Waste of a Server

[Fishy]

(03-18-2021, 07:30 PM)AgmaFan Wrote: I have noticed recently, while playing Agma, that there is a cartel in operation on the XY-Insta NA server. This consists of 10 or more "elite" players who farm this server. They prevent all, what they call "randoms", from playing the server by eating them as soon as they spawn on the server.

Yea, it's a pretty common thing nowadays in servers such as XY-Insta, Instant EU, Crazy servers, and some others. I, myself, used to abuse it a lot and amassed many coins & power-up alts quickly. It was fun while it lasted, but I'm not a fan of it anymore (it gave me some insight about this topic). The description of "elite" really fits because these are guys who can pretty much play anywhere and use their power-up alts to take over nearly instantly.

Quote:They seem to work in shifts of protecting and farming this server. They seem to be quite sophisticated and organized. They have:

• two players in room 2, farming recs and speed powerups
• one player farming room 1
• usually two players farming coins from a gold block near the entrance to room 1, while also blocking the entrance to room 1
• two or three big players patrolling the rest of the map, eating any "randoms" that spawn
  

Yeah, this is a standard setup for most servers, but their approaches can vary from server to server. For example, at Crazy, it's senseless to try to savage a map as big as that. Instead, they take room two and farm the block and use their powers to defend themselves. No matter the server, it ruins the fun, in my opinion.

Quote:If one of the patrolling players gets eaten by a "random", they will all group together and spam powerups until the "random" is eaten.

Yeah, if they do not know you, they treat you as if you're nothing. Even if they know you, they will never play fair. I even went to one of these servers several times, and I had a 'war' with powers... there were at least five spectators dropping abilities on me & 10 other guys on the map either savaging or attacking me all at once; they do NOT know how to play fair.

Quote:As a result, this server is currently unplayable unless you are part of this cartel. To make things worse, they then go to other servers and spam the powerups that they have farmed, giving them an unfair advantage. This can ruin the fun for the regular players in these servers.

I agree with unplayable. If you are not a part of their team, it is impossible to get above 5k mass without being savaged instantly. They do go to other servers and make those unplayable as well. It's not fair to those who want to take the game less seriously and want to enjoy it without spending hours daily farming.

Quote:Another thing I have noticed is, these cartel members can be extremely toxic to any "randoms" in chat. 

Yeah, they think they are high and mighty because they sit around on a gold block filling alt accounts for 8 hours a day...

Quote:They have multiple accounts too, that they call "alts", which are full of powerups.

Many players at these servers have hundreds, and some even thousands of alts filled with 9 recombines and 9 speeds. Think about how much money it would cost to buy 9,000 recombines and powers (I know this doesn't include the other powers you get with that pack, but I think it's still relevant)

Quote:I am not usually one to post on forums but I think what these guys are doing is just plain WRONG and is not in line with the spirit of Agma.

I think your post was excellent and pointed out some significant flaws in these servers.


Solutions?:

I'm not sure if there's a correct approach, but because I have spent a fair amount of time playing unfairly against others and gaining in-game wealth for myself, I have a few ideas:

• Change recombine & speed spawns. In the past, Sora has banned/locked alts accounts (which is fair, alts aren't meant to be allowed), but I think that alts play a somewhat vital role in balancing out the players that spend money and the players that are free to play. However, alts shouldn't make it entirely unplayable for those who don't farm, so a solution could be to make recombine, and speed spawns MUCH slower in these kinds of servers. Maybe doubling or even tripling the time it takes to spawn would help a ton.
• Making food (those dots on the ground) be worth more mass. This is something more for XY-Instant because at servers like Instant EU, the food is good where it is. Just by increasing the size of food could make it much easier for so-called 'randoms' to gain mass and put up more of a fight against the players who abuse the server's resources. 
• Nerf to Gold block? I'm not quite sure about this one because, at its current place, it takes at least 6 hours to farm back bots (900k coins) and to start making a profit, but maybe it could be changed to give 20% fewer coins. If it gave 20% less (120k coins per hour), it would take 7.5 hours to farm back the costs of bots, so that would make it harder for them to gain a ridiculous amount of coins. However, they will likely go to Giant or Gigantic and use their power-up alts to farm with 4 blocks at once, thus getting many coins very fast (this is better than them ruining Instant servers)
• Bigger map size. Again, not quite sure about this one because the server seems pretty inactive (not sure if that's from these farmers or people just not interested in it). A bigger map can make it harder to savage the smaller players. A bigger map + larger food spawns can make it easier to gain mass without being savaged. 
  

None of these solutions are perfect, and I hope other people have better ideas than me; lol, but I think it can drastically change the way the server is played for the better. Agma should not be "AFK, savage, power spam, and hold W on the gold block." It should instead be skillful & fun. With these solutions, people would not get so many alts, nor so many coins. Players also wouldn't control the server with such ease and would have to fight others to stay big