since I’ve played this game. I liked it alot, and came across the site recently while searching for LOTR PBEM games.
I would like to try it again, but one of the things that drove me away was people quitting. We would start with 25 positions and end up with 4 battling it out. It wasn’t much fun at that point.
But, I would like to hear from you regulars here who play. Has it gotten better? For myself, I would stick it out unless it came down to eating to live or paying for a turn. Are their groups out their that regularly stick with it when they play? Love hearing from you all…
It’s improved heaps since those days. People can scan regular ‘pick-up’ lists and fill positions that have dropped so the game doesn’t get totally stuffed up. There’s alot less of that than there used to be though.
My option was to get into a ‘grudge’ team, where team mates don’t tend to drop unless something extraordinary happens. Disadvantage for those that love the 5 neutrals is that one gets eliminated and the other four are divvyed two each way so it’s a pure two way from start.
Matt,
The game is in much better hands with the new company (ME Games LTD) that is running it now. They regularly replace dropped positions so there is minimal impact on the side who lost a player. Their customer service is most excellent, and they will correct an error that they made even if affects another player’s turn results. (which is not what GSI would do).
Since most turns now are mostly done via email instead of snailmail, you are more aware of your allies situations and can replace one that is about to drop so there is normally no impact on your side.
Welcome to the forum and (possibly) the game. I’m Clint, one of the GMs. We’ve got Stu from GSI days work with us as well (mostly doesn’t do much GM work nowadays). IMO I think we’ve addressed the situation where games have drop outs. We hardly have any games where there’s nations available (we regularly update the list and look for players to pick up nations) for pick ups until the game (IMO) is ready to finish naturally anyway.
Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. We’ve got lots of updates, software to help with turns and mapping, assistance with orders, lots of new formats of games and basically service. Hope that helps.
I think dropouts are still a real issue in the Gunboat format. I’m guessing that not needing to be accountable to any teammates probably makes it far too easy. Plus it is harder for MEGames to get replacements and most players will opt to play the 3rd nation if needed.
In the last GB game I joined plus another recent one a friend joined, there was a dropout within the first 3 turns which is just sad.
There is a minor problem with GB but I think it’s been addressed largely in:
(note for Matt I’d strongly advise not joining this format for now).
No drop Gunboat games. Although this doesn’t guarantee players not dropping it does strongly suggest it and so far we’ve only had one player drop from a no-drop game so I think that’s certainly a way forward (but demands greater commitment from players).
Us (and you guys) searching for new players. (For example in the games we’ve got running we’ve got only 2 drop outs to fill - the rest got filled very quickly - and they are in games where the end is nigh anyway I’d say).
I agree it’s not perfect but I think it’s dealt with as best as can be done at present (as usual feedback on how to improve this would be very useful).
There’s a difference between players dropping games (what Bernout was talking about) and positions not being filled when a player has dropped. We certainly can’t stop players droppng a game, but we can find replacement players in 95% of the times that it does happen in Gunboat games and pretty much 99% for other games.
