plk Posted:

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.

You get half of the reward though, not the full reward. If your strategy is to be that jackbum who only interrupts, you’re SERIOUSLY limiting your potential.

And if we have the limit in place on how many alts participate in dom to begin with, it’s not a particularly good strategy.

That said, I wouldn’t mind seeing it set so that with the limit on alts that participate, the other alts somehow don’t get counted when they pwn forums for interruption. You should still be able to pursue the peens for streaks and everything else, but you a) wouldn’t be able to help -or- interrupt raids and b) don’t get the scoop reward that goes with the peens. Kinda half-cheater style.

spacekadt Posted:

You get half of the reward though, not the full reward. If your strategy is to be that jackbum who only interrupts, you’re SERIOUSLY limiting your potential.

And if we have the limit in place on how many alts participate in dom to begin with, it’s not a particularly good strategy.

That said, I wouldn’t mind seeing it set so that with the limit on alts that participate, the other alts somehow don’t get counted when they pwn forums for interruption. You should still be able to pursue the peens for streaks and everything else, but you a) wouldn’t be able to help -or- interrupt raids and b) don’t get the scoop reward that goes with the peens. Kinda half-cheater style.

Yeah I’m ok with this too. Which is why an alt limit is also mentioned in the OP. Also, we can look into raid interruption later after we fix what’s not working with today’s configuration.

plk Posted:

What I was saying is that even without an additional scoop reward for interruption, if you are free to use any of your alts to interrupt raids but the potential reward from raid scoops are significantly limited, that already makes soloing on some alts and interrupting on others a much better strategy than raiding. Then if you essentially put a bounty on raiding by offering a reward, I’m just not sure who would want to raid.

That’s why I’m “advocating” that non-playing alts for the week not be able to interrupt either.

Personally, I don’t see an issue with klan raiding and solo raiding coming back into some balance. The top bracket right now is so completely beyond screwed up. Whatever klan gets the most active raiders (and has enough money and time to throw endless amounts of alts at a raid) in there is the one that gets to decide who splits the medals and how… that’s not fair to anyone and is really discouraging to the people that can’t get out of that hell hole.

Keep in mind, though, it’s a lot easier to keep a solo run screwed up than a klan raid and if someone’s *really* determined to keep you down, it’s gonna happen either way. I see some of your klanmates do it to people every time certain people try for the solo vanilla.

plk Posted:

Sure, if non-playing alts can’t interrupt, I think that would help to make things more even in terms of klan raiding vs solo + interruption. And regarding solo interruption, that is the best tactic we have to fight back against those who have 2 or 3 or more alts in the same bracket. Raid scoops alone does not really guarantee anything when your opponents have several alts each in your bracket. So we need to interrupt not only the alts in the top bracket, but also those in other brackets so that they can’t gain medals and further stuff the brackets higher up with even more alts. So it’s really all part of the same issue.

Raid scoops doesn’t guarantee anything? I’m bumuming you’re talking about the current implementation because there won’t be any bracket stuffing with the new proposals…

But seriously, have you looked at the top bracket lately? When’s the last time someone in the top bracket won a medal that wasn’t in your klan? When’s the last time the medals weren’t pre-determined for the week (in other words, someone actually hit one of you guys with enough cards that you won instead of courtney, for instance)? I do think that someone pulled off a coup in the last couple of weeks of season 2, but since the beginning of season 2, it’s been all you guys all the time. To the point where everyone else doesn’t even try for the most part. The best the rest of us can do is hit you guys with cards repeatedly and at least hope it makes it a little more of a challenge. Even that doesn’t get people anywhere most weeks.

plk Posted:

Yes, I mean with the current implementation, raid scoops don’t guarantee wins. Last season when people were interrupting all our raids and stuffing the brackets with their alts from their own solos, raiding wasn’t winning medals. So now we have to interrupt solos so that the top bracket doesn’t have 3-4 alts from the same person again, which is what was happening last season.

Well, I had once 3 alts in the top bracket and in another week 2. We still had to do some heavy raid interruption (both klan and solo raids) and most people outside E2B/BoD in the top bracket using all of their scoops for destruction to have a chance to win medals. I could win all medals in the week I had 3 alts in the top bracket, but it was decided only in the last minutes. Without raid interruption I’d have had no chance. Atm I have a lot of alts in the upper brackets, often 2 and sometimes even 3 alts in the same bracket, and yes, that’s an unfair advantage.

On the other hand my solo runs are often disrupted and the Board of Directors have alts in those brackets too and focus their attacks on me in the last hour of the dom round, so I think that balances it somewhat. I’m trying to medal with several alts not only because I like the challange, but also to keep my main out of the top bracket so that I can medal on him. It works for now but it isn’t easy to medal in more than one of the competitive brackets, else more people would do it. Still, the issue with multiple alts in the same bracket should be fixed.

I think that limiting the number of alts per account that can participate in a domination week would fix a lot of problems. Say you can play with only 4 alts. If you have more than 4 alts you’d have to decide with which alts you want to play once you get the first scoop. All other alts would be treated as cheaters (only for dom) and wouldn’t get any scoops and couldn’t be used for pushing forums.

People who have more than 4 alts could switch the alts they play with and save 12 visits, that’d be a big advantage, but they’d still be limited to a maximum of 160 visits per week. If they don’t use the visits of the alt that profits from the klan vanilla in the raid and use the visits to get solo vanilla/lemon/pistachio they’d have 120 visits to use for raids for the benefit of this alt. That is a lot.

Solo players probably need a pusher so they can only play seriously with 2-3 alts and it should be easy to prevent that they have more than one alt in the same bracket.

Just gonna make a quick point here, and then go on to address some of scully’s specific points.

As it stands, the best strategy of domination is “buy a ton of alts, and raid with them.” A limit of ~5 characters per account, or ~10 characters per raid, shifts the balance of power from the raiders to the current solo strategy of “medal your alts, and cram them into the same bracket”. It’s closer to the ideal situation of strategy actually being the determining factor in who medals, but it’s still pretty far off. Far closer is to simply eliminate alts from dom entirely. 1 character, per week, selected with a radio bumon on the “My Characters” page.

scullyangel Posted:

You are aware that the serious interruption you are mentioning required a dedication of damn near around the clock watching of the klan Dom board in order to catch you guys raiding.

If it took you that much time, you’re doin’ it wrong. We’re all predictable. Actually pay attention to patterns.

scullyangel Posted:

Ricket used 8 visits (on an alt he doesn’t use for anything except pushing forums down with) last night and cost my solo run 56 vanilla.

For the record, I used 3 visits during your solo. You happened to be running your solo at the same time as DoctorSpunny, who I bumume coincidentally (as it isn’t an alt of anyone I know), was running the same forums as you were. It was pretty funny.

Just one thing I want to bring up here. True, it may cost you 56 visits to block 56 klan vanilla, but that isn’t the way you or any other solo player plays. It will cost you far less visits to cram your alt into the same bracket as your main, solo a couple times, and buy some bumholes to blast those 56 scoops away. It is an effective use of visits for “solo” players to cram their alts into the same bracket to blast alt-raiders. Likewise, it is effective for alt-raiders, to interrupt solo players and their alts.

Once again, the issue here isn’t raiding, but alts. Remove ‘em entirely if you want balance and strategy. Log in to see images!

scullyangel Posted:

The number restriction is likely only going to serve to break up bigger klans into smaller klans or groups within klans.

That’s honestly why I think the number restriction in raids is a bad idea. The advantage to raiding, should increase with each person you’re able to get to raid with you. It’s coordination, planning, teamwork, and all that good stuff that we should be encouraging with more scoops. Anyone for a cap wants to keep raiding groups small, and I don’t really see any reason for this, other than “you can just buy medals with a bunch of alts” and that’s far better addressed by simply eliminating alts from dom entirely.

scullyangel Posted:

Ricket and Ronnie have both been clumping alts together a few minutes after the new Dom round starts since the new season rolled out, hell Ricket openly posted that he was going to abuse the system.

Any clumping following or prior to my thread (which, by the way, asked that the “alts in the same bracket” issue be fixed) has been entirely unintentional, at least for me.

So… instead of doing all the proposed changes, we should just not allow alts to play Dom? Or limit the number of alts?

BINGEBOT 2015 Posted:

So… instead of doing all the proposed changes, we should just not allow alts to play Dom? Or limit the number of alts?

Do the proposed changes, limit alts, prevent them from landing in the same brackets. With fewer alts playing dom, preventing alts in the same bracket should be fairly easy, I would think. Make X (or more) “top brackets” where X = the number of alts allowed to play. The top 6 brackets all look decently competitive, I would think this wouldn’t end up with the lopsided bracket type scenario we’re seeing in the top bracket week after week after week.

Solves what BoD is whining about (alts ending up in the same bracket) and makes the game fair (er anyway) for everyone who wants to play.

scullyangel Posted:

So now raiders are making a sacrifice and putting themselves in a precarious position by raiding – for 37 extra scoops – instead of playing their alts? Please. There is no sacrifice on your part because you are very aware that it is pretty solidly impossible to get alts into the top bracket. You can’t have it both ways, so you choose to make it sound like you are living on the edge. It makes no difference how many alts I play, whichever alt lands in one particular bracket might as well be invisible.

No, I’m saying the proposed changes would result in a 37 scoop lead for raiders, which is not a big enough lead to justify a raid that takes 2 hours and will see some interruption over that period, even if it is unintentional.

Good lord, I should have just made GO do epic freaking raids then you’d be complaining that there was a problem with raiding and couldn’t something be done so the alt escalation could stop. For now, I just have to say wow, looking at the top bracket right now you sure know how to make those 37 scoops work for you!

And again, the 37 scoops lead refers to the proposed situation, not the current situation. And I don’t care if you raid, but I thought your whole point was that it’s ever so much more honorable to play “solo”. Which, I don’t buy is really solo or honorable when what you’re trying to do is stuff the upper brackets with alts, which again, is just about as effective as raiding. In some cases, it is more effective than raiding, and still uses alts. But you seem to be fine with that particular use of alts. That screws over many more altless players than does klan raiding, since many alts with many solo scoops are distributed over a number of brackets. And no, it is not impossible to get alts into the top bracket. That’s exactly what you guys did last season. The best way of preventing that is from solo interruption, which is what we have been doing.

plk, I could post a lengthy reply but for now all I want to know is do you disagree with the bumumption that limiting the number of alts for domination would be a good thing for fixing some of the biggest problems dom has atm, and if you disagree what are your arguments?