My New Stance on Agf.io

[Fishy]

Quote:However, in order for teams to officially be allowed back into Agf, other adjustments must be made to accommodate and maintain balance:

so you want teams to be allowed in agf? i don't understand your viewpoint right now, lol

Quote:1) Fix Virus-Farming

Virus-farming is not an inherently bad mechanic. Even in a theoretically perfect server, there would still inevitably be times when the server is unbalanced and/or lacking in mass. Virus-farming is a nice way to restore balance and create more mass in the game. Currently, even when the server is at its most balanced, the vast majority of the server’s mass is circulated virus mass. However, virus-farming is easily exploited. Virus-farming is meant for players to get a headstart in mass, especially when they are beginners, but many players virus-farm mid-battle. Even Agf’s most skilled players sometimes struggle to beat them, especially when they are abusing it nonstop. Lowering the mass of viruses seems like a good idea at first, but it would have many unwanted side effects. Currently, the best solution I can think of is keeping the mass of the same, except for specifically when a player shoots a virus directly into themselves. This means that the viruses’ mass would ONLY be less when the player who shoots the virus also eats the virus while the virus is still in motion. I would love to discuss alternative solutions, but whatever solution is implemented should be enough for players to farm up to no more than about 8k-12k.

i think this solution also has its flaws... before SOLO agf existed (the old version of agf), i remember you could still virus farm but only to about 5k-10k mass (i think). Not sure what changed there, but if it could be reversed, then I believe it solves this issue without needing unnecessary patches to virus farming

Quote:2) Fix Virus Maximum

A virus maximum is set in all servers to prevent the server from crashing from too many viruses. However, the virus maximum in Agf is reached way more often than it should. This usually happens when someone is struggling to virus-farm and is creating more viruses than they are eating. The virus maximum should be raised if possible, but once the number of viruses reaches its threshold in the game, one of the viruses should be deleted to allow for a new one to spawn, only in emergencies. The virus that is deleted should not be the oldest one, but rather the least important one. This would most likely be a virus that is inside a large cluster of viruses and has no significance in any battle.

I disagree with the virus cap needing to be higher, as without virus farming on the map, it's pretty rare for the server to hit the virus cap

Quote:3) Fix Food Pellets

While Agf has the smallest map of all of Agma’s servers, map size is only an illusion. Our perception of the map’s size is just a combination of cell speed and mass density. I think that the current cell speed is perfect. It allows players to conveniently resume battles after they die and spawn back in the game. The problem is the mass density. There are several periods throughout the day when no experienced players are on, so it is just a few players barely above spawn mass aimlessly roaming the map, too afraid to fight anyone. During the other periods of the day, there are 1-2 large players casually savaging everyone else. Either way, the server is almost never balanced. Agf should have an algorithm that measures the server’s balance, considering factors such as the number of players and their mass proportions, and automatically adjusts the food pellet mass and production rate accordingly. When changes were made to the server in the summer of 2020, the food pellets were tripled in mass to try to give smaller players a headstart, but it actually ended up helping bigger players get bigger, since more mass was in circulation. Making the pellets larger also indirectly affected the physics, because a player’s tiny pieces used in virus battles would get really big over a shorter period of time and unintentionally break the viruses. Because of this, the pellets were set back to normal. I think that the mass and production rate of the food pellets should be fluid and change according to the server’s current conditions. I have a few ideas in my head for how to achieve this mathematically without affecting the server’s physics, but I may explain them in a different thread on another day.

I think a food algorithm could be a nice thing for ALL servers, but maybe differently from how you see it: the more players in the server, the more food that spawns & the fewer players in the server, the less food that spawns. I think it would make EXP more fair, but again, this is not something without flaws. If too little mass is a problem without virus farming, there are better solutions than changing food (which apparently also changes physics). For example, you can increase spawn mass or maybe increase the amount of mass that mass pellets give in rooms 1 & 2. If the mass pellets give more, then decay should also be significantly higher, so players can't camp there and get a lot of mass, although I suppose they can sit in the portal and gain mass for 5 minutes. 

I haven't played agf in months because of its condition, but I do know it's never easy to solve every problem and make everyone happy