I agree that some change is due. Does HTC, who knows. Change will happen of it's own accord or by design.
Currently the reward system is geared to a very important demographic. It's a blatant stick and carrot 1 to 1 feed back for the neophyt players so they will stay long enough to develop lasting relationships and the skills to successfully act upon their imagination. The strategic process is geared to minimise gaming the game while promoting emidiate conflict everywhere a base flashes.
As far as I can see it apperes to be working as intended. That should say volumes for the caliber of designers Hitech and Pyro are. They keep it simple and as reasonably unrestricted as possible for all of us to use our imaginations to create action.
The reward and strategic system neglects the advanced player becasue we are supposed to be smart enought and creative enough to be left alone with an almost unrestriced sand box and push the boundries of our imaginations. We have been provided a pantheon of tools to entertain ourseleves with. DA, AvA, WW1, EWMA, MWMA, SEA, KOTH, Air Racing, Squad Deuling, Deuling Ladder, Custom Arenas, and anything I missed. But, in the end we want HTC to modify the LWMA 400+ person environment to make us once again feel challenged and our rewards messages reflect our level of game mastery.
Caesar build us a new and more exotic standium. We are bored gutting the skilless in the old one and demand a newer more novel arena in which to gut the skilless and be cheered by the masses.
To this end a constant offering of ideas burns up pages of posts year after year. And mostly introduce the same three problems under different guises.
1.) Too overly complex and intellectualy nuanced with too many opportunities for a small number of players to constantly abuse or dominate the game while turning off the masses of neophytes needed for the future. Eventualy players will look for another game with more emidiate action rather than play chess in ww2 fighters.
2.) Too much like a 2 sided war game focused on strategicly giving a minority the opportunity to deny a whole country or regions of said country the ability to wage equal war at all times as a primary strategic action to winning the map. This will drive away neophyts and regular players. Think JSO in AH1. But, it sure feels good if you are doing the driving.
3.) No thought for how these monstrosities will be gamed, perceived by neophyts, or appreciated by the late night low numbers milk running crowd stuck with them after the war gamers go beddy by. What do you expect to see 12 hours later when you log back in while there are not the hundreds of players to drive the construct's flow? Do you have any clue?
You guys keep desigining for your selves and what you think will make you happy. It's gotta be good if it makes You happy so how could it not make others happy? Eventualy the enjoyment of the designing process in the POST becomes it's own reward for the particapents versus tearing it apart to see how it will be gamed or drive away customers. Design by Committe.
Let Hitech and Pyro design the game.
