Give Solo Players More Fair Chance

[Cunina]

I do not know how many times this has been brought up here, and specially in Agario-based games, but Agma.io has been designed to unfairly give teams more power over solo players.

Agar.io games have suffered because the developers do NOT listen to the voice of the community and usually claim that there is no game dynamics/mechanics that can be devised to combat teaming.

Let me also say that I mainly play in Gigantic servers (98%), so the following recommendations are simply geared towards those servers:

1. Give smaller masses a much larger viewing window. Currently, the view is very limited, and a single split can land you in the belly of another larger player that can see you from a mile away. In addition, limit the larger masses their viewing window. That way, it gives the smaller masses a better chance of not getting themselves into an immediate death zone. If this is too much, at least give the players an option to zoom in and zoom out with much larger viewing window and leave the default as is.
2. Quit respawning teammate(s) that die around their old teammate. Put them as far away from their teammate. The game has been designed to give teammates a greater advantage when a solo player kills the second teammate in order to isolate the remaining player and have a better chance of finishing him/her/it off. This also resolves another issue, and that is, respawning a player who has just been killed in vicinity of another player who has just killed him/her/it. What is the point of this? The guy just killed you and is much larger. Why would I want to get spawned near him to get killed again? I know that the goal might be that you'll have a chance to get back at him/her/it, but how many times a much smaller player would have a realistic chance to kill a player who has just killed him and gained far more mass?
3. In Gigantic servers, or other servers if you wish, devise a logic that when the server gets crowded, e.g. 50+ players (I say 50 because in Gigantic servers, that's when things get ugly), AND number of dots on the field is lowered of threshold, expand the server. The developers already done that in Royal Battle servers... in reverse. So I don't think it's going to require a lot of redevelopment for this feature. Just simply expand the room as the number of players are increased and/or total of number of dots are lowered. The expansion does not need to be dynamic (every second), but rather, when the average number of players exceed over a certain period, say 5 minutes, expand the server from each direction to certain length, and when the average is lowered over time, the server shrinks gradually -- step by step. Also, no penalty if the player gets pushed in during to this shrinkage and hits the water. This really helps the solo players not get cramped into confining areas and slaughtered when the server gets busy.
4. Pepper the giant masses with viruses. I'm not talking about 3 or 4, but rather 15+ viruses, all around. Provide more opportunities for smaller players to virus the crap out of them.
   

As usual, I am not getting my hopes high for these features to be implemented, but hey, I hope other solo players can chime in their frustration to make a push for better gaming mechanics that doesn't unfairly give advantage to only teams.

[Squirrel]

(12-31-2018, 10:58 PM)Cunina Wrote: I do not know how many times this has been brought up here, and specially in Agario-based games, but Agma.io has been designed to unfairly give teams more power over solo players.

Agar.io games have suffered because the developers do NOT listen to the voice of the community and usually claim that there is no game dynamics/mechanics that can be devised to combat teaming.

Let me also say that I mainly play in Gigantic servers (98%), so the following recommendations are simply geared towards those servers:

1. Give smaller masses a much larger viewing window. Currently, the view is very limited, and a single split can land you in the belly of another larger player that can see you from a mile away. In addition, limit the larger masses their viewing window. That way, it gives the smaller masses a better chance of not getting themselves into an immediate death zone. If this is too much, at least give the players an option to zoom in and zoom out with much larger viewing window and leave the default as is.
2. Quit respawning teammate(s) that die around their old teammate. Put them as far away from their teammate. The game has been designed to give teammates a greater advantage when a solo player kills the second teammate in order to isolate the remaining player and have a better chance of finishing him/her/it off. This also resolves another issue, and that is, respawning a player who has just been killed in vicinity of another player who has just killed him/her/it. What is the point of this? The guy just killed you and is much larger. Why would I want to get spawned near him to get killed again? I know that the goal might be that you'll have a chance to get back at him/her/it, but how many times a much smaller player would have a realistic chance to kill a player who has just killed him and gained far more mass?
3. In Gigantic servers, or other servers if you wish, devise a logic that when the server gets crowded, e.g. 50+ players (I say 50 because in Gigantic servers, that's when things get ugly), AND number of dots on the field is lowered of threshold, expand the server. The developers already done that in Royal Battle servers... in reverse. So I don't think it's going to require a lot of redevelopment for this feature. Just simply expand the room as the number of players are increased and/or total of number of dots are lowered. The expansion does not need to be dynamic (every second), but rather, when the average number of players exceed over a certain period, say 5 minutes, expand the server from each direction to certain length, and when the average is lowered over time, the server shrinks gradually -- step by step. Also, no penalty if the player gets pushed in during to this shrinkage and hits the water. This really helps the solo players not get cramped into confining areas and slaughtered when the server gets busy.
   

As usual, I am not getting my hopes high for these features to be implemented, but hey, I hope other solo players can chime in their frustration to make a push for better gaming mechanics that doesn't unfairly give advantage to only teams.

Hi Cunina, and welcome here!

I share your pain, as a fellow 'solo' player....

I agree with a lot of what you said, except for saying that the agar.io-related developers aren't listening to the community.

Even MiniClip, the company that does the real agar.io game, tried an anti-Teaming routine, and attempted to penalize teams... but their code... doesn't work.

And, as a guy who did programming myself, a long time ago, I started playing that out in my head...

(This issue has been brought forward a fair number of times... about one each for every new person who came here to try and vent some of their frustration away, and found.... likewise frustrated players.)

Sadly, that I know of, no-one is any closer to making an anti-Teaming routine that works, and in my head, I can see some of the why... (although I don't like it.)

The problem is simply this... a Team can look very familiar to a one-versus-one skirmish that just keeps on going, with one player being on top one moment, and the other on top just seconds later.

For us, the human eye is so astounding at taking in and processing information that to us, it's obvious that the two players are working together... even simply by the constant similarity of their actions!

But a computer does not have that advantage.  It must take the slow way to figure out that this isn't an unusually long one on one battle, but two people working in unison. And the longer and more complicated that routine is.... you're either forced to add CPU cores of processing to keep the game running smoothly (raiusing the cost of providing the game significantly), or accept the lag that it creates.

There have been some decent ideas... like in-game moderators that will recognize Teamers, and flag them as such. That allows humans to do the hard work (that, for us, isn't nearly as hard), and lets the computer use a simple variable for it's answer to a complex problem. Then the problem becomes finding so many willing in-game trusted volunteers to cover all of the servers. Volunteer to flag all these people, and to not give in to the draw of corruption, flagging people who don't deserve to be.

All of this... has been discussed before.

But let me journey onto a something I haven't seen said.

The owner here (@Sora) provides the agma.io game, which is agar-like, but heavily modified.

I'm not sure if this was their intention, but in a way, they've gone the other direction on teaming:

If we can't make the program easily recognize Teamers, could we maybe find a way for single people to behave more as teamers??

They added bots (Minions), and then added the ability to switch between controlling both bots and your actual player.

If you can capably switch back and forth fast enough, it's quite surprising how similar what a single person does can look like a team.

I myself just don't have the capacity to do it well... and I think most people would have to purchase one of the 'bots' packages for it to make a huge difference to them.

There are a few exception who play both sides pretty well, and my hat is off to them. And you could argue again that this makes the game a bit more of a 'pay to win' game... but I commend them for trying a different approach.

You can actually get a few "free" minions (up to 40, I think) in some of the agma server varieties. I really have only discovered one... but despite being a longtime player, I stick mostly to certain varieties, preferring the 'faster' ones... 'agarioforums.io' and 'SuperSonic'.

Thanks for your input, and I hope that we'll see you again, and that you'll become a regular visitor here?
We'd love to see an 'Introductions' thread by you, where you tell us a bit about yourself.

And I hope that you're having posted what you did, relieved a bit of the frustration that you probably have...

My way of 'dealing' with it, was more to poke insults at the Teamers... make them understand that "good teaming skills" just makes them a self-verified terrible player, in many of our eyes. (Because they need a serious advantage to be better.)

Even that has mostly worn off for me. Now, I just expect death when I've encountered a teamer... and try to not let it get to me. (I even called those who played the solo-teamer 'playing with themselves'... blush)

And I remember why I chose the game in the first place -- it's a passtime where I can play, and have no reason to care, if I die... because we all die in there. And to not mind the people who wanted to get ahead so badly, that they stooped to taking that huge advantage.

I hope to hear from you again, and hope that you enjoy your stay!

[mahran]

Hello Cunina,
Nice to see you here, do you remember me?

I think there is no solution for teams. I played with you in gigantic and as you know if you play solo there you will get destroyed easily. I quit gigantic and went to x-insta as this server’s physics support the idea of playing as solo. But guess what? pros formed a one team that controls the server ( iList, Tony, Toortle, Jam, Adrian... etc) and actually ingame mods support them (for example: Mamba) to savage solo and noob players who want to learn.

The only solution I found useful is to spam x-insta chat, this way teams get frustrated and leave the server. But my account got banned lol,

I hope for you a nice new year,

[Cunina]

Quote:I agree with a lot of what you said, except for saying that the agar.io-related developers aren't listening to the community.

Even MiniClip, the company that does the real agar.io game, tried an anti-Teaming routine, and attempted to penalize teams... but their code... doesn't work.

And, as a guy who did programming myself, a long time ago, I started playing that out in my head...

Sadly, that I know of, no-one is any closer to making an anti-Teaming routine that works, and in my head, I can see some of the why... (although I don't like it.)

The problem is simply this... a Team can look very familiar to a one-versus-one skirmish that just keeps on going, with one player being on top one moment, and the other on top just seconds later.

For us, the human eye is so astounding at taking in and processing information that to us, it's obvious that the two players are working together... even simply by the constant similarity of their actions!

Thank you Squirrel for taking your time to chime in (and write a mini-novel in the process but I'm so glad that someone at least makes an effort to write in proper English. I might fail in that endeavor but the effort is what it counts).

If you noticed, I explicitly went out of my way not to list anything relating to "anti-teaming" algorithm because I know it's a lost cause. I read a bit about it when I started play Agario (didn't take more than 3 months until I discovered Agma.io, and thus, abandoned it all together due to slow teaming). My recommendations are mostly coming from different approach -- ones that can give more advantage to solo players rather than tilt the balance towards teamers as described in the original post.

These are the suggestions that, although might not appear advantageous, but combined, can be tremendously helpful.

P.S. I am a developer myself (a horrible one to be honest), but I abhor front-end development. As a matter of fact, it's embarrassing to say that I don't have much web application experience, so any JS framework/library is a salt to a slug in my eyes -- but I digress.

Quote:And the longer and more complicated that routine is.... you're either forced to add CPU cores of processing to keep the game running smoothly (raiusing the cost of providing the game significantly), or accept the lag that it creates.

I take it that you are eluding to cloud computing pricing, right? Do you know how Agma has been architected or is it a state secret?

Quote:There have been some decent ideas... like in-game moderators that will recognize Teamers, and flag them as such. That allows humans to do the hard work (that, for us, isn't nearly as hard), and lets the computer use a simple variable for it's answer to a complex problem. Then the problem becomes finding so many willing in-game trusted volunteers to cover all of the servers. Volunteer to flag all these people, and to not give in to the draw of corruption, flagging people who don't deserve to be.

I have suggested that several times in other forums, and I think it's a very feasible solution. Take IRS for example, they do not audit every single person in the country; it's not practical. All they need to do to take a sample from the entire population pool and create a deterrence for tax payers not to cheat the system (I know, bad analogy).

You only need a very handful of moderators to shuffle through servers to get the message out, and most players after a while will get the message. The length of the ban can be incremental: 1st offense, 5 mins. 2nd offense, 30 mins. 3rd infraction, 2 hours, etc.

Of course, I suggest to provide a channel for players to dispute these allegations.

Quote:The owner here (@Sora) provides the agma.io game, which is agar-like, but heavily modified.

I'm not sure if this was their intention, but in a way, they've gone the other direction on teaming:

If we can't make the program easily recognize Teamers, could we maybe find a way for single people to behave more as teamers??

They added bots (Minions), and then added the ability to switch between controlling both bots and your actual player.

If you can capably switch back and forth fast enough, it's quite surprising how similar what a single person does can look like a team.

I myself just don't have the capacity to do it well... and I think most people would have to purchase one of the 'bots' packages for it to make a huge difference to them.

There are a few exception who play both sides pretty well, and my hat is off to them. And you could argue again that this makes the game a bit more of a 'pay to win' game... but I commend them for trying a different approach.

You can actually get a few "free" minions (up to 40, I think) in some of the agma server varieties. I really have only discovered one... but despite being a longtime player, I stick mostly to certain varieties, preferring the 'faster' ones... 'agarioforums.io' and 'SuperSonic'.

Exactly, and I have seen a very few people effectively utilize these bots, and witnessed how they can withstand and dominate in some cases. This is very encouraging.

I, personally, have not used bots, and when I tried it in servers other than Gigantics, they are hard to handle, so I can see why people do not wish to spend their coins or purchase a meaningful package when they are not sure how to effectively manage them.

However, I still do not know who for example bots can emulate freeze + solo trick split, and effectively do a sweep/cleanup after the split. There are many things that are hard to do with bots, so their viability is at question.

Quote:And I hope that you're having posted what you did, relieved a bit of the frustration that you probably have...

My way of 'dealing' with it, was more to poke insults at the Teamers... make them understand that "good teaming skills" just makes them a self-verified terrible player, in many of our eyes. (Because they need a serious advantage to be better.)

Even that has mostly worn off for me. Now, I just expect death when I've encountered a teamer... and try to not let it get to me. (I even called those who played the solo-teamer 'playing with themselves'... blush)

And I remember why I chose the game in the first place -- it's a passtime where I can play, and have no reason to care, if I die... because we all die in there. And to not mind the people who wanted to get ahead so badly, that they stooped to taking that huge advantage.

I will surely post a few threads regarding things I think should be improved (Read: me venting  ), and a few questions about certain algorithms that affect the mechanics of the game (not sure how forthcoming the development team is going to be about this).

---

---

(01-01-2019, 01:30 PM)mahran Wrote: Hello Cunina,
Nice to see you here, do you remember me?

I think there is no solution for teams. I played with you in gigantic and as you know if you play solo there you will get destroyed easily. I quit gigantic and went to x-insta as this server’s physics support the idea of playing as solo. But guess what? pros formed a one team that controls the server ( iList, Tony, Toortle, Jam, Adrian... etc) and actually ingame mods support them (for example: Mamba) to savage solo and noob players who want to learn.

The only solution I found useful is to spam x-insta chat, this way teams get frustrated and leave the server. But my account got banned lol,

I hope for you a nice new year,

Of course, Mahran.

And yes, I have seen less of you recently (since Oct/Nov). I know you have moved on to better things

I'm aware of tricks in X-Insta these teamsters pull, so I avoid those servers as Gigantic ones provide a better way in my case to defend myself.

More and more I find it hard to find people who do only solo like me, and NEVER team. 

P.S. Not sure why the forum posts this under my other reply.

[Squirrel]

(01-01-2019, 01:30 PM)mahran Wrote: Hello Cunina,
Nice to see you here, do you remember me?

I think there is no solution for teams. I played with you in gigantic and as you know if you play solo there you will get destroyed easily. I quit gigantic and went to x-insta as this server’s physics support the idea of playing as solo. But guess what? pros formed a one team that controls the server ( iList, Tony, Toortle, Jam, Adrian... etc) and actually ingame mods support them (for example: Mamba) to savage solo and noob players who want to learn.

The only solution I found useful is to spam x-insta chat, this way teams get frustrated and leave the server. But my account got banned lol,

I hope for you a nice new year,

Your spamming would have been useless.

They can just set up a private chat, and not be at all annoyed by you. You were likely just bothering everyone who didn't think of that.

If this 'Team' thing is true, couldn't you try to start an opposing team?

But I can see your point of view.

---

(01-01-2019, 11:16 PM)Cunina Wrote: Thank you Squirrel for taking your time to chime in (and write a mini-novel in the process but I'm so glad that someone at least makes an effort to write in proper English. I might fail in that endeavor but the effort is what it counts).

If you noticed, I explicitly went out of my way not to list anything relating to "anti-teaming" algorithm because I know it's a lost cause. I read a bit about it when I started play Agario (didn't take more than 3 months until I discovered Agma.io, and thus, abandoned it all together due to slow teaming). My recommendations are mostly coming from different approach -- ones that can give more advantage to solo players rather than tilt the balance towards teamers as described in the original post.

These are the suggestions that, although might not appear advantageous, but combined, can be tremendously helpful.

P.S. I am a developer myself (a horrible one to be honest), but I abhor front-end development. As a matter of fact, it's embarrassing to say that I don't have much web application experience, so any JS framework/library is a salt to a slug in my eyes -- but I digress.

I can't foresee them removing the ability to team. Much effort has been put into making that a possibility. What I hope for, instead, is to have teamers killing solo players simply get next to zero experience for it, thus making it not worth their time. Team on team, I think is a whole different thing, and is probably great fun!

Perhaps they will consider flagging Teamers with their in-game moderation then.

What I definitely know is... Sora and the developers do care.

(01-01-2019, 11:16 PM)Cunina Wrote: I take it that you are eluding to cloud computing pricing, right? Do you know how Agma has been architected or is it a state secret?

No-one has said for sure, that I know of... but I know he already uses CloudFlare to prevent DDoS issues, and cloud computing makes the most sense.

(01-01-2019, 11:16 PM)Cunina Wrote: I have suggested that several times in other forums, and I think it's a very feasible solution. Take IRS for example, they do not audit every single person in the country; it's not practical. All they need to do to take a sample from the entire population pool and create a deterrence for tax payers not to cheat the system (I know, bad analogy).

You only need a very handful of moderators to shuffle through servers to get the message out, and most players after a while will get the message. The length of the ban can be incremental: 1st offense, 5 mins. 2nd offense, 30 mins. 3rd infraction, 2 hours, etc.

Of course, I suggest to provide a channel for players to dispute these allegations.

Hopefully they will try something along these lines then.

(01-01-2019, 11:16 PM)Cunina Wrote: I will surely post a few threads regarding things I think should be improved (Read: me venting  ), and a few questions about certain algorithms that affect the mechanics of the game (not sure how forthcoming the development team is going to be about this).

I'll look forward to your posts! I'd have liked this one, simply for your ability to break out one of my long-winded replies into nice chunks!

You would pass my 'Editing Posts 101' course with flying colours! LOL
PS: No-one has ever requested to be enrolled. lollll

[SurakAtticus]

I've contemplated this issue a lot too, and like you guys said, I don't think there is a programming solution to the teaming issue. I think the one solution is a human solution for this. The best bet is to have a server that specifically states it's a solo server. To make that work though you'd need a human mod in game constantly though. A mod that, could at the sight of teaming, could place the player(s) in a timeout for a set amount of time and give them a warning. But, I don't know if that is really realistic, we do have enough Mods though to do it maybe for one server, but that would be impossible over a number of servers LOL.

[yukichan]

how's your new year guys school is coming again  

[Cunina]

Quote:I can't foresee them removing the ability to team. Much effort has been put into making that a possibility. What I hope for, instead, is to have teamers killing solo players simply get next to zero experience for it, thus making it not worth their time. Team on team, I think is a whole different thing, and is probably great fun!

If they can detect someone's teaming to give them zero experience, then they have already figured a way to detect teaming.

Quote:What I definitely know is... Sora and the developers do care.

Caring means that someone takes action. They doing nothing translates to not caring. Period. It's just not in their best interest. Agma has grown to be teaming game; that's what the players have come to accept, which means that's what bring them to the game. Anything going against that would mean the game dies which is something definitely the developers do not want.

Quote:No-one has said for sure, that I know of... but I know he already uses CloudFlare to prevent DDoS issues, and cloud computing makes the most sense.

I usually ask people during the game where they are located so I can find out what edge/node is serving them the traffic in order to find out what regions are experiencing lagging. Other than that, I haven't been told much about how the traffic is distributed and managed.

One thing I forgot to address regarding your comment about gaming is that I always try to promote what I have coined as "ethical gaming". Players like JESSICA is a prime example who don't abuse the system and needlessly making the game not fun for others.

Of course, you have to remember that the majority of players are underage (10 - 12 or 14 - 17), compounded by cultural differences and living background from around the world, one cannot expect a highly ethical gaming experience where the majority of people actually enjoy playing the game rather than being run over. So you should keep that in mind when discussing such topic to put things into context and realistic perspectives.

---

(01-02-2019, 09:54 PM)SurakAtticus Wrote: I've contemplated this issue a lot too, and like you guys said, I don't think there is a programming solution to the teaming issue.  I think the one solution is a human solution for this.  The best bet is to have a server that specifically states it's a solo server.  To make that work though you'd need a human mod in game constantly though.  A mod that, could at the sight of teaming, could place the player(s) in a timeout for a set amount of time and give them a warning.  But, I don't know if that is really realistic, we do have enough Mods though to do it maybe for one server, but that would be impossible over a number of servers LOL.

I disagree with your assessment. You don't know many moderators to police every single server at any given time.

We are talking about only a few designated servers for solo gamers. The point is that a single moderator can cycle through several servers over a short period of time and ban egregious teaming behavior. Players will get the message.

It's not as difficult as you are making sound to be.

[Squirrel]

(01-04-2019, 12:40 AM)Cunina Wrote: Caring means that someone takes action. They doing nothing translates to not caring. Period. It's just not in their best interest. Agma has grown to be teaming game; that's what the players have come to accept, which means that's what bring them to the game. Anything going against that would mean the game dies which is something definitely the developers do not want.

Sorry, I disagree with this part. We the users, are not aware of the full limitations and conditions under which the base code is made available.

Having seen Sora post messages for two years (long before there was an AGF, or now agma), he is just as caring a person as anyone.

I am very confident that if the Teaming imbalance were an easy thing to fix, he'd have made it more fair long before now.

Several times in my younger years I took care of a project that was coded by others initially, and it fell to me to make changes and keep a game 'fresh'. It so heavily depends on the original programmers -- their foresight for how far the game would go, in making initial limitations, and so on, right up to an individual developers style in coding. A number of them would much rather obfuscate how something works, rather than add comments to explain any coding weirdness.

You and I simply do not know what they are dealing with, coding wise.

I however, am very confident that I have pegged Sora's basic disposition.

[Cunina]

(01-04-2019, 03:13 PM)Squirrel Wrote: Sorry, I disagree with this part. We the users, are not aware of the full limitations and conditions under which the base code is made available.

Having seen Sora post messages for two years (long before there was an AGF, or now agma), he is just as caring a person as anyone.

I am very confident that if the Teaming imbalance were an easy thing to fix, he'd have made it more fair long before now.

Several times in my younger years I took care of a project that was coded by others initially, and it fell to me to make changes and keep a game 'fresh'. It so heavily depends on the original programmers -- their foresight for how far the game would go, in making initial limitations, and so on, right up to an individual developers style in coding. A number of them would much rather obfuscate how something works, rather than add comments to explain any coding weirdness.

You and I simply do not know what they are dealing with, coding wise.

I however, am very confident that I have pegged Sora's basic disposition.

No action = not caring

If that is the issue they want to focus, they will change the mechanics of the game to be disadvantageous to be a team. Lack of such mechanism means that the idea has been abandoned. I am not here to massage someone's good intentions. I aim for a wrong to be right. There are many ways to change the dynamics of the game to help the solo players, including the ones I mentioned above. Why aren't they being implemented? Simple, there is no will behind it.

You may argue that it would mess up the game. I disagree. You as a game designer set the tone of how the game should be played. People WILL adjust to the new mechanics just like they have adapted the current ones. It's a behavior that is being dictated by the game designers and the rest should follow. Why is it so difficult to set up a single server with these changes to see what happens? Because there is no care.

[Squirrel]

(01-05-2019, 05:17 PM)Cunina Wrote: No action = not caring

That is oversimplifying things, and again, I disagree.

The rest basically restated what you said before, and seems to me, shows more of a lack of understanding what it is like when you start with someone else's proprietary code, and then seek to make it different enough.

We have no business commenting on the nature of this, because we just don't have enough information to.

I do not like being argumentative, so I will say nothing further on this.

[Sora]

(12-31-2018, 10:58 PM)Cunina Wrote: I do not know how many times this has been brought up here, and specially in Agario-based games, but Agma.io has been designed to unfairly give teams more power over solo players.

Agar.io games have suffered because the developers do NOT listen to the voice of the community and usually claim that there is no game dynamics/mechanics that can be devised to combat teaming.

Let me also say that I mainly play in Gigantic servers (98%), so the following recommendations are simply geared towards those servers:

1. Give smaller masses a much larger viewing window. Currently, the view is very limited, and a single split can land you in the belly of another larger player that can see you from a mile away. In addition, limit the larger masses their viewing window. That way, it gives the smaller masses a better chance of not getting themselves into an immediate death zone. If this is too much, at least give the players an option to zoom in and zoom out with much larger viewing window and leave the default as is.
2. Quit respawning teammate(s) that die around their old teammate. Put them as far away from their teammate. The game has been designed to give teammates a greater advantage when a solo player kills the second teammate in order to isolate the remaining player and have a better chance of finishing him/her/it off. This also resolves another issue, and that is, respawning a player who has just been killed in vicinity of another player who has just killed him/her/it. What is the point of this? The guy just killed you and is much larger. Why would I want to get spawned near him to get killed again? I know that the goal might be that you'll have a chance to get back at him/her/it, but how many times a much smaller player would have a realistic chance to kill a player who has just killed him and gained far more mass?
3. In Gigantic servers, or other servers if you wish, devise a logic that when the server gets crowded, e.g. 50+ players (I say 50 because in Gigantic servers, that's when things get ugly), AND number of dots on the field is lowered of threshold, expand the server. The developers already done that in Royal Battle servers... in reverse. So I don't think it's going to require a lot of redevelopment for this feature. Just simply expand the room as the number of players are increased and/or total of number of dots are lowered. The expansion does not need to be dynamic (every second), but rather, when the average number of players exceed over a certain period, say 5 minutes, expand the server from each direction to certain length, and when the average is lowered over time, the server shrinks gradually -- step by step. Also, no penalty if the player gets pushed in during to this shrinkage and hits the water. This really helps the solo players not get cramped into confining areas and slaughtered when the server gets busy.
4. Pepper the giant masses with viruses. I'm not talking about 3 or 4, but rather 15+ viruses, all around. Provide more opportunities for smaller players to virus the crap out of them.
   

As usual, I am not getting my hopes high for these features to be implemented, but hey, I hope other solo players can chime in their frustration to make a push for better gaming mechanics that doesn't unfairly give advantage to only teams.

I did send you a PM about this a few weeks ago, I mentioned in regards to your points:
1. It's possible, but a larger viewing window also has some downsides. It requires more performance and might cause lag.
2. Respawning is completely random, there's no higher chance to respawn next to your teammate. 
3. The increasing borders is an idea considered before, and it might be implemented in the future. It does have some difficulties with the current architecture because of the secret rooms, and some other properties to the borders. But it's possible. Another solution is to add a new Gigantic server.
4. The amount of viruses in a server has a minimum and a max value. Some users would like to increase that max value, others would like to decrease it because they'd prefer less viruses in a server. It's a subjective idea, so not everybody would enjoy more viruses in a server. But keep in mind, we're always experimenting with new gamemodes. One which might be interesting is the "Domination/Teams" gamemode. I know that some users have really been wanting a team gamemode (Squirrel for example). A team gamemode combined with domination gamemode is something i'm very much looking forwards to, and think will be a lot of fun. 

In regards to some of your points about teaming: It's not prohibited in agma because if it was, people would still team and it would just be a chaos trying to prevent people from teaming. It's very hard, and likely impossible to develop a perfect algorithm that completely prevents people from teaming at all times. 
People have adapted to very sophisticated gaming techniques based around teaming, with splitrunning, tricksplits, and other styles being used. Teaming is not a bad thing, and it's actually a big part of how people enjoy playing. A difficulty associated with teaming is to balance it and make it fair for all players and soloists. A good player would most of the times be able to take down a team of players depending on the server and setting. It's seen as an extra challenge. I personally look at it as a challenge, and it just gets more fun that way. Even if you lose your mass, you can always respawn, and take advantage of viruses, powerups, minions, solo tricksplit, and other helpful ways for a solo player to beat a team.

We've definitely listened to the players who've asked for solo only server. We've added a Solo Battle Royale as you might have seen, with the intention of preventing teamers with both an algorithm that reduces players mass if they team, and also disallowing them to W feed each other. If you have any other suggestions how to prevent teaming more effectively, just mention it.

[Squirrel]

Awesome and detailed response, dere Boss! @Sora

(01-13-2019, 09:32 PM)Sora Wrote: 4. The amount of viruses in a server has a minimum and a max value. Some users would like to increase that max value, others would like to decrease it because they'd prefer less viruses in a server. It's a subjective idea, so not everybody would enjoy more viruses in a server. But keep in mind, we're always experimenting with new gamemodes. One which might be interesting is the "Domination/Teams" gamemode. I know that some users have really been wanting a team gamemode (Squirrel for example). A team gamemode combined with domination gamemode is something i'm very much looking forwards to, and think will be a lot of fun. 

Agreed! I prefer less viruses, but my playstyle is perfect for... as I like to think of myself sometimes, a "mine clearer'. Too many viruses makes it hard to play as a big guy, and I'm never small for long in SuperSonic. lol But yes, it's subjective, and another facet of the game that breeds and encourages more playstyles. That is a GOOD thing!

When you say a teaming mode, I'd just like to detail... it's not the sort of Teaming that we've seen here so far, but rather like the 'Teams' mode in the original 'agar' game, where players are evenly dispersed between three colours, and each group of players tries to become the only team remaining. Those games are fun, and I have missed them.

[yukichan]

can you help me @sora how to change the cause my friend got hacked 101% i want to help him pls if you read this can you help me?

[Squirrel]

(01-17-2019, 08:08 AM)yukichan Wrote: can you help me @sora how to change the cause my friend got hacked 101% i want to help him pls if you read this can you help me?

Your friend should get on Discord, and ask retslac#6008 to change their password. Retslac is around a bit more than Sora is, these days.