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Changes to the Paid Protection Option in the Market?

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  • Cjamieson99
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Aug 03 2014 8:03 am

I was just looking at the market and I thought about paid protection and how it gets abused so often to avoid being attacked by people you're at war with or just in general.

If someone is going on vacation for a week or two and can't check the game every day or just don't want to have to worry about it the should be using the Vacation Mode option. 5 days paid protection mode is reasonable, even using it twice in a row is reasonable, but when it is used for months on end or right after being attacked, it's clearly being taken advantage of.

An idea would be that you can only use it once a month or once every 2 weeks. If you go on vacation for 2 weeks, which people commonly do, you will have to use vacation mode for the second half. This will help prevent the 10 dollar protection mode from being abused by people that like to hit and run, or people who like to take a bunch of stations off of smaller players and then when they come to take them back they just buy paid protection.

Right now, the only use for paid protection is to hide from other people doing what you do... playing the game. I have only known one person to use paid protection for a vacation, and that was ****** on his birthday, and he didn't log in for more then a few minutes a day that entire week, which is perfectly reasonable. What isn't reasonable is the people that are on all day, every day in paid protection and actively effecting game play.

Which brings me to another idea. Maybe people in paid protection could still produce naq and slaves while not being able to log in for that week, and you could reduce the cost to $5 since those people using it can't log in on while they're on "vacation". And if they do try to log in, there could be a window that says, "If you chose to continue your protection will end."

Thoughts?

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  • Cjamieson99
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Aug 03 2014 8:07 am

To be clear, this honestly isn't a shot at the 4 people that do this to me all the time. Vitopian is a subject of a few parts in this post, but it isn't directed at him.

This is just me trying to bring up a problem that has been going on for months.

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  • Mythology216
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Aug 03 2014 8:13 am

This is a great idea. One thing I would add, though, is that as a penalty for buying protection your efficiency on all of your worlds should be reset and you receive no bonuses from tech, race, personality, or stance. Once you come out of protection, your efficiency can start building again and your bonuses will be restored.

Krivon, God of Mongooses; Heraclysseus, God of Fate
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Aug 03 2014 8:16 am

Good thought, Myth.

But I'm leaning more towards making protection useful for people that want a break or a vacation, not punishing people that attempt to abuse it. I'm saying, instead of making it so that people who use it to hide (or legitimately use it for vacation) get punished when they come out, make it so they don't want to use it to hide at all, and only to go on an actual vacation.

If you can't log in but you can still make naq and slaves while not being able to login, then the active people that are taking a week off can do so, while the people wanting to hide will have to sacrifice 5 days of playing for 5-10$.

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  • Mythology216
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Aug 03 2014 8:23 am

I wasn't even thinking of it as a punishment. I mean, if your abusing the system then yeah it's a punishment, but if you are just using it to go on vacation it is a reward. The current vacation system shuts down all production for the duration of the vacation. What I suggested is bringing it down to base levels, but at least you're still producing while away from the game.

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Aug 03 2014 8:29 am

Oh, then you have either missread what I wrote, or I wrote vacation instead of paid protection a few times. I'm tired and I've typed both a lot, so I've likely mixed a few up.

I'm talking about vacation being nothing, no naq, no slaves, no log in until it's over. paid protection is what I'm talking about changing.

Vacation stays the same and we change protection to one of my two ideas or someone elses.

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  • Mythology216
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Aug 03 2014 8:40 am

Oh. I thought you were talking about people using paid protection to go on vacation.

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Aug 03 2014 8:47 am

I'm talking about how paid protection is used so much to hide from attackers and rarely ever used for actual vacation. Vacation mode is for vacation, paid protection should be for vacation if you want to keep making a bit of naq and slaves, but you can't log in and shadowing makes a little money for the game.

It's always been a problem, and I'm just really starting to see it as that in the past few weeks. More and more people that are fairly big in the game live in protection or use it for hit and runs.

If you want to go on vacation your can either use vacation mode for free, or pay $5 and get the added benefit of still making naq and slaves, even though you can't login.

-----
An add on to another thought I had up there about being able to come out when you want. You can come out of paid protection and login if you chose, but your paid protection would be over. That should have a small negative to it so that you can't go "oh, I'm getting attacked, I'll just buy protection and come out tomorrow!" So a possible solution to that would be getting the plague if you come out early--(%) off of efficiency, naq production, and attack/defence for 3 days or so.

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  • Mythology216
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Aug 03 2014 8:50 am

That sounds like a very nice way to discourage abuse of the system. If I hadn't already given you a +1 I'd give you one for this.

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Aug 03 2014 9:08 am

lol

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  • Hellhound1384
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Aug 03 2014 1:31 pm

Since you need to have not attacked anyone for 24 hrs to go into protection, maybe those rules should apply to incoming attacks as well. This way if someone starts the process of infiltrating your worlds you cannot run away into protection. that takes away endurance from them and they are left with nothing but seething anger for 5 days which only leads to more attacks and verbal abuse. So make the 24 hr rule both ways. Lets say if you want to purchase protection early there is a penalty in the amount of protection time you receive. Or maybe instead of less time there is a cool down penalty of 24 hrs when you come out because you did not wait to enter in the first place. It would help big time in the rampant abuse of the system.

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  • Ra8472
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Aug 03 2014 8:42 pm

I agree. Bought protection should be slightly different than vacation or new player protection. Maybe it should put slave production and naq production on hold. You can't build any buildings use any naq or buy military. Once your out you get it all at once, still max on slave cap applies. You can only reposition troop and slaves the last 24 hours of the protection. Plus the cost of sequentially bought protection should go up like SS. Meaning 10 bucks followed by 15 followed by 20. If you wait 72 hours like stance then you go back to 10. Discourage people from utilizing it as a main strategy only when they need a break. Otherwise you are kind of sidestepping the real time aspect of the game. I have never used it but it is attractive. A little too attractive in my opinion. In the end it doesn't seem to affect outcomes that much it is just kind of a weak option that is easily abused.

I hunt the hunters of hunting hunted sheep or something.