Utopia Blog - August 12th, 2009

[Fagashlil]

This weeks blog comments here please :)

[Bijo]

nice :)

[Safri]

thanks indeed for the update

"Si Señor! Once we’re on the new code, Sean and I will be in charge of age restart and we intend to make it a smooth and predictable process. We’ll also be in charge of age changes, for which we’ll seek community input and come up with ideas of our own."

how long do you plan to stay incharge of utopia for? will you be here for a few years at least, or do you plan to move on to other projects once you have utopia recoded?

[DHaran]

So B&S, I have heard from Alpha testers that major gameplay elements are non-existent, such as GBP, and others are faulty, such as troop losses. Are these categorized as bugs, and are these types of issues being corrected?

[Sweetiepie]

Ezzerland: Would you consider using a monotype script (font) to make the depth of ascii themes more feasible for the general entertainment of kingdoms utopia wide?
You mean you want to be able to have your kingdom name render in a monotype font so you can do some nice ascii art with it? If so it sounds like a plausible suggestion that we could consider in the context of customising the kingdom page with banners, crests and alliance affiliations.

Please, Sean and Bean. Just NO. Utopia is not an alliance game, most players are not part of alliances, thankfully alliances do not have the grip that they used to have 5 years ago or so, don't encourage them. You're worrying me now.

[VT2]

So Utopia became Utopia classic, was then upgraded to Utopia alpha, and has now been further upgraded to Utopia kingdoms turbo allianceship edition 2?

[Hurlin]

Please, Sean and Bean. Just NO. Utopia is not an alliance game

My utopia is ... being able to modifiy my Kingdom page to wave my n00bie flag would be brilliant .....

[Sweetiepie]

Yes, Hurlin. Some people are in an alliance, but they are a small minority Alliances have always simply been tolerated but not encouraged. You can wave your n00bie flag in the banner, I have no objection to that, as per now; but I'm thinking like V2 is thinking, as above - is this a step in the wrong direction, are Sean and Bean being overly influenced by a few people?

[Hurlin]

ah yeh but see in my utopian universe your the vocal minority and Sean and Brian are doing a great job ........


Oops I think they call that a differance of opinion.

[Sweetiepie]

Hurlin, I don't want to play forum pingpong with you because it simply fills up the thread so isn't helpful, so I won't respond to your points again if you reply, please don't think I am being rude - of course we may have a difference of opinion, but nobody can deny that alliances are a very tiny part of the game, and they have never been encouraged.

Tbh I have no idea if S and B are doing a great job as I am not part of the Alpha test. I do not have the time to do more than just play WOL.

[Palem]

=\ I don't like the alliance thing either.
First it's trading, now it's this.

Utopia is only an ugly shadow of what it once was. It used to be about 25 random guys comming together to try to topple the rest of the world. You guys against the world.

Now it's mutanted into something else. Now it's full of kds that were strategically built to not have any weak links and alliances so everyone is nice and protected.

I understand that naturally there will always be alliances. I also understand that there's no way of fairly 'undoing' what trading has already done. But there was a reason that the first utopia I described had over 100k players, and this one has a small fraction of that. But I digress...

You want a good reason to not encourage alliances? Earth 2025.
If you aren't in an alliance you won't get even close to achieving what the players that are in alliances can, and even on servers the servers that DON'T encourage alliances, or even forbid them, they are still relevant. Alliances naturally want to help out their members and boost them up. It says something about your alliance if the top 10 on all the servers is dominated by your players

Utopia is getting close to this, so please don't give it that extra push it needs and try to get it back to the way it used to be.

[Ashwood9]

Im with the majority with the anti-alliance stance, cant stop them but they should in no way, shape, or form be endorsed by the game. Other than that my only niggle is "Utopia Developers’ Update 12th August on 12/08/2009" can some one please fix that so it says Developers', its been like it for ages now and is really starting to get on my nerves every time I go onto the main utopia page

[Ezzerland]

Alliances are free to exist in the game, but as has been said by a few others above, they should not be endorsed by the game. It's detrimental to the underlying concept of the game and there is no reason at all to change it. A kingdom with a banner and a name of its own is already more than capable of flying an alliance crest or tag. This is not broken, do not attempt to fix it. Thanks.


In regards to the font question. I did not intend for you to be able to change the font that your kingdom could be viewed in. I instead meant that the default font could be a monotype script for listing province names and etc on the kingdom page so that we can create very detailed ascii artwork.

Regards,

[Mourhelm]

I think people blow things out of proportions. If Sean & Brian add the option to put an alliance banner/crest/whatever in addition to the kingdom banner, what difference will it do?

Do you really think more alliances will form because you can add an alliance banner?

Some alliances already put tags in their kingdom names and in their kingdom banner...

As long as they don't mess with game mechanics to give an advantage to alliances it's fine.

[Ezzerland]

Yes, mourhelm. When people can plainly see that an alliance banner or alliance crest or etc is taking a certain action or performing in such a manner, they tend to want to replicate it.

I'd guess you've never played earth, or any other game with plausible alliance affiliation. You underestimate what a simple box saying "alliance crest" can do. People don't like leaving things blank, and as soon as it becomes an official part of the game, it becomes something that must be had.