I think that most people in the end-game have figured out that ET has made a few mistakes in how he’s been handling the game balance. He’s turned the defense-heavy troll into an unstoppable brute, beefed up the emokid to the point where it can almost pwn the Geronimo boss thread, and hamstrung the camwhore. Rather than trying to set things up to become more and more balanced as new high-level community forums come out (Remember Ep1 Faux News runs?), he’s living entirely in the now.

Clearly, he needs to be shown the error of his ways.

What I ask will result in you losing out on lemon scoops and vanilla scoops, so if you’re big on domination then you probably don’t want to participate.

Here’s how it works: ET has a script running that aggregates damage information from the player base and distills it into an easy to read form. Telling us how the system works lets us game it to our own advantage. Specifically, since it doesn’t track anything like damage taken, health, or stats, we can very easily change the data it collects.

What we need is for as many people as possible to pay Haxl a visit and get rid of our offense stats, then unequip our offense-boosting equipment. You can put the points in anything you want – defense and upkeep are good choices. After that, just pwn forums as you normally would. If you want to go the extra mile (Probably because you’re bored) then try to do it with only Bash and Drool.

This will result in his damage averages tanking like the fist of north star, and him scrambling to boost clbumes. (Or realizing that his testing method sucks, which is also fine.)

Why it works: It samples 1 in 10 attacks, and averages it into the total. Since lower damage attacks take proportionately more hits to take down a forum, there are more of them to sample. An attack that does 2k damage has the same weight as an attack that does 200 damage, but it takes 10x more 200 damage attacks to get the same total damage. The average damage of one 2,000 damage attack and ten 200 damage attacks is 364 damage. If you go the bash/drool route then that would mean one 2,000 damage attack versus a hundred 20 damage attacks, for an average of 40 damage per hit.

It’s not hard to see why even a few people doing this could drag an entire clbum’s average damage down significantly.

Sadly, the script DOES break things down by level. As a result, this would work much better if players from all clbumes from across the entire 25-35 level range got involved so that we could smooth the damage curve out instead of just having a sharp drop at 35.

I’ve already sent ET a tubmail forewarning that I was going to be messing with his data collection.

“Why do this?”, you ask? Well, because players have been tweaking themselves so that they’re the most capable at taking down forums. By putting everything into offense, players have been able to one-shot most threads. Since they’re one-shotting threads, that means they take no damage and make every stat besides luck and charisma pointless. With the recent adjustments to luck and charisma, a random smattering of .moar files is enough to hit the effective luck and charisma caps.

TL;DR: Offense is the only stat that matters, so that’s the only stat people put points into.

With so many people dumping everything into Offense, it’s completely expected that everybody’s damage has taken five steps past “insane” and into “absurd”. However, since all ET is looking at is the raw damage it’s only to be expected that he intervene to bring things back into parity between the clbumes. As stronger forums come out each clbum’s specialties are going to become more important, and people will pull points out of offense so they aren’t getting one-shotted by forums with 5k pwnage and a base attack strength of 200.

TL;DR: ****’s ****ed. Go to Haxl. Keep Offense low. Use weak attacks. **** gets fixed.

Any takers?

scullyangel Posted:

I think a good idea would actually be to stop doing “random” samples and specifically target some of the known high end alt whores for data gathering. They will be running optimal or near optimal speed builds and give a true base to judge things.

I tend to agree with this point, there are a small number of players that consistently top the leaderboard times. Just datamine off of them and we should be good to go in terms of balancing the endgame players.

Rather than trying to break his script why don’t you just suggest a better way to balance things? You obviously like writing out gigantic thesis’s, why not put all that thought and effort into a fix rather than an elaborate skewering of the existing system.

Camwhores are still overpowered imo.

Level 8’s back around Ep1. They’d have some serious trouble affording Ep2 eq, so the balance there should be basically the same as it was pre-ep2.

The primary changes seem to be focusing on the last few abilities of each clbum. It’s the 25-and-up crowd that are getting hit the most by these latest balance changes.

Also, the Eq might need to be nerfed, but with everybody going hardcore attack-whore there’s absolutely no way to tell. What does it matter if an item gives +9000 defense, ego, and upkeep if the forums the person wielding it pwns can never get a hit in?

I DON’T HAVE EPISODE 2 I DON’T KNOW IF THAT AFFECTS ANY OF THE FOLLOWING BUT WHATEVER

This is my first time playing Forumwarz, never bought an alt, etc. This is my only character, so I have nothing else to compare to.

My Emo kid has…

Ego 3185

Tears 2233

Offense 34

Defense 39

Luck 12

Frugality 12

Charisma 10

Upkeep 3

I have no idea what the last 4 do, at all. I read the Wiki, and it doesn’t really make sense in my brain. What I do know is that these stats are pretty ****ed up (I think). If I’m thinking right, my Ego should be lower, and everything else should be higher, correct? Even if, I can pwn Second Wife in around 2 minutes, only because I can’t 1-hit threads. What I think the problem here is that angry posts don’t do enough damage. Whenever I get hit (Attacks always miss, I think that’s Luck, right?), it only does between 20-30 damage. When I get hit in a ratio of 1:10, and there’s 10 threads to pwn, that means if each hit attack did the average damage (25), 25x10 is 250. 3185 – 250 is 2985. I think we have a problem here. Not only should angry posts do more damage in general, threads should have more God Damned health. Whining about trolls 1-hitting? Either make everyone weaker/balance everyone, or make the opponent stronger. Those are the two options we have. The latter would make more sense in the future.

That’s what I have to say now.

Kilroy edited this message on 11/23/2008 8:28PM

SimplyTHEBEST Posted:

You have somebody named “haxlrose” on your sTalk list. If you talk to him he’ll reset your stats for you, then you can repick things.

If you want to play normally, then you put too many points into Ego. You also might want to consider putting fewer points into Tears and getting a cache of tears restoring items to use when you run low.

Upkeep makes your equipment take less damage, so you don’t need to repair it as often.

Frugality decreases the cost of items, and the first 10 points of it increase how much you get when you sell things.

Luck and Charisma improve the quantity and quality of the items you get from deliveries.

Also, somebody toss this guy a few BP once he hits 35. He’ll have earned episode 2 by that point.

Alright, thanks for the suggestions and explanation. also

SimplyTHEBEST Posted:

Also, somebody toss this guy a few BP once he hits 35. He’ll have earned episode 2 by that point.

teehee ^_^

Lord Shplane Posted:

Defense and ego will never mean ANYTHING if no thread is hitting for more than 30.

Hell, higher level forums should be hitting for 500 or more, and when we get out the “New GFoC and Faux News” they should be hitting in the thousands.

Your defense is the reason the forums hit for 30. It is also the reason you get a high percentage of misses too. If you want to get hit for more then un-equip an item.

Also, I don’t think a “New GFoC and Faux News” will be enough. Many of the current forums should be adjusted.

was Posted:

Your defense is the reason the forums hit for 30. It is also the reason you get a high percentage of misses too. If you want to get hit for more then un-equip an item.

Also, I don’t think a “New GFoC and Faux News” will be enough. Many of the current forums should be adjusted.

The equipment shouldn’t be making me get hit by 30s, and Defense shouldn’t count as evasiveness if it does now.

The game should be made so that you can wear equipment and still have a challenge.

Kilroy Posted:

equipment shouldn’t be making me get hit by 30s, and Defense shouldn’t count as evasiveness if it does now.

The game should be made so that you can wear equipment and still have a challenge.

Well unless it has been changed recently, it does. A higher defense decrease the amount a thread hits you for.

That is why defense needs to be nerfed somehow. It causes serious problems for the emo clbum.

twas edited this message on 11/23/2008 9:09PM