Need a way to keep game interesting

[PhoenixEdge]

Valor is a great game, but its Achilles Heel is the fact that it kind of runs out of steam after a few months. The number of active players plummets dramatically, and you end up with so many cities that the game becomes more work than fun.
I can't come up with any definitive solutions, but if something is not done, eventually people are going to just move on to other MMOs that are being developed.
Here are a few suggestions.
Allow more people to join worlds. Make it so that once a world gets full, the server can purge all the inactive players (basically half the players at that point) and then let more people join to replace the ones that got purged. Repeat the process a few times before opening up a new world.This would at least double the effective player population.
Make Barbarian cities actually do something. Make them grow faster, maybe send out raids every once and a while.
Allow players to appoint "governors" for their cities who will automatically upgrade buildings, build troops, and purchase scholarships.
If you have several cities in close proximity to one another that are all 40k+ points, allow the player to merge them into a capital city for 500k of each resource (total, not from each city). The capital city might be able to produce slightly more res, produce troops slightly faster, have a population slightly higher, warehouse capacity slightly higher than all of the merged cities combined. Also allow it to upgrade units to lvl 4 (on applicable worlds) or to produce "elite" versions of units on worlds with only 1 research level.
I don't know just a few ideas to keep things interesting and extend the longevity of the game.

[Valorgamer]

Capital city idea is great, would make conquering more strategic rather than just going for that one because it's the biggest etc

[Orlor]

Some very interesting suggestions in there. I like the capital city/original city one which I think could add some more strategy against people with a lot of cities. I will bring this up internally so we can discuss it some more.

Please keep up the forum posts with the great ideas!

[Macewindow54]

The barbs deflnety should attack

[Jeheil]

Micro management kills it.

I have 185 cities....its almost a job to tend to them.

As Ive said on another post. Number 1 way to give it longevity is to let me kill a city....return it to barb state (to prevent a world being emptied).

I think each time a city 'caps' another it should get a Veteran status, which perhaps increase the speed of troop making. This could grow to say 3 stars or some such.

The thing that keeps all MMO's going is the social guild community, support it with guild achievements etc.

[Marti92]

The idea if a Capitol city sound great! And as for the micro management, maybe when you form capitol cities every city you own right there can be managed from the Capitol city, it is suppose to be the main hub after all. Like in other posts in the idea section, maybe you can set cities to but certain things at a certain resource limit that way micro managing won't be a game ended for the bigger players. And when I said the cities in the area I'm not talkin about the entire world just for like r24 or something like that. When I talk about the automatic purchase, if I want to set a city to buy 600 guardians when it has twice the amount of resources or if I just want it to do the same thing when it reaches that amount. You can do it for buildings and scholarships and scholars. It makes a capitol city worth having and makes it worth defending and taking it out!

[Nutterboy]

Really like the ideas, I think a whole region is too big to command. But I really like the main city idea. What if these main cities have an area of influence visible only to the player. This area would bolster the effectiveness of the cities. This area could be upgraded for large resources so it would encourage cluster growth and make it harder to break into a new area which could be an issue. Depends what style play the devs want to create. Might be worth experimenting.

[OckhamsRazor]

Phoenix nailed a lot of stuff. I think you should reward your players - that will keep any that are on the fence about quitting for a bit longer. But reward them based on what? Activity, longevity? Dunno, but do something to hold your current base.

Be very careful about what you charge for and what should in all fairness be a part of the game. You should never have to spend gold to make the game a game and not a job.

Fix the battle algorithms, please, because it's destroying the intended usefulness of certain units. Maybe I should explain my thought there with 2 different reports from the simulator.

Sent: 20 Zerks [color="#FF0000"]Lost 5[/color]
Attacked: 10 Lancers, 5 Zerks - all died

Sent: 10,000 Zerks [color="#FF0000"]Lost 5[/color]
Attacked: 10 lancers, 5 zerks - all died

Really? Ok, so here's why that really messes things up. Using high dollar units now becomes a calculation of guaranteed resource loss instead of a tactical choice. It should be easy for 10,000 to kill 15 - I don't care if they just gnaw the walls down with their teeth.

It's been said a thousand times, most likely. Some sort of player driven market.

Um...my dream? How about making this a mac app?

Edit: I love this game - these aren't complaints, just my typical ramblings

[Gummiebear51]

These are excellent ideas and wish they come into effect some point soon!

[Valorgamer]

I'd like to see pop cap increase, it would be great to be able to train 100k plus troops in each city ! Or at least be able to pool army forces together having each city training troops to recruit into your army not just for that city. You can then split it however you see fit.

You would still need to train defence and attack forces it would also still take time to move between cities so it would take careful consideration where you place them.

We all send our troops in timed attacks so that they hit roughly together so why not have them meet in one location before launching an attack ? It would be more realistic this way and also keep more people playing and for longer as most can't always be around at the specific time they need to launch each wave but moving their troops in advance would cut down the number of waves


Another suggestion would be trade routes,
When you trade with a particular city 5-10 times you can set it as a trade route allowing faster trades, there would be a maximum number of trade routes each city can have, trading between cities you own should be quicker or similar to the troop idea above pool resources you own, each city increase your limit to both so it would still be vital to defend them.