plk Posted:

As I said:

If all these solo players would form klans, they would get the same rewards as well.

As several people have said, most of those people have no desire to raid. Hence, solo playing. If there’s a portion of the endgame that basically *requires* being in a klan to compete, then they might as well say you have to join a klan in order to play dom.

Maybe we could get something like raiding “parties”, temporary groups of people who join together to rack up a few scoops. Coordinating people to be online at the same time would no longer be a problem as you could just grab anyone online at the time. I’m sure it would be a coding nightmare though.

kittiejenn Posted:

As several people have said, most of those people have no desire to raid. Hence, solo playing. If there’s a portion of the endgame that basically *requires* being in a klan to compete, then they might as well say you have to join a klan in order to play dom.

Maybe we could get something like raiding “parties”, temporary groups of people who join together to rack up a few scoops. Coordinating people to be online at the same time would no longer be a problem as you could just grab anyone online at the time. I’m sure it would be a coding nightmare though.

actually binge has suggested raid admins and invitations, that could probably have the same functionality.

plk Posted:

Isn’t this a pretty typical game mechanic, though, where you can play by yourself, but to be really competitive, you have to join a clan and do some sort of group gaming activity? But if you’re not going to have a large and increasing user base, I can see that it would probably be better just to have solo playing so that things don’t become unbalanced too easily.

Have you read any of the conversations about vanilla ever? There should legitimately be an *edge* – but solo players should still be able to compete, even if they have to work their bumes off to do it.

As it stands right now, solo players can’t even begin to compete. I don’t mean win necessarily, I mean compete.

plk Posted:

If raiding only gave you a slight competitive edge, even fewer people would do it.

Fewer than the 7 to 10 players currently raiding? This isn’t going to be the winning argument. As a whole the other several hundred players are going to say – awesome! As far as I can see, since Brainfreeze stopped raiding, Domination as an end game is down to a core of 7 raiding E2B players and a few E2B who might make the raid, but might not.

Either a serious adjustment needs to be made or the option just needs to go. It’s like a restaurant that keeps offering haggis as the main attraction because the owner and chef really ****ing love haggis. Cool, enjoy your haggis, but the rest of your customers are going next door for a burger or a nice chicken Kiev. It doesn’t mean the guys who love haggis are wrong, it just means no one is going to sit down to dinner with them.

The point in making some changes is that it’s a better idea to sacrifice the way a very, very small percent of the players, myself included, have been playing to ensure that the overwhelming majority have fun. More competition and more interaction will encourage more players to get into the game, and in the long run that is going to be more fun than what is going on. If the dedicated raiders can’t have fun with changes, if they can’t find new ways to work together without needing 3 times the scoops other players get then frankly they weren’t very good in the first place. Honestly, given the overwhelming numbers, if E2B or any group that has a serious body advantage, can’t take 2 of the 3 medals in one of the top brackets without any klan vanilla it’s pretty freaking sad.

The way I see it each aspect of the game gives a certain scoop advantage:

Speeding forums - average of 80 scoops
Doing pistachio loops - 30 - 70 scoops
Gambling - 35 scoops
Forumbuildr - unlimited, but realistically 0 - 100 max
INCIT (when it was active) - unlimited, but realistically 0 - 100 max
Solo vanilla (depending on whether it's worth 1 scoop or 8) - 25 - 200 scoops
Klan vanilla (depending on whether a player can attend 2 or 3 raids) - 500 - 750 scoops

One of these things is not like the others. A klan player who attends one good raid and uses 12 visits earns more scoops than a solo player can earn using 36 visits. Over the course of a week a klan player should get a benefit, but taking the time to raid should offer an edge, not allow a group to predetermine winners before scoops are even earned. I can see a really reasonable raiding benefit being an extra 100 scoops a week. That is 25 extra cards or scoops to absorb attacks or to kill competitors scoops. A clear and worthwhile advantage, but not so overwhelming that it literally shuts out 98% of those playing the game. Maybe a theme week returning klan vanilla to it’s previous state of 12-12-12, so it’s less of a commitment, but putting a hard cap on it, so once the scoops are earned there is no need to make the sacrifice to raid again that week. I’ve been opposed to a hard cap for a long time, but if solo vanilla stays at 8 and we see a few new Dom cards a hard cap might not be a bad thing.

plk Posted:

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

And grinding for the DML or whatever else is necessary to become a viable solo player, honing your speedrunning skills, developing strategies to keep yourself from being a giant target for the Klans, etc., are?

spacekadt Posted:

Ok, I’m totally confused. How do you know if raiding is still overpowered if you have klans and solo players *completely* separated?

If the Klansmen routinely get more scoops (gross, not net) than the solo players in the same bracket, then raiding is pretty obviously overpowered.

I think you might have thought I was suggesting that Klans and solo players be put in separate brackets, which would make the problem moot. I was suggesting that Klansmen not get solo vanilla during raids.

plk Posted:

If people were actually dropped back down out of the top bracket when they didn’t win

They are eventually; I was demoted to Headsets last week. But that still doesn’t fix the problem.

People seem to tend to agree that raiders should have an edge in number of scoops. I don’t see why this should be the case, as raiders already have an edge in not requiring an overpowered character to get scoops. Even a Re-Re can pwn Denture Chat 12 times. The way the system should work is that weaker characters band together in Klans while the strongest characters go it alone. There will be some strong characters who will still prefer to raid, acting as anchors for the weaker ones, but that’s their prerogative. This isn’t even mentioning that Klans themselves have an advantage of security through numbers. Raiding doesn’t need to have a scoop advantage for Klans to be worth joining.

Pluvius Posted:

If the Klansmen routinely get more scoops (gross, not net) than the solo players in the same bracket, then raiding is pretty obviously overpowered.

I think you might have thought I was suggesting that Klans and solo players be put in separate brackets, which would make the problem moot. I was suggesting that Klansmen not get solo vanilla during raids.

AHHHHH ok. Yes, I did read your original comment as saying that they be in different brackets. This makes a lot more sense to me.

Right now, if you’re signed into a raid, you should only be getting one vanilla for individual… I haven’t tested that, but that’s what’s supposed to be happening. At face value, I like that better than the no individual vanilla idea – it’s not terribly easy to pull individual vanilla during a raid… especially when you have more than just a few people involved. It’s a very limited number you can actually get that way (9 per raid if you’re EXTREMELY efficient and pull it off PERFECTLY). One solo vanilla that’s not in a raid makes up 8 of those – plus any lemons or pstash the solo player pulls at the same time.

Me too. Damn e-peens.

Vuron Posted:

These new changes are definitely changing it so that solo players are much more competitive than they previously were. However there is still a major problem with the top bracket and due to the number of alts that are active in headsets and sexy hikers I think those brackets are going to be primarily contested by scully, meeeeee, myself and possibly one or two other individuals.

I agree. I really wish something could be done to fix it. If I didn’t see so damn many players in the same situation I’d feel like I just had to sit out every round. I have at least 2 alts in every bracket I’m in except the top one. I even tried waiting a day to get half of them in brackets this time to see if it helped and it didn’t.

i’ve also though a hard cap on raid vanilla would probably be okay. i mean even as it worked now if we could only pull 80 scoops per raid it would still be worthwhile, and since arranging meeting times and turns become the limiting factors, you can expect raiders would only be able to get about 240 vanilla. clearly more manageable than the 130+ we get now, but still sufficiently greater than what we got now, considering you might not have to use all your turns to make that cap each raid.