Why is .us Dying?

  • Quite frankly the only thing that keeps me coming back is the people I play with. Life gets busy in bursts and makes you drop off the map and you reconnect after awhile; next thing you know you're in another server with a few old friends and having a laugh while getting back up to speed. Otherwise this game is actually rather boring these days and has lost its soul between the cash mechanics and the bugs. TMO also brought up a good point, most of the die hard player base is older now and just doesn't have the time they used to for the most part between work and kids. It's all well and good when you're a student in high school and college where you generally have little to no responsibility, but just becomes a chore when you're in the working world. Take Queen Leo and me for example, she's so busy she couldn't play if she wanted to and I definitely shouldn't but still am.(freaking Ocrack is a hell of a drug)

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  • The board isn’t something that is pushed to visit and participate until more so recently with the in-game notifications (which is a plus) and seeing what happened behind the scenes it was discussed and I can say Prongs is making an effort and bringing [ex-team] Maeve in to help boost activity was part of it.

    I have said that the in game notifications should have been done a long time ago. I have pointed it out during fights about many things. The fact that most players do not even know its there or just do not use the boards for that reason.

    The discord on the other hand is nice yet we still do not see a lot of people going there to ask for help.
    Though I think that GF should link it on the game and point out that is has some live help there.
    There are lots of games that use discord now and its far better than writing up a help question on the boards where you can get quite a bit of people to help you on the discord.

    The boards are just fine yet they lack one thing entirely. That is not updating the exact same thing on all of them. The problem with the rewards events and the nerf of the rewards. This was posted on the DE boards right after the post about how many points it was needed. I asked for it because it was not posted. It took a while for it to be posted yet when someone else pointed out the DE post about the lower rewards we were not informed.

    If there are post on the DE boards and are not posted here or anywhere else this kinda messes things up for many people.

    These posts should all be in game and not really needed on the boards.

    Also Ogame messages need to have its own section and not attached to the game messages. There needs to be 3 categories so that way you do not wake up to 100 messages and its all spam from players and expiring boost or some other junk. All game messages in one and other news in another.
    The confusion comes down to other boards getting information before we get it or never getting it.

    This is just a few reason why no one visits the boards.

    Maybe having some way to link the top 10 CR in the game and a way to like it would be nice. That way you can get a basic shot of what happened and give a like to the report with out having to go to the report. This helps players feel like something is being done. These can be hand picked by a mod. Say a couple a day. Not always the best attack yet something that is cool or something that stands out.
    Another thing is we need to have the boards attached to the lobby. and allow direct link from in game. There is no reason why we need to have more than one login for the boards. The boards should all be attached in some way kinda like the way we go in the game.
    This way anyone can go on to any boards with their lobby log in.

    Want to increase every thing for everyone these are just a few ways to help out.


    We need more interaction between the communication links that we have. The discord, boards and game should see all staff showing up and helping out in some way or another.

    The low communication between say prongs and other staff are far and between.

    The only real people that respond to anything between anything are Queen Leo. She is on both the boards and discord and I would like to see Prongs do the same. The same goes with the other higher ups who lack showing up anywhere.

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  • While I respect your opinions and why they make you feel like quitting, I thought I would throw my two cents in as one of these new mods you're talking about.


    Firstly the problem of .US 'dying' as you put it, I am sure you're aware is not unique to .US when you look back at the past, I agree.


    The reason mods like myself are pulled from other domains is firstly because it's harder to find volunteers than you would imagine for various reasons no doubt. Secondly it's easy to grab a mod who has the training, experience and easily transferred to help elsewhere and allows this to happen quickly for a community/team struggling.


    You're wildly wrong about mods being ignorant to the fact there are bugs o plenty. We obviously know this, you should know as a previous teamler that mods have no direct means to fix these. In this case we can only advise to create a support ticket with the supporting evidence of the bug so it can be pushed up the chain. Don't forget most us mods actually play the game as well.


    Your complaint about board staff, well, I won't say it hasn't happened. Some mods do have different styles in how they approach situations and communicate. The important thing to remember here is that we have a hierarchy, whenever you have a problem with someones modding you should contact the next admin up the chain. This does make a difference and I have seen it happen myself.


    Comparing this game to many years back, sure, it has P2W. Remember foremost Gameforge is a business, I am sure you know how business works. There was actually a trial not long ago with a server that had 0 dark matter purchases and was how it used to be all those years back, guess what? It completely flopped and the server population fell off quickly.

    That tells me that the people complaining about this are a very noisy minority. Now you could argue I am wrong but my personal experience says otherwise.


    For your final point I cannot talk on behalf of the GO team. However for the board team what I can tell you is considering they are volunteering (mainly because they still love and enjoy this game despite it's flaws) they do so much for this small community, consistently trying to improve it. No board mod intentionally gets on the wrong side of it's community and if they do as I said before contact up the chain and it will get resolved.

    The likes of Prongs here in .US and Piink in .Org do far more than you seem to think. They do not always have time to be on the board and discord, that is why we have a team structure where the work is distributed and messages are passed above and below where they are required.


    My personal opinion as to your initial question "why is .us dying?" is investment, innovation and technology.

    Investment - obviously Gameforge is a business and has to prioritize what is most profitable to it as a business. Ogame I imagine is not always that despite what you may think, just google the other games it owns.

    Innovation and technology - Without real dedicated Apple and Android apps it makes it hard for Ogame to survive IMO. At its heart, Ogame would make an absolute smashing app game perfect for the app stores if it was created right. How many young people these days do you know who want to open up a browser to play a game? Not many I am sure. All people do these days is get a new phone and just get everything from the app stores, most will never even hear of Ogame let alone find it.

  • The likes of Prongs here in .US and Piink in .Org do far more than you seem to think. They do not always have time to be on the board and discord, that is why we have a team structure where the work is distributed and messages are passed above and below where they are required.


    I was following this discussion but at the moment i read this i didnt remembered this example, Now i was just talking with a friend of mine about notifications on the game and this exact situation came to my mind.


    During the ShutDown of the 7.5 update someone got logged out and couldn't log back in for a while due to that he got his Fleet crashed because he didn't know about the update and couldn't fleet-save. A post was open where we discussed on why players had to come to the forum to find out about things when some players just play and don't like to use the forum. I believe CM-Prongs saw the post and the next update he himself send a in-game notification a week prior the update to let players know. So i do believe if he can make a change himself that doesn't necessary involve the approval of GF he will do so.

  • During the ShutDown of the 7.5 update someone got logged out and couldn't log back in for a while due to that he got his Fleet crashed because he didn't know about the update and couldn't fleet-save.

    So I've played many games that has done their weekly updates. I have noticed during these updates you are warned typically at minimum for a week in advanced. Now Gameforge has no excuse putting up a message on the game menu stating when and between what hours they are gonna be doing the maintenance or updates. NO EXCUSE. So for someone to have their fleet crashed for this.. ridiculous. Give us a week prior message or warning like almost all Blizzard games.


    I hope he was able to put in a ticket to get his fleet back.. but that probably didn't happen.

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  • So I've played many games that has done their weekly updates. I have noticed during these updates you are warned typically at minimum for a week in advanced. Now Gameforge has no excuse putting up a message on the game menu stating when and between what hours they are gonna be doing the maintenance or updates. NO EXCUSE. So for someone to have their fleet crashed for this.. ridiculous. Give us a week prior message or warning like almost all Blizzard games.


    I hope he was able to put in a ticket to get his fleet back.. but that probably didn't happen.

    he opened ticket couldn't get his fleet back.

  • The reason mods like myself are pulled from other domains is firstly because it's harder to find volunteers than you would imagine for various reasons no doubt. Secondly it's easy to grab a mod who has the training, experience and easily transferred to help elsewhere and allows this to happen quickly for a community/team struggling.

    I know of several people who have applied for go and mods and did not get it. Though many people have said they have been asked back yet refuse to.

    There are a number of former mods that I know that have though about coming back. Yet are still on the fence.

    When you reject someone who is applying it would be helpful to let them know why. The person had no clue and had more than enough experience to be one.

    I myself will never be a mod because its not worth the pay, Plus I would just leak what ever I could. So I am pretty much banned from ever being a mod. I can tell you that I will be around longer than most players and existing mods. I have seen them come and go for years.



    So I've played many games that has done their weekly updates. I have noticed during these updates you are warned typically at minimum for a week in advanced. Now Gameforge has no excuse putting up a message on the game menu stating when and between what hours they are gonna be doing the maintenance or updates.


    This is very true. Many games reward players for updates and maintenance.
    They send an in game messaging saying that this will be done and because we need to do this here is a reward for the minor inconvenience of the update. These rewards can be set up just like the tutorial is where your claim your rewards. I mean it does not have to be anything of high value. Random boost. Random amount of res would be ideal. This just shows players that Ogame is thinking about them.

    he opened ticket couldn't get his fleet back.

    Yeah most times this will never work.

    There was a player who had DM some years back yet it was all found DM and he went on vacation for over a month and came back to find his account deleted.

    This problem can be fixed by using a message system that informs you that your account is safe or not. Giving the option to buy DM before you vmode. This may also prompt more people to buy a smaller amount of DM before they go vmode in case they do not return in time.


    Innovation and technology - Without real dedicated Apple and Android apps it makes it hard for Ogame to survive IMO. At its heart, Ogame would make an absolute smashing app game perfect for the app stores if it was created right.

    I and thousands of other people have expressed this a number of times. I have even broke down how much money they could make. Apps bring in far more money than a 100% browser game.

    I have even shared screen shots of peoples ideas on how a browser game would look. I have also shared games that work just like Ogame does that are apps. There are 100s of games that work the exact same way ogame work with different skins. The only thing that would work the best is having the apps and then still having the browser. The app can be minimal in its functions due to not having addons. Yet would function the same. Layout would be far more different and the existing players who download it would have to adjust to a new lay out and how it works. Playing a bunch of other similar games will give you ideas on how to build a good lay out. Having existing players test and give ideas would increase demand for the game. The lay out is key and how its done. Yet because GF does not want our help they will and are failing. They can not shut ogame down because of the German laws about in game money. Which is why they will have to learn to adapt.

  • why do you see yourself struggling to keep playing ogame

    For me it's the reason why bots and dark stuff exists. GO's should have a system in place to identify these kinds of things and I shouldn't raid the same player 10 times to prove to a GO that the player bots. This also lines with what's been previously discussed on deploy>recall bug. It's not players job to prove that xxxx person uses bugs/hacks or how bugs in game effect the game mechanics, there should already be a system in place to detect such things. If there isn't, it's a poor game... as simple as that. It shouldn't take 6 years to fix a simple bug as well, that's just lazy developer team.


    This is why Ogame is a dead game for me, but IMHO it's done surprisingly well since the start from 2006 as I remember. I never thought this game would keep some of its' player base till 2020. If you played a shooting game against a computer and would never be able to kill that player, you would never play again right? Same thing here goes with bots, I can try attacking it 1000 times but the end result will always be the same.


    Pay2win aspect on rewards system IMO is a clever marketing strategy. Buying resources like a mad man kills what Ogame is about though, Ogame should and always start with 500 metal - 500 crystal. It's a level playing field. If rank 1 gets 100m pts in 3 days, no point playing that server... even 100k in 3 days is too much. I'm not worried about going up against pay2win players as I find it more fun to smash someone who wasted hundreds of dollars, but seeing people bot and use some sort of scripts kills what the game is about. It's all just bunch of numbers on excel sheet at the end of the day. It doesn't really matter if you have 2 billion fleet or 200 billion fleet, there's no end to it. You can upgrade stuff for the next 1000 years and it still wouldn't improve your life.


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  • This is one of the most intelligent and well worded posted you have ever had on these boards. Mature, well spoken, honest, and accurate. Wow. I'm so proud of you my stepson.

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  • Quite frankly the only thing that keeps me coming back is the people I play with. Life gets busy in bursts and makes you drop off the map and you reconnect after awhile; next thing you know you're in another server with a few old friends and having a laugh while getting back up to speed. Otherwise this game is actually rather boring these days and has lost its soul between the cash mechanics and the bugs. TMO also brought up a good point, most of the die hard player base is older now and just doesn't have the time they used to for the most part between work and kids. It's all well and good when you're a student in high school and college where you generally have little to no responsibility, but just becomes a chore when you're in the working world.

    so true and.. well the flow changes as well.

    When I was in highschool, over a decade ago, there were alot of RPG games, which requires tons of time to play.

    And now, it's more like mobile games - play for a short period of time, and never really have to work hard/stressed about making your game character strong.

    That's why most of game companies comes up w/ all those decorative items(avatars, special effects, skins, etc) rather than...p2w contents.

    sadly, Ogame cannot... do the same since it's web/text based game with few icons.


    Also the system that the game runs also take another part.

    Major bug gets reported to community team, and to Prongs,.. yet none of us have the right to fix it on our own other than forwarding and crossing fingers for things to be fixed as QL mentioned on other post - the reward system bug thing.


    In addition, as far as I know, there's no such a thing as volunteered staff unless it's non-profit and even volunteeers should be paid/compensated way over min.wage in the country where I live since 2010 or whenever the min.wage started to go up. I was actually surprised that.. Queen Leo was still fall into the category of 'volunteered staff' and well.. I say you should join me and enjoy good night sleep everyday; you deserved way more than being a "Ogame.us Pinata". I did my numbers for pay and... well, it was so little that I could simply walk around, pick up an empty pop can and make more money per day; yet my main reason for joining the team was to nail down all the cheaters though I gave up at the end. I still hear rumors and complaints but I say it won't get fixed, just like other games - cheaters/hackers will be always on every game.


    it's been few weeks or some time that i took off and just hovering on discord for this game, just to keep in touch w/ friends and I do enjoy it.

    So many things that I couldn't do while I was a oj, and there were times that I was framed/mislead by faulty accusations w fabricated evidences by players yet couldn't do a thing like irl.

    and now... I need to block off some people so that they won't drag me back after few years..


    For those who're still actively playing, have fun and don't let the game play you; you guys should play the game and have control over it. ;)

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  • The board isn’t something that is pushed to visit and participate until more so recently with the in-game notifications (which is a plus) and seeing what happened behind the scenes it was discussed and I can say Prongs is making an effort and bringing [ex-team] Maeve in to help boost activity was part of it.


    The updates never bothered me that much and I luckily didn’t get hit with any noticeable bug except one that drives me absolutely crazy as I know it does to others and that’s the constant forced log out. If that was somehow corrected I would be very happy. Not fun logging in 4-5 times a day or more when really I shouldn’t have to log back in until the server reset.

    Compared to .org this place is less stressful and an easier community to connect with. Adding more content in spam and discussion areas can help “up” the activity and staff participation in these discussions and even CR threads also improves relations.


    Anyways that’s my 2 cents. :thumbup:

    forced to re-login 4-5 times per day? you mean per hour? and i would say its probably more then that. to be honost i love ranting, and there are few places that allow so much legit ranting as ogame :)

  • Have I mentioned BOTS? Kalyke has more than 50 bots in the server with some are top 10-20 players, seeing the server like this made me put my acc on V mode and there's no way I'll come out of it. There's no point trying to raid a bot where the fleet will lift off 1 minute remaining, why bother? Something seriously went wrong in this server, it's like owning a computer/internet connection without any antivirus/firewall program. It makes me feel like I'm playing in a chaos uni where botting is allowed.


    Add all the in game bugs with bots and I'm out of Ogame... Maybe I should be thankful for all bot creators for freeing me from this O'Crack. I'd give away my acc to someone but I don't wanna ruin their time so I'll just keep it in V for now.

  • its not only the US community who's dying. Every community are having this problem. (Im initially not from US community, so I've seen this elsewhere as well)


    There's no more diversity into the universe... most players nowadays want higher economy, higher research, higher speed. So all the univers now look the same...


    And I think there was too much fusion as well, fusion happened way too fast. I know its to maintain the activity IG, but the lack of diversity created that at the first place. (Well, in my opinion^^)

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  • There's no more diversity into the universe... most players nowadays want higher economy, higher research, higher speed. So all the univers now look the same...

    Yeah everyone wants this now because years ago getting 15 or 16 planets was unheard of. Higher eco, research and everything else keeps the game flowing.

    Before you were in aw of hitting 1 million points today that is a noob account.
    Yet in the last year or 2 there have been a few improvement on the game yet development is still lacking and this also causes the game to die out.

    App games expand their games and grow very fast, new things are added all the time, New ways to increase points and rankings.

    We are getting their yet we are years and years behind.

    People still play this game because they like it. Though many will fade away over time because it becomes stale.

    In order to increase the amount of people who join and play an app needs to be built, this is the truth. There are tons of games out there that have the same basic format and make bank yet we are still stuck in pre app days. People want more mobile games and yet we can not provide them that.

    GF lacks the development to expand the game in what players want. This is their downfall.

    There are 100s of items that should be add in to the game yet because their development is not up to par they refuse to do it.

    Most if not all players use some sort of add on. If GF were to just add these things in to the game then new players would stick around longer. Since they do not know about these addons they tend to leave because the basic game is super boring with out them.

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  • Most if not all players use some sort of add on

    AGR=Best add-on ever because it actually makes the game playable without commander. Fight me.

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  • AGR=Best add-on ever because it actually makes the game playable without commander. Fight me.

    Nope I agree.
    Yet you might have to explain to me what commander really does. So far I have not found any thing other than building queue that is good for early game and colonies.

  • It's more about what it used to do honestly. Commander cleaned up the UI mainly and made fleet dispatch much quicker by adding the shortcuts and profiles. It also gave the message filter and allowed you to do certain things from galaxy view, like send recs by clicking on the field instead of going through fleet dispatch. Now you can do this without the commander, minus the fleet profiles, but before AGO and AGR did many of these things in their own way. It also did a much better job of cleaning up the UI.

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  • It's more about what it used to do honestly. Commander cleaned up the UI mainly and made fleet dispatch much quicker by adding the shortcuts and profiles. It also gave the message filter and allowed you to do certain things from galaxy view, like send recs by clicking on the field instead of going through fleet dispatch. Now you can do this without the commander, minus the fleet profiles, but before AGO and AGR did many of these things in their own way. It also did a much better job of cleaning up the UI.

    This is so true.

    What I do miss are themes/skins for the game though.

    I used to use the Excel Spreadsheet theme so I could play at work.

    Before AGO (AGR) and Infocompte, you really needed the commanders to make the game more playable.

    But then again, you used to be able to time a phalanx hit to within a second before the redesign too.

    So some change is good.

    Some change is not so good.

    However, it is still OCrack.

    :biggrin2: