5 replies to this topic

[Amberson]

So the situation on UK2 is pretty stale... Hundreds of different studios, but only a few of them are somewhat competitive in terms of being able to grab a trophy or reach a higher placement in the Temple.

The power distribution doesn't really change significantly over time and there's no real fight for the very top position(s). The subtop studios keep switching positions depending on who leaves or joins at the moment... You see one studio rise to a certain position, then they loose some crucial members and fall down and maybe later they manage to gain a few reinforcements and rise again... But overall, these are all only cosmetic power shifts... Biggest changes actually happen when some studio dissolves altogether.

What could really help to pour some new energy into the status quo would be the introduction of proper studio merges that would offer an actual incentive for different groups of players to stop playing in their own little sandboxes and instead band together to create something greater.

How to make this happen? Well, that’s what this thread is here for - to offer some ideas and suggestions how to make such a prospect viable, attractive and fair. At the moment, merging means to let one studio die out or to try to keep running both studios by either relegating one to the position of an inferior "farm team" or through shuffling the players around periodically. None of these options are optimal. What this game needs is some sort of mechanics that would allow a true merge into one unit without anyone feeling like they had to give up something....

One suggestion might be to allow the newly merged studio to support a bigger rooster than a regular studio can - let's say of 40 or up to 50 members. Of course, there would have to be some kind of penalty to compensate for the higher number of members. This could take the form of both a permanent skill point penalty in studio fights and also a penalty on Temple points collected (either on an individual or overall level).

Allowing the individual studios to somewhat keep their own identity even during their stay in the alliance could make the prospect even more enticing. This could be achieved by letting the merged studios have 2 separate private "chambers" with their own roosters, chats, visual layout etc. On top of that, there could be a main "hall" for everyone to mingle in and also to represent the alliance outwards (this would be the page that every other visitor would see with the whole rooster and common studio name + visuals). The chamber system would also allow for the individual studios to split again at any time into their own units.

Anyway, this is only one of different possible suggestions that I came up with just now in order to give different groups of people some actual motivation to merge and thus make the game more competitive... But this thread is open for any other and better ideas.

Edited by Amberson, 09 June 2018 - 16:08 PM.

[CaptC]

Nice idea.  I just have a little quibble about your wording: Development studios are in no way inferior.  It's just a way to have one, 60 person roster.  We have been doing this successfully for quite some time on Nutaku. 

[Amberson]

I was thinking of a situation were you have two subtop studios with a couple of high-level active players, while the rest of their roosters is neither active or strong. So the optimal scenario would be to get the best players of both studios under one roof to create a single powerful unit. However, today that means that both groups have to decide what roof that would be... And of course, nobody really wants to make the move some place else and leave their current studio as the one intended for development of characters. Under these conditions, it wouldn't even be a development studio, since all the leftover players weren't really putting much effort in the development of their characters before the creation of the alliance. And recruiting is not an option either, since if it were that easy for a subtop studio to recruit, the prospect of a merge would be unnecessary to begin with...

So once the creme de la creme of one studio leaves, their former studio is often condemned to quickly fall down the ranks and wither. For multiple reasons, that's not something many players in the game want to see happen to their home studio. After all, it cost them a lot effort to build it up, expand it and get it up the rankings. They invested their time, energy or even real money into it and identify with its brand. In some situations, bosses also want to keep being bosses or founders view the studio as their own baby that they are unable to give up.

The only way to break this is to offer a true merge option that would allow both studios to stay on equal footing with the possibility of an eventual return to two separate entities in the future.

Edited by Amberson, 09 June 2018 - 19:27 PM.

[CaptC]

I agree that it is a rare situation, and one of the bosses has to be competitive, have less personal ego than "team" ego, and have a reason to change what they are doing. It helps if the bosses are friendly for other reasons.  Such situations can in fact actually occur. Busty Spiderbabes is living proof, and a player named HoosierDaddy jump-started that process by offering to merge his studio in with mine.

 

It is true that many competitive bosses would rather quit the game than give up being boss. *shrug*  I will merely make the point that it doesn't actually matter what the merger mechanics are in that case. The boss wants to be boss, no merger method will change that, and the vast majority of players are loyal to their bosses.

 

Studios with such bosses have to self destruct in order for the players to be redistributed. Mechanics are not the issue. People being people, is the issue.

[Amberson]

I can agree with that. However, the desire of the boss to stay being the boss constitutes only one hindrance to a potential merge. There are others of which I mentioned at least some in my previous post.

The boss thing could be still worked out under the new mechanics (or even the current ones). Establishing a rotating leadership is an obvious solution. Under the chambers system I proposed, this might be even brought up to the next level with each chamber having its sub-boss who’s still responsible for some of the management of that particular studio branch as well of the whole studio. Heck, there might even be two bosses in an alliance with some actions needing the authorization of both of them.

I view the withering or deletion of one of the merging studios to be a much bigger obstacle to a potential merge. Current way of uniting different groups of players might be described as a merge, but in reality it’s just a recruitment of players by one studio on a massive scale. And many players simply don’t want to abandon their studio that they laboriously built up together and leave it out to die.

Maybe it could be put in an indefinite virtual depositary with the option to reactivate it in case the boss/founder decides to leave the alliance? Or if the alliance becomes so successful and sought out that it actually starts to make sense to have a development studio? That might be another option. And it should also include the possibility to transfer all the diamonds/notes/bought cake and doubles from one studio to another before either of them gets put in the depositary.

[Amberson]

One more note... I think that in order to motivate players to want to merge studios and not feel like only one side had to give up something (the dissolution of their former studio), there should be some added incentive besides the obvious fact that uniting two strong groups of players creates a much more powerful unit. Not sure what that might be, maybe something in the form of current studio boosters reserved only if both studios agree to go through the whole merge process (at the end of which one of the studios cease to exist). Or it could be a small bonus in daily available energy or on notes or being able to have 32-35 members on the rooster... Something like that. Consider this to be another alternative to my initial chamber system proposal.