TYLER Projects | the blog

Just as a proposal, you could change some of the higher level quests to requiring clan membership to do instead of having a crew requirement much like the outposts.

Also u could add crew slots to the ship and have us (the players) hire npc crews from the different ports (maybe have stats associated with them, or not, easier to add if not, more flavor if yes) ongoing npc crew costs could be an aspect of the proposed island bases.

Then change referal link to a direct to the ocho site that works outside facebook, u can still get the viral advertising. (Or move off failbook altogether)

I really like this change in FB’s policy, although I’ve made some friends because of a game “forcing” me to add others, it’s much better to develop new actual friendships from Clans, etc.

I’d also like to continue to reward social activity by encouraging teamwork, etc.

…FB becoming more and more commercial

@Rant
I don’t know if clan membership would be an applicable work around, because the player verification system could possibly be seen as a breach of other points on the developer policies.

Though every application on facebook is already in violation of at least 3 of those policies, so I am not sure if battlestations is large enough to fall under the scrutiny of enforcement.

I personally like the concept of forcing developers to start driving their applications based on the application’s merits over extortion though.

I have 230 people who i dont know as crew so does this mean i have to wait for ages to regain crew as im a lvl 93 non ocho player shame realy

the thing is getting crew cost us trouble but no real benefit…. u expect everyone have 250 friends?

Obviously I’m not your target demographic, because this whole crew issue has been nothing but a pain in the butt to me. Adding my friends was difficult enough, and seemed pointless, as the only ones likely to enjoy playing BS would not make a total of ten crew. Now those crew members are gone, and I can add new ones, but they can’t be my friends? no, wait, they can be my friends but they don’t have to be? No, wait, it’s completely unclear…I like shuffling about the tiny world in a ship I can upgrade, and taking part in gradually evolving quests, but I don’t want to join a clan or constantly battle other people. I’ll be closing out my account once I’ve completed the quest I’m in the middle of now.

1mil for 1 crew is too expensive… for player lv 1-50(non-ocho). Fee should be reduced

I’ve never liked the fact that I have to add random strangers to my facebook account (gettin’ to see all my personal business) just to reap the benifits of a game so I think this could be a good thing. Haveing to pay 1 mill for crew especially when they can accept then cancel (thus loseing all that money) & where does that money go anyway (might as well get the robot crew)? What Rant says is a good idea of buying or hireing non player crew with special bonuses. I’ve also don’t see the point of having squad members that doesn’t do anything. But there is the point that the developers will want/need to advertise their game, I sudjest something like 1000 ap for each refferal accepted or a rare item only gained by refferal etc.
As for other recent changes, they don’t seem to have been properly thought through and have left parts of the game kinda pointless & not working properly, It would have been better to open sudjestions to the public & made a beta of the game to test to see how it works then make the changes strait out instead of making random changes here & there which gets pretty annoying when your trying to play the game.

Okay, here is what I am seeing. There is no point to try to add any friends to any of the games that I currently am playing on Facebook or any other social networking front end. Facebooks rules dictate that we are to receive no benefit (either in content or special items) from having added friends. This is impied in the statement that the devs are not supposed to gate content based on number of friends added.

Making your players pay one million gold to add friends that will give no benefit, check that, should not (according to Facebooks rules) give any content benefit means that there should be no reason to add friends. However, with Tyler projects plan for the implementation of the new rules, they are still attempting to force their players to add friends. The only reason that they are still trying to work around this is so that their game is advertised. Which I understand, I really do, I like people to get “paid” or “rewarded” for their hard work. Basically, by setting the bar that high, to be allowed to use friends in a game that still technically is against the rules means I have to purchase Ocho. Which in turn still gives Tyler projects their money coming in.

I think the proposed changes to the game, and the ones that have already been implemented, will do little more than turn most online gamers away from playing these types of games.

I would rather see Tyler Projects stop fighting with other social networking front ends. Stop fighting their rules, and merely use them for advertising. If people truly want to play the game, they will get their friends playing. Tyler projects should start considering alternatives that will fix the situation rather than trying to put band-aids on these social networking sites to continue to draw their revenue.

I would like to see Tyler projects create their own front end, and gain total control over the game. Thereby removing the need to follow the rules that are just going to destroy the gaming community on such sites.

If this were the case, I would be more inclined to continue playing Battlestations, and getting my friends to play. Heck, I might even purchase Ocho at that point, as I think we’d have more of an input in what happens with the game content. Otherwise, I’m afraid that I will probably delete my accounts on Myspace (which is a moot point anyway), Friendster, and Facebook, and remove all of the people that I have no connection with in real life. It’s been a good run, thanks for playing.

Friends not being allowed in crew even for the 1,000,000 price tag to request them subverts the social aspect of the game. You can’t have clan members in your crew unless you aren’t friends? I think this is a horrible application of decision making and that Facebook didn’t say you had to make a bad system just because it’s new.
Must pay to have strangers maybe add you and probably you can ask someone in some other person’s crew and waste money.
This will not stand and a revision still within the facebook rules must be found.

Facebook said you couldn’t make people be friends to promote your site, not that you should punish people for being friends.

wat no more AP bonus?

Then wtf did i pay good money for?

This stink if I have to pay 250 mill just to hire back my 250 crews?!

Oops Tyler project, looks like you got a riot on your hands!!

You all really need to re-look at this. If you don’t change it, from the way it sounds you will lose alot of people. And I might be one of them. One million for crew that you don’t even know and if they leave you lose it, now my friends that is the biggest pile of crap I have ever heard.

I agree with most of the comment. 1 mil per crew is way over, giving a hard time (maybe) choosing to buy game item ie. weapons/parts vs crew, for those non-ochos and beginners.

> looking at other games in FB like Mafia and others; i take example of tycoon (playing recently) I need (x) people to get some of the ‘business’ to operate and doesn’t cost me a thing just to get that, and i believe most of the game in FB are and was like that.

> What i can see is that, there’s no reason for changing in the crew system UNLESS reducing the requirement of (x)crew of the quest OR make it into Crews of Clan [ i mean those in the clan they are crew with each others (just a guess, might not agreeable) ] and those without clan, they can be solo… [ may be imba, unless making quest into 2 section which is Clan quest (which require crew[need to adjust req of quest] ) and Normal quest without crew?? (so item and some bonus stuff need to be adjust here and there..)
>>also maybe there’s a merchant for hire as temporary (with time duration) crew
(’cause some ppl prefer solo…. )

This is my opinion for now. =)

I also agree with some of my friends that, BS might loose a lot of fans if these crew system going on… especially the Non-ochos.. But that just my feeling on it…

Hope things can work it out…!

Like I said on my previous post I do like the fact that I don’t have to have hundreds of strangers on my friends list to be able to fully use the game so it could be promising & make some interesting angles to the game (if tyler think it through properly & listen to feedback) but there are so many other things that need to be changed & shouldn’t have been changed like the passive bonuses of the characters, why did you (tyler)change that? Why did you get rid of the trader class, you just took a chunk of the game play out & whats to become of all the trade ships that there is no point in useing any more, who wants a ship with loads of useless capacity & only one or two weapon slots? why did you call explorers scouts? who wants to be a scout, explorer sounds so much better & wouldn’t it have made sense to give explorers a cheeper travel cost? same goes to the change of commander to soldier. I know it’s abit off topic from crew but it needed to be pinted out & I hope tyler does read these.

I’ve just looked, if you invite a crew they can’t cancel for 90 days, which sorts the problem out, that’s 3 months to get 1 mill back but that ammount is likely to change. Soz 4 the stick tyler, it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next month. Be patient my friends :.)

Oh, Tyler, more communication between would be nice & something to encourage people to use the bio & build an avator!!

*between captains

If we hired 2 crew for 1 mil each on Monday when the announcement went up on BS (and before we read this blog detail), is there any chance of getting refunded? I’m already ocho, but thought only the +1 AP from ocho purchase was remaining for free.

“Don’t undermine the integrity of the social graph by encouraging the creation of fake accounts or inauthentic friend connections. For example, don’t gate content or provide rewards based on the number of a user’s friends who also use your application. (DPP V.2)”

Creation of fake accounts? I can still do that if I am desperate for a crew/squad. IP address block? No problem at all, give me one hour in a cyber cafe, i can CREATE SEVERAL FAKE ACCOUNTS already!

Don’t gate content or provide rewards based on the number of a user’s friends? Then what is the point putting up the bonus AP? Isn’t that a kind of reward (in some way of seeing it)? How about the mission, the quest, no matter how many crew/squad u may reduce, if I don’t get the requirement, doesn’t that mean I cant do the quest? Doesn’t that mean IF I have the required number of crew/squad only then I can complete the mission, isn’t that also another part of “reward”? To invite a fella into your crew/squad, and the fella MUST NOT be in another’s crew/squad, meaning no repetitive crews, how in the world blaze can we find such a person?

Lets see now, assume that we have 10 captains here
I shall name them from A to J
And “>” this symbol having these captains in the crew/squad
All of them only need 3 crew (for example)

A > B C D
B > E F G
C > H I J
D > A ? ?
E > ? ? ?
F > ? ? ?
…
…
…

Take a look at that, captain D has insufficient crew! How bout captain E? F? G…..? And the list goes on and on, can only be in one (1) crew/squad? Are you having some maths problem because the Facebook policy hit your head too hard?

The 1 mil gold is the biggest issue. The best idea I could up with was join and hire within your clan to make sure you and your clan are running at max efficiency. There is more likely to be more loyalty within the clan. And get your actual friends to get in your clan if you want them in your crew. And I would say a 10k per level hiring fee is a nice and tyrannical charge while being managable, or some sort of sliding scale because im sure an admin or someone knows the potential average of income per level. But it also depends on the amount they ‘greatly reduce’ crew requirements. Im sure it shouldnt be free for low levels because if we pay a percent then they can. It could average out ap based like it maybe the [a(AP) = ~|g(gold)|~]/level = fee … I dunno if I need to go back to math class or not but Im saying…since action points are relatively constant a gamelord can be like – okay it takes *this many APs* for this *character level* to get *this much gold* on average when money hunting. So if I want them spend say, 100aps to earn enough gold to hire 1 crew, then the fee for that level should = X

just buy ocho