"Give/Transfer City Ownership" function within guilds only.

[Kaleel]

Hi, everyone:

I appreciate your comments and concerns about this feature being abused for cheating, but I just realized that in order to address your concerns, my arguments have gotten off-track from the original premise and I've gotten bogged down in the nitty-gritty details of a system that doesn't even exist yet.

Let me refocus: The point of this feature is to improve gameplay in an area where I think it is currently lacking; namely, city transfership. My goal is to make it easier to transfer cities between players in the same guild so that they aren't wasting time via the methods that I specified in my initial post. I never conceived of this idea in order to cheat the game or gain points or whatever. But I spent too much time over-thinking things in response to the concerns that have been voiced about fairness, so here is the simple solution that should satisfy THOSE concerns and while still achieving what I originally intended:

TRANSFERING A CITY FROM ONE PLAYER TO ANOTHER PLAYER IN THE SAME GUILD:

• A player can give or accept up to 10x cities per world (e.g., give 7x and accept 3x).

• NEW EDIT AS OF 2012-03-02 FRI: Just like conquering a city costs 1 scholar, a player can only "accept" a transfership if he has the necessary free/unallocated scholars available:
  
  • Player A wants to give 5x cities to Player B.
  • Player B only has 3 unused/unallocated scholars available.
  • When Player A tries to initate the 4th "give" transaction to Player B, an error message pops up saying, "The recipient doesn't have enough scholars available!"
  • This way, the transfership of a city doesn't incur any negative scholarship costs on the recipient's end.

• NEW EDIT AS OF 2012-03-02 FRI: After a city is transferred, the player who initiated the "give" transaction ends up loses the scholar within that city, so the requisite amount of scholarships is released back into that giver's queue, ready for reallocation to educate another scholar:
  
  • Player A has 4 cities (1 to start with and 3 that she conquered). As such, she has to have purchased a minimum of 3+2+1 = 6x scholarships and has to have educated a minimum of 3x scholars.
  • Let's assume that all three scholars were used up in order to capture those three cities and that she doesn't have any more unallocated scholarships.
  • When Player A successfully gives 1x city to Player B, this frees up 3x scholarships in Play A's "bank" of scholarships, so Player A can now educate a replacement scholar at the price of 3x scholarships.

• There is no time limit between city transfership. "Player A" can give all 10x of my cities to "Player B" immediately without delay.

• The transfership is still a two-step process that involves both sides: one person has to initiate the “give” and the other person has to “accept” the offer.
  
  • If a player has 10x “give” offers in their inbox that are pending their decision, then they have to either accept or deny those offers before they can (a) receive more offers or (2) make offers.
  • If a player has sent out 10x “give” offers to other players, then that player cannot send out more “give” offers until the recipients make a decision to accept or deny them.

• The transfership process has a price. It’s not tied to gold, because I now realize that it would be silly to force someone to pay when they’re trying to quit a world, so here is the “cost” which I think is fair:
  
  • All troops in that city are destroyed (includes both troops native to the city housed in the city, troops native to the city which are currently supporting other cities, and troops that it received from other cities in support).
  • All scholars in the city are destroyed (includes both native scholars in the city and any scholars which might have been sent to support it, but does not apply to scholars which have already been “used up” in the conquering of other cities).
  • The academy remains intact. The scholarship count is not an issue because scholarships aren’t housed in any specific city anyway: the academy is just a virtual portal to a “bank” of scholarships that is tied to a player’s buying history.
  • All structures are lowered by 5x levels.
  • If a structure has less than 5x levels, it is lowered to level 1.
  • 250,000 of each resource is liquidated. If there is less than 250,00 of a specific resource available, then that specific resource goes to 0.
  • NEW EDIT AS OF 2012-03-02 FRI: The loyalty is reduced to 25.

TRANSFERRING CITY TO THE GAME/ MAKING IT A BARBARIAN CITY:

• There is no limit on how many cities you can turn into Barbarian Cities.

• Upon confirmation of disposing of the city, the following will happen:
  
  • All troops in that city are destroyed (includes both troops native to the city housed in the city, troops native to the city which are currently supporting other cities, and troops that it received from other cities in support).
  • All scholars in the city are destroyed (includes both native scholars in the city and any scholars which might have been sent to support it, but does not apply to scholars which have already been “used up” in the conquering of other cities).
  • The academy is DESTROYED.
  • All structures REMAIN INTACT.
  • All resources REMAIN INTACT.

• So it basically becomes a high level barbarian city.

See the following example of how both functions work (EDITED 2012-03-02 FRI):

• You want to give me 15x cities, but I only have 8x scholars available. So I can only accept 8x cities, and all 8x of those cities are downgraded appropriately when I get ownership of them. However, they are devoid of troops and have little to no resources. So I have to spend time building them back up and recruiting troops before they can become functional.
• Because you successfully transferred 8x cities to me, you basically lost 8x scholars, so your allocated scholarships are released, and you can educated 8x more scholars.
• As for the remaining 7x cities, if you still want to get rid of them, you can either “barbify” them so that I can take my chances of conquering them, or you can do what you currently have to do (e.g., send out all troops to support another location so that I can try to conquer your city intact and recall the troops later):
  
  • Afer a while, I've educated 5x more scholars and someone else then wants to give me 5x cities. Even though I have enough scholars to accept all five cities, I can only accept transfership of 2x because I’ve reached my limit of how many cities I can give/accept for this world.
  • Someone else wants to give 3x cities and you have the necessary unallocated scholars for it. However, you can only accept 2x of them because you’ve reached your limit of how many cities you can give/accept for this world.

Does anyone see any problems or abuse with this?

-Kaleel

[Vasasalo]

>

• NEW EDIT AS OF 2012-03-02 FRI: After a city is transferred, the player who initiated the "give" transaction ends up loses the scholar within that city, so the requisite amount of scholarships is released back into that giver's queue, ready for reallocation to educate another scholar:
  
  
  >>
  
  TRANSFERRING CITY TO THE GAME/ MAKING IT A BARBARIAN CITY:
  
  • There is no limit on how many cities you can turn into Barbarian Cities.
  
  >>>
  
  • Upon confirmation of disposing of the city, the following will happen:
    
    • All troops in that city are destroyed (includes both troops native to the city housed in the city, troops native to the city which are currently supporting other cities, and troops that it received from other cities in support).
    • All scholars in the city are destroyed (includes both native scholars in the city and any scholars which might have been sent to support it, but does not apply to scholars which have already been “used up” in the conquering of other cities).
    • The academy is DESTROYED.
    • All structures REMAIN INTACT.
    • All resources REMAIN INTACT.
    
    
    • So it basically becomes a high level barbarian city.

_________________
>Why? i thought the player was quitting. If the player is quitting and not just buffing the one main character then why would anyone give up 10 cities?

>>So this is in essence still buffing the player who is waiting to take over all the other cities you didnt give to him.

>>>This can already be done by them quitting the game and supporting a guild member like you yourself said and you wouldn't have to rebuild anything. So really the existing one way is better then your scenario. I'd rather send 5 waves of scholars walking 6 hours then have to rebuild an academy at 12hrs on a 1.5x server.


>>>I'm not trying to bash the idea but it still has the feel of cheating all over it. i do understand the want of people leaving the game to give their cities to their guild; however, if the guild just puts a little work into it, they can claim all that persons cities in their forum, boot the player, and then take his cities. Also, if you only want to give your cities to you second account you can just move the troops from the city, drop guild for enough time to send the attacks, get back in the guild and then wait the march time to take the city. I just think this is an overall bad idea. the though behind it is good, but this just opens up the door for easliy cheating.

[Kaleel]

@Vasalao: I don't agree with your argument because I don't undersand it vis-a-vis my proposal, but I will try my best to address your concerns:

[HTML]Why? i thought the player was quitting. If the player is quitting and not just buffing the one main character then why would anyone give up 10 cities?[/HTML]

This function not only works for players who are quitting, but also for players who just want to transfer ownership of a city from themselves to another person. Why would they want to do so? Perhaps because their want their fellow guildmate to have a city in close proximity to themselves. My opinion is that the alternative (which is the current method of training 5x scholars and sending them on a long-distance journey) is inconvenient and a waste of time that could be better devoted to active gameplay.

So this is in essence still buffing the player who is waiting to take over all the other cities you didnt give to him.

... I don't even know how you came to this conclusion, so I don't know how to appropriately respond to it. It's like I tried to explain that the sky only appears blue and you responded, "So basically people are color-blind." This is not an ad hominem attack against you -- I simply cannot comprehend what you mean and how you came to this conclusion logically. The transfership process is a two-part process that requires input from both the giver and the acceptor. How can this process like this be equated to "buffing a player who is waiting to take over the other cities you didn't give him"?? Please explain what you mean by this.

This can already be done by them quitting the game and supporting a guild member like you yourself said and you wouldn't have to rebuild anything. So really the existing one way is better then your scenario. I'd rather send 5 waves of scholars walking 6 hours then have to rebuild an academy at 12hrs on a 1.5x server.

I argue that the existing way is worse than my scenario. Using the existing way, if I want to conquer my guildmate's city with Lvl 25 walls and a standing army of 3,000 lancers; 1,500 sentries; 2,000 knights and 1,000 guardians, which is also a 16-hour scholar march time away from me, I have to do the following:

1. Purchase at least 5+4+3+2+1 = 15x scholarships
2. Educate at least 5x scholars
3. Recruit at least 500x knights
4. PM my guildmate and ask him to send his troops away, then ask him to leave the guild.
5. Send 5x waves of 100x knights + 1 scholars.
6. Wait 16x hours.... and hope that no one else has laid claim to the city in the meantime.

Using my way, the same result can be accomplished by:

1. Having at least 1x free scholar.
2. My guildmate sends me a transfership offer via PM. I accept said transfership via PM.
3. My scholar is used up, but I gain immediate ownership of the city. Having to rebuild the Academy seems like a small price to pay for getting around 16x hours of waiting + whatever time it would have taken to raise enough resources to purchase scholarships, educate scholars, etc.

I'm not trying to bash the idea but it still has the feel of cheating all over it. i do understand the want of people leaving the game to give their cities to their guild; however, if the guild just puts a little work into it, they can claim all that persons cities in their forum, boot the player, and then take his cities. Also, if you only want to give your cities to you second account you can just move the troops from the city, drop guild for enough time to send the attacks, get back in the guild and then wait the march time to take the city. I just think this is an overall bad idea. the though behind it is good, but this just opens up the door for easliy cheating.

I will admit, I don't understand this "second account" issue. It is my understanding that every player only has one account in Valor, and that having more than one would consitute cheating and being banned from the game.

The second thing is that it seems that everyone's main criticism is that of cheating. That just begs the question -- why are all of you so big on cheating? I don't see how you could cheat with this. I really don't, and here's why:

• The cities that are given away are adequately demoted. Even if you transfered a maxed-out city, it would be downgraded by 5x levels across all structures and all troops are destroyed. This means that the the ONLY thing which the transfer has granted is that of a quick handover and an immediate foothold in another region.
• The tradeoff of this immediate benefit is that the recipient still has to (1) upgrade the city; (2) wait for ample time to pass to gain enough resources; (3) re-recruit the troops.
• The recipient still has to use up a scholar in the process, so the earlier concerns of gaining numerous amount of unallocated scholars or incurring huge scholarship debt are no longer an issue.
• To answer the previous concern of a single player receiving hundreds of cities with possibly thousands of scholars, the cap of 10x transfers negates that possibility.
• Futhermore, the fact that being transferred is WIPED CLEAN makes this function unsuitable as a tactic for warfare. EXAMPLE:
  
  • My guildmate and I are trying to conquer your city. I'm relatively close to your city (say, a 5x-hour marchtime by scholar) but my guildmate is 18x hours away.
  • I conquer a barbarian city which is 4x-hour marchtime away from your city.
  • I initiate city transfership with my guildmate, so he now gains possession of that barbarian which is close to you. However:
    
    • The city is empty and has no troops, so he cannot attack you.
    • The warehouse has been emptied by up to 250,000 of each resource
    • There is no academy.
    • The loyalty is 25
  • If anything, I've put my guildmate in jeopardy of being conquered by YOU because he lacks the resources to attack you efficiently, while you can easily conquer the 25-point loyalty city w/ zero troop defense.

Again, this feature was suggested with the intent of helping a guildmate gain a foothold in a region which was far away from them in both distance and time. That's the primary function. The limit prescribed are to prevent it from being abused. Surely, if you want to go the existing route, then be my guest -- no one is stopping you. However, there is no reasonably feasible way to do what this function ACTUALLY allows, which is why I continue to argue in its favor.

[Naita]

I like this idea .... Isn't it as simple as .... The receiving player has to have the scholarships to receive it... He need to have at least 1 scholar in his "number of scholars you can educate" and of course once he gets the cities his "number of conquered cities" goes up by one and hence it uses a scholar and means it uses scholarships.

Of course it lowers the city count for the giving payer and frees up a scholar.

This is no different from friends letting each other conquer their city and creates no greater loop holes

[Vasasalo]

Why would you leave troops in a city you are giving away? It makes no sense... You argue that in the current way you would need to raise x amount of troops blah blah blah. No you just support your guild mate and then you will not have any troops in the city that he is conquering and when he does take the city he can recall the troops and not have to rebuild from scratch.
The reason everyone is saying it sounds like an easy way to cheat is because it is exactly that. At least in the current way you still have to put some effort into it.
There are alot more useful changes devs could be focusing on then this.

[Kaleel]

@Naita: Thank you for getting the point! I appreciate it.

@Vasasalo: "Blah Blah Blah" rarely constitutes a strong argument, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt by attempting to logically addressing your concerns:

No you just support your guild mate and then you will not have any troops in the city that he is conquering and when he does take the city he can recall the troops and not have to rebuild from scratch.

Problem #1: Sure, you can send your troops to him. But until you do that, he can't attack you because you're in the guild. Unless he leaves the guild to start his attack, which means he has to be invited back in. During that time, he's at a disadvantage. Either way, he's got to purchase scholarships, educate scholars, recruit attack troops, then send them towards you.

Or perhaps you'll be the one to quit the guild. Okay, no problem, you quit the guild.... but you forgot to send your support troops to him. You'd have to be invited back to the guild for that to happen, but your guildmate can't do that because he is neither a crown nor a general. Whoops. So now you've got to PM a crown or general to ask for an invite. And explain exactly what is going on. And deal with the drama of THAT.

So now what do you do? Obviously, you can either send your troops across all 6x of your cities to support 1x of your cities, thereby emptying the 6x cities so that is "safe" for him to conquer them at his leisure. Which will require him to raise enough scholars and other troops to send waves against each of your cities. One. By. One. And if you're 8x hours away from him, that can take a LOT of time.

Here's the cost/benefit analysis to gain 1x city in this situation:

COST:
-Resources and time to purchase at least 5x scholarships to attack 1x city.
-Resources and time to educate at least 5x scholars and escort troops for each scholar.
-Time spent sending 5x waves that 1x city (and if you couldn't send the troops away, then he'd have to fight against them and lose his own troops in the process).
-Reducing the city to 25 loyalty.

BENEFIT:
-An intact city.
-The ability to recall the cities' troops and use that standing army to either defend his newly acquired city, or to launch at attack at another city.
-Access to all the resources in that city.

My proposed solution: Use the transfership function. Here's the cost/benefit analysis:

COST:
-Resources and time to purchase at least 1x scholarships and educate 1x scholar. That's it.
-5x levels off of each structure lost.
-up to 250,000 resources lost.
-No troops.
-25 loyalty.

BENEFITS:
-Immediate ownership.
-No attack waves, no escort troops. No troops lost on your side.
-No need to hassle with the crowns or generals to explain your actions. This is a private transaction between you and your guildmate.
-No wasted time! No wasting 16 hours and 5x scholars! It's yours!

The reason everyone is saying it sounds like an easy way to cheat is because it is exactly that.

Again, exactly WHAT? Show me how you could cheat with this. We've already established that it leaves the city vulnerable to attack, so it CAN'T be used as a warfare tactic. We've already established that because it lowers the levels, players will only use it sparingly (it you try to transfer a 10K city it will be come a 5x city, so why bother), so they WOULDN'T want to abuse it. And we've established limits on the amount of cities transferred and given, so you can't load a player with with 1,000x cities! Please, tell me how you can cheat with this. I want to know what scenario is running through your mind.

At least in the current way you still have to put some effort into it.

And there's effort involved in this, too. It's not all glory and roses when you acquire the city. You still have to spend time building it back up, gaining resources and recruiting troops. Sure, all this takes time, but it's time towards actual GAMEPLAY and I think that this should be maximized as much as possible!

Building up and developing a city and troops; getting your guildmates to establish a foothhold in a region with you so that you all can cooperate to maximize defense; and coordinating with their efforts to lay siege to an enemy city who is actively fighting back with his guild -- I argue that all of these are good uses of gameplay time.

Watching a 26x hour countdown on a round-trip scholar wave to a former guildmate's city... I'm sorry, but that's like watching the paint dry. When the time required between stimulus, action and result are too great, the harder it gets to consider such activity as active playtime. That's why most people quit the 1.0 worlds because building a Lvl 26 Farm takes 17x hours.

There are alot more useful changes devs could be focusing on then this.

I won't argue with the first part of this statement, as I am sure that there are plenty of good ideas floating around in this suggestions forum. But it would constitute a logical fallacy to use that as the basis of your argument, because it neither proves that my idea isn't worth consideration (which is what you and your supporters appear to imply) nor does it negate the validity of my suggestion (which addresses an issue and provides a possible solution).

-Kaleel

[Vasasalo]

First off, me and 'my supporters'? So anyone that has a difference of opinions and doesn't declare your idea the next greatest thing to sliced bread is illogical? Also, how you keep trying to intimidate me into either silence or agreement to get your point across is amusing.
Now back to topic, waiting is grueling; however, that is what the whole basis of this game is about. Not instant gratification. Would it make things easier, yes. Is it a tool that could be used to cheat, without a doubt. Regardless what you say, there is no bout this would be abused.

[Kaleel]

@Vasasalo: I don't mind that you and others don't think my ideas are great. I don't want or need you to agree with me. What I would like, however, is for you (and others who share your opinion) to explain WHY. The greatest con-argument that you (and others who share your opinion) have raised is that "This can be abused and can be used to cheat." Now, that's a pretty big con-argument and definitely needs to be addressed. However, I can't do that when I don't know HOW this can be used to cheat. And I've asked for an explanation of what you mean at least twice, but I still haven't received an explanation of the how this function could be used to exploit any new loopholes that aren't already being exploited. It's just the same rhetoric that "Nope, your idea still sucks because it lets people cheat" and I'm sitting here going, "How? How can you cheat? Will someone please come up with a scenario that clearly supports that argument so I can understand it?"

And I'm not trying to intimidate you -- I'm trying to get an concrete answer out of you. And I say that you and "your supporters" because y'all came to the same conclusion quite quickly:

Brendone: I just think it makes it very open to abuse.

Ramorocks: this is very unfair and very easy to take advantage of.

Vasasalo: while it does seem great at first i to think this is a bad ideal if its as stated above. [...] like stated before this has abuse written all over it.

Conan94: Good ideas but no good ways of making them without a loop so people can "cheat". [...] I will try to think of a way to keep people from cheating and post it here but don't hold your breath

So I took all of those criticism and suggestions to heart and applied limits to plug up all the possible holes. But you continued to argue that it could be used to cheat:

Vasasalo: I'm not trying to bash the idea but it still has the feel of cheating all over it. [...] I just think this is an overall bad idea. the though behind it is good, but this just opens up the door for easliy cheating.

And though I addressed each of your specific points and raised other questions, you still haven't responded to answer those. Instead, you fired back with:

Vasasalo: The reason everyone is saying it sounds like an easy way to cheat is because it is exactly that.

...again, the same argument as before. But no explanation as to how. And again, I tried to address all the possible concerns that you raised, point by point. But I must be missing something because you keep falling back to this argument without explaining why.

So this is what I'm waiting for. I'm not picking on you or trying to intimidate you. I honestly want to engage in rhetoric discussion with you and that means I have to understand where you're coming from. And to do that, I need to you to explain to me what you mean by "this is an easy way to cheat". It might be really obvious to you, but as I've asked a few times already, I think it's pretty clear that it's not obvious to me.

So can you please explain to me what you mean?

Thanks,
-Kaleel

[Mathijsvand]

@ kaleel: this is a great idea, don't get mad because of vasasalo, it is a great idea and I deffinately support.

[Orlor]

Ok guys lets keep this thread going constructively, no need for calling out others.

People can have different opinions about possible features for Valor.