The 8 scoop solo vanilla and (yes, I’m in THAT Klan) INCIT chocolate were very beneficial to my bracket as a whole.

I’m not going to think too hard on any of the other changes, as they didn’t really come into play from my vantage point.

Yeah, that was a good fun bracket Jubbles.

Of course, it’s pretty obvious why you had to steal my Forumbuildr chocolate now, Orb took all the INCIT scoops. Log in to see images!

In other news: all the balance changes so far were good, and it would be nice to see INCIT chocolate made permanent whenever “test mode” is all done.

What I’d like to see though, is a non-theme week, just to spice things up. Log in to see images! Scargrrrl edited this message on 07/31/2008 3:04AM

I haven’t read all of the other comments but am adding my two cents because Scully asked me to.

From the perspective of a non-Klan player with several alts, this week and these changes were excellent and made the game much better.

I had one alt in each of the top 6 brackets so I was able to see a lot of different strategies at play. The top bracket was too difficult so I just bought some attack cards and did a bit of damage which was still fun. The second bracket had three Squidly alts which he announced early on so again I didn’t really bother with it. But in all of the other brackets the game was extremely competitive with several people (4-8 I would estimate) playing hard for the win in each. I personally thought I had three medals wrapped up but was hit by about 20 cards in the last two minutes and couldn’t play my cards fast enough to recover (damn system freeze in the last minute!). Most other weeks these brackets are write-offs by Sunday.

The ability for a solo to get 300-400 in a week and the limited cards really changes the strategy radically and doesn’t let anyone get too far ahead of the pack without risking a dogpile reaction. Personally, I think the 30 card limit is probably too low but any kind of limit is better than none. I can’t speak to the ties since they don’t affect me – it appears the Betas decided early who was going to get what medal for them and just went ahead. Does anyone know how many inadvertent ties happened in other brackets?

To sum up, even as one of this week’s losers, I heartily endorse the changes. At least in the brackets I was playing, there were more people playing and they were playing better than I have seen before (i.e. using strategy throughout the week rather than just in the last 10 minutes).

The downside to these changes is that they make the problem of having more than one alt in the same bracket even worse. If you can use one alt for pure attack and the other for the win you have an enormous advantage over everyone else – even more so if you don’t have the decency to announce it.

Scoops awarded for wins in INCIT: Should be implemented a long, long time ago. It’s a double benefit: people are more interested in INCIT (which is dead most of the time) and removes some of the spam part of it, since there’s people willing to report vandalism there. I admit I suck at motivational posters so I’m almost never in INCIT, but it’s a good change for people who are interested and is willing put effort on it.

8 Scoops per Solo Vanilla: I think it’s a bit too much, but not really when you consider the impact of Klan Vanilla. Really makes stuff interesting if everyone on the bracket is doing it. But it’s a little overkill when no one does: my troll alt, bigsillypoopfacebot, raped my bracket using 12 visits because no one else did. We need more advertising on solo vanilla.

bumhole hitting by 6: Bring it back to 10, nuff said.

Hand Limit: Wait, you actually need to think ahead of “stack as much MI/Shields as you can” because of hand limit? 100% approved. Domination was lacking some strategy IMHO, this was a much needed change. Now you need to think what you’re doing with your hand and plan ahead. Welcome change, really.

No Ties: Mixed feelings as well. I agree because it’s a new strategy: force a tie to make the enemy lose medals. I tried to do it on Headsets don’t make you a man last week, it worked (scully didn’t medal Log in to see images! (no hard feelings, it’s just an example)). But I disagree because we have a really low medal pool. Most of the time people don’t really play because they think they can’t win, and/or because they think playing to wreak havoc is not fun/worth the effort. Most Scoops/Shields Destroyed was suggested in the past, and seems to be a nice idea.

Alts out of raids: Having to “Buy Scoops” to compete is not really my idea of a balanced PvP game. Not everyone can buy BPs or win contests to create alts. If you want to see another example of how broken this scheme is, do a little search for Dark Age of Camelot: Multibox (controlling multiple characters/accounts with one computer) became so popular, people had to control at least 3 different characters at the same time to be able to “solo” PvP without being at a disadvantage. Two thumbs up for this change.

When a raid group pwns 12 forums, raid group members have to beat forums not already owned by anyone in their raid group in order to get subsequent scoops: Doesn’t really help promoting raiding. We need major changes to prevent the disparity between Klan players and Solo players, but the 12-12-12 method was attracting more people into raiding. I think there’s better solutions then this.

Well, those are my opinions. Log in to see images! Fran edited this message on 07/31/2008 7:37AM

INCIT scoops: I don’t play Incit (I already spend to much time with Forumwarz and I doubt that I’d be good at it) but I’m grateful for everything that lessens the predominance of vanilla scoops. Incit might be open for exploitation but what isn’t? It’s part of the Forumwarz universe and Orb and the others of 70CS certainly deserve some scoops for keeping it alive.

I’d like to know how many chocolate scoops dedicated Incit players made this week, but I doubt that the change had a noticeable impact on the outcome in the higher brackets. Maybe they made a difference in the lower brackets.

8 scoops for solo vanilla: Mixed feelings. Solo players could make a lot of scoops but not enough to compete with raiders (though that wasn’t a problem this week because there were no raiders outside the top bracket). Together with the hand limit it allowed for great new strategic options and fun competition. On the other hand it made the scoop gab between experienced players and beginners even bigger and – worse – now even solo players can easily make more vanilla scoops than all other flavours combined.

bumhole hitting for 6: I disagree with scully; that you can play them at any time makes them very powerful. They didn’t make an impact in the top bracket not because the bumhole isn’t powerful enough but because vanilla raiding gives ridiculous amounts of scoops.

In my bracket (Headsets) almost a dozen players made more than 300 scoops this week (without raiding!) and in the end Max Scoops was only 66. There were a lot of bumholes played in the last minutes. I’d prefer it, if bumholes would hit for 10 if you have less than 4 scoops and attack randomly one of the three players with the most scoops and if you have 4 or more scoops they hit for 5 and attack only the player with the most scoops.

Hand limit: Great change. If you make a lot of scoops early in the week you are forced to play some cards if you don’t want to expose your scoops. This way you can optimise your hand to your strategy. Together with 8 scoops for solo vanilla it offers a lot more strategical options and action within the week and not only in the last 5 minutes.

No ties: I love it! The fight for medals is much more fiercely and fun though it would be better if the higher brackets were a bit smaller – about 20 players should be right.

Keeping alts out of raids: Simply put the reason for the best dom round this season so far. Thumps up! But though this week there were no players with raided vanilla outside the top bracket nothing prevents that they pester lower brackets in the future.

When a raid group pwns 12 forums, raid group members have to beat forums not already owned by anyone in their raid group in order to get subsequent scoops: Not really a solution, vanilla raids are still broken and overpowered.

All things considered the changes are a big step in the right direction.

—- —- —-

My personal experience this week: I was in the second bracket, Headsets, and it was a merciless fight in there. I loved it!

I had 12 visits saved and completed a pistachio loop on Sunday. I made 3 successful runs for solo vanilla, so I got way more scoops than ever before. The hand limit forced me like the others to play cards midweek to optimise my hand or else the exposed scoops would have been wasted. I still lost almost 70 scoops before the last day because I couldn’t protect them, so it isn’t necessarily a big advantage any more to save visits.

The last minutes were nerve-wracking. 9 players were fighting for medals and some more were attacking just for the fun of it. My timing was almost perfect this week but in hindsight I made two small tactical mistakes which might have cost me Min Scoops. Well, we live to learn. In the end I had the second most scoops and if ercbume hadn’t killed a pistachio in the last second I’d have tied with Squidly for Min Scoops.

It isn’t surprising that Squidly won all medals – he had three alts and a lot of klanmates in the bracket, but unlike vanilla raids those are advantages of klan cooperation and having a lot of alts that I really don’t mind. Also I’m kinda glad that I didn’t won any medals – being in the top bracket would be sooooooooo boring. Log in to see images!

You don’t need to destroy the towers to prevent a player from earning medals. It’d be enough to force a tie, if two players are particularly close to each other. A tough job to coordinate that when players are actively playing their cards though. It does at least force players to be on at the end of the round, if they were sitting back relaxing and thinking they had a sure thing…

Raids really should give a much greater reward than solo playing. Finding the right players who are able to coordinate and commit to working together is not easy or quick and I’m not sure why solo players should be able to compete with that.

plk Posted:

I’m not sure why solo players should be able to compete with that.

Because:

plk Posted:

Finding the right players who are able to coordinate and commit to working together is not easy or quick

So if we can’t do it, we’re shut out of that aspect of the game? Wow, how fun.

plk Posted:

No, as a solo player, you can do well in many brackets; just maybe not the top bracket if that’s where all the klanned players end up.

So when they do well in the lower brackets, they end up in the top bracket and are just screwed for the rest of the season?

I can tell everyone here from experience just how ****ed that is.

If people were actually dropped back down out of the top bracket when they didn’t win, I don’t see how it would be a problem. It makes sense to me to go down a bracket if you lose a couple of weeks in a row.