SimplyTHEBEST Posted:

Now, lets take a look at how hard it is to pwn PrayPal. IIRC, PrayPal threads have between 2k and 3k pwnage. 3x that would be 6-9k pwnage. It does about 20-30 damage to me, so it would instead do 60-90 damage at the 3x modifier.

I don’t agree with this analysis. If you multiply the pwnage of the thread by three and also multiply the damage the thread does by three, you’re multiplying the damage that you take in pwning the thread by a factor of nine. Since by multiplying the pwnage of the thread by 3, you make it so that players take three times as long to pwn it, so they get hit (on average) three times as much. So if the damage you would take were unchanged, you would already be taking three times as much. But if you also triple the damage the thread deals, you are taking three times as many hits at three times the damage, and 3x3 is 9.

Increasing the pwnage or increasing the damage is both fine. But when you do both, you have to realize that the difficulty increases compound each other. So if you really want forum A to be three times as difficult as forum B, doubling the pwnage and doubling the damage dealt by forum B for forum A would be a much more reasonable way to do so, as it results in only four times as much damage taken as opposed to nine.