Megamedes, thats great. The only thing they will say is that most of the player base pays nothing. But even so, the large amount of players drives the game on and on. It is free to play after all... Zorg, if you want to make these decisions without being left in a rut and without many players quitting...Switch to pay to play. Then you'll get support from every single player. It seems like you are driving it to become a quick, easy money maker. You drive out the ones who dont pay, and favor those that do pay. So if you make the free players leave then you have no worries aside from racking up the moolah.

Just my opinion

Okay, so it appears that something needs to be done to retain the players in Extreme. Zorg, you have asked for suggestions and I have one that I think all players can live with.

As of to date, the noob protection seems to work for only those under 100K points. Don't get me wrong, but I think that is working well. I think we need to re-visit the Noob protection rule.

So, even if you are no longer under the noob protection rule, new players should not be subject to being attacked by fleets that are thousands times bigger than they are. The noob protection of 5x your points should still be in effect.

Example: So if a player with say 200K points, they should not be a target by players over 1 million points. Thus, this player still has protection from the upper top players.

This layered effect will enhance the players chance of survival. Also that will limit the number of targets the higher players can attack.

I feel this is a fair deal for all players. Let's reclaim our current players and gain new ones.

Torgard's suggestion is perfectly reasonable. For many PvP games this rule is standard procedure. The compromise here is that it allows the younger players to grow among the very largest without fear of having their work taken down with no possible recourse. It still allows the players to experience the thrill of being hunted by a more reasonable opponent. Each level of growth will make the player graduate to a newer and more dangerous level of play. However the experiences gained during that growth would make them more wary, and better at preserving their hard earned fleets.

I would give full support to this suggestion.

The question remains... Who would the highest fleetpoint players hunt? The answer is that they would be handicapped in using only a portion of their fleet in any particular hunt. This will add another layer of complexity in the hunt, but not such a handicap that it makes the hunt impossible.

I like this idea, Torgard... however, I don't really see it working unless the player base increases significantly, because the number of possible targets will be even further restricted if this is enacted...

Also, there is a further issue here... the ability to hide fleetpoints so that someone with a large fleet can still attack very small players, while simultaneously hiding in protection to avoid attacks from larger players... There are a few players who do this in X... One in particular who has over 1.5 million fleet, but sits just below the 100k barrier, so he can attack players with as few as 20k points (we all know who I'm talking about)... I think we can almost all agree this is bad for the game and new player retention...

Said player occasionally steps over the the 100k barrier just so he can bash larger players whom he doesn't like, but then slips back under so these players are unable to retaliate... Personally, I believe this is an egregious abuse of the intent of new player protection. I await the opinions of others...

To remedy this, I would suggest that the maximum number of total points a player has had at any point in the past should be the determining factor in protection zones. This would mean that fleetpoints would count, even if they were hidden, as long as they had shown at some point in the past. I know this may not be a perfect solution, but it is the best one I can think of at the moment. If someone has a different idea that would resolve this particular issue, I would love to hear it.

I'd be alright with the limit of 5 x, if like Pulsar said, there were enough players to substain it.

Not sure about the fleet counting thing, how that would work exactly. But might be worth looking into.

On another post, someone brought up the idea of a new tech that would allow you to get more planets. I think this would be a good idea. We are losing a lot of inactives. So this way there would be more targets (active targets) for fleeters and raiders to go with. Miners would get more resources. Newer players would develop more quickly (depending on the cost of this option)...

Hi again. I have finished reading all replies here.

In my pleasure, I realized that most of you are concerned for the game, rather than your own benefit.
I will try, using as less words I can, to reply to all the major concerns.

First of all, there are STILL, THOUSANDS of inactive players in X-TREME. We deleted 5000 inactives last we but there are still more.

A newcomer has more than enough FOOD to grow fast:
A ZERO inactive account generates 57.600 resource points a day. Every newcomer has access to at least 2 inactive accounts in his OWN system and to at about 1000 in his galaxy. That's 57.600.000 resource points a day only from ZERO accounts.

We V-MODED about 180 accounts.
These were all accounts with 50 rubies on them that have escaped deletion thanks to this - some of them for a long time. Some of these accounts were "suspicious".

180 accounts do not affect newcomers
They do affect smaller players to an extend. I agree to this. But providing 180 fat farms is making the game evolve faster than usual.

There is no logical solution to this issue other than v-moding them
Letting an account be, for the yeats to come, only to operate as a farm, because it suits some players who farm him daily is not an argument.

It does not help the game grow
If such farms helped the game grow, we could put a thousand of them. Then we would see Zorg thrive. WRONG.

No fleet save spots
You lost some good FS spots. Agreed. However, you can always create new ones. Even on inactive accounts. Pick a newly inactive account. He will remain there for at least 150 days there. Have a friend to ACS defend the moon and get moonshots to the moon. Create bases in this way.

Now, on to your suggestions. We got to realize which is your problem here. If you are looking for ways to retain newcomers, this is a DIFFERENT discussion which WE WOULD GLADLY hear you. Newcomers are NOT AFFECTED. As I presented abovem newcomers HAVE food.

Suggestions we can discuss, is the amount of days that must pass before an account is considered as garbage - where after this point it will be deleted. This point is TODAY at 180 days.

We need to take in consideration the amount of new accounts in these 180 days. In the last 30 days, X-TREME has been joined by 1786 new players. Which means that at current rate we get about 11000 players per 180 days.

We had 15k players last week, now we got 9500 after a forced deletion day as we needed to ultimately catch the current pace as it was taking too long. Eventually, with the numbers currently picked, we will average at the same number of players joining, about 11000. The amount of deleted players per week will be about 500 - about the same will join up.

Good to know....good that (hopefully) we can finally put this subject to bed now.....

I want to say a few more words.

Some players here have threatened us that they will go blue or stop playing or even that they will not return to play. This is not the way to change the game. Threatening is not a solution.

If you want to change the game, speak your mind, freely and showcase your suggestions. Whatever we are doing in this game, it is 80% through suggestions.

Mistakes have happened before and they will happen again. You need to take decisions though, or else you cannot progress. Time will show if this decision is wrong or not. We are here to evaluate and correct things if need be.

X-TREME, as some people noticed, has a great momentum right now. It needs assist, not war. There has been some good progress among playerbase tightness lately - it will be good to use it for the game improvement and not the other way around.

Finally, I will open a few more topics that will help discussion in some things regarding X-TREME that are very important.

I think the reason many players have threatened to go blue is because they feel that they have not been listened to or that their opinions and thoughts are not valued by Zorg. I may be wrong, but this is certainly how I have felt to a large extent throughout this discussion.

I am not blaming anyone. I know that you care of the game so I cannot possibly blame anyone. We are grateful for all the replies.

I am just saying that we need some more positive thinking. We are not trying to destroy the game obviously. We want to make it better, for everyone.

We also need to try to understand the other side better. The misunderstandings are very common in the forums.