Plundering is just part of the game, if you don't like the game then don't play it. Anyway what you lose from being plundered can quite easily be plundered back.
Reminds me of a quote from a picture off the internet using Dungeons and Dragons alignments to describe different kinds of players (in Call of Duty.) Under 'Lawful Evil,' (the same alignment for devils in D&D, by the way), the quote is, "Grenade launchers are a part of the game. If you don't like it, don't play." I'm more like the 'Lawful Neutral,' where the quote was, "Requesting air support! I repeat! Requesting air support!" Otherwise, I take a less active role as 'True Neutral,' the quote for that one being, "..."
Anyhow, notice how I like to remain somewhere in the middle. Most people lean toward one of the extremes. I think there should be more centrist rulers in the world, but it seems like that would never happen because they aren't extreme enough for people (e.g. extreme left-wing, liberal democrat.) Now, why do people in these online games (of all games!) need to be so extreme? If any game is to be well-rounded and adaptable for a wide variety of players, it ought to be the online ones! You get such a bigger audience interacting with one another, it seems direly important to maintain balance and stray away from extremes.
I think that, if people are really so adamant about all this plunder-palooza, then they should only be able to plunder half of what that person was manufacturing and leave half for the player to collect (or if two attack and plunder the same building, then it's all gone), or the percentage of what can be taken from a producer is equivalent to how many units they still have intact (2/8 is 1/4, thus 25%, and 25% of 20 iron, for instance, would be 5 iron.) After all, if they really take such a beating and lose so many people, how do they plan on carrying all of that plunder off with them?
Don't ignore the open wound - it'll just get infected. Best to treat the problem as swiftly and effectively as possible instead of letting it fester. People give way too much credit to the 'theme' of the game to justify what are simply poor or excessive actions and views that don't apply in the real world. The game might be based in eras of the past, but does that really mean that each player must make themselves equally primitive and barbaric? And I'm really shocked to see some of these people deemed 'altruists,' as they blatantly contradict the very definition of the word. That most certainly doesn't apply to everyone, though.
But please, people, stop being narrow-minded. Place yourself in other people's shoes, grow a heart with some empathy - or sympathy if you can't achieve that - and maintain at least some degree of civility. If you really, really are so adamant about attacking and plundering like a war-frenzied viking, then maybe you should play a real war-game, not this. Or if you really don't want plundering or attacking, play Castleville!
(Plus, it's a bit embarrassing to admit, but I couldn't find the 'Ideas Section' for some reason and so just posted it here, figuring a moderator could just move the thread if need be. Could it be that being signed out makes the forum somehow appear differently signed out than signed in? Hmm... But I think that the 'Feedback' section would've been more fitting as they both encourage an open forum of discussion of both feedback and ideas.)
I just thought up another idea! Perhaps plundering could be removed and, instead, players are awarded goods from the PvP tower. That way, pure military might can get an income of goods without having to be at the detriment of others. The competition, the PvP, all of that remains, and I've heard most people who are for plundering that the only real reason why they would need to plunder is because they don't produce goods themselves due to investing in military units or to 'make up for' having to replace units they lost when attacking another player's city. I think this sounds like an 'everybody wins' sort of idea. I mean, I was sure that's how my previous idea was, but people seem to be utterly unable to change their angle hardly one bit.
The amount of goods awarded would of course go in a grade from 1st to last place. 1st place gets a much larger sum of goods than last place (or the places that fought but didn't win any medals.) Instead of accounting for how much they would lose out from not plundering, they create averages in respect to a pure trader. A pure trader probably could easily produce 80 goods a day, and for 3 days that would be 240 goods (or is the tournament 4 days? in which case it would be 320.) The top ranked person would then get a total 320 goods from their age (e.g. an Iron Age Champion might get 64 limestone, 64 ebony, 64 iron, 64 cloth, and 64 jewelry.) This could make up for days of attacking, I think, and you would also get medals! It would increase people's urge to do PvP, I think, as they could potentially get both medals and extra goods (or goods they cannot manufacture.)
To figure the lower places (6th, 7th, 8th... and so on) you would just divide the 1st place value by the individual's place (e.g. the person in 5th place would get a total of 64 goods because 64 is 320/5.) That 64 would then be divided by 5 to figure how much of each good from a given age he or she receives (13, rounded up.) Obviously each game has it's own system for rounding numbers - some doing round up at all and require an individual to have whole numbers, others round to a degree, some from 0.5... I think it could be easily sorted out, but I think that rounding up for each individual good (13*5, or 65 goods) because then they aren't losing out, and it wouldn't be detrimental, anyway, to through an extra one a player's way.
