The Fleetcrashed

I've begun playing ogame again and I already regret doing so. It takes up so much of my time and I constantly have to watch it, to make sure some idiot doesn't attack me just for fun. I am in the unfortunate position of being ranked just below 500, which means I'm weak enough for roughly half of the active players in my universe to pick on me, and weak enough for half of that number to come by and completely destroy all of my defenses whenever they feel like it. I don't have the time nor the desire to always be watching my fleet, and my meager defenses keep getting destroyed with enough regularity that it's impossible for me to build up enough defenses to stop being a target. To be honest though, I probably would be just fine if it wasn't for stupid players who think they're proving something by picking on players half their rank for no profit or even losses (in the tune of 1,300,000 in total resources lost). For most, needing 90 IPMs to take out most of their defenses, to get at less than half a million in resources is enough to dissaude other players.


On the other had, it's kind of boring when no one is attacking me. And honestly, I'm even getting bored with being attacked. It's always the same kind of routine. It doesn't really make a difference, as long as I'm not being profited from. I drop down a few ranks, they stay exactly where they are, oh well. My mines are good enough now that it only takes a few days to build everything back up again, and I rise back up in rank. It's boring.

Also, the more I play, the more I understand that there are complexities to the game, but, there are also a lot of flaws. It's a very flawed game. I can see where a player could just amass a large fleet of deathstars and then not have to do anything ever again. Also, players can never have a guarantee, even when they don't make any mistakes in strategy. If a high enough player decides they don't like another player, well, there's no stopping them. It makes the game feel futile. No matter how I play, I am always at the mercy of everyone higher ranked than me. Some may say that it simulates warfare and the need to create alliances. But, it's different in that the attacking side need not feel any moral twinges. It's a game, which makes it easy for people to be cruel and grief, without any repercussions. In real life, there are war crimes. In a game, not so much. You can get banned for sending lewd messages or attacking a single planet more than six times in a day (which is actually a lot, you could attack a player a total of 54 times in a single day), which doesn't include IPM attacks.

Addionally, it's really just the players who have the most time that are truly successful. You don't really need too much strategy beyond knowing how to fleetsave if you have time. I think that makes for an ill-designed game. Reminds me of when I briefly played Ragnarok. There wasn't any strategy involved, find an appropriately leveled monster, attack it till it's dead, move on to the next one, repeat. Getting to a high level wasn't difficult, just very very time consuming. It's lazy game design.

I think I might quit.