There are basically two ways that games traditionally create player attachment to characters - on an emotional level (the character has or develops some story that makes the player attached to them); or by making the character more valuable as you progress through the game (new skills, etc) - or, of course, by some combination of the two.
My suggestion would be to allow characters to gain something as they go along (experience; abilities; skills; or some thing of that sort). When you create a new character it's a blank slate but becomes more valuable as you go along. Then players wouldn't consider characters to be so disposable and spamming new characters wouldn't be an easy option.
I'd suggest things like giving characters a bonus to settlement production; a bonus in battle; and so on depending on their past actions - i.e. charcters actually have to do something to earn experience (in the form of players clicking options while playing them). They wouldn't gain experience just passively. That may mean that people who really focus on development of a few characters might then actually gain advantages over players who just spam large numbers of disposable characters. Possibly, you could also make it so that experience/skills degrade if they are not used for a time. That might somewhat guard against the creation of super-characters who become amazing at everything by being rotated through different duties so they max out experience in all areas.
I'm all for stats, but I know a few people have been against them. This is something we'd need to sit down and really figure out before we start implementing them. We'll need some sort of stat system before I implement duels and tournaments and the like though. Personally, I'm for some sort of infinite-yet-diminishing system, where 10 vs 9 is a greater gap than 100 vs 99 which is itself a greater gap than 1000 vs 999. But I'd also be liable to code a chance for a ridiculous victory (skill 1 triumphing over skill 1000) just because.
Also, it would be a help if the trait system actually worked. Part of the reason it was introduced was to make characters different from each other, but it does no good unless fully implemented.
True. I think if I touch the trait system though, I'll likely start over from scratch on it. Add more traits, make it more diverse. Code in some special combos. Stuff like that. Might even add some special ones that are regularly obtainable.
Maybe having more achievements would help?
I'm game. Tell me what I should make an achievement! A lot of them are just one-off checks, so they should be pretty easy to do.
Focus on things that 'build' character./family legacy.
eg. a family crest and related.
make that cheaper and more encouraging to get.
It adds more diversity if people can have banners.
All are nobility or first ones after all, not bandits, and most houses had some banner/shield/crest identification.
Houses having crests will be in the next update. This code is already finalized and tested.
Houses could perhaps marry to get more benefits of some sort. eg. to have a 'kid' in the family you need marriage between houses, else its just another independent character.
I'd like to not add any complicated features with the initial release, as it'll just draw out the development time needlessly. As it stands, you can make and edit a house, apply to join a house, and manage applicants to your house. Down the line, I'd like a way to merge houses, create cadet houses (already in the code, actually), split cadet houses off into their own (family feuds). There might even be code to auto-assign new children to a house upon creation, but I'm not sure. I'll have to look.
I used to be exited for this game and was even responsible for introducing some of the game's original hero funders when it started, they no longer play. We dont even talk about this shit anymore. Its a bad topic.
I hold on, hoping for better days, but like bmaster, its been years of no improvement.
I consider deleting often. Losts a couple of large realms and many friends in this due to powerplayers storming through.
It's unfortunate that you think there's been no improvement. Unlike BM, which has 3-5 people coding, I'm a one man team here, but I've managed to keep pace with their own developments. I will admit, a lot of my work has been refining existing systems, or laying the groundwork for future ones, rather than big, flashy new features. I taught myself PHP by coding this game, and as a few people will attest, I've gotten a lot better over the nearly 2 years I've been at it.
At some point I plan on inviting old players back to the game to check it out again, when I'm confident they'll enjoy it and immediately be able to tell it's not the M&F they remember, but something better. We're not there yet, and won't be for a while I imagine, but people sticking around to help me figure out what to do (or even coding themselves, if they know how or want to learn), will help us get there sooner.
The game only rewards powerplay or pay to win for those spending credits.
you then have more nobles and towns than many free players and can can overpower any realm alone even.
This has chased many of our players away from the game and left horrible review or taken down good reviews actually bothering to mention the game.
Picture this scenario for newbies. you start off in some realm, or alone and are given say a town to manage. great. A year later (real time, if you stuck around) that town should be somewhat ok with a few buildings, maybe walls.
You may have had a battle or two.
Then comes a power player wih multiple characters and takes over your towns that you built up because he has many more towns and resulting troops (paid account) vs. his few free-play settlements.
Sure you could spend another 2/3 years tryng to get towns back and such, or just quit game and go play something newer that came out - so many choises out there and often free games handed out on occasion if you know where to look. Why bother with this really?
I do want to create a system that makes it harder to lose settlements. So people aren't so quick to lose all they've invested. I want players to build stories and lore for their lands, and I want that to be possible to lose, but not easily so. If you quit, in time, your mark will be erased, but if your town is invaded, well, why should it just magically forget you? That's just wrong, but there's no silver bullet to fix it, as far as I can tell. I'm tempted to add an occupation system, that grants occupiers certain privileges while maintaining the previous lord's role. My concern with that though, is you'd need some mechanic to eventually force your demands on an opponent, because if not they could simply just refuse to ever accept your terms (and thus prevent the attackers from EVER gaining a true lordship).
Summary: by all means, reward paying customers with props or things (maybe a special building/palace) for their characters, but not with 'power' or such that unbalances the playing field or you'll only have their clones left in the end. Go back to the drawing board and create a 'fun' game for all. And wipe the dungeon minigame, nobody plays that.
Hm... It'd not be hard to bring the character limits down, and grandfather existing accounts in to their current ones, but doing that means the people who want more will just make more accounts. And I'd prefer to not have to spend my time hunting people with more than there allowed number of accounts.
I like the dungeons, for what it's worth. And they function, so there's no real reason to remove them. Tempted to code some unique achievements in for them, actually. I'd love to see someone fight a dragon, to be honest.