plk Posted:

Yes, solo vanilla can be and is interfered with, but it’s much more difficult to watch for many people doing solos quickly at different times and interrupt them than it is to catch a raid that lasts for several hours. It’s hard not to notice a klan raid, but you have to pretty much stalk somebody if you want to interrupt their solo vanilla.

Agreed. However, with these changes raids will be restricted to 120 visits (lets call it that for argument sake). Therefore they won’t last for hours. Many users can run multiple smaller (and faster raids). This should make raiding as a whole more common then solo raiding. And with only requiring 10 characters instead of however many contribute now, it would be easier to coordinate. Perhaps we could adjust the yield of solo vanilla to 7 or 6 per dom (so 63 or 54 scoops instead of 72).

The point is, smaller raids, which are easier to coordinate and execute should result in more raids, more competition, and more strategy overall, because you wouldn’t have a windfall of scoops, you’d have an edge over solo players. An edge.

I don’t want domination to be about who has more alts and who can spend more time raiding. I want it to be about strategy and to encourage cooperation.

plk Posted:

The other methods of gaining scoops I only brought up in order to demonstrate why it wouldn’t really be effective to raid with such a small advantage coming from vanilla. If you can make up the difference with other methods and gain the advantage of stuffing brackets with your alts, that is a better strategic choice than raiding.

Agreed, but this is, and always has been true.. but if you look at the top choco earners, they aren’t the one’s dominating the game.. the vanilla raiders are. If we nerf vanilla scoops and choco (or other scoop earners) become the kings, we’ll make adjustments to keep them in check.

Again, other suggestions/alternatives are welcome. That’s why I post these types of changes publicly.

BINGEBOT 2015 Posted:

We could also just nerf solo vanilla (like I suggested in my previous post). Also I’m considering putting a limit on when you can join a raid (ex: you can only join in the first 5 minutes). That way you couldn’t cycle characters into and out of a raid.

With all these changes I don’t really see a need for a raid time limit cap.. we might just get rid of it. The cap was put in place so that one character couldn’t join and sit for hours while other members push forums. With a limit in space you wouldn’t want leeches in your raids anyways.. I would bumume Log in to see images!

No… definitely no leeches allowed. We were just talking about that in IRC. Log in to see images!

I like the idea of only joining in the first 5 minutes, too. I’ve seen talk about doing exactly that kind of cycling so that the raid can gather more than the intended 109 scoops.

BINGEBOT 2015 Posted:

It would also make the time commitment to raid significantly less and therefore more enticing for more players. There is also Lemon and Pistachio which you can get at the same time too (in both cases).

I may be in a raiding klan, but due to timezone differences and a stupid workload I’m primarily a solo player, and I make many, many more scoops total over all my alts with lemon, pistachio and solo vanilla than I would with a main character with lemon, pistachio and klan vanilla (and solo vanilla if I save my mains visits which is pretty standard), even if this change meant my alts made some klan vanilla too. This is because if you’re raiding, because of the dynamics of preparation and protecting against interference it’s usually difficult to work out pistachio runs on alt characters and fairly tough to get any lemon.

Err… that’s a terrible explaination. Lets go with some numbers, see if that makes it clearer

Option A: Solo

For an ideal solo vanilla run of 12 visits, you can get 72 vanilla, 36 lemon and a varying amount of pistachio. Let’s say about 50 ish if you’re roughly in the middle of a run. That’s 158 scoops. 10 (really very good) solo characters working as a team make 1580.

Option B: Raid

If there’s only 1 main not using his visits for solo purposes, with the rest made up of alts of other klannies helping out, they can make 96 klan vanilla, plus the solo player makes 158, giving a grand total of 1118 scoops from a team of 10.

The klan player will have 96 more scoops than his individual competitors, but the solo team makes 462 more scoops overall, and if more than a couple are in the same bracket as the klan player they will anhiliate him/her. Even if the raid characters make some lemon and pistachio scoops (they might get 15 total, each) that’s still a pretty steep hill to climb.

There’s a lot more to this, I know, especially if you get characters and klans with enough alts (and time!) to raid everyday and keep adding the same main into each raid, but that’s beyond my ability sort out. If anything, this is gonna make raids longer as you just have one main, 9 other player’s alts, raid to the limit, start a new raid with someone elses main, raid to the limit etc. etc. That’s really ****ing tedious and I doubt I’d be willing to participate.

*Edit* Made this post before talks of nerfing solo vanilla came in. I might be behind the idea if you can get it to balance well, but it’s still pretty overpowering at the moment. Also, cutting back on solo scoops is still going to hurt the klan “main” who isn’t participating, but that’s a much minor effect.

Adeptus Posted:

I may be in a raiding klan, but due to timezone differences and a stupid workload I’m primarily a solo player, and I make many, many more scoops total over all my alts with lemon, pistachio and solo vanilla than I would with a main character with lemon, pistachio and klan vanilla (and solo vanilla if I save my mains visits which is pretty standard), even if this change meant my alts made some klan vanilla too. This is because if you’re raiding, because of the dynamics of preparation and protecting against interference it’s usually difficult to work out pistachio runs on alt characters and fairly tough to get any lemon.

Err… that’s a terrible explaination. Lets go with some numbers, see if that makes it clearer

Option A: Solo

For an ideal solo vanilla run of 12 visits, you can get 72 vanilla, 36 lemon and a varying amount of pistachio. Let’s say about 50 ish if you’re roughly in the middle of a run. That’s 158 scoops. 10 (really very good) solo characters working as a team make 1580.

Option B: Raid

If there’s only 1 main not using his visits for solo purposes, with the rest made up of alts of other klannies helping out, they can make 96 klan vanilla, plus the solo player makes 158, giving a grand total of 1118 scoops from a team of 10.

The klan player will have 96 more scoops than his individual competitors, but the solo team makes 462 more scoops overall, and if more than a couple are in the same bracket as the klan player they will anhiliate him/her. Even if the raid characters make some lemon and pistachio scoops (they might get 15 total, each) that’s still a pretty steep hill to climb.

There’s a lot more to this, I know, especially if you get characters and klans with enough alts (and time!) to raid everyday and keep adding the same main into each raid, but that’s beyond my ability sort out. If anything, this is gonna make raids longer as you just have one main, 9 other player’s alts, raid to the limit, start a new raid with someone elses main, raid to the limit etc. etc. That’s really ****ing tedious and I doubt I’d be willing to participate.

How about we nerf solo vanilla back to 1 scoop like it used to be.. and we allow alts back into raids..

I still stand by the fact that raiding should be better than solo, but it shouldn’t keep solo players from playing. So some math…

Situation A – solo vanilla run

12 visits. Let’s bumume I get 2 lemon for each.. and sure, we’ll use your number 50 pistachio. If solo vanilla is nerfed back to 1 scoop I would get 9 vanilla scoops. 24 lemon. So total of 83 scoops. Mostly pistachio.

Situation B – klan raid

120 visits. Fair to bumume no lemon, but let’s say you’ll get 6 out of your 12 visits, because. We can use the same number for pistachio, cause it’s likely you can do both, so 50 pistachio. If you can get 109 vanilla, that’s 165 scoops. So you’d get double for doing a raid.

That looks pretty good on paper to me. We want to adjust it? Make solo vanilla worth 2 instead of 1.. or 3 instead of 1…

Again, I’m just saying there are options when it comes to vanilla.

Maybe I’m missing something here.. am I?

BINGEBOT 2015 Posted:

How about we nerf solo vanilla back to 1 scoop like it used to be.. and we allow alts back into raids..

I still stand by the fact that raiding should be better than solo, but it shouldn’t keep solo players from playing. So some math…

Situation A – solo vanilla run

12 visits. Let’s bumume I get 2 lemon for each.. and sure, we’ll use your number 50 pistachio. If solo vanilla is nerfed back to 1 scoop I would get 9 vanilla scoops. 24 lemon. So total of 83 scoops. Mostly pistachio.

Situation B – klan raid

120 visits. Fair to bumume no lemon, but let’s say you’ll get 6 out of your 12 visits, because. We can use the same number for pistachio, cause it’s likely you can do both, so 50 pistachio. If you can get 109 vanilla, that’s 165 scoops. So you’d get double for doing a raid.

That looks pretty good on paper to me. We want to adjust it? Make solo vanilla worth 2 instead of 1.. or 3 instead of 1…

Again, I’m just saying there are options when it comes to vanilla.

Maybe I’m missing something here.. am I?

Personally I’m fine with most of your argument here. If you can balance this right I’d certainly be more comfortable with it… as long as I’m not overlooking something, which is possible. The only thing I’d like to point out is that the last time I raided pistachio was next to impossible to gain. Trying to take larger forums, not double up on forums being prepared, running multiple alts at once (which you’ll probably have to do, since it’s very tough finding 10 people willing to raid nowadays, let alone at the same time) and keeping an eye on the 12 count is tricky enough without having to avoid certain forums cos you’ve taken them before. If there’s some interference it’s a nightmare.

I’d say it is doable under minimal interference conditions, but extremely easy to mess up. Probably only half (or even less) of the 10 raiders would manage it – I expect on the ‘mains’ since keeping track of the alts as well would be too confusing and time consuming.

markchild Posted:

It’s not easy, but if your klan is amenable to maximizing scoops, it’s hardly impossible. Nobody said we wouldn’t have too work for it. (Says the guy with 8 total medals.)

Note that last time I raided was during the mbumive interference period by a large group of co-ordinated players a while ago. It might be much more feasible now.

You can manage pistachio on one or two alts, but more than that and it is really too confusing and unhelpful to the group if there is only a particular proportion of the forums you are able to take. Especially when people interfere and take down two, three, and four forums at a time, you need to be as fast and flexible as possible with your visits, or else you will just never get back to holding 11 or 12. So sure, you can do it sometimes, but in practice, it really requires the sacrifice of pistachio in order to be able to maintain a raid. If you have a ton of people, maybe this isn’t the case, but it’s the way it works in a small group.

BINGEBOT 2015 Posted:

With a smaller raid groups though it should be easier to get 10 (or less if you include alts) users to work together on a raid, and maintain your pistachio scoops. I do think that more raid, more often, that are less time consuming would be better for all involved.

Then we could even do “raid” weeks for a domination theme, where the raid limited is higher.. or lifted.. or klan vanilla yields 2 scoops instead of 1.. once the game is more balanced we should be able to experiment a little bit more and encourage raiding! More raiding klans is a good thing in my books.

If you had 10 users, you probably could work out pistachio, or at least do better with it. But in my experience, 10 different users is a huge raiding group. I can’t remember the last time I was in a raid with that many people. The only way truly small groups can compete is by using alts and being willing to sacrifice pistachio for speed in the case of interference. You just can’t take the time to work out or double check your list of forums you can take and wait for one that is convenient for your pistachio loop. It’s kind of tough to be individually greedy and work towards the needs of the group, at least when you’re talking about small raids.

plk Posted:

Yes, solo vanilla can be and is interfered with, but it’s much more difficult to watch for many people doing solos quickly at different times and interrupt them than it is to catch a raid that lasts for several hours. It’s hard not to notice a klan raid, but you have to pretty much stalk somebody if you want to interrupt their solo vanilla.

Players have already proven this can and will be done (me included, though I just don’t want to dedicate the amount of effort required for longer than a very short period) If that’s where the edge lies after the proposed changes, that’s what will happen – the ability to play yourself, and lock down your opponents and all their alts, up to the limit of how much time and cash you want to dedicate to the job. In other words, we again have the same problem, just a different focus, again.

For that reason there still needs to be a flat limit on the number of visits a single player can deploy per week in domination, amongst all their alts, on whatever they choose – neutering another player has to have a cost to yourself. I think it would even be possible to have some kind of scoop reward for interruption as a form of compensation (half the scoops you prevent being earned?) but that would still have to come with a flat limit on the number of visits you deploy.

BINGEBOT 2015 Posted:

Yes we could certainly look into a reward for raid interruption. But we have to careful or users could just form two raids with their alts and interrupt themselves. Half the scoops is an ok reward.. Something like every 2 forums you pwn back from a raid you get 1 scoop for.. Sure, I’d consider that.

Okay, but now this goes back to the issue Ricket mentioned earlier. If there is no limit to interruption but gains from raids are further limited, why would a klan set themselves up to be someone’s scoop source if the only advantage they’re getting from raiding is 30-something scoops, bumuming no interruption? Almost any coordinated interruption and a couple of unintentionally interrupted visits would quickly destroy that lead. I suppose you could figure out how to best use that mechanic to your advantage, but if you want to encourage more raiding by people who don’t do it now, I don’t think that will work. I don’t bother interrupting klan raids, since if it’s a raid with a lot of people, that is a pretty stable situation and they can recover quickly, not making it worth it. And I really don’t want to interrupt and discourage less experienced groups from raiding. But if you get a reward from interruption, people will just pounce on whatever group finally gets it together to make a go of it. I think that would be pretty discouraging.