Dear Vlaartje, I know you don't like my playing style but I do happen to agree with you on this 
(comment edited by CM)
It is a completely corrupted server at best, and a totalitarian server at worst.
Everyone knows this already however, and many have left this server (or the RN game). I can only recommend you do the same or try a different community other than NL.
The icons / pictures of Quartz and Silicone are still reversed. Since the beginning of the game (oldest bug).
Silicone is sand and should be represented by the yellowish pile, Quartz is a stoney mineral and should be represented by the purple stoney icon. I still have to laugh at this silly mistake. But after 7+ years it’s really time ti finally fix it.
One more thing .... We used to be able to turn this individual event into a team event!
With a lot of discipline and coordination, by using the widget our corp could ALL watch ALL winter videos, simultaneously. It was fun, it provided a good team spirit and atmosphere (instead of competing with each other for the videos) and of course it brought us all more winter goodies.
It was also said that this was NOT a bug, but an intentional feature to promote the use of the widget. This was a great idea, as this year there were still many players that had never heard of or seen the widget!
But to our great dismay, the ONLY 'bug' that you seem to have fixed and the only 'bug' that you were NOT supposed to fix, was this widget feature of being able to view videos simultaneously with your corp!
Why why why??? This is seriously becoming completely ridiculous, You develop a feature, it is used with positive feedback, then you take it away while not fixing the real bugs in the game?
I heard the effect of the purchases / sales were changed but not deleted. The price changes would simply appear slower, or less than before. That is also consistent with what I saw in the Winter Event this year. I did see price changes, although not every hour.
I do have a question: If a player purchases a package consisting of 2 items, instead of purchasing the items individually, does this also count towards the price changing mechanism?
My suspicion is that it does not, so therefore you will see less price increases.
Samisu, the list of bans you removed were examples, partly from myself, partly from what I have seen from other players.
These examples are to illustrate your customer's gripe with the current rules and how they are enforced.
I am not discussing actual individual bans, again they are examples to show you what a complete mess and inconsistency is taking place across multiple domains. I do not care about the actual cases of the bans, they are history and there is no hope of ever resolving them.
Please put them back so that we can maybe prevent these things from happening again?
This is my main issue with the new rules. They ARE highly subjective and they are NOT consistently applied by the CM's or by support across different domains. There is 0 clarity whatsoever and 0 explanation.
(Comment edited by CM)
I have seen it all, and it 100% STINKS!!!
The new rules and especially the interpretation, subjectiveness and enforcement of the new rules is a complete disaster. My gameplay as a prestige hunter is completely destroyed, as is the enjoyment of of the city hauler games. In short, NOBODY is happy with how the rules are currently explained or when they are or are not and how they are enforced.
I too have already said I'm finishing my final round and leaving. No way am I going to invest all my time (and money) in a game with these kind of nonsensical, unexplained, unclear, highly subjective and wrongfully enforced rules.
And RN you are crazy to think that any player will be able to put up with this for much longer.
The benefit of having played earlier winter games and therefore having a higher level winter market ... is negligible and completely wiped out by these packages. Maybe I can earn (12%) more coins from the tasks because of a level 7 market but just offering 350 coins and 7x all resources with the package wipes that benefit out (1500 coin value?), together with any chances of actually winning again. Then have to wait another year for the same event???
Please tell me Samisu, what is the point of even playing the winter event anymore?
I can not find a good reason.
I always played the winter event as best I could. I even won it last year on my server. Just lost all interest. Pay to win for annual community events is a horrible horrible horrible decision. I am done with RN's player management strategy, it just plain sucks!
never thought of it that behaviour like yours and more like you will maybe drive more people away and that might be the main reason of changing the gamerules like they are now??
The classic map is about city building, your style of playing belongs at the USA map at the border between red and blue. That scenario is all about conquering cities with all the mean play what goes with it.
My behavior was and is according to the game rules. Who do you think you are to determine that that is not according to how you think the game should be played or that that will drive other players away? And where do you get the arrogance to tell me which maps I should play and what kind of behavior is acceptable on certain maps and which ones are not?
I am seriously getting pissed off now. You are supporting the new rules because you are a city hauler and the new rules allow city haulers to get rid of prestige hunters. That's the only reason.
And Samisu, you can say all you want that the new rules only provide you with an extra tool to avoid 'toxic' situations. But you continue to deny that in 100% of the cases it is a city hauler that is reporting a prestige player or free hauler and these new all encompassing and vague rules only benefit the city haulers at the expense of prestige players. For the reason above, It WILL happen that innocent prestige players are punished and never that innocent city haulers are punished. And it WILL happen that city haulers will abuse their new 'tool' to get rid of players who do not follow their city orders. You can say that the reports will not be evaluated that way but please use your intelligence and consider what will happen with 1000 reports. How many of us are going to get deleted unfairly do you think? Can you really guarantee that all evaluations of these reports will be done with both perspectives in mind and completely objective and fair to both playing styles? I highly doubt it and I already have been proven right.
The only thing prestige hunters can now do to continue their gamestyle without being unfairly punished is to try to get rid of all the whining and complaining city haulers now. Every time I break a majority from now on (which of course will be for prestige reasons), and if anyone complains to me in the city forum or personal messages, I will report them. They are seriously damaging my gaming enjoyment by their constant whining, complaining, crying and threats to go away as well as by their constant and multiple abuses of the report button.
Game on city haulers, we'll see who wins this crying game
See, this kind of language calling us 'parasites' and 'pests' .....
This is the real problem. Maybe the prestige hunters do indeed need the city haulers and the city haulers do not need the prestige hunters. Fine, but that doesn't mean that you should be allowed to press that report button to chase us away or to get us punished. We are not doing the same to you. We are merely following our own goals of topping the prestige rankings (clearly the official and original goal of the game).
The REAL damage to the community and to the game is being caused by exactly this kind of attitude of the city haulers.
And if this behavior with the support of the CM's continues the prestige hunters will just have to prove their point, they will all leave the game and you can continue to play it without us to your hearts content, while the game dies a slow death.
By the way Rhosen, no I am not safe. This has already been clearly demonstrated which is exactly why I am trying to warn everyone that these new developments are really not a good idea and that they are creating a huge amount of damage to the entire game, much more so than the imaginary damage that these new rules are trying to avoid.
See, this is exactly my protest against the new rules and how they are being interpreted!!!
Steve, you say that hauling a non-called good equals 'deliberately hurting the progress of the mega city'.
Where do you get that idea from? Where is your evidence of this??? I am personally offended by that statement and offended that CM's and support staff have validated this as a reason to punish other players.
It is a bold face lie !!!!!
There are many reasons to haul a non-called good, there are probably as many reasons as there are players who haul non called goods. It happens in EVERY mega city on EVERY server! Have you ever wondered why? Have you ever wondered what the goal of the entire game (originally) is?
It's called prestige. The non called goods usually have a 0 or close to 0 wait time, which means you can get maximum deliveries in in between recalc hours, giving you and or your corp more prestige. This can be done in a single city but usually in all mega cities (for the extreme prestige hunters who connect and build 48 rails around each one). This is a major strategy and game play style by many many players. They may be ignoring the imaginary city races during the end game and they may not care if they are damaging your wait times for an hour, or sometimes longer, but fact of the matter is, they shouldn't care. They have their own goals, they have invested hundreds of millions in their rail network and city connections and should be allowed to pursue their prestige rankings without being harassed and yelled at in forums and without being accused of being a 'jerk'. And they certainly should be allowed to pursue their goals without the fear of being accused of 'intentionally damaging the gaming pleasure of others', because this is just simply not the case. It is a 100% FALSE accusation which is currently being supported and encouraged, and it will destroy the game.
PS, these prestige hunters who you say are deliberately ruining 'your' progress, are probably doing the same in other mega cities as well, and are therefore not even influencing the city race one bit. Furthermore these 'non-called goods' haulers might also just be new players who do not understand the game yet or who simply just want to run their own end game according to what they want to do with their hard earned trains, and maybe not according to your city 'orders'. I see no reason whatsoever why any players should be forced to follow commands of any other players by punishing them. And instead of harassing, threatening, reporting or driving these players out of your city, maybe next time you should try just being nice to them. Or work out a deal where they can run all goods at 0 WT's for an hour and leave before the next recalc, giving you both what you want.
But accusing them of deliberately ruining your progress is just plain not true. They are doing what they want to do and not what you want them to do. This is pretty common in any fair and exciting competition and I support their actions 100% for this exact reason.
They have a new shiny 'Report Player' button.
And it is unfortunately proving very effective to run free haulers out of their town (and off their entire server).
And another example, I forgot to mention which is a huge factor and which I still don't know how this is ever going to be solved:
- City hauler (player B) reports that Prestige hunter (Player A) invests 10mln and breaks majority but isn't using the industry at all and is not hauling any of its goods to the city and therefore Player A is damaging Player B's city.
- Player A gets punished because this argument proves that Player A is purposly investing a high amount to damage the gaming pleasure of Player B (or his/her city).
- Player A protests that he invested 10mln to get max prestige points at level up (which he did probably 100x already and his intent can be shown by his #1 ranking)
- The protest is rejected and Play A still get punished
So there is still some questions I have regarding this, if Player B's argument is taken into account, must prestige hunters actually haul some goods now to be allowed to break the majority? And if so, how much?
These questions still really need to be cleared up!
Yes, that is allowed. Officially and after plenty of experience with this, you are always allowed to break majorities, as long as you don't do it with the intent to damage the other players' gaming 'pleasure' or 'experience'.
(edited by CM)
The intent of your message is good Samisu, and the intent of what is in your message is also good, I think we can all agree on that. It would be even better if reality agreed with it however and if it was actually handled that way, which I still have to say, it was simply not. And I guess that is all I am allowed to say and I agree, I really don't want to discuss the issue any further, so I won't.
All I am saying is, there is still a huge problem with the new rules and you will see the same discussion as above happen over and over again unless it can be solved asap.
1) Apart from limiting investments automatically, maybe make it easier for corps to maintain their majority while still allowing prestige hunters to invest enough to get the top prestige at level ups?
This means not requiring 50% of the investments to maintain majority but maybe only 25%? Or just giving majority to the corp who invests the most, no matter what % it is (this would mean no more neutral industries).
2) Maybe after level ups (when most of the majority breaks occur because the prestige hunters really can not wait long to re-invest and because it takes the city haulers usually at least 6 hours to re-invest), maybe change the residual investments from 10% to 25%? This would automatically create more room for outsiders to invest without having to ask and without having to wait a whole day to get their money in.
Both of these measures would reduce the need of the city haulers to complain, it would reduce their needed investments and it would allow the prestige hunters to get what they want more easily without having to 'ask for more investment room' every hour. Something like this has to be done, because as a prestige hunter with 500 industries connected, I do not have the time or the patience to be 'considerate' of other players feelings and to write down all the industries where I need more investment room and then hours later go down the list to check if I can now invest again. The fact that I need to ask in the first place fearing being reported and punished is ridiculous anyway and heavily favours the city haulers.
I have to also add, the investments in their current design, were designed exactly to make it more difficult for multiple corps to work together, to create a 'competitive atmosphere' anyway. This is the whole point of a competition and investments are simply a HUGE part of that competitive element. A lot of prestige is awarded for level ups so this additionally attracts also the prestige hunters on top of the multiple city corps. Everybody wants to be able to invest however much they can, and giving only 1 fragile 'majority' which requires 50% of ALL investments, is simply too much to ask. It is a very sensitive issue for city haulers, and yes the prestige hunters know this but why should we be forced to forgo our objectives just to allow them to run off-line for 20 hours with maximum WT discount, just because they want to and because they have the ability to complain about it and to report us? The prestige hunters don't complain about extreme wait times from the wrong or non-existent integration of the city haulers, we don't complain when we want to finish a prestige comp while having to deal with 10 minute wait times and we don't complain about their non-stop whining in city forums and their threats to us to just leave 'their' city and go somewhere else. We spent the same amount of money laying rails and should have equal rights to haul goods and to invest anywhere we want to, without fear of being accused of 'ill intent or wanting to damage their game'. No, I do not want to damage their game, but I don't want to help their game either. This is a competition, and it was supposed to be a fair one.
1 more serious injustice happening now, which is really an issue of overal player mentality of city haulers. They think that a certain industry is 'theirs' an no one elses'. They think they can determine who is allowed to use it and who is allowed to invest in it and who is allowed to gain prestige from it. And now, with these new vague rules, they have been given a lot of power to enforce this incorrect thought. Well, I have a message from the game developers for those players: NOBODY owns anything. If you lay rails you can haul and you can invest. This is the DESIGN of the game. Deal with it. Invest more, complain less, work better together with your corp to maintain majority, or accept the fact that maybe you have a bit longer wait time while you sleep! The so called 'Damage' that everybody is complaining about is in reality really not that damaging, the complaining city haulers just think it is. Again, I point to the fact that prestige hunters have to hunt comps and daily deliveries in other cities where 99% of the time they DO NOT have the majority. So what if we break it or take it over when we need to occasionnally?
What is the 'real' damage of this???
3) My solution is therefore to just make these complaints more difficult or at least scrutinize them a bit more, maybe by a 3rd party before just deleting a player or corp and at the very least provide CLEAR and PRECISE rules for investing and majority breaking.
Realize that there are multiple strategies and gaming styles and allow each and every one of them the leway they need to obtain their goals without being harassed after their every action. If I want to invest 10 mln, then I want to invest 10mln. I earned the 10 million and I should be able to spend it wherever and however I want. It's really as simple as this. And by creating some new vague rules without specified threshholds and by accusing these players of really wanting to do other things is kind of just silly. Especially if they are at the top of the prestige rankings and when everybody can clearly see what their goals and intentions are. The rest is juist all made-up nonsense and it only creates more frustrations and debate and unneccesary punishments and a big waste of time of the support staff. This HAS to be avoided somehow. I know many of you don't want to see it this way, and especially the city haulers don't want this, but you will see for yourself soon enough that the 1000 year 'war' between prestige hunters and city haulers has already been at its boiling point for a while, and now a big new barrel of oil has just been poured on top of the flames.
Aside from my complaints about this, how about a solution?
If 'over investing' is so much of a problem, and if you can't ever prove (but only suspect or accuse) certain players of having ill intent or trolling by abuse of the investment button, why do you set such vague 'guidelines' and absorb 100% of all CM's time with hundreds of tickets and investigating every darn button press?
Why not just automate the rule with clear investment thresholds and add these rules to the code so that it is impossible to over invest or to break the rule in the first place?
Your comments only prove to me that these vague new rules are ruining the game already and that prestige hunters can no longer play their game style without attracting massive complaints and therefore punishments.
This... is my main concern about the new rules and how they are applied and enforced.
(edited by CM)
and of course, TLDR comments will be expected. Please accept my apologies for the length of my rant 
Please think about the new rules and how they are being enforced and what effect this will have on the gaming experience of ALL players and more specifically the prestige hunters, which is I think the original intent of the entire game to gain prestige, no? The City races and City leveling if I am not mistaken are completely artificial goals that were added on later by players and then only after that the 'End Game' elements were developed, or am I wrong about this? The game originally was developed with only Individual and Corp Prestige rankings to determine the 'winners' of a round, and yet, the prestige hunters are now being made impossible to freely hunt for their goals.
I therefore humbly suggest that the new rules are really a negative development and will cause more damage and a larger 'negative' influence than a 'positive' influence on all players' actual gaming experience and gaming pleasure!
PS, I am only sharing my experience with the new rules and my opinion of the effects of said rules have had on my actual gaming experience, which has been a complete and utter destruction of my positive gaming pleasure. (edited by CM) Nor is this post meant to point out any actions taken by any specific CM, nor should it be deemed an attack on any specific CM.
I rather do intend to use this example to point out the major flaws in the new rules and the impossible road you are asking us, the players, to follow.
I merely question whether or not other players will also encounter such negative experience from the new rules and/or from how they wil be enforced and I strongly question the existence of a fair competition on any server after the implementation of these new rules. Lastly I question RN's ability and the ability of any RN support crew to really objectively examine any and all industry investments or complaints about any investments and then be able to to determine whether each and every click of the investment button was done for gain of prestige or other gaming benefit or whether it was done for 'ill intent to damage the gaming experience of another player'.
(comment edited by CM, please let's not use forum to discuss punishment decisions or bans)
We all want to and we try to enjoy this game in our own way, we are all adults and not small children and I take extreme personal offense to the way we have been treated by Dutch support in their overzealous way of interpreting and enforcing these new rules. I hereby caution all my colleague players to be very careful and to think 3x about your actions before logging in next time. This makes me very sad to have to do this and I look forward with great fear that this game is now being damaged beyond repair. I therefore also ask all support crew, CM's and developers to really think these latest rules through a bit more, and preferably from the players' perspective.
You have developed a great game. Now please let us just play it!
