Tbh you've kind of already called it out, it's the community feel for most players. I can quite easily spend a day talking with various people about the game and non-game related things but most of it happens outside of the game because ingame messaging sucks. Where this game is somewhat different to others is that you can't exactly integrate a public chat lobby without it revealing your onlines/active times which is important for OGame.

I don't think there is any one thing that is the answer. Instead the game needs a consistent amount of incremental changes that doesn't break the game each update.

Most of the below is just random thinking out loud without much serious thought at this point...

So how do you improve community?

Help the community feel like their voice is actually heard. Some examples:

Merges. Ask and actually use input from community input.

Setting Changes. The current split is too much, you're actually alienating the majority of your player base by not making changes (see recent U1 example).

Community Events. The Euro football event was a good example of bringing some activity back, more things like that with some reward for playing would help. Need to keep the momentum going.

Combine some communities? Seriously, it gets smaller every year.

Incentivise PTS. Bug hunts, rewards for finding bugs. Stuff that can be redeemed in the normal game. Better quality (if then acted on) and more active accounts in PTS.

Better guides... Seriously, new players to OGame have a steep learning curve, it's no wonder most quit.

How could you improve teamplay ingame?

Better alliance system. You know, some actual incentive to play together as an alliance. (I think I've read some alliance reward stuff before).

Easier information sharing. Most/all happens outside the game via Discord and approved toosl. Integrate them properly (PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DO YOURSELF, WORK WITH THE DEVELOPERS - Looking at you Combat Sim).

Ingame trade centre? People tend to repeat trades once established, I'm sure there's lots of ways to improve this without it being abused.

Temporary competition servers? Sometimes it's nice to have an equal playing field and funnel activity into them.

I'm going to stay away from the DM/Money/P2P arguments, that happens everywhere.

Maybe I'll come back with more brain dump stuff later but that's a start I guess

Quote from Ikinboy

The Euro football event was a good example of bringing some activity back, more things like that with some reward for playing would help. Need to keep the momentum going.

(Just a quick parenthesis on this subject, because it's a very good point.

I'd love to organize other events, and it's true that we need to. If other people raise this point, and if you have ideas for events you'd like to see (or even past events you've enjoyed), please feel free to list them. It would definitely help to organize others, or at least know what you're really interested in.

The same goes for rewards, although on this point it's fairly regulated, so I'm not sure we can take that into account, but who knows haha)

I returned after a long period of time so i can't probably say alot. Before returned i played actively 2 years. Decided to change my lifestyle a bit so i couldn't be as active so i left. Now my lifestyle changed again due to medical issues so im back again :D.

Why is OGame fun for me?

In short i have things to do now which motivates me to play. When i returned from graveyard i was at 3.6mil points with all planets having less around 265 fields which was back then very good (max was like 268). Then after talking to few guys i knew from back then (was happy to find them still playing :D) i realized i need to recolonize all of them. So basically im having fun because im farming/doing expos, seeking active players to try and attack and developing lifetechs.

One of important reasons is also probably 2nd screen. So basically spend 10-20 lookings for targets, send waves, turn on a show/anime or read some books/manga while watching the game from time to time

Will the game be fun in few months? I don't know answer to that question right now. I think i will definitely play it but maybe a little less, becuase right now i am really playing it alot.

You can't do anything to make people come out of VM. There are many reasons why people VM. Some dislike that there is no competition in this game anymore due to P2W, some dislike some other changes, some dislike that they cant be afk for 5 days without getting farmed lol. You can't satisfy each individual that is in VM and only way to bring most people back would probably be removing all resource packs out of the game/building with DM situations, shortening your ques and so on which will never happen.

Players should change their mentality but who am i to tell them that... They have to realize they cant win anymore but then again you could never "win" in this game anyway. OGame is the same wheter you got 100bil or 100mil points, you play it the same way. Who cares if you are top100 or top500? If you consider ranking as an achievment then there is something wrong with your head :D, the game is clearly P2W so ranking can no longer be achievment, it just shows top spenders :D.

I think the problem is people don't pace themselves properly so end up consuming too much energy on this game. All in all everyone gets tired after some point. Only way to keep the game alive is with influx of new players which is not happening as fast as it should.

As i said and will always say; More chaos will bring you more activity. But people who play are old so they dont want to be bothered alot thats why the game is kinda static. No one wanna start a war nowadays, no one will go "nuke" someone else just because they dislike the player, try MD or attack for no profit. War game where there is no war :). Wish real world is as peaceful as ogame right now .

The problem is everyone cares more about points then about having fun so untill people change their heads nothing will change

How about Gameforge not breaking things left right and center? They broke several add-ons with their message system update and even when they did fix it enough AGR could be updated it was really only a partial fix. Tracker was down..what a month or 8 weeks? They don't listen to players..they don't listen to tool developers. If they had then neither tool would have been broken for very long.

They say they listen to players/devs but at the end of the day there isn't really anything that suggests they are actually doing that.

How about just making the game easier to play. Lots of ideas have been floated out there about quality of play/life improvements.

The speed bar has been an issue for ages...

There are bugs that have been present for ages....

Quote from Neotinea

Quote from Ikinboy

The Euro football event was a good example of bringing some activity back, more things like that with some reward for playing would help. Need to keep the momentum going.

(Just a quick parenthesis on this subject, because it's a very good point.

I'd love to organize other events, and it's true that we need to. If other people raise this point, and if you have ideas for events you'd like to see (or even past events you've enjoyed), please feel free to list them. It would definitely help to organize others, or at least know what you're really interested in.

The same goes for rewards, although on this point it's fairly regulated, so I'm not sure we can take that into account, but who knows haha)

Tbh it'll be a lot of trial and error.

The Olympics would've been a good one to continue the sport theme.

You've then got football through the season (I'm sure I've seen a fantasy football post somewhere).

Historically I enjoyed the FanArt section so the Logo competition was always fun. You've got multiple seasons/holidays where that culd be used.

Hell - it doesn't even need to link to a real-life event, you could just run a community event on ANY topic to keep activity going (Something silly like guess how many items are in a jar) It's just something to stimulate people to talk.

You could grow it into something relating to ingame... Most 'points' of something collected - EG: Create a new form of something (use Triterium again?) to be collected, who finds the most? Idk. Keep it RNG and limited so huge accounts don't have a superior advantage.

Quote from Neotinea

Quote from Ikinboy

The Euro football event was a good example of bringing some activity back, more things like that with some reward for playing would help. Need to keep the momentum going.

(Just a quick parenthesis on this subject, because it's a very good point.

I'd love to organize other events, and it's true that we need to. If other people raise this point, and if you have ideas for events you'd like to see (or even past events you've enjoyed), please feel free to list them. It would definitely help to organize others, or at least know what you're really interested in.

The same goes for rewards, although on this point it's fairly regulated, so I'm not sure we can take that into account, but who knows haha)

Will have USOpen for example, i think it could work.

In rewards, for example one "super prize" (50k DM for example) if someone collects +95% of the points in rewards. The way is it now, you can miss 2 days and still catch them all.
One with more days was a good idea too.

Remove packs and roll back all accounts to where they were before packs and combat expos… then maybe I could get motivated again

What motivates you to play?

Friends and Enemies, and performance art - thats about it

Quote from Ice

Remove packs and roll back all accounts to where they were before packs and combat expos… then maybe I could get motivated again

facts packs done the damage but sure lets refund all the purchases and see where it will leave the game at, or maybe not refund and to hell with everyone that did buy packs...

peak clown

I have tried quitting many times, and every single time friends are the ones that pull me back in. My last hiatus was a little over 3 years of touching grass and living life and not having to worry about imaginary space boats made up of 1's and 0's. Friends I have played with for many many many years, is the only reason why I am still here nothing else.

The game has a natural progression, server starts with thousands of players and as you progress through the end game it dies down, like everything, it has its peak then the inevitable downward spiral. Its not just ogame that is plagued by this norm, its basically most mmo's. That is why new unis have always and will always be a thing for Gameforge, they have to milk the cow somewhere.

Quote from hedgefundpoe

Quote from Ice

Remove packs and roll back all accounts to where they were before packs and combat expos… then maybe I could get motivated again

facts packs done the damage but sure lets refund all the purchases and see where it will leave the game at, or maybe not refund and to hell with everyone that did buy packs...

peak clown.

Why waste your time he is just Special

(Needs).

Did you simpletons actually think it was a serious suggestion?

On the topic of community, a lot of companies do 'user/customer forums' where the company actually speaks to it's customers about specific developments... EG: Early insight about features, what to avoid, what's the opinion etc etc.

It'd be good to see something like that put in place, espcially as there's a CoMa position here.

You've ruined a bag of pearls, so to speak. Marketpalace was the part of the game that I enjoyed the most. You removed this and ruined the game with unlimited DM and resource packs. I can't even reach class-specific ships. I left the game because of the logic that you can only get the ship you want if you spend 500000 DM. I don't think I'll be back as long as it continues like this.

Demands ( only my thinks)

* All classes must be able to reach all ships

* Resource packs must have a weekly usage limit

*new universes should not be constantly opened

* general and collector classes should also be able to benefit from expeditions (at least 25% of explorers)

* Marketplace must return

I'm just here to meet hot gamer moms, to be honest.

Quote from Ikinboy

On the topic of community, a lot of companies do 'user/customer forums' where the company actually speaks to it's customers about specific developments... EG: Early insight about features, what to avoid, what's the opinion etc etc.

It'd be good to see something like that put in place, espcially as there's a CoMa position here.

This.

OGame is a much smaller and different game but for educational purposes take a look how well Old school Runescape (OSRS) communicates and interacts with its community. There's frequent sneak peeks and roadmaps of upcoming updates. The community is involved in development by giving suggestions and feedback on everything and the players are heard on that.

One big problem I have in mind is that fleeting for smaller or mid-sized accounts is really hard for many because they are instantly hunted down by players much bigger than them. I'm not against packs here but some kind of dynamic noob protection should be in place where you cannot attack much smaller targets. The protection's range of points shouldn't be too tight though, just so for example a 100B player couldn't go and destroy moons of a 500M player and hunt down any fleet with ease. It could be capped so that after 10B points you no longer have any kind of protection because otherwise there wouldn't be many targets left in old universes for those huge accounts. These were just random example numbers.

What motivates me to play?

Friends. Simply put.... without the Muppets and old friends, I would have no motivation. Every day I pray gameforge shuts the servers down and puts us out of our arm chair misery. I encourage people to quit literally daily. I hope everyone moves on and lives a happy life outside of this game. Even you Great King Pat

So what motivates me to play is nothing. Preparing for the endgame. Afterlife. Life after Ogame. Cracking jokes, trolling RyaRaineS literally all day and good conversations.

Getting back to the suggestion mentioned.... About the reward thing. Vmode is a tool to be used if things come up in real life. People shouldnt be punished for having to use it because they have an upcoming vacation or their mother is in the hospital, or their kid has a ball tournament or theirs a big work event... ect. I agree vmode should not be used as a replacement to fsing and that certainly should not be rewarded. Maybe someone whos better at math than I am can figure out the optimal % of out of vac vs in vac and base rewards off of that. Maybe 75% -80% just shooting from the hip here. Running consecutive days in a row is not fair to some who have a life outside the game imo.

Because OGame is open-ended and has no end condition, I think it becomes much more interesting to set end conditions or goals for oneself, reach them, and then stop playing. For me, the goal from the very beginning was to research the game mathematically. After I got some interesting results, I stopped playing, published them, and left it at that.

So... Um, what's next?

Quote from Ikinboy

So... Um, what's next?

all the above mentioned activities will get added to list of prohibited actions and banned under ToS

no fun allowed as usual

Quote from hedgefundpoe

Quote from Ikinboy

So... Um, what's next?

all the above mentioned activities will get added to list of prohibited actions and banned under ToS

no fun allowed as usual

hahahhhaha