Open Question for Sentinels of Valinor (in General)

I just really have to know...

So are y'all just planning on restarting characters over and over again to stay at the top of the clan ladder? If so, um, why? Just to stick it to Hellfire and Brimstone? I am pretty sure they don't care, as their rewards are still basically 14-15% at all times.

Or are you guys making cash off raising characters and selling them? Maybe I should pay more attention to character sales...

If it is fun for you, then more power to you. I was just wondering if there was some sort of master plan I am missing. Do none of you aspire to have a character over 100K score?

Good question. It seems they have a high turnover of characters, always having their people under 50k(ish) score.

That is the perfect way to be #1 in clan scores and ranking. But, like you said, it does nothing for anyone's long term characters.

I'm curious too. Don't get me wrong, hats off to you guys, you've held top spot for a while now.

Heh. The other half may be getting the full 10 BA ..

If you can keep passing on along the same $1mill ToJ each time you re-start a char, and have a low PR char whomping on much higher ones, the XP and $CB rewards are pretty nice, combined with the clan bonus.

And you get 10 BA while the 20-40k pr guys you beat gain only 8, you have that additional number of clan points to raise over the day before even buying BA (I don't know if the number of BA you can buy also floats with your replenish rate, but if so, then you can also buy more BA).

Not very sporting, but hey, whatever floats you man.

/me gives everyone some cheese to go with their whine.

Well, I cannot speak for the clan itself, nor for any other members, but I'd like to share my thoughts on the subject. Until yesterday, I was a member of Sentinels of Valinor. I left the clan because RL obligations were starting to make it more difficult for me to support the clan in the manner that satisfied me.

"Not very sporting, but hey, whatever floats you man." While Chet and Todd have made some pointed questions, I don't believe that they have been disrespectful. I consider the comment by sasquatchan to be disrespectful. Different people play this and other games for different reasons. They have different goals that they hope to accomplish in CB. Some of those reasons include reaching a certain PR, reaching a certain Score, reaching a certain NW, reaching a certain amount of cash on hand, etc. Some of the reasons involve reaching certain rankings in the stats tables.

And one of those reasons can be to be involved in a clan that reaches a certain ranking in the clan tables. That is what I aimed for in SoV, and what I think a lot of the other members were aiming for as well. It is not about the bonus by itself. The difference in bonus between the top 3 is really fairly minor. It's about the satisfaction that we receive for maintaining either number 1 or number 2 among the clans for as long as we have. In order to achieve that goal, we have adopted a clan strategy that calls for sacrifice in other areas of the game, such as long term PR gain. The satisfaction that we derived from our clan ranking balanced out those sacrifices, in my opinion at least.

Bubo hit the nail precisely on the head. While I don't believe Todd and Chet are being disrespectful, I certainly think Sas is and I'll just quote the dictionary here for a second:

game
n.

1. An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime

Entertainment or amusement. Therefore, if I find it entertaining to make a char who uses 50% DM and 50% AMF, what gives you the right to be condescending? If Valinor wants to have a bake sale over CB2, so be it. As long as they are having fun, that's the only thing that matters.

/me gives everyone some cheese to go with their whine.
--Favorite 70-80's Music, 1:13 PM EST

Hmmm? Neither Chet or I were whining. We really are curious, since our reasons for playing CB seem to be to develop a long term character. I admit, there are a lot of things I don't "get", (tourney's being one of them), maybe this is one of them - someone wants to play just to be a member of a top clan, but never developing a long term character.

That's why I am curious.

Bubo says:

"It's about the satisfaction that we receive for maintaining either number 1 or number 2 among the clans for as long as we have. In order to achieve that goal, we have adopted a clan strategy that calls for sacrifice in other areas of the game, such as long term PR gain. The satisfaction that we derived from our clan ranking balanced out those sacrifices, in my opinion at least."



This is my reason precisely. As a *side effect*, the constant switching has a lot of tactical benefits to this end, which I'll leave as an exercise for the reader to discover. Some are obvious, some less so.

For me, raising 4 chars at 1/4 the rate is the same as 1 "main". The game isn't any different at any point in the "ladder" for me; you fight some people, you stop fighting the ones you lose to; wash, rinse, repeat. But that's me.

As for "sporting", well, I don't find it "sporting" to put a bunch of real USD into the game to beat people you wouldn't otherwise be able to, but to each his own.

I was mostly reacting to the third post, chet's and your whines were minimal.

To be honest though, I'm not really sure what the question is. Basically, not everyone wants to be the best individual character, is there something questionable about that? I personally like playing with multiple characters and playing with different strat ideas. I tend to unlearn and fire minions alot as well. Myth just happened to find 5 or 6 people that are content working with multiple characters at once, rather than trying to get one BIG character.

If you want disrespect, I can crank up my rhetoric. Instead, I'll simply opine.

I stand by my not sporting comment. Yes it is a game (and please, dictionary quotes, c'mon you can do better).

Do I really care ? No. Do I go out of my way to trash talk clans/random strangers on the internet ? Did I even pick out anyone, other than offer random observations about a behavior that could be done by anyone on this game ? Read my comments, and you'll see, no. Heck, I don't even know if the commentators are members of whatever clan we're discussing, or just random folks commenting. (Yes I could easily click a link to figure it out, but I really don't care, despite the length of my words)

Are there lots of things one can do in this game that are perfectly legit that the public opinion is mixed on ? Yes.

Is this one case ? Perhaps. I don't claim to speak for anyone but myself. I've said in CB1 that starting a new char and dumping your $125m NW of stuff on it is lame, and I'll stand by that (I don't even remember what clan did that, but I recall it happening).

Do I think this is along those lines ? Yup. And for something as intangible and abstract as a #1 clan ranking on a game played over the internet ? hoo boy. Golly misplaced priorities, batman.

Now, to be fair, yes, it's the "arguing, internet, special Olympics" comeback time. Do I lose sleep over this ? Hardly. Do I make a value/moral judgement on this ? Yup. Lame. Legal, within the rules, but not very sporting, and to what end ?

Hey, we all like a little distraction and maybe some competition. But from the comments, it sounds like some people have too much self worth tied up in this, if they're going to smack talk someone who says they are lame.

Sas, once you actually understand something then you can offer your view on it, until then anything we say is like arguing the colour of the sky with a blind man. From what little I could bare to read of your post it became obvious immediately that you had no idea of what you're talking.

It boils down to this:

Some people want to have the best character,
Others want to be the best camper,
The SOV want to be the best clan.

I really see no problem with it.

As with all strats there are drawbacks and benefits.

Case Closed.

I think what they are doing is okay, they wanna be the top clan forever, thats fine. I'm sure the rest of us will be alright with it too, especially when we are all at the top of the PR chart, and forging starts to catch on again.

Myth, you're a bright guy. Your strategy posts show a good insight. So I'm not sure if you're trying to be snide, or have a reading comprehension issue, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and try to spell it all out here.

With CB2, the BA refresh rate is different. I'm nowhere near the top and yet I still have an 8 BA refresh rate. In CB1, it took me almost 9 months to get there. This may be due to the newness, and the scale/rates are the same except there's no run-away guys at the top or, to keep things fair, the refresh rate goes down faster (to give new players the chance to be competitive and catch up). Regardless, that middle of the road (and up) players have a low BA refresh rate is the important fact.

If you retire or exclusively play a new char, you will have the full 10 BA refresh (up until that new char hits whatever the limit is. I don't know at this time).

If you have a new char with high end gear (from rentals or inherited, whatever -- I've seen 1k pr guys with better scores than my piddly 40k), that new char will gain good XP and $ from fighting up.

If you toss clans in there, and clan points, and ignore buying BA (for the moment) such a new char should, over the course of a day (12 hrs playing, for argument), have the chance to earn 12 BA/hr-refresh*12 hrs*2 clan points/ba = 288 (or 432 if all 3 pointers) more clan points off the top.

Now, that's being generous on playing 12 hours a day. Lots of folks play much more than that.

Now, combine that with I dunno, 4 clan members, and you are looking at 1152-1728 points additionally per day than an established clan could make. That's enough to put you firmly in bonus category, I think.

I haven't verified if the max BA one can buy in a day varies with the BA refresh rate, but I think it does. My max buy is down from what I recall, but I'm hazy. So I'll just skip buying BA, but note that a new char will have it cheaper if not only more.

Doing so is perfectly with in the rules. Doing so can quite easily give a dedicated group/clan a way to stay high in the rankings.

So, what have I said here that is incorrect ? Please, enlighten me, I've made no judgement on doing such in this post, I've called no clans or players out, made no insults, so please, indulge me with where I'm wrong, or where I've done some bad math, made false assumptions, what have you.

Caught one error. Nuts.

I was comparing doing that to myself (and any other characters in the 8 BA/10 minute rate). A new char will gain 12 BA/hour more than such players will.

I suppose for completeness I should have shown the comparison across the board. I have no idea what the BA refresh rate is for high level players.

The take home message being that the gap widens more, the lower/slower your BA refresh is.

The BA refresh rate for the high level players is 7 BA per 10 min.

Favorite, I wasn't whining in any way, shape, size, or form.

When I am curious about something, I ask questions. That is how I learn.

Basically, I tend to assume I am always missing something (because that is usually the case), so I was hoping to be enlightened about a "master plan" other than just being the top clan.

Now that it has been verified that SoV simply enjoys being top clan and that is all the deeper the rabbit hole goes, my curiosity has been sated. I appreciate everyone's time. I know simply being top clan ad infinitum is never something I will be interested in, so it is not an issue I will waste any more biological CPU time upon.

OK, I'm going to take this bull by it's horns. Sasquatchan, I am not going to fault your logic, but you have completely missed the point in regards to the comments directed at you. Your logic, although it has a slightly faulty conclusion due to inadequate base data, is correct. The inaccuracy lies in the fact that we do not get a full 10 BA when we switch to another character, except in the instance when we create a whole new character from scratch (which is rarely done after the initial five are built). In point of fact, the BA that I accumulate when switching chars is consistent (which leads me to believe that BA calculation are based on per Player as opposed to per character, perhaps an averaging of PR across characters), and my costs and available BA for purchase remain at the higher rate, even when switching to a lower character.

So, to return to my point, we are not questioning the logic behind your assumptions, just some of the data points. The reason why you were singled out stems from attitude that you convey in your posts. Whether intentional or not, you come across to me as someone who views others with disdain, and this impression increases to the point where I am led to believe that you view anyone who disagrees or dislikes you as being of vastly inferior intellect and character to yourself. Again, I emphasize that this may be unintentional, but it is how it appears to me. Your word choice, your "rhetoric" as you put it, tends to the inflammatory and comes across as being disrespectful and/or insulting. Furthermore, in the two encounters that I have had with you, you approach the subject with a view that is so far in the extreme that it is hard for me to follow your logic because your start point was outside the original scope of my own view. I was looking at one part of the problem/solution, you were looking at another, but where I conveyed simple confusion, you became condescending because I did not immediately see where you came from. Logic can be hard to follow if you cannot see both start and finish of the sequence.

In this instance, you began by indicating that the SoV strategy was "unsporting" and followed that observation with the statement "hey, whatever floats you man." I'll be the first to admit that any statement can be taken in a myriad of ways, but to me and the others who posted regarding it, it was viewed as calling us cheats and that we have to get our jollies by cheating. To explain why I see it that way, I must express the view that "sporting" behavior is following the rules of the situation and adapting to maximize my performance in the situation, and "unsporting" is to step outside of the boundaries of the game in order to employee a non-situational solution to advance myself in the situation (i.e. using a steroid to boost physical performance, or that lovely incident involving two Olympic ice skaters and a baseball bat). SoV views themselves as doing the equivalent of a sport athlete who forgoes certain social events to spend more time training for their sport. Your comment came across to us as claiming that we were using steroids to get the same benefit without having to forgo any activities. This is the basis of why I and a few others feel you were disrespectful.

When we commented on our view that you were disrespectful, you responded with an attack that attempted to use logic to justify your perceived attitude. While the logic might have been enough to carry your argument, you continued to display an attitude of condescension with your comments of "hoo boy. Golly misplaced priorities, batman." and "But from the comments, it sounds like some people have too much self worth tied up in this, if they're going to smack talk someone who says they are lame." Again, it's not your logic but your attitude that is causing offense. Furthermore, you go to an extremist view yet again. You claim that we called you lame. Favorite 70-80's Music made a light hearted comment about whining that can be seen as an attempt at humor without too far of a stretch of logic. I called you disrespectful. BrandonLP called you condescending. No where did we say you were lame or indicate that you were crippled in any manner beyond social interaction, or attempt any character assassination beyond the disrespectful and condescending comments. I could continue with individual sentences that seem to contradict your attitude, but I think Mythology summed it up nicely. The majority of your response to a comment about your attitude is a defense of your logic, and this makes it appear that you do not understand why we took offense to you. Admittedly, Mythology was condescending and rude to you in saying this, but I think it is fair to state that two posts of your attitude could have affected his attitude towards you.

Your final post(s) are, as you said, without insult or attitude or targeting people. It is an explanation of your logic, and if you had present it this way in the beginning then I doubt that any offense would have been taken. The only fault that I can find is that again, like your second post, you are responding to comments about your attitude with a defense of your logic. Your logic and math, aside from the flawed base data that I explained above, makes sense and appears to be valid. However, you have missed the point as to why we are offended.

Which brings me to this reply for you. I want you to understand that it is not your logic that we find fault with, it is the attitude that you present when you discuss your views.

I've said my piece on this. Sasquatchan, if you wish to continue discussing this with me, can you take it to CM's with me so that we don't bump this thread with private arguments?

Sas, unlike Bubo that said many things right. I was pointing out a single point, you didnt have a clue what you're talking about. I was annoyed at your tone, I was annoyed at simply what you said. So when you deem to say it's not sporting or that it's a grey area in the rules or something you really ought to know what *it* is. So arguing with you was pointless, this is how it is to use an analogy;

You're like the friend you take to watch a sport they have never seen before that you know a lot about, then after the game they will start arguing with you about something like they have a clue what they are talking about. So in other words, learn the game before you start talking tactics.

Myth, I worsened the signal to noise ratio in this thread. In doing that, I've done something that irks me when others do it, so I've made myself to be a hypocrite. I stooped to namecalling and bad judgement, among other things, rather that sticking on topic.

I consider that I've made peace with bubo. He was quite correct in what he had to say. My delivery was lacking.

I've been corrected by several that have clearly stated that's not what ya'll do. Weasel words: I didn't say you did. I said that's a reason someone may continually shuffle new chars into a clan as a way to earn more points. I have no way or desire to track what ya'll do with your chars or who goes in/out of a clan. Far too many other interesting things to look at.

I consider my first post a legitimate answer to Chet's question of why anyone would do that, not if that's what you are doing. I've seen enough noise about "haters/jealous/whatever" in regards to any clan postings to know to try and avoid that mud pie. As I said above, I made it worse by answering those posts in an antagonistic manner.

About the only leg I have left to stand on is that what I originally posited is possible -- stacked low level chars with a higher BA rate is one way to earn more clan points (for an admittedly unknown but probably short time period -- until caught up) over other players.

I wouldn't be surprised of holes in that, so I repeat my request for correction. (I'll cop to that if "everyone" did it, then there'd be no BA advantage)

I admit and have admitted that the 'not sporting' comment was a judgement call -- my personal opinion. I doubt my synonym of 'cheesy' or 'lame' would have been any more or less appreciated. So be it. To my knowledge, so long as doing what I've posited is actually possible -- new guy, stacked equipment, free clan points due to BA difference etc -- I will continue to think it lame or not sporting of any who'd adopt such a strategy. You've shown you don't do it, I never said you did (weasel words).

Bubo, as a sports fan I disagree with your definition of 'sporting'. In most team sports that I follow, it is perfectly within the rules to have a quiet word in your opponent's ear to put him off his game. I don't think anyone would call it sporting, though.

/me pipes in "im in a championship team!"

:D Woot!

they just making a bunch of little farms for nOObz to run into..Thats half the fun is making Characters little people can't get around :)..gee whiz I'm a veteran nOOB Killer and I still like it more than anything...I need to make some more Dirt Farms Be Right back ( who
did I leave my shovel buried in ? )..oh there it is!!!!

Wow Bearded, that was incredibly constructive and added to the discussion in this thread. You sure do know how to speak positively.

/end sarcasm

I supposed we could all make fun of you for having a character spread across nearly every stat there is, but you don't see us doing it, do you? Be civil, seriously, there's no need to talk crap about people for the way they play a game.

laugh all you want. our strategy works almost perfect :D

If you're gonna laugh, laugh at Bearded Dragon's user pic. That or barf.. I'm not sure which I'm at yet.. Maybe laugh till I vomit.

FYI your BA refresh rate is based on your biggest char - when I swapped a farm in I needed to retire my main to get from 8 to 10 BA per cycle. And also FYI the max BA I could purchase also went up.

Although incidentally I'm back to 9 BA per cycle in just over 24 hours of play with a new character.

G Maximus:

BA refresh rate is based on the pr of your current character. i had a bigger character (getting 8/10) and a smaller character (getting 10/10) when i was fighting enough with the smaller character i just gained the 10/10 normally

and indeed by retiring your highest character(s) your BA buying prices will decrease and the amount you can buy could increase

also 6% of highest pr = the line for getting 9/10 ba gains. this can be reached within a day atm :)

whaaaaaaaaaaambulance!
/me wishes for a nice CB community with no flaming anyone