Ive played with Kronn and co, I would like to know how others see in their opinions what makes a great player ?
a great player to me imo, is someone who can play anywhere and not need his team of gold burners with him everywhere he goes before they can earn their rep, they can also attack and defend equally well, I know a lot of guys who have reps as amazing attackers that dont build any dlu/bires of their own because they want to look like great fighters, then they rely heavily on their alliance to save their citys when they get countered.....thats almost like someone playing 100% defence and calling them great defenders, when their just playing the numbers, Im certainly nowhere near a great player, but I know enough to be a good opponent, but if I compared guys today who play to when i first began playing, the standards are totaly different, both for Alliances and players, the more commercial Grepos became the more alliance hopping and gold burning happens, the servers die faster and more often than not the early growers can usually stay highly ranked throughout the server unless they get opped and chased out of it.
my time in EN though I was neither impressed or learned anything I didnt already know, but they joined a server with two premades and targeted weaker alliances avoiding any tough early fights, then NAPd with everybody they didnt want trouble with planted spys everywhere they could, then waited until the main aggressors on the server had more enemys than they could handle before they jumped in to get the takes off the back of 9+ other alliances hard work wearing down their defenses.....then half way through the server they got chased out when the backlash caught up with them, and their early size advantages no longer ensured a victory as other alliances started getting organised to deal with their brute force attack style. Kronn also targeted players with the whole alliance just because they said no to him or that he had personal beefs with great players wouldn't need to do that imo.
also a good few EN originals have played US servers, at least 3 or 4 joined late to Phi in pre built accounts they took over, and all they did for the duration of their stay there was launch mostly long range attacks on isolated citys of people they hadn't pacted with, and typically made sure they stayed pact with the only alliance in their ocean that could have hurt them.
But how do others decide or gauge if someone's a good player? too many can buy success and high abp and high rank positions, it doesnt mean their actually good players does it ? from a personal perspective theres guys in this server who had 5 citys while I was still building my first but that I have farmed or cleaned out in a few EN servers, although every server can be different and I would hope everybody no matter how long they've played still keeps improving or finding better ways to do things, but I notice a lot of people tend to link size with skill or ability, and we all at some point have met huge account players that haven't got a clue how to handle live opponents because their takes mostly consist of inactives or internals .
I know many rank 1 players that buy most of their slots and so having their size advantage helps make some look like good players, im thinking in particular of Phi were Santa Clause, and also philvgr8 both are pretty weak players, one is a total simmer but every server hes first to over the mill mark, and phil talks a good game likes to attack but cant really back it up, but has been a rank 1 on a couple EN servers too. and is always leading usually the rank 1 alliances in servers hes in Nysa EN server as example, but thats because of how deceitful his tactics are, pact nap then break and recruit anybody plus your 2 or 3 academys to keep stored internals for later to keep the machine growing, that to me is not skill or the sign of a good alliance.
so how do others determine a good player in their own opinion......im kinda off topic to the original thread, so my apologies