What fatal mistakes can a new player make? On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 1:52 AM, Nic Evans <nich...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/23/2017 06:38 PM, Alex Smith wrote: > >> On Sun, 2017-09-24 at 01:30 +0200, Cuddle Beam wrote: >> >>> Btw Agoran Geronotocracy has been a problem since forever: >>> http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~michaeln/agora/subgame-manifesto.html#g >>> erontocracy-syndrome >>> >> One obvious fix is to make it so that it's possible to cash in an >> economic advantage for a win. That way, before long (if the economy is >> functioning correctly), the experienced players will have won and then >> will end up behind the newer players as they've spent all their assets >> on the win. >> > > That's the general idea behind stamp wins. You destroy 10 stamps to gain a > win. > > > >> In general, though, I suspect gerontocracy issues are less of an issue >> than many players think. The most recent time I've seen it be a >> noticeable problem was in the era of permanently accumulable VLOP, and >> that went away soon after I initially joined the game, many years ago >> now. Since then, I don't think we've had an economic system that didn't >> reset either as a result of people using economic assets to win, or as >> a result of it being repealed and replaced with something else that had >> a cap on how much economic advantage you could accrue. (I also note >> that with the typical rate at which players become inactive, >> deregister, etc., it tends to be fairly hard to get a considerable age >> advantage over another player, especially given how often the economic >> rules reset.) >> >> Note that there are two separate issues here: "can new players do >> something?" and "can experienced players do more?". Making sure that >> new players aren't locked out is very important. Making sure that >> they're on a level playing field with experienced players is hard to do >> fairly, though, as otherwise deregistering and reregistering is a >> simple way to get rid of any economic disadvantage you might have. In >> general, I'd suspect that the perfect system involves a) enough >> starting assets for new players to be able to participate in the game >> at a reasonable rate (I'd argue AP is sufficient for this), and b) a >> way to get semipermanent advantages which will fade over time if not >> maintained, and for which a skilled new player who's trying to >> accumulate advantage and a skilled existing player who's trying to >> accumulate advantage will both end up as roughly level frontrunners >> within a medium timescale (say, a few months; Agora tends not to do >> anything quickly). >> > > Pretty much entirely agree with the above. The way I see it a game should: > > - Be interesting to both new and old players > - Prevent new players from fatal mistakes > - Reward both long term planning and short term cleverness > > Admittedly, we're failing the second point right now. But that's not > because of any perceived 'gerontology'. >
