3. The "Cherry-Picking" Problem and Dead Universes
OGame currently suffers from a massive lack of trade-offs. As it stands, players can cherry-pick the absolute safest, most lucrative settings for their playstyle without sacrificing anything.
A pure miner can pick x10 Economy, x1 War speed, and a low DF.
A Discoverer can pick x10 Economy, x6 Peaceful (for max daily expeditions), and x1 War speed.
Because players naturally flock to the path of least resistance, fleeter universes are left completely dead because the majority of players simply choose not to play there. To create healthy, mixed-ecosystem universes, Gameforge needs to introduce real trade-offs. For example: Economy speed should be capped as a factor of War speed. If you want the massive profits of an x10 Economy, you should have to brave a higher war speed. This would naturally spread players out and breathe life back into the ecosystem.
3. The "Cherry-Picking" Problem and Dead Universes
This is probably the biggest point in the entire discussion.
At the end of the day, we have been watching the same pattern for years: players vote for what is best for their own account. And honestly, who can blame them for that? If the system offers a choice between more safety, more convenience and more profit on one side, and more risk and more effort on the other, most people will naturally vote for the safer option.
But good game design is not about endlessly ratifying self-interest through majority votes. Good game design is about creating a healthy ecosystem over the long term, even when that means saying no to the most comfortable short-term preference of the remaining player base.
That is exactly where OGame has lost direction. For years, the game has moved further and further toward letting players cherry-pick the best parts of every world: high economy, slow war speed, low debris, strong expedition value, and as little exposure to danger as possible. The result is obvious. The "optimal" choice for a large part of the community is no longer a meaningful strategic trade-off, but a comfort package.
And once that becomes the norm, fleeter universes do not die because fleeters are doing anything wrong. They die because the wider game design keeps giving the majority a better alternative somewhere else.
Historically, OGame worked because different playstyles had to coexist in the same ecosystem. Miners, turtles, raiders and fleeters all depended on each other in one way or another. Over time, however, the design moved more and more toward specialization without enough downside: first through increasingly segmented universe settings, then through class design, then through expedition scaling, and later through further layers of optimization. Every step made it easier to build an account around the safest and most efficient lane, and harder to justify entering a universe that actually carries meaningful combat risk.
That is why I strongly agree with the idea of real trade-offs.
- Safety should cost production.
- Convenience should cost profit.
- High reward should mean high risk.
If players want the massive upside of very high economy and highly efficient expedition play, they should also have to accept a faster and more dangerous war environment. Otherwise, the game keeps rewarding the least interactive and least risky path, and then acts surprised when the more aggressive universes feel empty.
Good players leave when bad incentives stay.
I think that applies here as well.
OGame is not declining simply because the market changed or because players got older. A huge part of the decline is that the game has lacked a clear direction for years. When leadership keeps outsourcing design decisions to the majority vote of the already-remaining community, the best you can hope for is that those exact players remain. But that does nothing to address the more important question: why are so few players left in the first place?
Majority voting can preserve the comfort of the survivors. It cannot fix the structural reasons why the ecosystem has been shrinking.
That is why these trade-offs matter so much. They are not there to punish miners or peaceful players. They are there to make the universe structure sustainable. Without real trade-offs, OGame stops being a living strategy game and becomes an optimization spreadsheet where everyone is encouraged to take the safest, most profitable, all-in-one option.
And that is not just shortsighted. It is destructive.
It weakens interaction, it weakens diversity of playstyles, it weakens the value of aggression, and in the long run it weakens the game itself.
Why this proposal is the right direction
This is exactly why we need more balanced universes: high fleet speed and high economy should go together.
If a universe offers exceptional growth, strong expedition value, and fast progression, then it should also come with real exposure, real pressure, and real opportunity for active play. High reward should mean high risk.
That kind of structure is healthier for the game because it creates actual trade-offs instead of letting every playstyle drift toward the safest and most profitable setup available.
Plan 1: The "Healthy Ecosystem" Merge (With Trade-offs)
This plan operates on a core philosophy: Safety costs production. If miners and explorers want the massive benefits of a high-speed economy or rapid peaceful fleets (for expeditions), they must accept the risk of a higher war speed and larger debris fields. This forces playstyles to mix, bringing "food" back into fleeter universes and preventing servers from dying out. All targets universes are available for all Exodus unis. You might want to add another target universe for the "newer" universes such as Grus, Hercules, Imai, Jishui, Keid, Lyra and Mars.
I therefore fully support this proposal and the direction behind it.
It also addresses one of the key gaps in the current merge proposal: the lack of a proper destination for x5 fleet players. Right now, those players are effectively being asked to downgrade into settings that do not match the way they built their accounts or the way they organize their playtime.
This proposal solves that much better. It creates a more coherent universe spread, respects the needs of the currently missing x5 fleet segment, and moves the merge discussion closer to what OGame actually needs: not just preserving comfort, but rebuilding a functional risk-versus-reward ecosystem.
what a players 
you are awesome 
go vmode and wait next call 
