Progress, or Hindrance?

For the online game I've been playing, I wanted to address an issue in the forum and propose a possible fix. In the game, you can invade a neighboring empire and plunder any one of their buildings every 24 hours as long as you can breach their defences. Naturally, the stronger players in each neighborhood decimate the weaker players and try to take their most valuable things. These valuable things are necessary to make progress in the game. Many players have been complaining for some time about the plundering option, and even leaving the game entirely, while - of course - mostly the dominant, higher ranked players are just calling the sufferers whiners. Many of these stronger players seemingly devote their lives to the game and will breach a neighbors defences and then wait up to the allotted 24-hour window to plunder that neighbor when they're best producers are done producing! People who can't play so obsessively and constantly obviously have to have larger periods of being offline before they can come back and collect their stuff. Each player can choose various lengths of time for producing from anywhere between just 5 minutes at a time to 48 hours! The longer period you choose, the more stuff you get at the time of collecting (though if you could be there to collect every 5 minutes, it would be drastically more efficient than every 4, 8, 24, or 48 hours; that's just not realistic for many people, or probably most people.)

My person experience from being on the wrong end of plundering has obviously colored my views on the subject, for if I were a much more successful fighter and plunderer, I obviously wouldn't be trying to 'fix' the plundering system to limit my plundering abilities in any way - but this isn't a bad thing. See, I've been through the game's forums and I've seen argument after argument for both sides and took both sides into heavy consideration. Some people wanted to only limit the plundering so that those who are being plundered get only a benefit and those plundering get only a limitation. I don't agree with - the 'fix' shouldn't purely help one and hinder another. Others have quite bluntly said that people who get plundered should just 'get used to it,' also not a viable option. The game specifically lays it out so that you can focus on military might, trading, or something in between, but because of the plundering option, it's much harder to be a trader or something in-between when you aren't strong enough to defend yourself, retaliate, or plunder, and they're taking your only real means to progressing in the game.

Some people have gotten it much worse than me, having it seem like a whole neighborhood is ganging up on them at once - as many as 79 other players! This is brutal and completely decimates that player's ability to progress in the game. Now, here's the big thing - it's an online game, so it should be able to be played by a wide range of people. Making it so that only a select, elite group of people can play a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE (MMO) GAME is ridiculous! Also, it's a free game, but people who spend money on extras (particular diamonds, which can be used to progress in absolutely every aspect of the game) get such a clear advantage that - even when they should be at the same level as another player - they can essentially rule whole neighborhoods of 79 other players. I've heard an argument that every MMO is like this, but every MMO I've ever played in the past let players be able to keep to themselves and go at their own pace without any real problems. One MMO that I've played over the course of a several years, I've been absent most of the time. Do I feel like I've lost the ability to play, like other players are going to murder me when I sleep or am offline, or like I'm 'missing out' because of going at my own, very slow pace? Not at all! I hop back on every once in a while and get to playing as usual. The player(s) who say that every MMO is so competitive obviously has only played MMOs that focus on competition. This game that I'm playing, however - Forge of Empires - is somewhere in-between and made with the clear intention to allow for competition, but also allow for more relaxed players. This isn't how it is in practice, however!

My idea was to add a button on every player's screen so that they can toggle whether or not they want protection from plundering. By getting protection, they sacrifice the ability to fight other players and, consequently, plunder other players. Other players, however, can still attack the people who are protected from plundering, and can gain points for defeating their defending army (default 2 of the lowest ranked military units.) This makes it impossible for players to no longer be able to gain points by battling other players, preserving the core Player-versus-Player aspect of the game, while protecting those who wish to opt out of the competitive part of the game. Now, attacking another player doesn't hurt them at all! If you defeat their defending army, their army is immediately restored and they don't have to worry about being defenceless (can't always say this about the attackers, as any units they lose they have to replace.) So by allowing players protected from plundering to be able to still be attacked, they are completely unaffected, but the players who want to continue fighting other players can continue do so!

There was a point brought up that I had already thought about that if the protection could be toggled at-will, someone might attack and plunder a neighbor and then immediately turn on the protection, making retaliation impossible. Since you can only attack and plunder once every 24 hours, I thought that it would be effective to make it so that the protection option can only be toggled every 48 hours. This makes it so that, if they come out of the protection mode to attack, they are vulnerable for 48 whole hours! If they turn on the protection again after that, then they can no longer attack other enemies for 48 whole hours! It makes it so that toggling it on and off is very inefficient, and thus can't be easily abused. I've seriously looked at this from every angle I can think of - unlike most, single-minded players - to come up with a win-win solution. It allows players to live in harmony without one minority constantly suffering and another minority constantly dominating! Everyone could also then play at their own pace with their own style. For some reason, many people can't see this, especially on the plunderers' side. They think that it would 'completely eliminate' the fighting aspect of the game, when I've distinctly tried to preserve that aspect. Most say that they attack for the points, and plunder as a 'reward' for breaching a person's defences. The thing is, if the person is virtually defenceless, then those people are getting a 'reward' without any real sacrifice, and plundering only hurts one and helps another, unlike all of the other aspects of the game that focus on win-win, or win-neutral situations. Plundering, as it is now, makes the game horribly unbalanced!

Now that I'm finally being able to see things from different perspectives - a trait that doesn't come very naturally to people like me - I'm taking flack for it by people who can't see the situation from different perspectives! It feels terribly unfair. I'm doing my best to come up with a solution that works for everyone, not simply hindering one and helping another, and people are getting mad at me for it! Now it feels like it would be better to be single-minded and fit in with a certain 'group' of people who think the same way than to be devoid of any group of thinkers and take flack from most everyone. I've read just about everywhere that people with bipolar and various other related illnesses need to learn to see from other's perspectives since many of us apparently are lacking in that department, but it appears to me that most people are devoid from being able to see a situation from multiple perspectives. If this is the case, I'm just putting all this effort into learning a trait that no one else actually really shares. It's supposed to be 'helpful and healthy,' but I feel like it's just a disadvantage in one way or another. I thought something better would come from it - a novel, balanced idea that could be appreciated from both sides. But, just as in life, the power-hungry want to remain in power, and the weak want the tormenting to stop, but no one actually does anything about either. Capitalism - a total crock. No wonder so many people hate America! (and any other imposing, power-hungry, dominating country that they aren't a part of.)