Summarizing two points made here: http://www.zorgempire.com/forums/viewto ... 24&t=11246

1) delete inactives with a sliding scale: the more points they have, the longer it takes to delete them

2) if an account with more than say 10k points would be deleted, instead store it, run a weekly competition to allow anyone (obviously with less points) to 'account switch' into this account. thus allowing faster growth for newbies (should they win the competition) and removing the inactivness. (delete the account switched from, which could meet this criteria thus going back up for the weekly competition)

1)Absolutely not. We consider the inactives the base reason for decline over the time. Things were pretty much better when we deleted accounts at 30 days.

Now accounts are deleted on 6 months note and according to traffic stats we will decide whether we will reduce this further or not.

Again if you have not realized what I said: The game thrived when we were deleting people on 30 days.

I understand that food nearby is convenient but it is dull and boring and not what we want. If this is your style, you can still do it but in a more limited way.


2)No. This changes the nature of the game.

My dear Zorg...I would disagree with every fiber of my being. My take on what has reduced traffic is due to game stagnation. 100's of PB approved idea's, but nothing new has been added since I started playing. In order for the game to keep a player's attention, no matter the playing style, is something else to work towards. We have had many discussions on what new tech to implement, how to improve current ships, etc.

You have to keep the game evolving in which to gain the existing players attention. That is just my two cents and I think the player base would agree, keep the game evolving and you keep the players coming back.

MegaMedes wrote:My dear Zorg...I would disagree with every fiber of my being. My take on what has reduced traffic is due to game stagnation. 100's of PB approved idea's, but nothing new has been added since I started playing. In order for the game to keep a player's attention, no matter the playing style, is something else to work towards. We have had many discussions on what new tech to implement, how to improve current ships, etc.

You have to keep the game evolving in which to gain the existing players attention. That is just my two cents and I think the player base would agree, keep the game evolving and you keep the players coming back.

100% agree with mega, some times we talk to players who left the game, our old friends.
i sometimes ask them to come back, among those who didnt agree most of them said this:"i lost interest"..

Glad to see I wasn't the one who had to make the first reply mega.
You blame everything on how often inactive are deleted, and then immediately disapprove it without any player base response?
How long has things like elite recyclers been in the waiting?
It may be true that while there had been 30 day deletions there was more traffic, but surely you can't jump to the conclusion that after all this time and the change that that is the only and primary reason.
You delete in-actives more often and the only change you will have is that noobs will grow slower, and there will probably be less new people among us than there already is.

I agree with what has been said so far except by Zorg.

Inactives are not the problem and not even you believe that. Why else are you dropping noob 0 point accounts in Extreme? Raiding is just a fact of life, it's what will keep people playing. Expeditions are broken and a waste of time so if you don't have a target and can't raid, well you might as well just log off.

Mega hit it on the head, worry about getting organized and make a list of to do items and for gosh sakes stick with it. I would be emembarrassed with a to do list as long as yours.

What's worse is you put it all on your plate

1: at the risk of being wrong, i'm willing to bet overall activity was higher when account deletions were at 30 days, the deletions are based off activity most likely, not the other way around, but fair enough.
if there were more actives, i wouldn't need to attack inactives, however attacking actives also means attacking new players which has led to many people giving up, if they don't have the time to idle on zorg all day they are at risk of being destroyed by an unstoppable (unstoppable to them) force.

2: to be fair Zorg, as far as I am aware you do not really play on any particular server (excluding generals), it would be interesting if you did as it would give you more of an insight to trying to play on a tight schedule...
I can see the strangeness when reflecting, perhaps as an alternative the playerbase will be more lax on the milking rule (http://www.zorgempire.com/forums/viewto ... =7&t=11229) so we can send small players more goodies.

dang, wish i had seen this sooner so i could have posted here sooner.



more ideas to deal with inactive deletion:

1. consolidate galaxies so that players are closer together, this can be implemented in a number of ways.

2. stop deleting them.

3. delete inactives at normal pace but have a bunch of npc farms. accessible to everyone. perhaps they could regenerate for each player seperately. the idea here is to try and level the playing field, and help maintain growth. then if zorg has reason to think that growth is too easy [not likely to be the case] then the farms can regen slower. likewise they can speed up resource production, and increase numbers if deemed insuffecient.

4. note that the servers with few inactives are mycg less active [especialky massacre, but compare standard to extreme]

now, peope have said that when inactives were deleted after 30 days the game was more active. now, i have not been here very long. i have absolutely no idea what it was like before, but based on what gameplay is like here, i would hazard the guess that there were also many more actives who had not quit yet. am i right? if so, then perhaps it can be misleading without taking into account the context?

if my guess is right, then the assumption that deleting the inactives faster led to more activity is like the following:

the sun is out. i weed my garden. i get tired and stop. the sun goes down and is replaced by the moon. i then assume that stopping weeding brought out the moon.


now. i am obviously going to be biased since i am in standard where a good farm disappears every few days, in a raiding alliance, managing to be on the top raiders by more than ni had dreamed. so yes, i admit i will be biased towards growth for the present.
[on a side note no-one will ever figure out who i am lol ]


now. i have seen a number of players who i KNOW are good raiders when they want to be. i would like to see what other styles of players think too, as well as the big boys already here.