02-28-2020, 11:52 PM
Joining existing empires has always been a tricky subject. On one hand it helps new players to play with their friends a lot, but allowing anyone to join an empire will always spell desaster.
After "open immigration" was removed, there was no longer any need for a player to be presented with a list of all empires anymore. There after it was just cleaning up the avatar creation process that saw the joining existing empires fully removed. It removed the weird empire passwords and other weird "join emperor with no cities" logic.
Now I don't see an issue with allowing joining existing empires, as long as it is implemented in a simple way that doesn't overcomplicate avatar creation process or empire controls.
One way to do it would be to copy what a few other games seem to use nowadays:
The empire has to have an empire capital, that seems like a simple requirement that doesn't take more than a little while to build. Then in their empire policies, they enable new avatar joining and get a randomly generated "password". This could be a simple UUID or similar. The emperor then give this "password" to the player that they want to join, upon avatar creation you simply have an optional "invite password" field that a player can add this "password" to. If a player creates an avatar with a valid "invite password" entered, the new avatar will spawn at the capital city of the empire who matches that "password". The emperor can then disable the option, or generate a new random "password".
This means that the player doesn't need a list of all empires while they are creating an avatar. On the avatar creation UI it is just a simple input field that can be left blank. The emperor does not have to choose a password themselves that can be guessed or accidentally left blank. This is something players might understand how works from having seen it in other games.
After "open immigration" was removed, there was no longer any need for a player to be presented with a list of all empires anymore. There after it was just cleaning up the avatar creation process that saw the joining existing empires fully removed. It removed the weird empire passwords and other weird "join emperor with no cities" logic.
Now I don't see an issue with allowing joining existing empires, as long as it is implemented in a simple way that doesn't overcomplicate avatar creation process or empire controls.
One way to do it would be to copy what a few other games seem to use nowadays:
The empire has to have an empire capital, that seems like a simple requirement that doesn't take more than a little while to build. Then in their empire policies, they enable new avatar joining and get a randomly generated "password". This could be a simple UUID or similar. The emperor then give this "password" to the player that they want to join, upon avatar creation you simply have an optional "invite password" field that a player can add this "password" to. If a player creates an avatar with a valid "invite password" entered, the new avatar will spawn at the capital city of the empire who matches that "password". The emperor can then disable the option, or generate a new random "password".
This means that the player doesn't need a list of all empires while they are creating an avatar. On the avatar creation UI it is just a simple input field that can be left blank. The emperor does not have to choose a password themselves that can be guessed or accidentally left blank. This is something players might understand how works from having seen it in other games.
