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Some discussion regarding the point value of cities. Click here to comment in the forums.

Makaveli wrote:

Discussion on the point value of a city when it is orbed has been going on for awhile now. Basing the number of points for each orb on rank keeps getting brought up, and more recently Weebo mentioned the possibility of using the amount of time a city has been up to determine that city's point value.

Here is my idea:

———-

Once a city goes over 21 or builds either an orb or bombs, that city is forever orbable. From that point on, forget about the number of buildings…the building count will have no effect on the number of points the city is worth.

Instead, the number of points you get for orbing a city would be be based on the number of orbs that city has gotten. A city that has gotten zero orbs would be worth 30 points. After getting one orb, that city would be worth 50 points. After that, each orb a city gets increases point value of that city by five points.  

NumberofOrbs      PointValue
      0               30
      1               50
      2               55
      3               60
      4               65
      5               70
      6               75
      7               80
      8               85
      9               90
      10              95
      15              120
      20              145
      30              195

If NumberofOrbs = 0
Then PointValue = 30

If NumberofOrbs = 1
Then PointValue = 50

If NumberofOrbs > 1
Then PointValue = 50 + (NumberofOrbs*5)

Benefits of this System:

1) It would make a target of any city that dominated the map for too long. (If a city has gotten 10 orbs — that's 500 points — then 120 points is a reasonable reward for whoever takes that city out.)

2) It would discourage targeting specific players as soon as they are done building. (If you double a city before it has a chance to orb someone, you only get 30 points for orbing them. Again, this encourages players to go after whichever city is dominating instead of going after the players they don't like.)

3) It would make the reward for orbing newbs much lower. (If a newb city hasn't orbed anyone they are only worth 30 points, regardless of the number of buildings they have.)

4) Orb cities would be worth a full 50 points as soon as they orb someone. (This allows people to get full points for orbing a real orb city, but doesn't reward them for attacking cities that "might" be an orb city.)

5) Smurfs wouldn't affect the system, because it is based on how much a city is dominating the map, not on the rank of the players in the city.

———-

What do you guys think?

To go along with this idea, here is what I suggest for the windows in the lower right corner (building on Vindkast's idea):

———-
 

This first screen would be a list of all cities that players are in, along with the point value of each city if orbed, and the direction of the city. (An unorbable city would have "0" for the point value.) The nearest city would show in a different color. Also, it could be programmed so that BCL cities did not show up on this list to keep people from attacking them during league play. This screen would require a scrollbar for busy times when more than six or so cities are up.

———-

This second screen would contain more detailed information on the nearest city. If the city is too small, the point value would say "NONE" to make it clear to newbs that there is no point in attacking. (Just an afterthought…maybe this screen should also show city direction so that players between two cities don't get confused.)

———-

Sorry, I was too lazy to change the buttons, but one could say "City List" and the other "City Info" or something like that.

 

Vindkast wrote:

Interesting suggestion. I think number of orbs is a better way to determine a city's "value" than size or rank or time-orbable, since it is based on actual dominance rather than the city's potential.

One problem I have with how the numbers are set up right now is that the +5s, small as they are, could inflate points. The possibility of a newbie getting 2+ promitions from one orb seems wrong. The minimum orb would be bumped up 10 points (20 to 30), but also the typical orb would drop 20 (50 to 30)… so maybe things would balance out overall?

Anyway, so far it seems like everyone agrees on the "permanently orbable at 21" part.

 

Stubbs wrote:

Basing orbs is by far the best idea so far.
I think I would cap it 80 pts…
or maybe
Orbs Pts
4 64
5-9 70
10-14 80
15-19 90
20+ 100

Just another Idea, Just keeps the points in the same range. If we do change the points awarded, I would definetly suggest a Point Reset.
Also do we want to keep the numbers even? would basically be for tradition.

*Allthough I still think there should be some penelty for destroying alot of buildings.
perhaps -2 points for every building under 21 but a minimum of 50 pts.
P = Point Value based on Number of Orbs
B = # Buildings when orbed
A = Points awarded for orb

if (P<=50)
A=P'
else
if(B>21)
A=P;
else
C = P – [(21-B)*2];
if (C<50)
A=50;
else
A=C;

So if you orb at 19, and theyve had 4 orbs, you would get 60 pts, instead of the full 64. Anyways, just an Idea, Allthough I am not sure if it is worth adding, but you could ponentially loose 40 pts, If you destroyed every building. But you also always get the 30 pts, or 50 if they had atleast 1 orb.

Here are some Monthly Status Reports put together by the old Admin team which some people may find interesting if you want to analyze how BattleCity is doing!

Comment on this article in the forums 

Web Traffic Statistics 

Month	Unique Visitors	Bandwidth
Jan 2005	482	458.80 MB
Feb 2005	1242	2.30 GB
Mar 2005	1832	3.67 GB
Apr 2005	2425	3.69 GB
May 2005	5836	5.14 GB
Jun 2005	3566	3.63 GB
Jul 2005	2999	4.28 GB
Aug 2005	1927	3.49 GB
Sep 2005	2761	3.84 GB
Oct 2005	2594	9.04 GB
Nov 2005	4030	11.63 GB
Dec 2005	4198	8.87 GB
Jan 2006	8630	16.23 GB
Feb 2006	15453	18.99 GB
Mar 2006	11894	14.16 GB
Apr 2006	10261	14.47 GB
May 2006	6512	10.79 GB
Jun 2006	5157	8.24 GB
Jul 2006	4916	8.48 GB
Aug 2006	4238	6.96 GB
Sep 2006	3471	6.14 GB
Oct 2006	3381	6.48 GB
Nov 2006	4097	5.99 GB
Dec 2006	4626	6.55 GB
Jan 2007	3889	5.53 GB
Feb 2007	3534	5.60 GB

July 2006 Statistics and Results:

Overall, web-traffic still larger than same time last year, however down again from the month before. This is now 5 consecutive months of decline, however, total unique visitors is still overall larger than before any advertising was done indicating a growth in the community.

Comments for July:

Overal server population in-game has been decreasing since incoming web-traffic has declined without advertising or fresh spamming of game website forums. This, along with active players playing less has brought average numbers back below 10 when it had gone up over 15 a few months earlier.

I still believe the server constantly lagging out was the major factor contributing to the decline as it frustrated active players enough to ruin their gameplay. Recent updates by ReMoTe have addressed this issue so if the fix has reduced the problem then this will definitely help get ingame counts starting to go back up.

Laming has been a continual problem as well, so some administrative changes have been made to help eliminate the problem by re-defining laming such that nothing is lame, everything is playing the game. Whatever shouldnt be part of the game, should be fixed and prevented via code.

Once updates related to reducing laming are released, it should be interesting to see how that affects the game. Almost everyone is in favor of such updates as they will help make the game more enjoyable. Quitting/demolishing are really loopholes which were never intended to be part of Battlecity strategy. The updates will provide many needed fixes, though they will also favor team-stackers whom had their point counts increased big-time by respawn which made it easier for them to rape newbies since cities didnt die. New ideas are circulating for other possible solutions to deal with that problem, such as increased points for orbing dominant cities so that they become targetted more.

BC Java is on hold while the current game gets fixed up. Nobody minds because everyone loves the updates!

Overall, the end of the month ended with a big bang and surge of activity after lots of drama and city rotation captured lots of interest. Hopefully that momentum carries into August. If the server stays stable, I expect to see player counts begin to start rising again.

Plans for August

– Updates aimed at reducing laming
– Getting BC mentioned again on many gaming website via forum posts or news posts to help bring in some fresh traffic and newbies. 

 

Comments for June 2006: 

I've definitely seen a lot of new players starting to take over the show! All these new players though are now Colonels or higher and form the majority of the active community. Thats encouraging because player numbers are about the same with the majority of vets not playing. As we get more and more new players and some vets come back time to time, theres more and more chances of having more and more peeps online!

Was happy to see the events going well in June! Hope to have that continue over into July.

Server "lag" crashing has continued to be the main problem plaguing the game. I believe a stable BC would definitely see major growth, but crashing at 20 players or during events which attract players just cripples the game and prevents it from getting bigger.

Right now the only solution on the horizon is BC Java, which will be stable and accessible to a larger audience. It will likely bring around a Golden Era of the new Battlecity, especially if completed before the summer is done.

Other problems remaining is laming, though that seams to peak when server population is low and you cant avoid your tormentor.

Plans for July

– Summer Bash continued! Give Surge a hand as much as you can!
– Wait for BC Java! Progress on the project has been going well.

 

Statistics and Results May 2006:

May was a slow month for incomming traffic. In fact, it was the lowest amount of unique visitors we've had so far in 2006, but still higher than the best month in 2005. This statistic is reflective of the community size + first time visitors from links or ads. We no longer have any advertising money so its normal to have less incomming people, though we still need to work on ways to grow this number so we get new players to replace our retired players 😉

Comments for May:

I wasn't online enough to get a feel for how well or poorly the game did this month. I would appreciate some feedback from those who were active please. Generally I found there to be less players online than in the last few months, but then again every now and then I logged on to see 20+ players. I did see lots of newbies which is encouraging!

Plans for June

– Weekly event planned and hosted
– Discuss new ideas and better ways of doing things to possibly be incorporated into BC Java.

Please respond and give me some feedback for how the game did in may. How was server population? How was newbies? How was laming? Any common complaints you heard or issues that need to be adressed? Thanks

Vindkast:
The server population definitely dropped– I seldom see it over 20 anymore. I think this is more because vets are disappearing than because the newbie flow is slowing. On the contrary, it seems like only now that the "newbies" are becoming vets. And there are a lot of people I haven't seen since BCL.

A lot of newbies are playing very regularly now (even bad ones that aren't on the monthly top 20). It's probably school being out, but maybe the lower server population has something to do with it, since when it's under 8 or so is really the only time newbies get help from vets.

Laming seems to be on the rise. During the day this doesn't seem like a problem, but late nights are turning into the lawless late nights of old BC. The lower server population causes some of it, since if nobody's on there's nothing to do but trap CCs or orb some newb at 10 before he runs out of money. Also, a summer lack-of-bedtimes are just going to make the nights longer…

Issues,

I was firing people from Iqaluit for a while, since whenever I see a full Iqaluit and a full Huambo, both cities just prey on small cities because they don't want to make the long drive. But maybe the excitement (or whatever) of a strange city outweighs this and keeps people playing. I'm divided on it, but either way I don't think it's an urgent issue.

Server "lagouts" are definitely still the main problem with BC. Whenever it looks like the server population's going back up, a lagout comes and kills the momentum.

Stubbs:
I think there is a comination of alot of things.

1. School is now out for alot of people, meaning, a summer job, vacations, various other things.

2. Server Lag outs, This is, and will continue to be a problem that lowers the number of people

3.. No BCL, I havent played regulalrly since the BCL.

4. Nostalgia runs out eventually, I think for most everyone it is gone.

I usually only play until I get orbed now. So, If I am orbed at 15-20 (which I usually am it seems). Then I usually just leave.

Weebo:
Great info Vind and Stubbs, appreciate it!

Some time has been spent on trying to fix those server lagouts without much luck so far. Well, thats not entirely true, each time a multiple of bugs were fixed which were causing actual crashes. Now it doesnt crash it just gets stuck in the winsock code for some reason simulating "lag".

Im not sure it will ever be fixed in the c++ version. Right now ReMoTe is working on BC JAVA and is hoping to take advantage of this to clean out the bugs as he codes. The networking in this version should be much better. ReMoTe has forecasted a release before the end of summer.

That means we may need to suffer the lagouts a bit longer unless a lighbulb lights up somewhere.

Issues of laming are again something which will likely be more fully addressed now in the JAVA version. Now is the time to think of better ways for the game to do certain things so as to limit laming and help make life more pleasant for newbies. Many of these changes may not make it into the current version as most effort is now going into getting a full JAVA version running so we can tap into a much larger market of players.

Thanks for keeping me posted!

Also I think thats a good point Stubbs brought up. Most vets will reach a point where they play less often. They'll still log on for a game every now and then, but will log off quickly if its not fun and they get lamed or orbed at 15-20. Sometimes you dont want to put in the effort to place D before you go over 11, you just want to log on, get in a city and play for a bit.

Thats another thing that I believe changing when a city is orbable will help address. The game will be more fun if its set up to encourage battles between fully built cities so there are actual battles and not random orbs that discourage people from playing.

Also indicating which city is currently dominant would let people build up and join in the fun, rather than have their fun ruined as they try to build.

Stubbs:
Somethings I think could help

1. change orbable limit

2. Inform mayor(maybe everyone in the city) that the city 'is now orbable'

3. 'city Under Attack' – this is an old feature

– 2&3 could be combined, may once the city is orbable the color of the Compass changes, and if it is under attack, it flashes

4. Hospital only buildable after Med Research – This has been discussed, but this gets new players all the time

5. MAYBE remove money entirely, maybe just go with time limits between building, overall money doesnt play a huge role, but is more of a annoyance for new players, people who know how to play rarely have a problem with money. and you could just limit hospitals to 1 or 2.

Thats all I can think of now.

Vindkast:
About server lagouts, does Remote know they happen daily now? Back when the server was running in debug mode so he could catch a lagout, they were only happening once a week or so. They're a much bigger problem now, and a huge reason why BC isn't growing.

As I just posted in the Errors section, it might be worth his time to try debug mode again now that we can apparently cause lagouts by running gauntlets.

 

Statistics and Results April 2006:

Another good month with another 10,000+ unique visitors to the site. This number has been slowly dropping as advertisement money becomes less and less.

Code:

Google Advertising Campaign Name—–Clicks—–Impr—–CTR—–Avg. CPC—–Cost Feb Ads—–7,981—1,307,423—0.6%—–$0.01—–$83.63 Mar Ads—–7,686—931,601 —0.8%—–$0.01—–$76.86 Apr Ads—–5,030—749, 017 —0.67%—–$0.01—–$50.30 Money Left For Advertising: $39.21

Advertising money is pretty much used up! Its brought plenty of newbies and got us plenty of new downloads. Hopefully we've grown enough that even without ads the game population will continue growing at a good rate 😉

Comments for April:

Lots of players, though I'd say average server population was lower than in March. Hopefully we can blame final exams and expect things to pick up once again in May.

Plans for May:

– Wrap up BCL Playoffs!
– Tony9 and Jizohn will host Skills Competition.

Open Issues:

We need to start keeping track off all issues that are affecting the game negatively from big to small. This way we can work on resolving them. So please reply in this thread with any additional ones.

– Converting downloads to new players
– Music and game sound effects has been switched off by default for new downloads! This must be fixed asap!
– Server spikes/lagouts

 

Statistics and Results March 2006:

Another good month for new accounts, with nearly 12,000 unique visitors on the website

Code:

Google Advertising Campaign Name—–Clicks—–Impr—–CTR—–Avg. CPC—–Cost Feb Ads—–7,981—1,307,423—0.6%—–$0.01—–$83.63 Mar Ads—–7,686—931,601 —0.8%—–$0.01—–$76.86 Money Left For Advertising: $89.51

With advertising money starting to wind down, we will be toning it down a little this month with Google and try to focus on spamming forums again for free. The ads will still run, but we will try and split whats left between april and may.

Comments for March:

Nice numbers, lots of players, plenty of fun.

Still lots of new players who don't stick around after trying the game. Need to work on that, think of what can be improved! Gotta convert more downloads into players for the game to grow!

Plans for April

– Run the BCL!
– Spam forums with new Battlecity newsletter. Email all players too!
– Pass final exams! =p

Expect possible new admins in May after BCL to help with events. Inactives will have admin accounts made non-admin to prevent any problems from too many admin accounts circulating around. These inactives will still have access to admin forum and will be welcome to use EventSparrow and EventHawk should they wish to help out and become active again.

 

Statistics and Results February 2006:

We thought January's record setting 8630 unique visitors was amazing… February almost doubled that with 15453!

Once again February was characterized by an incredible growth in new players! Thanks to advertising with Google this month, we were able to get many new players for basically 0.01$/click. Here is the Google Report!

Code:

February 2006 Google Advertising Campaign Name—–Clicks—–Impr—–CTR—–Avg. CPC—–Cost Battlecity Ads—–7,981—1,307,423—0.6%—–$0.01—–$83.63 Money Left For Advertising: $16.37

Comments for February:

This is definitely very positive! Battlecity is growing and we need to work hard to keep it that way!

One important thing to note, by looking at the Player Rankings we can see that only about 20% of all accounts created have made it over the rank of Private. So, for every 10 players, only 2 reach at least Corporal. This fact presents us with a definite opportunity for improvement.

The new respawn feature has recently been added to try and help keep more players playing Battlecity! New ideas and improvements will still be needed to make a better first impression on new players so they stick with the game! Please share all your ideas!

Plans for March

March should be a fun month! Battlecity League will be starting up again, which brought the server up to 30+ players on many nights back in November and December before all these new players joined!

The main goal for March will be to try and keep the games momentum going and growing! A lot of time will need to be spent re-thinking the way the game works to make some more major improvements to retain players.

Battlecity will be switching to a different server again around March 6-8. We will try it out for a day or two to see if that helps cure some of the recent problems with bugged cities and server stalls. If so, we will begin a new advertising campaign to load up on newbies!

Thanks to a generous donation from Commons, we now have an additional 150$ going into advertising which we will spread out across March and April.

We need to make sure people are not abusing these new players. Help them out on your admin name, encourage fair fights. People can load up their team with good players if they only attack other cities of equal skill. If they are picking on newbies, feel free to help the newbie with extra items or what not.

We DONT want to stop people from attacking the newbie, or he/she will think the game is boring. We just want to keep the newbie alive, not constantly orbed 😉

 

Statistics and Results January 2006:

 

All in all, January was an explosive month for Battlecity.

As you can see, the website smashed any old records regarding unique visitors. Thats a lot of newbies who visited the site for the first time, and as you all saw, this translated into many newbies 😉

I must say, all the efforts I did to market the game during January definitely paid off. At first, January looked dark and gloomy, with very few players online, but that was really just due to all the regulars not playing much anymore. By the end of the month, the newbies started to add up.

Now we just need to keep em coming in February. We've seen BC have 20+ players before then drop back down. So we need to keep it up! Keep events coming. Even though the Dark Lord thing sort of sucked, I've heard a bunch if newbies talking about it, asking what happened, asking who orbed it, being sad they missed it, etc.. So overall, it got their attention and sparked some interest, which helps keep them coming back 😉

Also, server crashes haven't helped in January. These crashes tended to only be triggered once more players were online, so as soon as we hit 15-20 players, we got a crash. ReMoTe has fixed several bugs related to this already, and hopefully the issue will be completely resolved within the next week as the game continues to run in debug mode.

Commons plans to help out with marketing this month, so hopefully we can get another 8000 unique visitors or more! If we do, then we will definitely start seeing some big crowds online.

Nice job everyone. Any opinions or comments on the month would be good. Any ideas for the future, please share! Right now, BC is growing, and thats good news. Traffic tends to go up and down, but overall, if it keeps getting bigger, the game will keep growing.

The Ads on MPOGD will stop showing on Feb. 10th.

Commons:
I think we are getting great numbers of noobs which is good news. Ive been thinking of late we need to get players that have started playing but have not continued! Vets from this version we need to keep them playing! We need to put some thought into this!! Maintain what we've got than we can truly expand.

Stubbs:
This last Week it has really stepped up

And I have had a blast playing the past 2 nights. I had some good battles.

Weebo:
For January, we will pretty much spend our time getting settled in and preparing for February. This is a new admin structure, so we will need a little while to adjust and figure out what is going on. =p I welcome you all to the team!

Please spam me with questions about anything that is unclear. I've written a lot of information but it may be a bit much to absorb all at once.

As of now, the only thing on the table is to get the Dark Lord event rolled out for late January.

Once we have the admin team finalized, with the exception of the Marketing Team, I will post an annoucement about the new admins. The Marketing Team will be made later once we have the rest set up and rolling.

As of now, welcome, Stubbs, Wujiamin, Method, Makaveli, Obiwoz, Vindkast to the team! I've also given Meerkat access to the admin forum as he will be helping out with the Dark Lord event.