where are all the players ?

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Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.empire (More info?)

Empire is such an amazing game. how come there is no bigger community ?
Does anyone know of any hosts besides the one listed on wolfpackempire.com ?

Thanks
 
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Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.empire (More info?)

nbang wrote:
> Empire is such an amazing game. how come there is no bigger community ?
> Does anyone know of any hosts besides the one listed on
> wolfpackempire.com ?
>
> Thanks

There's hp empireclassic that I host. But I have to warn you, it is the
older text based type and uses a grid, and Telnet *is* required.

http://hp3000.empireclassic.com/

It has hardly any players either.

I have a theory I heard elsewhere, it is Summer break at major
universities. The usual student Players are out of town.

Tracy Johnson
Justin Thyme Productions
http://hp3000.empireclassic.com/
BT








NNNN
 
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Archived from groups: rec.games.empire (More info?)

nbang <nrv@email.com> wrote:
> > Tried the Links page there? If you mean game hosts, they should be
> > announced in this group.

> I did look into the links and also the games page. nothing new..
> But thanks anyway Markus, you seem to be the only one responding to my
> messages.

That's because he answers them so thoroughly, there's nothing left to
say for the rest. :-(

Zlo
 
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Archived from groups: rec.games.empire (More info?)

Very amusing post!

Statement A:
> Empire is such an amazing game. how come there is no bigger community?

Statement B:
> Does anyone know of any hosts besides the one listed on
wolfpackempire.com ?

The implied horror of statement B is definitely a contributing factor to
statement A. Theres really no "intuitively obvious" client or what
would be considerd by todays standards "easy to use". The game was
released under the GPL, so theres really no motivation/incentive for
anyone to make better ones.

The client programming API is primitive as well, and basically a
nightmare to code to (think lots of nasty string parsing, with
differences in format from release to release). I heard the wolfpack
team was going to update this at some point, so maybe there is hope on
the client front.

Some other major drawbacks:

Steep Learning Curve Due to Lack of Coherent Documentation:
The only real way to learn empire without being able to read C code and
administer your own servier is through what is considered "tribal
knowledge", i.e. talking to others that know how to play and trying to
make sense of things. Knowing how to play is considered a badge of
honor by most empire players; learning how to play has become a rite of
passage. One can only assume that they like things this way, or they
would have fixed it by now (Its been this way for at least 7 years, when
i first started casually playing). Playing empire is also more fun than
writing documentation on how to play, which also favors the status quo.

Importance of "Human Factors":
How good you are at the game is heavily dependent on human factors, not
game skill. If you cant be on around update time, every time, dont
bother playing. Having a life outside of the game will get you
eliminated from any game eventually. "Rolling Updates" usually requires
that you be on at odd hours such as 2am, 6am, and other times not
friendly to your daily routine. You get the picture.

I guess this could be minimized by only allowing server login during
particular hours. Players are spread all over the world, though, so I
dont really see this happening without being unfair to someone.


There are a multitude of other things in the actual gameplay that dont
really make sense, but those are minor and (at least a little more)
fixable compared to the 3 items above.
 
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Archived from groups: rec.games.empire (More info?)

The real problem is that the complexity of the game got out of control
due to non-intuitive commands, starting with the "order" command in the
late 1980s.

The idea we had prior to that was to keep all the commands so intuitive
that a new player could join a game and learn by experience, by trying
out and using the commands, without having to read any documentation.

Complexity grows exponentially, each time you let a new complicating
factor into the game.
 
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Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.empire (More info?)

Allan Anderson <all5n@yahoo.com> writes:

> Very amusing post!
>
> Statement A:
>> Empire is such an amazing game. how come there is no bigger community?
>
> Statement B:
>> Does anyone know of any hosts besides the one listed on
> wolfpackempire.com ?
>
> The implied horror of statement B is definitely a contributing factor to
> statement A. Theres really no "intuitively obvious" client or what
> would be considerd by todays standards "easy to use". The game was
> released under the GPL, so theres really no motivation/incentive for
> anyone to make better ones.

The GPL doesn't prevent you from making money, it just rules out
certain business models which the founders of Empire considered
harmful to the game and the community.

Money isn't man's only motivation to create. This applies to software
as much as to other artifacts. Unsurprisingly, your conclusion that
nobody works on better software doesn't hold water.

The only area where we truly stagnated is user documentation. I'm not
talking about info pages; that's reference documentation.

The true reason for slow progress is the size of the community. We've
failed to break out of our tiny niche. Chicken and egg problem.

> The client programming API is primitive as well, and basically a
> nightmare to code to (think lots of nasty string parsing, with
> differences in format from release to release). I heard the wolfpack
> team was going to update this at some point, so maybe there is hope on
> the client front.

Yes, the client programming API is primitive. Yes, there's work being
done in that area. It doesn't address all the problems.

Wolfpack tries hard to minimize gratuitous output format changes.

> Some other major drawbacks:
>
> Steep Learning Curve Due to Lack of Coherent Documentation:
> The only real way to learn empire without being able to read C code and
> administer your own servier is through what is considered "tribal
> knowledge", i.e. talking to others that know how to play and trying to
> make sense of things. Knowing how to play is considered a badge of
> honor by most empire players; learning how to play has become a rite of
> passage. One can only assume that they like things this way, or they
> would have fixed it by now (Its been this way for at least 7 years, when
> i first started casually playing). Playing empire is also more fun than
> writing documentation on how to play, which also favors the status quo.

This sound a bit as if you assumed there would be an all-powerful
committee (`them') that can order things they don't like to be fixed.
The only way how things have been fixed in Empire is somebody
volunteering to do it.

Documentation can't fix runaway complexity. We need both: getting bad
complexity under control *and* better resources for learning the game.

> Importance of "Human Factors":
> How good you are at the game is heavily dependent on human factors, not
> game skill. If you cant be on around update time, every time, dont
> bother playing. Having a life outside of the game will get you
> eliminated from any game eventually. "Rolling Updates" usually requires
> that you be on at odd hours such as 2am, 6am, and other times not
> friendly to your daily routine. You get the picture.

What you call human factors is relevant, but I think you're
exaggerating.

Yes, missing the occasional update is a disadvantage, but in my
experience it is rarely fatal unless your defensive setup is flawed.

Yes, Empire can make you spend so much time in the game that it
interferes with your life outside the game. Judging from the lives of
Empire players I know personally, having a life doesn't necessarily
get you eliminated from any game.

Rolling updates are not for everyone. I prefer fixed updates myself.

> I guess this could be minimized by only allowing server login during
> particular hours. Players are spread all over the world, though, so I
> dont really see this happening without being unfair to someone.

Personally, I won't play if the server doesn't let me play whenever it
is convenient for me.

> There are a multitude of other things in the actual gameplay that dont
> really make sense, but those are minor and (at least a little more)
> fixable compared to the 3 items above.

Welcome to the swamp. Here's your thimble. Happy draining :)

Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.
 
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Guest

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Archived from groups: rec.games.empire,rec.games.chess.misc (More info?)

One new idea for documentation that occurred to me recently, is that by
right clicking on a command, text comments on that command could be
displayed. Additionally, players could edit those text comments and by
clicking on a send button submit their new comments to Wolfpack for
consideration. That way documentation could evolve and grow organically
from the bottom up, by players entering their own comments, and all
Wolfpack would have to do is read the damned things and accept or
reject adding them to the official set of comments.

(that comes from thinking about chess trees and text comments to chess
opening moves. In chess there are trees now that show almost all the
moves that have ever been played and recorded, and if you could display
text comments to those moves by right clicking on that move, that would
be the most efficient way I can think of to access the huge volume of
opening theory knowledge in chess, that is currently scattered in many
thousands of different books and other difficult to access locations)