Tattoo Nerf Suggestion. (in General)

If the minion wearing the tattoo dies, the Familiar dies along with him. Seems like the perfect balance to the killer ToJ.

(BTW, I use a ToJ too, for all the potential flamers.)

it's way to easy to die in battle though. and it takes for ever to level up a tat. but i do believe that the tats will be nerfed sooner or later. just my 2 cents.

i think, as we get stronger and start breaking several 100k pr, we'll notice that they won't level as fast, they will be very expensive to loan and rent (since the tats will be 100k+ in size). Tattoos are part of the game. Its like adding a fifth minion to cb1 and saying if the forth minion dies so does the fifth. I would like to see HP trained on the ToI,ToS, and ToF similar to ToJ.

This is a textbook case of misidentifying the problem: Tattoos in combat are not unbalanced. Jon will sprain himself patting himself on the back about how balanced they are any day now.

Of course, there will be suckers who will want to use outsize tatoos, and they are suckers. (That is why I only offer to lend my clan my tattoo when they're getting farmed rather than when they're fighting). Why are they suckers? a ToJ gets 38% of the exp that a single minion gets from a fight (2-4 minion teams get a slight bonus). Thus, people who fight with loaned or rented tattoos only get 2/3 the experience that they would otherwise get. Because rewards increase logorithmicly, most people will not get 3/2 the experience they would otherwise get from fights by strapping on a powerful tatoo. This aspect of tatoos is a self-balancing system--people who fight with other peoples' tatoos may gain more money but they pay for it with lower experience in a crazy rewards type of way.
(And yes, I realise that for Joe Sixpack (power: 1) it's worth it to strap on Steve G's ToJ (level: 91,270), but most trades are not that extreme.)

The real problem is that score/power ratings no longer accurately reflect the strength of the person you're going to fight. They strap on a tattoo, and <<bang>> instant courage, and there's no way to tell that they've gotten stronger other than by losing to them. That is what has people irked.

How do you solve this? I have few ideas. Possibly, Jon could add an option to add tattoo level to score/power in fight lists.

However, adding a clause to kill the familiar when its minion dies would not really affect the main annoyance. Admittedly, I think it's a cool idea, but it does next to nothing to solve the real problem.

Grant.

1, Are you really sure that tattoos take away from your EXP? I'm fairly sure that there was a bug like that near the start but it was fixed so that it doesn't take away your EXP.

2, Making the tattoo die when the minion dies sounds like a good idea to me. It's a way of linking tattoos power to their character's so that you can't just equip a big tattoo and suddenly fight so far above PR.

-

As for tattoo nerfs? I think it'll be necessary at some point in the next month but not right now, Steve G's tat is the biggest and whilst I'm quite happy to claim that to be the reason he beats all of us, it's not capable of really making a run for top spot by itself and without negative EXP/$$$ it's not such a big deal just yet.

Tattoos do NOT reduce the amount of experience the rest of your team gets. There is a post from Alpha days in December that says this.

Careful with the stone throwing, Grant.

And as PR increases the inability to put armour on a familiar will start to limit their life span

Score is a non-issue; equip an outsize tattoo and your score will very quickly rise to an appropriate level.

Um, I did not say your tattoo takes your experience. I said your tattoo earns 38% of experience of a single tank. For the mathematicly inclined, that means tank + tattoo = 138% normal experience. I'm sorry that was not clear in context.

Which means, like I said, if you don't have a tattoo, you're thus only earning about 2/3 of what you would otherwise be earning, experience-wise (slightly more, but approximately). Using a tattoo you don't keep has the same effect, experience-wise, as not wearing a tattoo.

I second Jon's comment about Score. It's just the same as someone equipping a massive weapon (like a x25+ elbow) and being able to now beat others twice their score...

Grant, I think I've finally figured out what you mean. I don't know how relevant it is, though, since noone in their right mind would rent or loan a tattoo unless they didn't have one of their own. The temporary increase in power, and the resulting increase in rewards, still make tattoos appealing. Or am I missing something else?

/me agrees with GentlemanLoser but there's a diference between a x321 Elbow on a 100 pr character and a level 100,000 ToJ on a 100 pr character.

The elbow can't beat everyone. If you use FB, EC or have multiple minions you can beat that elbow easily. Those are strategy changes that will make you both competetive above PR and make you win bellow pr even if the strat is designed to kill higher PRs such as yourself.
A tat however requires no more intelligence than the ability to find the Assign sellected items link and suddenly you can fight well above PR and win without your opponent having a chance. I just hate to see NW being the king of "strategy".

I think it's quite funny that the largest tank in the game is a familiar. But I don't quite know what should be done to balance them.

Make the levelling out slower at higher levels is one idea, but that tattoo is still going to be huge over time.

Make it non-transferrable is another but that will make them worthless financially, and you might as well make the maximum char a five minion rather than four.

The fact that you can't arm/armour the Jig, that the direct damage tattoos have no hp and that you can only equip one per char add some balance but I guess we are left with the same problem as CB1 - High NW will dominate in some way. Shame.

How is high NW dominating a shame. It's that way in real life. The solution: bring your own NW up.

Steve_G: have you spent any USD on this game except for supportership?

What if there was a NW penalty for loaning or renting an item? Since any given loan can add 5k NW, why not penalize the tattoo 2k for loaning or renting. Or, this I suggested in CB1, have depreciation in value. Say tattoos lifespan isn't that long a start slowly dying after a period of time (actually i suggested that with all items since there really is no item that can last forever and only get stronger)

Just because nw dominates in real life doesn't make it a good thing! It takes no thought or imagination to pump money into a weapon that can take out all attackers. But that's a little off point.

I like the idea of items 'dying' so to speak but perhaps it would be easier to cap how much can be spent on them. That would force people to be more creative in how they use their weapons, more creative in thinking about strategy. It would also mean that weapons/items still had lasting value but would not become overpowered.

Steve's tattoo just didn't accidently get that high. It wasn't as if he tripped and found a nearly 100k tattoo under a rock. He worked hard pimping it out and taking advantage of others short-sightedness. He also has put in a lot of BA himself (including buying ba). The rest of us may be jealous for not being as aggressive or as quick thinking as Steve, but that doens't mean that they are out of balance.

Some of you guys are nuts anyway to think that we need to judge everything by the first few weeks of CB. My guess is around 1 Million PR the lack of armor and ranged on that tattoo will make it only a minor meat shield. Some of these big MM teams will probably kill it in one round. Wait till things mature before crying out for nerf.

Think about your team in comparison to CB1, we are nowhere near to the point we can see the big picture.

Whoops, you're right about people not having tattoos. I've always seen the 470+ ToJ and thought they were about as common as Republicans in Utah. But I just checked the # of users and it appears a only about 45% of users have tattoos.