Comments on: Helpless in Nile Online

By: Pete

Pete — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:10:07 +0000

@Mike, Well, first of all yes, it was stupid to get upset about it and that was part of why I posted; because I was “fascinated at how strongly Iâ€™ve reacted.”

But I still think its an incredibly stupid design. It’s like entering a PvP arena in World of Warcraft where anyone walking past the arena can attack you, but you can’t fight back. Plus, the person who attacked me stood to gain nothing from the attack except using up both of our resources (in terms of troops spent). Had their attack succeeded, they would have taken the plot from me, its true, but at a *much* greater expense to them than it would have cost them to take one from the NPCs (and such plots were available).

(Had I had a larger pyramid built, this wouldn’t have been the case as the person would’ve captured the pyramid, but I only had 1 tier built, and whenever a plot is captured it loses 1 tier of progress, so the plot would’ve once again been an empty one.)

At the end of the day, Nile Online is a passively-cooperative game. The person who attacked me is a neighbor to two of my cities and we’d both profit more from trading resources than attacking each other. The only scarcity of resources *is* the monument sites, but there were plenty of those still available for the taking.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 07:25:19 +0000

Of all the games to get upset about this sort of thing, this one seems surprising. Isn’t it expected that this would happen in this game? By merely capturing a monument, I would fully expect that I’m exposing myself to attack. It would be like entering a PvP arena in World of Warcraft. I get frustrated when I get ganked or griefed by other players in games as well, but not when I willingly step foot into the designated PvP zone, which this is akin to.

By: Pete

Pete — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:06:48 +0000

I think Ysharros has the right of it. I sent the person who attacked me a link to this blog post, and they commented, but I’m not approving the comment because it just continued the argument. In it, the person chastised me (legitimately) for making such a big deal out of something that happened in a game, which was kind of the point I was trying (maybe not very well) to make in the post. I have no idea *why* it became such a big deal for me, but really I was mad at the game and I just transferred the anger to this person.

But yeah, it capped off a truly terrible week, and I think all that seething anger and frustration was just waiting for an outlet.

By: Grid

Grid — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:22:02 +0000

Remember its a beta. Report your thoughts on that aspect and if enough agree it can be changed. It is a work in progress.

By: Ysharros

Ysharros — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:29:35 +0000

Sleep on it. It’s possible you’re reacting so strongly to an asshat because you’ve had a truly horrid week, and getting righteously furious about a game is easier than what you’ve had to deal with — especially if RL has been one of those “it’s not really anyone’s fault but it still totally sucks” kind of things. Nobody to really get angry at and no outlet.

I’m surprised and yet not surprised … there are asshats everywhere. I’ve been browsing the Nile Online forums and have discovered some … techniques, some would call em, exploits in my book, that I guess some players have been happily using while others won’t.

Ethics is a strange beast. But just because Joe Asshat doesn’t have any won’t make you feel any better if you abandon your own.

By: Shamutanti

Shamutanti — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:19:02 +0000

I actually started a Nile Online account because of your post displaying interest in it, although I tried to take the approach of being as uncoopertive as possible to see if it works.

Currently I have no intention of bothering with monument sites though having only sent about 20 troops to a nearby one to test the combat system to try and understand it. Heck I don’t even have a temple. I pretty much make as much from my own personal resources as I can, undercut the market as much as possible with what I make and use the bread from that as my main form of income for purchase – rather than trading with anyone directly. I only have boats so I can trade between my two cities but i’m thinking of adding a third because i’m fed up of purchasing some other resources.

I’ve got a level 10 city and a level 6 city – both soon ready to be upgraded if you wondered

It’s an odd game though – I’ve played similar ones, Xenocide 3001 (now deceased) being really the only real time strat browser game I can think of that had all the elements required of a ‘good’ browser game without the extra schmuck. The invite friends rubbish, the bad alliance control, etc. etc. Yet to find something even remotely close – and where as I find the trade aspects etc. quite interesting about Nile it’s got a fair few problems to it.