Board Thread:Fiction Universe Discussion/@comment-4242472-20160124202207/@comment-1370845-20160126102645

I have to agree, we've come a long way in creating flexibility in fiction that makes for interesting story and fun involvement - which, unlike these systems, were things the fiction universe was founded on: an extension of the enjoyable creativity found within Spore. Though it's been rough at times, I do feel like the GXS successfully achieved this as well, with the co-operation of all involved allowing it to play out realistically despite over-powered fictions.

Flexibility is a great solution to the problem of feeling left out, but I don't feel it's the most all-encompassing one: it doesn't solve the problem of users who just want their own big faction, and it's honestly fair of them to want what other people have. I don't really want "hyperpower" to become another thing we have to say "sorry, you can't have one of those anymore" to a user, much like galaxies and Tier 0s. To those problems, I feel the Essentials/Ultraterrestials merge of most Tier 0s (so users can have their own member of a race but not just their own godrace) and opening up most galaxies were excellent solutions to those problems, though I may be wrong. We've created realism limits in the past, such as the 200,000 colonies limit, but I really don't want to resort to that option. I feel like, if we do limit the power of certain civilisations, a good solution could be a merged alliance. I don't know how the new Milky Way or PAE work, but I know that the Polar Crystal Alliance in Borealis, from experience, largely operates as a single group, allowing it to be a key player in many events even though several of its members would get easily stomped on their own.

There are ways to solve the problem of power creep, and I feel with the experience we have - and the current, honestly much better userbase (the average age of it has also gone up by a few years :p) than in the past, we're more equipped to solve them now.