[Xavier Darkmyre]

As those of you who are still active have probably noticed, despite the recent rapid updates, things are still fairly stagnant around the vworld. We'd like to change that - but before you can fix any problem, it is important to understand what the problem is. To that end, we've started this article to directly take feedback from as many of you as possible, on what you believe to be the #1 problem in vNations today. No matter what it is, we want to hear it, so that we can take stock of all the issues as perceived by the community, and focus our efforts on addressing those issues.

We'd like to reach as many people as possible, so if you have a friend or colleague who used to play but has let their citizen slip into a vComa, please pass on this link to them and encourage them to give us their feedback too. Every citizen's opinion counts.

Please refrain from trolling, spamming, etc in this thread so we can capture good quality feedback to focus our development efforts on.

[Apiaguaiki Tumpa]

my biggest concern is about inviting people offering them certaing things, offering them to get certain game experiences and modules, and then see how that is not possible just because anti-gamers are gaining power without controll.

vnations is a game. sound obvious but that simple definition must be granted for alll the gamers who come to this place. Game must be preserved FOR THE GAMERS, people who want to play it, respecting the rules and the SPIRIT OF THE GAME ITSELF.

your modules are not so simple but also, not too complex. They are diverse enough to allow people try some experience in them.

Sometimes I felll you are just bettin g on big issues, forgetting that the details is the different between good and excelent products.

As said, vnations is good (for me) because of his diversity of options and how you are trying to get a BALANCE in the game.

JUST do not commit the same mistake as other games, turning crazzy trying to gain money selling golds and destroying that balance.

The really good games do not make a difference between the rl money payers and the free players.

The free players have his importance too... they create the conditions to the payuers stay and enjoy staying.

in those game, payingf you get more cute graphics, more detailed statistics and different kind of extras, but NO INGAME ADVANTAGES just because you have real money.


theres a lot of thing to polish, to develope, to encode, but at this moment you have a group of people believing in your project because you demostrated that you are doing thing in a different (better) way.

keep the trolls, the cheaters, the goons, the ANTIGAMERS far from us.

[Metralla]

I think only forumfags will answer.
My opinion is that vnations is a product and you do not have a strategic design on how to promote this product, you may know that many good inventors were very bad in promoting their inventions and good buissinesmen prevailed with inferior.
Promotic the product does not mean only big banners arround the city.
It means, to understand better who is the customer(where are you targeting) and what how this customer thinks and reacts.
Then you can try to design a product that suits him well.
The game has many modules since it simulates some RL aspects, so some potential customer is the wannabe politician the wannabe buisinessman, the wannabe conqueror, the wannabe rebel. The big majority is a bit of everything but on the way I think they follow a path according to their personal RL skills.
The balance in a social game is how socializing will be necessary and joyfull.
e.g. In FG you can be a lonewolf easier than vN but people that get involved in the game after some time they get organized themselves making military units showing to the developers the way.
The FG in my opinion relies on nationalism for noobs, you conquer the bad neighboor or you help yourself to be liberated but after few months you realize that this is a dull circle that leads nowhere and it is facsinating only till you realize this. Then the thing that keeps you is the friends that you made.
In FG this circle it is so simple that you can understand in relatively few time.
If the game had more depth then it becomes more difficult to make such circles and the gameplay also keeps you warm. Socializing keeps to be the most importand though.
So in the world that we live, a product that is not specialized, needs to be cute on the first glimpse. SO the game needs cute interface.
Some people we are neanterntal and and we do not understand about cuteness.
It is a whole science to make the something appealing, it is not simple.
A good step in interface would be big buttons(like for daily tasks), now edit company or place purchase order is a quest to find them.
So closing another wall of text, the area you should focus in order to bring people is to give them a catchy first glimpsh and then not to let them get lost among the numerous options, which means a very very very good explanation of how things work. This has also to be cute and not like a dull instructions wall of text. So If the environment is catchy, he will bother to see what is this game about, so he will see the very nice features of the game. When he will understand that the features can provide him with a nice game experience he will stay.

After that it will be very difficult to balance it since some features may cause unbalance because of their philosophy(tweaking does not solve everything), which means total redesign. This is the fate of each product development, design with the best intentions, practice, results, analyzing the results, redisign realizing some not obvious restrictions that do not exist in any theory.

[Booms]

Dude... game is two years old, it's not new that you can make quality baby boom. And lot of things happend in last two years in vNations. People who played and quit have their reason, and they won't come back. I would like to see country with 1000 players, but I think you are one year late with all this updates and stuff. All these rapid updates are fine, but they come too late. (Man, this is first game I have play that go from Beta to V1 and back to Beta)
I realy belive in this game... but in the end looks like is gonna be one big fail.
I hope I'm wrong.

[Sledziosław]

im in 2-click mode now.

i have words of criticism foradministracion;

i lot of our (Polish) & Hungarians players leave (or 2-click) due your unfair movements;

and it wasnt first time;

u give start bunning our players when we start important battles; so how we should see this another "coincidence"?

many of those buns was stupid and unfair; some players wrote to you and u even unban them next day(or few days) !!!!
so how do you check them later ?!
many of them didnt write to u becouse why they dont wont play such game (with unfair bun in "strange" moments)
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this is russian & bulgarians world and nobody have now chance with them(cograts to them - that not their foult that they are the best and they can infuence on weak administracion); and even someone tries to fight with them u alway make your "coincicence" to help them;
only players from different timezone have some(small) chance with them;
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i see in SirDude signature for example:
"Quote from: Xavier Darkmyre on February 04, 2011, 19:22:36
vBulgaria is a p cool nation that doesn't afraid of anything."
-admin shouldnt favor any nation; he should be neutral

[Tapherial]

1. Dunno  if military rank achivements gave anything but it would be nice to get all previus rewards + last rank displayed in your achivement list.
2. in future (no idea now its too early)
3. agree with Sledziosław
4. Currently there are loads of unused companies, many ppl want to sell em, how bout refunding companies for 75% of their worth? 15 vbx for t1 company and so on (raw and items are lost in process) this will allow great mobility in company moving (its expensive to move company now, and u can only move it across 1 country) with this it will be easy to "start over" in another country if u fail on another market.
5. Getting military ranks will take years now, u can introduce something like specialist training which consumes 5hp or more but gives slightly more combat skill (inf/med/tank/jet) but greatly more cexp

[jany]

1. Number of players.
1a. No new players
- New players cannot see to much perspective. If you introduce a new militiary skills (for example miner or something like that )), then new players can develop this skill as quickly as the old players.
- The game is too complicated for new players. Maybe a 2-level war modul can be introduced for beginners and 2-kickers.
1b. Old players leaving the game
- stop the "neutralization". There should be no change in the "origanal owner". There should be always possibility to restoring an occupied country by RW or with allies. By totally eliminating Croatia and Poland from this game you lost 2 RL countries with one of the largest potential (see FG and FG clones). Many old players have gone. Moreover, new Poland and Cratioan players would not play such a game where there is no country for them. I do not think the newcomers from these countries would play Indian/Irish/USA citizens. National feeling is one of the most important drive in such a games. If you think national feeling is unimportant than make all countries "ficitve": but at this moment v-contries have RL national names .
- agreed with Sledziosław x2

2. Overproduction. Due to this there is no consumption no production, no work. See my topic in the suggestions for 2 very simply changes (no limit for intelligence and lower the benefits of Houses). This is a 1-minute job for a programmer.

[Tapherial]

Its not xaviers fault that poland and croatia got erased, they can still come back on map (if they get all pln back from haos and win vs russia + bulgaria + serbia +..., and then they just have to rebuild their whole economy because most important person in poland got banned 4ever for [Exploiting, encouraging others to exploit] [god damn it its beta! we are supposed to find these bugs (thats the way developers save money from game testers, they just lunch closed/open beta)])
i dont see a problem there do u? Now polish ppl are treated like PTOers everywhere and if country welcomes them it gets attacked (like USA and Spain)


btw xavier another bug for u to fix (dunno if it happened in more countries but currently u cant start rw in any canadian territory) canada tottaly disapeared from map

and another one, delate all not english signs from nicknames (its impossible to search for russian ppl) ITS SO DAMN ANNOYING!

[mildox]

4. Currently there are loads of unused companies, many ppl want to sell em, how bout refunding companies for 75% of their worth? 15 vbx for t1 company and so on (raw and items are lost in process) this will allow great mobility in company moving (its expensive to move company now, and u can only move it across 1 country) with this it will be easy to "start over" in another country if u fail on another market.

Russia still can refund for 50%

and another one, delate all not english signs from nicknames (its impossible to search for russian ppl) ITS SO DAMN ANNOYING!

better learn russian. it is the language your motherland speaks. shame for you not knowing the language of your motherland. Also, come back, you rolling-stones, we need more labor forces for our economy.

[Angelus Domini]

its impossible to....find TTK...ITS SO DAMN ANNOYING!

agreed! we want TTK back!

[Sledziosław]

"4. Currently there are loads of unused companies, many ppl want to sell em, how bout refunding companies for 75% of their worth? 15 vbx for t1 company and so on (raw and items are lost in process) this will allow great mobility in company moving (its expensive to move company now, and u can only move it across 1 country) with this it will be easy to "start over" in another country if u fail on another market." -i totally agree with  Tapherial;

and some more contructive ideas from me maybe (i lose my faith in this game and its administracion, but anyway...):
1) damage should depands from all phisical skill not only speed; like in companies; end be different for each profesion;
for example: infantry wage: speed/15 +stamina/10 + aleth/5 +str/20+...
medic: speed/5 + stamina/10 + atl/15 +str/20+....
2) WM-time zone advantage makes game unplayable
3) advantache of Russia & Bulgaria makes also game unplayable; nobody will start game if he doesnt see chence to beat them- i have nothing against them and i dont know how to repair this situation; even when we try beat them administrasion make some "coincidance";
now beating them is imposible; Xav ruin our countries/economy and most people leave/ dont fight with un fair bans;
i have nothing to Russian/Bulgaria-its Xav fault;
4)maybe Russians & Bulgarian should fight against each other? and that would remove their astronomic advantage?
but i dont believe it;
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5) u can also try by "re-adding" new poland/croatia and give them protection like in new countries; but to be honest our players dont believe u anymore- even new ideas you get from "Russian side" (new war module-i dont rember name-is it working now?)-now u must listem them becouse only they stay 
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6)we try to re-run this game; and u must admit that when we make our actions activity of players(ours & rusians&bulgarians&americans&novas) was bigger but every time we try u (Xav) distoy us;
now there are no more "ours" and they probably will not come back;
new players wont come becouse they saw what u do with them...

[jany]

Its not xaviers fault that poland and croatia got erased, they can still come back on map

I did not say that this is a fault but if neutralization will be completed then there will be no chance to make come back for these countries on the map. The question was :"what to IMPROVE". I suggested only cancel "neutralization": there should be always possibility for a nation to live in a country which called like their RL country if you want to have a baby boom from these countries.

When eHungary was almost erased in FG (in 2009) there was a huge baby boom due an RL article. Conversely, if due to "neutralization" there would have been no original terriotories for a nation you cannot expect any baby boom from these nations which are eliminated forever.

[Biskvit]

I personaly hate war module. last battle i was deployed as tank, and i couldnt shoot anyone for the whole battle time ...

[Sledziosław]

and u also dont display acive battles or i miss something!!! (finished are not such important)
u can make new bar with them; i write about all active battles in all vWorld; its difficoult to find some now epecially if it is uprising...

[Jaadoo]

In my opinion it's the fact, that many nations can't be attacked. Which makes war for smaller countries a suicide-mission.

When I was living in vGermany, we were planning an attack on vBelgium. We were looking so much forward for the day the protection period was over, and then suddenly the new protectionsystem comes and destroys everything. please remove the new protectionsystem for the warpart of the game. Leave the ecenomy protection, but the game needs wars now!