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Behind the Scenes - Age 71

Open Archived Moderator_Jamzi opened this discussion on

Moderator_Jamzi -

This is an update with some news about what we're working on behind the scenes for Age 71 and beyond.

Gits and Bolle are working on Race Changes for Age 71, more specific info will be announced later this week most likely.

Coding on the planned tutorial is halted indefinitely due to Del's hectic schedule right now. As a replacement for that in the meantime we will be introducing a series of short videos on various topics which will be available via youtube links (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCATespKlo2jBVCQ0IzWjQjw ) from the in-game help function. The first 5 of those will be in the game from Age 71 and we will be looking for volunteers to help us add to the collection in the future.

AatWAwards questions should be updated to the new questions for Age 71 as they are just about to be submitted for coding. There will also be a few small adjustments to the Player CoC, including the addition of a new “short” version of the CoC which we hope will make people more likely to pay attention to it [;)]

We have begun making preparations for advertising, which we will start in late November. We are formulating an email which we will send to the few thousand email addresses we have accumulated over the 14 years the game has been going(including yours!). We're quite hopeful that we can double our player base by around February next year (currently only 58, an increase of 4 from a month ago but usually it is steadily dropping each month). We will also step things up a gear in relation to social media (facebook, tumblr, twitter, reddit) and a few other things like that.

We had been waiting with our advertising as we have been debating in staff, what exactly we want to advertise.. ie. where do we see the game going... The main part of this discussion was deciding whether or not to bring back resets and we have now agreed to do this. Therefore from Age 74 the game will go back to its roots and resets will return. There will still be scope to return back to infinity style play as we will save the code so that if by about September 2016 or whenever we feel we have given it a fair chance, if we find it is just not working out, then it will be possible to go back to the infinity version.

All the details have not been ironed out yet of course at this early stage but it is something we believe we can do from a practical perspective. Max has agreed to code it, Bolle and Gits have agreed to develop around it and Mazja, Bruno and I have agreed LnO and Ops will still work with it.

More info will come when we have it but that's it for now.

For info these are the predicted upcoming age dates in earth time:

age70: 10th Oct 02:00:00 - 7th Nov 00:59:59
age71: 7th Nov 01:00:00 - 5th Dec 00:59:59
age72: 5th Dec 01:00:00 - 2th Jan 00:59:59
age73: 2nd Jan 01:00:00 - 30th Jan 00:59:59
age74: ? - Approx. 1st Feb 2016 (this will be manual)

Kelvin -

Resets rules!

Lyr -

2th??!!?

Moderator_Jamzi -

I hope so Kelvin :D I know not everyone will be pleased with the decision to bring back resets and we don't have a lot of detail yet as we wanted to share the news to keep everyone updated so that staff players don't have an advantage. Hopefully we can find a way to make it fun for everyone but yes I for one think it will be the motivation I need to start playing again, hopefully some others will feel the same.

I've edited it now Lyr thnx [up]

Lyr -

[up]

Bulby -

i think if player base was much bigger resets would be awesome... i think half our current active players would be immediately behind as the activity to start fast means crazy amount of early activity...

Moderator_Jamzi -

Yeah, you're completely right. we have been considering this kind of thing. Our players and prospective players used to be younger in general than they probably are now, a lot of people can no longer prioritise getting up at 3am to continue with their super-strat! We are looking into the possibility of having a 48hr protection period that you can set up (like using the start now button) to enable hardcore players to run multiple strategies whilst they are waiting for OOP and which would also allow people with jobs/kids/limited time to not be at a massive disadvantage straight away. We're not sure yet if we can do that but we're thinking about it and trying to come with a solution.

Gits -

Just keep in mind, resetc will be back, although that doesn't mean that it will be exactly the same. If you asking to what extent, we arent sure but we will be adding a few wrinkles to that ability. Now if anyone has suggestions go ahead and state some we already have some ideas but it wouldn't hurt to hear something maybe we didn't think of.

h3 -

[up] resets

bloodball -

[up]

[odin] -

I heard something about reset? :P

Bulby -

can we take a poll of the desire for hard resets? like we did with the downsizing of alliances??

Moderator_Jamzi -

No sorry Bulby because it is already decided about the resets and I already take it that the 52 players here quite like Infinity so that's the poll I guess.

[odin]!! OMactualG. Welcome back [up][up]

Bolle -

People generally dislike change (just check the usual announcements comments). That said they can be completely right.

Hard resets have a few things going for them:

- the game is simpler (no need to worry about out of war damage, alliances dominating for AGES, and so on).
- the game is more engaging. There's an equal start and a clear goal, which fosters competition.

It is probably more time-consuming, however. This might scare people off. There's always the option of switching modes now and then.

Moderator_Jamzi -

Del has retired from staff temporarily. Hopefully he will be back in the future and thanks to him for the work he has done for us.

In other news behind the scenes of Age 71, our Marketing department is now open in alliance #7. We have been busy making plans over the last months which we will now begin to put into place.

We also welcome two new staff members, Darkwing has joined LnO+Ops, Hardar has joined Marketing [up][up]

Termato -

:'( hopefully Del will come back soon.

chaoss -

Reset ages is what i came back for when i saw it in the email i received

Prefered with the 48 hour protection time and not a prebuild tribe as some people want to play a race differently sometimes

No prebuild tribe also makes the missing tick for defence again interesting was always nice to hunt those who came oop without defence

For protection and sleep times i was always able to get a good strat without needing to login in the middle of the night, if standard game time is not your timezone just start your tribe a couple hours later so it suits you

Other option is an preset so you can do your strat fully and press start now could work as well, after start now you will stay in protection till 48 hours are over so everyone starts at same time

As i saw in suggestions an free app would be best to pull a lot of extra players

And hi bolle! /wave from origin

Sanzo -

I remember in classic there was an option to get the update button for 24hrs of protection if you paid $1 or something
IN early infinity we had 8hrs protection where we just got boatloads of cash to start then 8hrs to train basics, then train other military
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