So you can get hundreds of scoops, potentially, a week from sitting on your bum?

priscilla edited this message on 10/04/2008 4:47AM

priscilla Posted:

So you can get hundreds of scoops potentially a week from sitting on your bum?

Exactly.

Ricket Posted:

Unless your klan leader gets upset that you’re reaping the rewards of the other klanmates’ work, while not…you know, contributing anything.

Still, having say, 20 people in on a raid who contribute equally still means a fair bit of undeserved scoopage. Having people consolidate into 1-2 major raiding klans isn’t good for the game either.

Ricket Posted:

I’m not quite sure how something that you contribute towards can be undeserved.

You think 100-150 scoops for using all 12 turns, or less, on 1-2 forums represents skill? You want ET to do a poll on this?

There’s a sort of unintentionally built-in mechanic against large raiding klans: the limit on the number of medals awarded each week. The fact that X klanmates won’t be able to medal each week keeps the number of raiders in a klan, in each bracket, relatively low.

I don’t think we really have to worry about 1-2 major raiding klans.

SMS and E2B as of this posting have 13 and 9 members, respectively, out of 48. Good Omens comes in next at 3. And several people ****ed about E2B in this thread I believe.

with 20+ forums coming in the middle of october, many users will go for the streak peens I guess. a chance for others to catch up on leaderboards and/or domination

scullyangel Posted:

On a side note since Ricket mentioned it, I do agree that the reduced medals work very much against any sort of Domination based klan cooperation.

Just addin’ a bit here, on that topic.

Having been able to do many rounds since these changes went in on their “Limited Trial”, and look back on previous rounds, the lack of ties has affected how klan vanilla scoops are used. What used to happen, was several klanmates would attempt to tie for the same medal. You’d get maybe 15 across the board for mins, and say, 50-ish scoops for fave, and a 110+ total. While mins and total were pretty much secured, fave was quite attainable, with careful planning and deployment of modest improvements, and a last minute forum to finish out a pistachio loop.

But as soon as ties were removed, everyone’s scoops stayed out all week, leading to a ton of meatshields, and a vanilla tower 200+ scoops tall for fave, and bigger mins totals.

Basically, there needs to be a balance that will tempt us greedy ****s with 4 medals a week and keep scoop totals somewhat vulnerable to a last minute ninja, while not, you know, having a stupidly high number of ties.

Ricket edited this message on 10/05/2008 5:53AM

Ricket Posted:

Do you think pwning forums represents skill in any way, shape or form?

I’m comparing the other scoops to Vanilla, where mbuming them are skill in the same way that knowing how to deal with computers are “computer skills.” Briefly back to point that large scale klan vanilla abuse is ok because one contributed: an office bumistant contributes to their company. Does that mean s/he should get pay comparable to the CEO?

I’m not really sure what you’re trying to suggest here. Even if SMS was into klan raiding, 13 is too big of a klan for you? (Just a note, but the klan affliations were rather different at the time of many of the posts in this thread.)

If you want an accurate representation of just how many people are in raiding klans, why don’t you scan a few other threads? Like, you know, not one where people express their opinions on klan raiding.

Looking at the top brackets was enough. I checked the top bracket the past two months, and without counting, found that E2B won 80-90% of the medals, despite having only a few members each time. I remember some mention of E2B medal domination earlier in the thread, but I wanted to see for myself. Other than this clear evidence against your earlier bumertion, if there’s a “built-in mechanic against large raiding klans,” why haven’t you defected from E2B?

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Scullyangel,

It looks like you’ve completely changed your tone from earlier in this thread, where you pointed out:

”I think it’s a shame that everyone seems to think cooperative game play is 100% equal to klan raiding. In my mind cooperative game play has to do with strategy, plotting, diversionary tactics, making a sacrifice to advance the team. The current epic strategy in klan vanilla is show up.”

What happened? E2B approached you like the mafia and told you to stfu about vanilla raiding or else? Log in to see images!

No, it’s not all of one or all of the other. You missed a lot of back log – people have been arguing about different klan vanilla options since last March. My note was written from the perspective of someone who had used big klan vanilla strategically within a small klan and watched it slowly become less strategy and more a matter of sheer numbers.

When the debate is raging people tend to scoot further into their corner about it. Of course klan vanilla takes team work. People cooperating – being willing to show up, use their visits, paying attention. Is it an epic undertaking? Not at all. The hardest part is getting people together at the same time.

Currently the reward for klan vanilla, when done to it’s most effective with alts, really contributes to eliminating strategy and team work. If a serious vanilla klan is not opposed by either another serious vanilla klan or a klan dedicated to solo/klan disruption, the medals are simply guaranteed. The players can choose at their leisure who will be winning what each week. The excessive benefit offers so much security that it takes the use of klan vanilla as a strategy and forces it to become the only viable or necessary strategy. That is what eliminates the need for klan player A to help klan player B in any way beyond showing up.

Some players love having it completely locked in and not needing to worry. I get that. Some weeks, I just don’t want to think about it. Overall though, it just doesn’t feel like a competition if no one else can compete. And yes, I think it’s pretty unreasonable to expect players to need lots of alts to be competitive. It also detracts from the team work aspect. There is nothing to “high five” at the end of the Dom week, if the round was decided on day one, you know?

Currently the only reasonable choice to combat klan vanilla is klan vanilla. The interruption that Amasius mentioned can work, but is far more time intensive than simply raiding. (You have to keep checking in throughout the day every day to see if anyone is raiding, so it’s really not a viable strategy.) But even that is just not possible without a large stable of alts to combat the first stable of alts.

Realistically alts currently aren’t just an alternative to gathering a large group, alts are far more effective and powerful. That is cool if that is the way it is supposed to be. I think it’s great when people donate to support the game, and alts are a fun way to use the BPs. It’s just a bit silly at this point to say that upper bracket Dom is a competition of scoops and destruction. Upper bracket Dom is pretty solidly a competition of who has the most alts. It’s just a simple matter of alts being able to funnel scoops into a main, and alts ending up grouped in the same bracket so that one or more can be used for crowd control while the other goes for medals.

Until awhile after Episode 2 rolls out, I can’t imagine that CZ will have the time to do anything Domination focused, so just hang in there. Maybe try joining one of the non-raiding klans and then see if there are actually members in there that are interested in trying it. The Wiki articles on klan vanilla are helpful.

Just a clarification for priscilla:

3) Clan-joined alts cannot participate in a raid, but non-clan ones can push forums, correct?

Klan joined alts cannot benefit by joining the raid to earn scoops. They can however currently be used to pwn forums that make up the 12-11-12-11-12 pattern. This is known as Slow Shuffle.

priscilla Posted:

I was going to ask about klan alts contributing. Is the invite-no-join trick required for an alt to contribute to forums pwned? If not, what determines which character gets the scoops? Thanks.

Anyone in the Raid will get scoops when the forum count hits 12. Currently klannies not in the raid can help towards that 12 forum count. But I doubt I’ll keep things that way. When we remove that “feature” I’ll likely let alts back into raid groups. Again, see the original post for more details about the proposed changes.

It’s not that we’re not considering these issues, it’s that we need to decide what will work best to make Klan Vanilla fair, for everyone.

Should there be a benefit to doing a klan raid? Yes, of course, since it takes a lot more work. Should you (as a solo player) be able to compete with someone who raids in a klan? Yes, but it should be tough. We do encourage Klan Raiding, but it shouldn’t be that you simply can’t compete if you do not raid.

So that’s where this thread comes in… proposing changes, getting opinions and trying some of the options out (either through week-long themes or otherwise).