Revising the Clan System (in General)

After having a conversation on the chat about the problems with the clan system, I finally decided to move the discussion to the forums. Here are the issues as we saw it.

Issue 1: There seems to be an abundance of inactive players in clans.

Issue 2: Some people join clans simply for the extra rewards, thus not promoting the objective of a community.

Issue 3: Farming of other clan members is very much encouraged by the new system.

Side Issue: This is unrelated to the problems of clans, but I think a change in the system could fix this issue I have as well. Namely that the game lends itself to making a tank only team, but there are no rewards to feed such a team.

Now what were the objectives of clans in the first place. As far as I was told, It was to promote a community for Carnage Blender. Yet none of the ways for clans to score points promotes any one player to talk to any other player, clanmate or not. Thus, clans don't pull in those people interested in team strategy or makes those people interested only in their own characters become more involved. The rewards certainly gets people into clans, but clans in no way gets people into the community. Therefore, I believe the system to be flawed.

The question is how do we promote clan member talking to each other. The best way is to make scoring point strategic. Like I said before, the current scoring requires no strategy. One way to make it strategic would be to restrict scoring only to the first time a clan beat a character for that day. This way the clan now needs not to be able to beat the same people repeatedly, but must instead beat the widest variety of characters. The pro is that the farming ends, at least you won't get beaten by the same clan member over and over again that is. Instead it would be different members each time. But I don't think this is good enough to require people to start talking, or enough to build clans with much variety.

I think that if you get beaten while attacking a clan member then the other clan gets marked a win for their side by having your name, the attacker, added to their list. This would mean that a clan with members that specialize in taking down certain types of characters would become more cost effective then a clan with a whole lot of all purpose teams. Draws should cause both teams to get the opposing teams names, and stalemates causes nothing to happen to either clan. This way the focus is outright victories only, draws only get you back where you started. I think that members that go undefeated for the entire day should also score their team a big bonus to score. Therefore players need to be organized enough to be able to minimize loses and maximize wins while making sure every clan member is accounted for as defeated.

I think that if someone does manage to make it through a day without being defeated once should get a nice xp bonus that gets higher the more people they fended off. This means that some teams would want people who simply tank all the time and there actually becomes a a way for such a tank to keep growing along with everyone else.

Summery:
1. Each clan only gets credit for killing another clan member only once a day.
2. Attackers need to clearly win the battle in order to increase their score.
3. Bonuses should go to characters who go undefeated.

Logistics: Memory wise there might be some issues. This system means that each clan needs its own list of players it has defeated for that day. It would of course require that the length of the list be variable, therefore in a relational database, each list might have to be it's own table. You would also need to add a integer value to each character in a clan that keeps track of the attacks they have overcome, and a negative value would denote a loss at some point.

Please feel free to respond with any type of comment other then "Jon won't do it." (Unless your Jon of course.)

okay i in no way am knocking your idea, but if followed sefton and ranger would from here on out dominate even more, ranger is the only person who threatens sefton, and if sefton was made to fight under his fightlist to get points there would be havoc on all the other clans who got in his way, the same goes for ranger.

Interesting analysis, except you missed one critical point: clans were not added to "promote community".

Clans were added to CB1 because lots of people had the idea that "clans are cool". For a long time, they were a F.O.R.S., until Jon (with the help of of player feedback) arrived at an implementation that was not R. That's about it.

Going over the CB1 threads, I fail to see a single mention of "We need to strengthen the CB community! We need clans!"

Frod has it right.

But let's assume for a moment that he hasn't. Clans do add 'player interaction' -- if that is what you mean by "community".

My consistent, relentless, passionately-devoted farming of AvoidCXT led to many delightful CM exchanges. The same can be said for Almuric and, occasionally, Rubberduck and DAWG -- all folks who aren't otherwise particularly chatty. Some can occasionally be lured from their dark, cold, bleak, chatless existence into Carnage just for trashtalking alone!

Nothing like carping on Valinor to get chat going, back in the day. Now, of course, it is a source of near-endless amusement to send people to Alleviation's version of The Batcave, on any flimsy pretext. And 'lo the merriment when the small band of scruffians known as Alleviation (search by user "Fuhg") comes to visit Carnage!

Then there's actual clan membership: Spydah, for instance, is greatly amusing -- in a way that I never would have speculated when he was a member of Hellfire. And one's clanmates can be a valuable source of information, you know, if the evolutionary origin of bovines concerns you a little more than it ought (for instance).

I liked Ranger's idea for tweaking the clanpoints system, just to shake up the Top 5 more often and make the gameplay a bit more dynamic, but I certainly wouldn't do it with any "community improvement" motives in mind.

Ah.

We come to the point of the matter, the point of so many discussions and enhancements.

Clans are here to serve Bast.

So, let's stop discussing. Clearly, this reason is more than enough. Carry on, Bast. Surely the way you do things represents the majority of how things are done around here, and we wouldn't want to step on that.

Did someone once mention that Bast is a journalist?

If you are referring to her writing skills, it would certainly seems she has the chops for it. Other than that, you lost me...?

"the new system?" isn't it a bit late to be calling it that?

Hey,
I"m pretty green here, so I'll keep what I say short.. *wry grin

At this point in my game, I'm only looking for the bonuses that being in a clan can give me on top of my Newbie bonuses. That is the only attraction to me. Otherwise, I see no real point in joining one.

I believe myself to be very good friends with all my clanmates, and agree to much of their comments about different topics. We talk to each other about each little problem one of us may have.

Mistress Reyna >> Ranger and Sefton can't reap the bonus if everyone knows not to fight them pointlessly. Looking at Ranger's log, nobody really seems to fight him much anymore anyhow. Sure they'll go undefeated for many days at a time, but you just make undefeated with no challenges worth nothing.

[CoU]Frod >> I apologize for being insufficient in CB history. Community is the catch word I used because it was the first word we used in the chat discussion. I guess what I really want is the strategy you find in other online games. However, even if my objectives are wrong, the issues listed above are still observed. There are a good amount of inactive players in clans, people do join them only to reap the benefits, and it does promote farming.

Bast >> Player interaction is bound to happen as long as the chat works. Your right that 'community' is just vague in the context of my post. All I'm going to say is that like the post above yours, your response ignores the other issues, which in fact started the conversation.

Chet >> All I'm going to say is that I'm 95% sure that was sarcasm.

Jonathon >> I think I meant to say 'current system' not 'new system'. I guess I just blacked out. Maybe this is the part that made someone think I was someone else from CB1.

yes they wouldn't be challenged, but they would be challenging picture seftons mighty gyaxx, or ranger's, whatever his characters name is smashing down on poor unsuspecting 200k pr's

Wait... your trying to end farming in clans?

Last time I checked the name of the game was "down, enter, repeat." This game is built AROUND the concept of farming. Jon even provides you with an instrument to make it easier: the custom fight list.

Also, it seems like in your system, people would only be able to pull MAYBE 100 or so fights a day. And if they lose 1 they get no bonus? Doesn't seem fair to me.

I'm sorry, but really the amount of people that think clans are broken can fit inside a very large paper sack. Far more people LOVE the way clans are now, myself included. And actually, I have more fun in clans that strive for that 3% bonus than dance between first and 5th place.

and how would that stop farming?
it would merely make it so that people would find the "clanpoints" opponents, and fight them once a day, and then use the rest of their BA as before: farming those who give better rewards.

The status quo would still be the same, it would merely be forced to move it's chair a few steps to the side before it settled back down again.

and about all those people who are inactive - how would this affect them? they're not in it for the clanpoints, just the small bonus...

sorry to be so negative, but right now i don't really see any way to fix things - but hey, change is good, so why not?

Vestax, you may not realize it (since you're not in a clan) but when clan members work together with a "strategy", they do benefit. You see the Top Clan rankings? Can you guess how a clan gets to be at the top, with the full 15% bonus? Yes, that's right, by cooperating with one another so that they maximize their clan points. It's impossible for a single clan member to bring a clan to the top of the rankings.

Vestax, I say give it more than a month before jumping to any conclusions.

Maybe I've had the luck of being a part of exceptions, but the two clans I've been in have lead to some real life friends as well as many great people I talk to online, even outside of CB2.

I think you should wait that you reach a large clan before make jugement.