before that. I'm not sure. But that isn't fair to new players, is it? The moment I leave the grace of 100k I could be sent right back into it by someone I can't hold a stick to. That *****. Maybe it should only be 5x up or down you can attack, ever? It keeps you protected from big threats but also makes sure you're not punching down. It keeps the top 10 players trying to kill each other rather than prowling the galaxy screen for anyone they can hit for even small gains.

Vmode shouldnt be forever. I will admit, I was in Vmode for over a year, but isn't that too long? It's a vacation, it shouldn't be forever, should it? 444.3 days is a very long time and If I came back to my account being forced out of it and hit into the dirt, i would understand. It would suck, but I would get it. I shouldn't of been gone for over a year. That's on me. Though from what I know, most Vmode accounts never intend to come back, thats a lot of resources and such tied up indefinitely.

Suggestions:

A new building, lets call it the Planetary Shield. Theres two possibilities for this.

1) It would protect a planet completely, rendering it unable to be attacked. However, it would consume a million Deut per hour of operation, and can be activated for no less than one hour. While activated no ships may enter or exit the planet, all fleets leaving or coming to the planet must be parked before the shield can come up. No attacks or probes may be coming or going from the planet. Resource generation of Deut would be halted to prevent players from turtling indefinitely. Once activated there would be a timer in the overview screen to when the shield is protected to fall.

2) It would do the same, but be based on the Energy resource. However, one big difference is that it could be destroyed by deploying 100x the Energy in fleet combat power to that planet. Ships that scale based on the Plasma technology would have a bonus against the shield. Once destroyed, the planet can be attacked like normal.

New ships and Technology.

Stealth Technology - Required to build ships and go undetected by Phalanx or Espionage Ships. Only applies for ships that are from this Technology, and is scaled against Espionage Technology and or the level of the Phalanx x2. So for each level of Stealth, Espionage would need to be at least one level above it to see fleets containing these ships.

Stealth Espionage Ship - A espionage ship, but depending on the Stealth Technology vs Espionage Technology, you wouldn't be notified in any way of being Espionaged.

Cloaked Cruiser- The only actual Stealth combat ship. Same stats as a regular Cruiser and matchups, but can raid a planet without the attack being detected (obviously based off of the Stealth Technology vs Espionage Technology / Phalanx

Thanks for entertaining the incoherent ramblings of a new player's shower thoughts. Feel free to pick this apart and tell me to get good lol.

Edit: Sorry, 200k is the protection for Reloaded, not 100k.

Edit 2: The universe that was teased, Juniper, has the best player protection. 5m being the newbie safe cap is by far the best possible outcome.

Unfortunately it's what happens. You have to be really switched on. I agree with the auditory thing though, a good idea. But, if you play a game, this type of thing, crashing is par for the course. What server is this that you're referring to? I have played all of them. I am predominantly in Standard. It's slow, but a higher protection level, 1 million points. Fleets are slow, to crash someone takes research and more time, more skill. At this time there's only three actively current players! It's safe for newbs. But as stated, mist don't bother as they cannot handle the slower speeds. If you want a "wham, bam, thank you M'am" server, Standard is not for you. But the point is, if you play a fast server then you WILL get hit more often. You readily admit that you've been in v mode for an extended period of time. Not having a go at you, but the only way to grow is to stay active and plod away. To limit players ability to hit you through protection levels is unfair on players who do put in the time. You will always have players more active than others, it's just life. But the reason that they have grown so much, time spent and invested aside, is the fact that they can feed off others, add to their own accounts. I think Standard would be better for you. But I feel that you wouldn't like the speed and relative inactivity that's there. There is no easy fix apart from finding the server that's right for you. Even then, it will not be perfect. But for safety of new players, Standard is it. Ruby rewards, good idea, but that's the life blood of the game masters, their income. So it will not happen. Standard. If you go there, I can help, milking rules aside, to help get you started, as long as you were to stay active.

Oh trust me Oz, I know that the game is rather cutthroat. I know me being inactive for a while certainly held me back, I'm not at all upset or unfavorable to the game as it currently is. In the edits I clarified I play Reloaded, mainly for its speed and its higher than usual activity. I'm not going to pretend even for a moment that people don't deserve their power, or to be hit. That's Zorg, and I love it for it.

I'm not now nor will ever blame the game for crashing, I left that fleet down, I left the resources there. That is my fault. Standard is 1m? That's interesting, I did not know that. Thank you for that information.


I agree the only way to grow to the point that being hit isn't a big deal takes time, and that sitting in V mode is not a good way to grow. That was not something I was trying to blame the game for. People pass me by, that's fine, that's normal.

I wouldn't say limiting the ability for someone to hit you depending on their relative score is unfair. If the game is based on newbie protection periods where crossing a certain point threshold means everyone can attack you regardless of relative strength, I'd say it's a little unfair for someone who crosses that line, be it 200k of Reloaded or 1m of Standard, to be able to be readily attacked by 100s of millions. Again, I know that's part of the game, and I'm not saying its a BAD thing, but I can certainly see why there's so many inactive accounts with points in buildings and research but none in fleets, obviously they either went inactive and got crashed; or got crashed then went inactive.

Rubies, I know, are the very life blood of the game. If people didn't buy, there would be no Zorg. That's with every game, there's always a premium currency to buy to get power ups; but they also have rewards for your progress to keep you playing longer. I don't think you should get very many if there were to be rewards, maybe 1 or at the very most 5 for certain things. Just enough to reward you for playing but just little enough to make you want to buy them to get that thing you want.

Thanks for the offer to help me out on Standard, I'll be sure to shoot you a message if I end up playing that!

Whilst I feel for anybody losing stuff, especially when they're just starting out, it's probably less soul destroying to lose a little than a huge, established fleet. I did enjoy reading your suggestions though. Perhaps too much time has passed now since the inception of this game? People, like myself, that have played from nearly the start of the game, we've grown massively. It is not a level playing field. But that is what happens when something has being going so long. Inequality. I started this game a couple of years in. There was "massive" fleets then too, I never thought for one instance that I could ever catch up. But people stop playing, enter v mode, get hit by a bigger fish etc. These fast servers, there's no way to legislate for mistakes, for technology failure. A drop out of your internet connection, you're dead meat. Whereas if you have time, slower speeds, then there's room for this to happen, to a degree. This is why I stuck with a slower server. But it's not action packed.

What I'm trying to say is that if you want speed, action, "excitement", then there's the rough with the smooth. But you can really suffer, it'll put you off the game forever, unless you can rely on other factors not complicating matters.

I think you're right, too much time has passed since the inception. It's old, it's a really good but old game. I love Zorg, I do. Even when I get crashed I know that its my fault. But it hasn't really adapted to the times, has it? It's old, it feels old, the players in it are old. Not age wise mostly, but old as in been here for ages.

I adore the game, and I've spent money for rubies before and probably will again. I just hope the game modernizes, hope it doesn't try to pretend to still be in 2009. Game is great, just wish it would get with the times.

I see that you did indeed create a new account, in Standard. SO, I sent you a not inconsiderable amount of resources to help you get going. But, I didn't hear from you, the account went inactive almost immediately . So I have taken the opportunity to retrieve those said resources. A shame that players create accounts, then just walk away from them almost straight away without giving it a go. . I hope you get going in your preferred server and keep safe, not go inactive. Good luck.