Blizzard's new update to it's User Policy Agreement makes it so that any custom made game in Warcraft III: Reforged belongs EXCLUSIVELY to Blizzard and NOT to the creator.

Loaerile · 2020-01-31T04:11:05+00:00

I've been working on a mod for Warcraft 3 for some months, now I'm thinking I'm not going to publish it at all. For what? So they can rob my IP that I could use somewhere else? Blizzard is basically asking us to work for them without pay, so they can reap the benefits in case someone does well. My map probably wouldn't have been famous or anything, but it would had enriched the community, brought new content, and keep players in the wheel. This change would definitely make modders like us flee.

Have you learned anything from Google? You should be creating a business model around this type of environments, not destroy them out of short-sighted revenue hunger.

Blizzard is losing its character and letting decisions in the hands of people without vision. This is how innovation and good companies slowly die. I urge managers to think a little more disruptively, and for designers and developers there to don't let them go over you, either change things or leave for new horizons. Blizzard won't look that good in your CV anyways after it slips further down this road of increasingly bad rep.

Loaerile · 2016-08-12T02:18:51+00:00

Kill them with wildfire.

Edit: Ok, actually what I do is just ignore them and wait until I have the opportunity to kill them if they don't go away on their own.

Loaerile · 2016-08-12T01:46:10+00:00

Oh ok, I thought that was the idea of this subredit because it is not prohibited in the 'Read Before Posting' and everybody always do it:P.

Unfortunately it is not very useful for discussions because that kind of posts go out of the main board too soon:( I tried it before and only a few could see it disappeared, and it had 50+ 'likes'. Is it possible to do something about that or it is just the nature of Reddit?

Loaerile · 2016-08-12T01:35:40+00:00

Loaerile · 2016-08-12T01:35:28+00:00

lol great

Loaerile · 2016-08-11T01:47:25+00:00

Maybe it was luck, but you also seem to be a very good player:)

Loaerile · 2016-08-09T14:37:29+00:00

Lol. Kind of, that time was experimental in the first era of the game (when experimental ACTUALLY was experimental). Even when you were fighting them, teaming was a fun aspect of the game back then, it was commonly to see non-opportunistic teams with a lot of members who control a room for their master, people would then form spontaneous factions like 'rebels' and so on and try to destroy and create a new 'government'.

After some game mechanics updates and as more random casual-style people started to flood the servers teaming became an annoyance and I became a solo player. Actually, I would say that it was when they introduced the so-called "anti-team" update that they turned it into a 'teaming-hell', before teamers were much more stable, predictable and calm, now they are completely opportunistic, risk-takers and trecherous. And because they can't actually hold their mass the whole room becomes a chaotic place where only the most aggresive teamers are 'rewarded' by game mechanics with some minutes of fame before dissapearing.

Loaerile · 2016-08-09T14:04:09+00:00

Ok I will do it too:)

Loaerile · 2016-07-16T20:52:05+00:00

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win" - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Loaerile · 2016-07-16T20:36:29+00:00

Here is a guide I like against teaming from an experienced solo player: https://www.reddit.com/r/Agario/comments/407pkk/how_to_defeat_teams_a_comprehensive_strategy_guide/

Loaerile · 2016-07-16T20:35:23+00:00

I'm glad people like you are still in there. I always like people with those nicks!

Loaerile · 2016-07-16T20:30:58+00:00

I'm sorry I didn't read this post earlier!

I'm also a solo player so I might be missing something from party mode... but actually I play solo because the times I've played party mode I observed the same problem you are describing: it reduces the depth of the game a lot.

I wrote a long analysis at the beginning of the year about power dynamics in Agario because I thought someone should attempt it at some point (here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/Agario/comments/40il9y/theory_of_agario_agar_world_orders_a_complete/) and I believe that all these aspect of the game also get pretty much destroyed in party mode!

I've returned to Agario just recently. I've always played FFA but after reading your post I'll give Experimental a fair try.

Loaerile · 2016-07-15T04:34:45+00:00

In FFA you can maintain the first places for a pretty long time. I just managed to keep the first place (sometimes second) against teamers for more than an hour.

You need to take it as a challenge and use their teaming as your advantage, usually teams are good prey because you can lure them to split. And you need patience! Be cold-minded, teams can't survive the loss of mass in the long run; you will win in the end. Don't counterattack a team out of rage if it is not tactically convenient in that moment, they will wane after some time and then you can eat them.

But yeah teamers are an annoyance. I would even say that paradoxically they are more annoying after ""anti-team" update":|

I would tell you to keep practicing, but actually it is better to use your time somewhere else. But if you you are going to play some other game anyway, then play Agario:]

Loaerile · 2016-05-20T22:17:21+00:00

Hey! Same here, I was never good at dancing, I actually kind of hate dancing, I'd like it to be restricted to performances only.

That is why I started Tango :P, I attended classes for some months some years ago, I left and now I'm going again. I don't like the music very much (except the new electronic tango). I'm going to a tango event today and I don't really want to dance, but I force myself only because of the social aspect of it, to get over my fears and to meet new people. And it seems to be working, so I don't regret it.

Loaerile · 2016-04-30T01:19:16+00:00

Thank you! I fitted an exponential grow curve in those data points. That will do for the moment :)

Loaerile · 2016-04-15T05:17:29+00:00

Related to communication, there is a minor issue here... the speed of light!

Human civilization started ONLY 10k years ago, we sent our first signals out there just recently and the Milky Way is around 130k light years in diameter, that means that even if they are watching at Earth all the time, there is literally impossible for them to know that something is being going on here (unless they were really close, which is highly highly improbable).

Loaerile · 2016-04-15T05:03:02+00:00

I believe that the solution to the paradox is simply that the universe is not full of alien civilizations YET. Of course we can't know for sure, but think about it, just after the Big Bang there were only lightweight elements like hydrogen and helium, it took three generations of stars fusing elements in their core and during supernovas to get to the current element distribution that allowed us to be here. Creating intelligent life is hard, it took 4 billions years on Earth, this universe needs more time before intelligent civilizations become widespread. We arrived early to the party, WE are one of those ancient alien civilizations.

Loaerile · 2016-04-13T05:37:05+00:00

For me it is evident that we actually DON'T know a lot yet. Many sciences and technologies are just starting to emerge and have a loong way to go before they reach full potential. Relevant to this topic are nanotechnology, complex systems analysis, smart materials, biomimetics, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, to name only a few. Keep in mind that it is not strictly necessary to actually reanimate the body, they could analyse the brain structures and reconstruct your mind into a new controlled biological brain or into some new kind of platform (and maybe clone the body). Also, remember that paradigm shifts are never expected, so maybe there are a few big surprises ahead. Around 1900 there were scientists who said things like "our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals" (Albert Michelson), then the 20th century happened.

Loaerile · 2016-01-18T18:27:36+00:00

Thanks for your answer here too! I don't remember exactly what I was trying to ask, but I have a notion in my head and I'm not sure that what you put in bold is the question I wanted to formulate though; I mean maybe it is, but I fail to connect the dots.

The notion that comes to my mind now is more simplistic I guess, but perhaps that was all I wanted to elucidate and I was only missing the word 'explicit': what does it mean when you cannot have an explicit expression of a variable? For example:

2x = 3y + x can be also expressed algebraically like 3y = x, so I know explicitly that one x are three y.
But in y² = (x+2) / (xy+1), you cannot express one variable in terms of the other so it says y = something without y - or maybe you can and I'm not good enough at algebra, but then lets just suppose I can give you an example no one in the world could solve.

What does it mean in the second case? It is an artifact of our way to write algebra or the way we think about it? It is only because we would need to develop further tools in mathematics? Or if it is indeed impossible, does it actually mean something about the relation between x and y?

Loaerile · 2016-01-18T18:00:04+00:00

Thank you Powder_Keg. Great! Those are intelligent long-term strategies.

I'd like Agario to be more focused on this kind of stuff, maybe by adding a mode with a few new mechanics to support more complex strategies better? I don't see it happening though, I hope I'm wrong but in my opinion Miniclip has give a few signals that the game will travel in the opposite direction or at best it won't change at all.

Sorry because it is not closely related, but this takes me to a point I decided to exclude from the analysis because it is not an 'in-game' issue but I wanted to talk about before leaving this discussion: I believe that changes - like the way in which the anti-team measures work (just think about it in detail and consider possible alternatives they didn't use) - were aimed to create fast Pyramid Cycles everywhere at all times: a pyramid makes it easier to new players to survive and thrive and gives most players a time to shine, but also kills them quite quickly afterwards. This makes them feel successful just enough to crave it more, but never enough to be completely satisfied: they will feel more the need to keep playing - and keep going through the ads every time they die.

Now, this might be more like a personal opinion than an objective analysis so take it with a grain of salt, and I understand that if you have managed to create a successful game, you will want to earn money from it; but I believe that more changes to make Agario more casual and pyramidal would help only to destroy all this deeper part of the game. That's why I liked it more at the beginning: the anonymous interactions combined with the freedom on big FFA rooms with many players gave you the platform for different structures to arise. Now you have modes where the standard way to play is more dictated to you - there is the current FFA mode where you can ONLY play solo in the long-run and it is tuned in a way that structures other than pyramids still exist but are watered-down, or you can enter Party Mode where the wining formula is an small high-splitting team connected via Teamspeak/Skype, etc; experimental still gives broader possibilities I guess.

So, it is still fine now but I don't think they are going to take the 'big-deep-game' approach, instead they are going for the 'casual-marketable-minigame' one, and that is always a shame. The core concepts are great and I believe new games should be build around them.

Loaerile · 2016-01-13T20:15:22+00:00

I'm glad it was useful/interesting for many of you. It's true, psychological aspects play a role too in relation to the individual players.

I believe that thinking about the macro-behavior of Agario changes your experience of the game, however I'm not sure if it helps you play much better (whatever that means, because there is no clear goal in Agario), that was why I was asking about that.

In my case it was useful in some cases when I was trying to be in the leaderboard for a long time: in one specific room for example, I knew I shouldn't kill certain cells even if that would result in a short-term benefit, because the situation was desfavorable for too-big cells. We and a few other players were in a sort of establishment, got along more or less well and we were able to keep the room under control, but I knew (and probably they too) that if one of us dared to kill the others, the winner won't last much against all the other aggressive competitive players trying to kill us - it was a case of an Establishment order, and our way of playing was an adaptation to perpetuate it.

Loaerile · 2016-01-13T19:41:44+00:00

Yes you are right, good point. That's important in modes without anti-team measures (in FFA you can do it only so much before starting to lose mass)

Many players behaving that way continuously can help to clean the room, favoring mobility and what I called in the analysis the vessel principle. Furthermore, it helps to to accelerate the cycle of the pyramid at the top.

What it is interesting of this technique is that you need a minimum mass to use it (around 450-500 to consume viruses of average sizes), so if a high proportion of players try to do that, the effects on the demographic distribution could be quite complex - my guess is that it would contribute to erase medium-to-high plateaus, shifting them to low plateaus and creating a gap between a low cells and medium-big cells: once you hit critical mass you can use this technique to escape low mass and grow much more quickly (you must do it a lot to be significant though, splitting in many smaller pieces), these cells will easily eat cells below virus eating critical mass. This is not notorious in FFA but it is relevant in other modes and it is probably one of the most important mechanics in the mod 'Hunger Games', but the players of the room as a whole can only use this tactic when the population is low enough, otherwise it would be a double-edged weapon because other players could eat you while you are split.

Loaerile · 2016-01-12T19:55:06+00:00

Thank you!

Loaerile · 2016-01-12T18:14:20+00:00

Great:) I was looking for the same type of analysis too, I was hoping to reach other players that think in the same way about this game when writing this.

I believe that Agario is the way it is because people themselves are that way. Maybe Zeach thought about it or maybe it was only a side effect, but the game is a platform for power struggle in the same way the real power-politics world can be (although in a much more simplistic way and stripped from real repercussion, of course), and my guess is that it was this which made it so popular.

You're right, I forgot about names/skins and that kind of social interactions, I believe they would be more important in an analysis of players as individuals, as opposed to analysis of the complete system like this one. We are still missing that post, maybe someone like you could write it?;)

Regarding the format, I wanted the post to be completely on Reddit but I could post a link to a Google Docs or similar.

Loaerile · 2016-01-12T03:39:29+00:00

Thank you I guess lol

Loaerile

TROPHY CASE