#178
by RogueSpearofTRA
Frankly Im still trying to figure out why this change was implemented. The primary function of vmode is to protect ones account when one cannot access the internet conveniently. This appears to have been forgotten by Zorg. With the current set of rules on vmode, one will need to plan vmode down to the letter days in advance or one will have *Something* in the queue or in the air. Not intending to start a flamewar here, but this was a blatantly underthought and halfbaked solution. I honestly would not be surprised if it was thrown together when the coffee pot in the conference room was empty and the development team was sitting crosslegged waiting for the meeting to finish so they could visit the little boys room. It throws power straight into the hands of the big names, everyone knows a fleeter patiently waits for their prey to slip up, but this vmode business makes that painfully easy. Suddenly a player is forced to go offline by iRL issues, and cannot concievably enter vmode. Suddenly players like fishpond(Im sorry buddy but your commentary clearly comes from self interest) are snapping up fleets left right and center. It is blatant abuse by the development team to put restrictions on the player base that the players cannot affect. Until we can cancel build queues and teleport fleets back to base from a 3 day fleetsave, these restrictions are immoral and foolish.
I second Karroths idea. Delay the entrance to vmode until all fleets have been landed for 30-60m. Freeze all production queues from the moment vmode is entered. Im currently studying for a BSc in Computer Games Applications Development, and thus do alot of coding and this really doesnt seem to be a complicated piece of code. Im fairly certain if you insert an 'If' function into all build functions, where 'if ( Vmode = FALSE) {
ConstructionCountdown = TRUE;
}
else {
ConstructionCountdown = FALSE;
}'
Where ConstructionCountdown is your function controlling the time required to build an object/queue. By inserting a false value, it should pause the countdown while storing it. Im making this up on the spot so it will be a bit trickier than that, but essentially it is fairly simple. Assuming you have a private class for each player and their respective planets and so on and so forth, it shouldnt be too hard to control. Not trying to steal the dev teams thunder/make them look silly or anything, but from where I sit the pause problem seems fairly simple.
However, from a design perspective and a player from at least may 2009, the issues with vmode never should have arisen, and player complaints should never be tossed aside as 'Not crucial' ("You cannot yet cancel ship building but it ain't as crucial because it does not take as much time.") Ive never had a successful hit that did not end up in a queue several hours long. It takes me 6h 43m to build 2000 LC. Thats a sum cost of 15mil metal and 15m crystal. A good hit will gather hundreds of millions of resources, and when chucked into a queue that will go on for days. That is crucial. Its commentary and negligence like this that has caused many good players to leave over the last *nearly* two years. ACS Attack has been promised since day one, and its taken about a year and three quarters to release it. Many of us disbelieved the claims of its arrival. We've been working on these 'special zorg ships and technologies' for months, and we've seen precious little but promises. Its not for nothing that 'It came to the development teams notice' a few months back that the player base was feeling dissatisfied and as if the dev team didnt care. The player base is an essential part of the game, much more so than the game itself. No playerbase, no game. The playerbase has been dwindling for months. The community is held in place more because we like the players we play the game with rather than the game itself, since there are so many other identical games that are cared for much more by their dev teams and are much more complete.
To summarize, this change to the vmode function was poorly thought out and player complaints are once more being largely ignored by Zorg. While I appreciate that Zorg and the design crew are much more involved in the forums than they used to be, they need to listen to the players, think in the games best interest rather than the high rankers, and respond more positively to critiscism. Show reasoning for design decisions rather than just discarding complaints as irrelevants because the dev team is always right.
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