While we are at the change month request posts (in General)

While we are at the change month request posts, I have a few of my own. (I see the jaw dropping shock in all your faces)

#1 Remove the NW to PR link. It was a great intentioned idea, but it just does not accomplish the goal it was intended for (unless it feels right or it makes sense was the goal). I asked for anyone on the pro side of this why it was good and that is what I got. It created the opposite situtation. I think the idea was to make USD less important in the game. It has made it more important. More sales are for USD only or USD greatly preferred because people do not want to have to hassle with the then selling of their CB2 $ for USD in a second sale. Granted this has driven down the CB2 to USD ratio, but that is all it did, which in turn will only make the buying of CB2 eaiser and cheaper with USD and thus encourage it even more. Again, I have to assume this was the idea, because no one ever mentioned it as a goal for the change.

Solution to accomplish the same goal for it feels right folks. Remove the ability to fight by PR and only allow you to fight by score. Please someone on the pro side tell me how this does not accomplish the very same goal as it feels right.

#2 Do not make the NW of the ToA and ToE tattoo count for as much of a person's PR IF you keep the NW to PR link. These two tattoos are not able to on their own win a fight like any of the others (ok ToBF...you are own your own there). The ToI, ToF, ToS, and ToJ all allow for a low character to equip and fight higher than their MPR with some effectiveness, the ToA and ToE do not. If you need to know why I can explain that. So before you nerf the ToA and the elbow, consider how this factors in.

#3 IF you keep the NW to PR link AND let the ToA and ToE count for as much PR as the other tattoos, then make some mechanism by which a person can gain a significantly higher amount of rewards than their peers BESIDES when they started playing. (read NUB) I think honestly if people without the NUB had some mechanism ANY mechanism to get better rewards than their peers, then all this hub bub about the NUB would go away. That mechanism USED to be NW, I say bring that back. If not, then tie it to clan, or the amount of BA spent in a day, or phases of the moon, but something so you can close or create a gap between you and your peers by virtue of how you play the game, not when you started playing.

#4 I like Jonnywas' idea enough to post it here. Add a link on the left so I can quickly look at any of my character in the same way that others view them, OR add MPR to my main view. I have to go to Clans>my stats to see just how ridiculous it has gotten.

I added #4 in there mostly so I would have a shot of one of my ideas being adopted :)

There you have it, I brought an extra cannister of napalm and some spare daisy cutters, let the flames begin :)

A few additional of my own! ;)

1) Change the TBF Evasion to be 'per level' as pth on ToA. Buff the FB reduction and Melee damage. Or make the Melee damage return per hit, like GA.

2) Change Skill based Evasion back to stacking with item based Evasion. As it is, the skill is no longer worth training if you own a pair of DB s.

3) Remove the vast majority of useless weapons (and to a lesser extent Armour)

3) Give a reason to use Crossbows.

4) Lower Bows effectivness. Especially when not used with archery.

Lol, I'll add my support to Sefton's number 4 =)

"Remove the ability to fight by PR and only allow you to fight by score. Please someone on the pro side tell me how this does not accomplish the very same goal as it feels right. "

I am not in the "pro" side (nor in the against one). However, removing fighting by PR would not accomplish anything. Why? Because only supporters can fight by PR, and supporters use fightlists.
If, for instance, I would have to fight by score, the only difference it would make for me is that I would go down my fightlist in a different order: only slightly better that a cosmetic change, I would say.

On the other hand, I also like #4. Even better, if we could have BOTH a link to view the chars AND MPR in the main view. But maybe I'm asking too much.

I hear you manta, and that solution was only for those people who felt the reason to add NW to PR was because it made sense or it feels right. Basically if you fight by PR and I have 80 mil NW not reflected in my PR then when I crush you, you are like how did that happen. However, if you fight by score this is not a problem. Make score meaningful again instead of worthless. Also, if there are other pro arguments for the NW to PR link, lets hear them.

Add a link on the left so I can quickly look at any of my character in the same way that others view them

To view one of your characters the way that others see it. Click "manage characters", then click the name of the one you want to see.

I don't remember who originally suggested it, but MPR graphs would be excellent.

Sefton, as always an excellent post. I could not agree more. If there was no NW/PR link, noobs could borrow/rent stuff and get nice rewards. No reason then for the NUB. Killing 2 birds with one seeker.

I support "Sefton" #1 and #2.

About #3, well since that is an "If" statement, and I place my best hope in #1 and #2 therefore #3 can be ignored +).

#4 feels kind useless, don’t effect game much, maybe that is why is last on the list.

Good Job, Sefton (^_^`)

Vagabond, if I remember correctly Jonathan said that he is keeping track of MPR (and hopefully MPR graphs are on the to-do list).
Said that, I also would appreciate having MPR graphs.

Sefton, score is already meaningful, since the opponent's score the main (or the only?) element that determines rewards.
The opponent's PR is useful only insofar as it indicates how difficult it is to defeat, and how much should we expect his score to be on average (since score can oscillate so much).

I am not sure, but maybe you meant that your score is meaningless for you (since it does not influence rewards). However, I do not see how making people fight by score would solve that.

Since NW is (very) useful to win, I think it should affect the power rating (but maybe not in the way it does now).
If you think it is not right that people with higher NW receive less rewards for fighting the same people, please explain why you accept that people with higher MPR receive less rewards (for fighting the same opponents).
Of course, this does not mean that the current system cannot be improved.

Finally, for #2 take into account that the mechanism must work also for high MPR characters. While it is true that, for instance, on a low-MPR char a large ToA is less effective than a ToF of the same level, on a high-MPR char the ToA can be more powerful than a ToF.
A compromise could be that, on low MPR chars, familiar tattoos count more toward PR than non-familiar tattoos (or armor).

For GL's number 3-4 (which seem to me the same issue), I would prefer if Jonathan increased the effectiveness of crossbows (as things stand now, a compound is better than any Xbow to deal damage, even without archery), and maybe even of slings (who uses slings anymore?), instead of nerfing bows.

5) Make defense a viable alternative to offense.

manta, I must say I am enjoying your posts very much as you making me make my points clearer, and I think I can.

In regard to the Score vs. PR idea. You help me make my point. For instance, last night I forgot to requip my seeker arrows. While my PR did not fluxate at all it left me vulnearable to mages. So my score dropped as mages could beat me, yet my PR stayed about the same. So in reality, my PR was not an important factor as far as determining the power of my character. Now that the seekers are equipped, those mages cannot beat me and my score goes up, yet my PR stays the same. So, as I said, score should be the meaningful factor to determine how powerful you are, not PR, and in this case it goes to prove my point. NW is no question useful to determining power, and it is as it has always been reflected in my score. Why you need to reflect it in PR when in reality it is already reflected in score is my problem. Again this is to go to the point of those who say that it just makes sense that PR reflects your NW. I say score already does, so why does PR need to? And I will add score does it more accurately than PR.

I must say again I disagree with your assessment of the ToA regardless of the MPR of the character. If you take a high MPR character, add a large ToA, then have less than 1mil NW on that character, the large ToA will do nothing to help you. You need other things than the tattoo to win the fight. This is not true in the case of the familiar based tattoos. The same is true with the ToE. If you take a high MPR character, equip a high level ToE, but have a poor DD or NW based attack it will not help you win the fight. You need other things that compliment the tattoo in order to win. Not true on the familiar based tattoos. Certainly you will win more if your other things compliment your familiar, but you can still win without that compliment in some cases, whereas with the ToA and ToE it is much less likley.

So I think score more accurately reflects the power of the character than PR, so it is unecessary to use PR to do so. I say this because I could put a massive elbow on an enchanter, give it no arrows, and poof my PR skyrockets, but it will do nothing to affect my score. The "power" of my character does not change even though the PR of my character does. Again this goes to saying that PR should include NW as a reflection of power. If there is another reason than this, then this argument does not affect those points.

Keep up the good posts manta!

Good points Sefton.

With regards to your Seekers, maybe the PR they give should be amended, to make light of thier special properties over normal arrows.

I don't think Score should be a recognition of your overall power.

Consider Melons old pure EC character. When I had my Tank, I had a good score, but Melon was set up to defeat teams like me, and could do at a very low PR. So whenever he beat me my score dropped dramatically. Mine wasn't the only Tank to be effected by this.

It was no longer a true definition of my power, as I could still beat everyone on my fightlist, at my old score rating.

But for the times he fought me, and I wasn't fighting to regain my score, my Tank looked far weaker than he actually was.

Also, Melons score increased when he targeted the specific high level Tanks he could beat, but dropped when every other team beat him.

IMO score can fluctuate too much to be a valid showing of overall power.

The example of the ELB and no arrows you use is the same as your seekers. PR increase to NW should more readily take into account an items power on that team.

A bow with no arrows doesn't increase power much (there is one aspect when it could...), so shouldn't increase PR.

A percentage giving item increases power more to larger teams than smaller, so it should increase PR more for them.

:)

GL, I think your post also goes to prove my point. You were not as powerful as you would like to have thought because someone using a lower PR character could beat you. Granted they had to be specifically tailored to beat you, but still, they could, so you are less powerful overall and your score showed it everytime he beat you. You PR did not change, but your score reflected your weakness to a particular strat at a much lower PR than you. So again, score showed that weakness, yet your PR did not. And thusly score is a more accurate reflection of power than PR.

Excellent!
I totally agree with #1, #2
#3 once again its an IF, but i agree
Number 4 doesnt really count as a change, you can always look yourself up, look in settings, clans >stats or use manage charcters. It would be more convent but not a biggie.
BURN THE NW/PR LINKAGE!

Sefton, I think that I get your point now: score reflects the "power" of a char better than PR, hence why not use score instead of PR to determine rewards?

I think we can agree that a very powerful char and a wimpy char should not get the same rewards from defeating the same opponent, since the wimpy char has more difficulties in doing so.

Thus, the larger the score of a char, the worse the rewards he should get from fighting.
However, I see two kind of difficulties with this approach.

The first one is that for certain chars score oscillates too much to be a good indicator of power: GL's example of melon is a good one.
Moreover, people would be encouraged to "tweak" the score even more, for instance by removing seekers (or even tattoos) while they do not fight: in this way, their score would drop, increasing their rewards.
Frankly, I do not wish to go back to the period when we could not unequip tattoos...

The second one is more "philosophical": namely, even if there is a system to solve the previous issue (for instance, making the rewards depend on the average score in a certain period of time, say 1 week) have you considered the consequences (I did not)?
For instance, how would people react to a system that encourages low-score characters? Wouldn't it upset a lot of people (even more than the NW-PR link)?

If however I misunderstood your proposal, I apologize in advance.

How was it more accurate Sef? In 1, maybe two fights I was back up to original score.

I go away for a weekend, drop 100K in score becasue I don't fight, and a specifically tailored team is able to beat me at a far lower level. Within second of being back, I'm back to my original score.

Maybe Melon shold have had his score boosted to my level, and not mine drop, to show his application of strategy.

I was no less "powerful" when Melon fought me than when I hit my fightlist, yet my score would have said otherwise.

No one with a fightlist picks peole to fight they can't defeat, so score will always be inflated when fighting.

Everyone is tipping the odds in thier favour.

No manta you make an excellent counter point. I was not looking at it from a rewards perspective, more so as a counter to the somewhat simplistic argument that PR should reflect power because it "makes sense" But the scenario you describe for lower score is NOW occuring for lower PR. People are trying to minimize their PR as best they can so they can have better rewards. This has caused a down turn in all economic factors. Rentals, forging, and selling for cb2 is dropping rapidly. Some people on the pro NW to PR side think this is a good thing, for they feel that rare items hurt the game and all the economy portion of the game is not needed or wanted. Those in that position feel that there should be no market per se, that rare items do not make the game more fun, and they would be just as happy if all of that disappered. I think if you put it onto the score side of things, dropping the NW to PR thing, all of those factors would rebound. Granted the scenario of someone wanting their score to fall would occur, but without all the negative things that go into wanting your PR to fall. I think that is a more positive situation overall. I have no direct counter to the dropping of score to increase rewards since PR no longer would reflect NW, so it is perhaps a lesser of two evils scenario. I think wanting less PR is more evil than wanting less score.

It is more accurate GL because exactly that, only one very specifically tailored strat could beat you at a lower PR, so when he did beat you your score goes down, but because you were more powerful than the majority of your opponents, you were able to quickly make up any loss that the one tailored strat caused. If say suddenly 10 people on your list went that route, suddenly it would not be as easy to undo the score damage they cause. But one person could not and should not say because I can beat you, you are thusly less powerful than the majority. So, again I think it goes exactly to my point. Score does a great job of accurately reflecting your power because it fluxates so much. For instance, what if part of your counter to Melon's strat was to add a DD spell. Well that change may let you beat him, but then it could make you more vulnearable to other people on your list with AMF and so on. So as your strat changes your score changes a lot but your PR changes a little. Which shows why score is a better indicator of power than PR.

:) Sorry Sefton, I think this;

" But one person could not and should not say because I can beat you, you are thusly less powerful than the majority."

Disporeves your point and not aids it.

That is exactly what melon was doing by beating me and vastly lowering my score, if my score is my measure of power as you have sugessted.

IMO, score just reflects how well you are applying your current strategy. Not how overall powerful you are.

On a completely different note, how about adding some sort of mage-friendly shield, that doesn't reduce magic. I don't care what it does - that empty slot just bugs me.

I think I can see what Sefton is getting at with his view of score. My score fluctuates wildly and as such I was thinking that it's not such an accurate view of your character's status or power. But actually it is if you think of it in a different way. Score should best be seen as a snapshot view, that is your power at that moment. Your power status will be different if you are not fighting or if others who can beat you are not fighting. My character Jack Crow was for about 20 minutes today the number 5 top scoring single minion in the game. For that moment (or moments) he was number 5. And yet the rest of the top ten was filled with characters that can beat me hands down. So it can't be viewed in the long term, or maybe even historically. It should just be viewed as a accurate reflection in the here and the now.

PR on the other hand is something that grows and develops in a far different way. Much of my fightlist are a much higher pr than me and yet I can beat them, in 1 or 2 rounds. They're not failures though - far from it because they can beat others in the same way. It's not a matter of NW or pr but strategy and in some respects luck. And the only way that is reflected is in my score at that moment.

I'm not sure I've made sense here, sorry it's very very hot in London right now and I should be sitting in the garden with a drink, not in front of my computer with you lot!

GL, you reprove it however by saying you could easily get your score back up. So, as I said, score allows for reflection of weaknesses in your strat, PR does not.

There are two sides to everything. Jonathan decided to add NW/PR link to better reflect a users power so new users fighting small-fry chars wouldn't be surprised by a char with 8 mil NW and get slaughtered.

The way to address that concern and also allow us to have that "playing the game" factor of increasing our rewards beyond our peers is complicated.

Maybe the NW/PR thing needs a cut-off point. After a certain PR (dynamic and preferably based on top chars) make the NW/PR link less and less obvious in PR.

For instance, at 10k MPR you equip a 4 mil NW sword, and your PR goes up by 50k or something. But you are 100k MPR and you equip a 4 mil NW sword and your pr goes up by 10k pr. I realize that is already (to some degree) how the system works, but it would be nice to have a significant reduction in PR that NW adds after a certain PR.

*Bow*

Touche! ;)

I think you're right...

Two people of equal PR+MPR+NW. Two different stats.

1 is more 'powerful' than the other, because they have a better strategy.

How does the game show this?

Score.

Re #1

I'd much rather not be able to equip a wep or piece of armour if it was disproportionably strong in comparison to my character.

If your MPR isn't high enough then you should be capped on what equipment you can use.

I don't understand why this isn't spoken of more often...

G Bee, I think the reason it is not spoken of more often is because without a way in which to devalue items, and the uncertainty of how restrictive or loosely it could be interpretted, the chance that there are now weapons that no one could wield are high, because those weapons were created under the current system. Also I think this mimics other game systems, and those systems (as I have only heard not played) biggest complaints stem from just that inability to equip items. In the end, I think it would create more havok than the current system without a complimentary system for devaluing large items.

G Beee.

Its one of the 2 suggestions I have made to "fix" the NW/PR linkage.

The first is to make it so you cannot equip large weapons/armor on a low MPR character.

The other is to make only a certain amount of x or + available to your MPR. IE, every 5k MPR lets you use 1x and 1+ of a weapon. The rest of the weapon is there but not effective on your character until your MPR grows to it.

Also, If Jon was to do this, I would hope that he grandfathers in existing weapons, in that if they are on at the time of the changes they can be used in their entirely. But once unequiped, then the new restrictions apply. To let everyone who has a supersized item still use it. But if they want to BS it, then the new rules would apply.

Taking a seperate tact, I think the ELS should be revaluated by devaluing the VB. I think the VB should have a MUCH steeper upgrade curve than it currently has. I realize that the ELS is cheaper to upgrade, but I think very few people do. For a supporter item I think it should be made obvious how much harder the VB is to upgrade to keep it from being very useful in the upper strats. As most supporter items are or at least have been viewed, they should be great for lower to middle PR strats, but tossed aside in the high level strats. The current upgrade curve in my opinion does not do this, so that's my #5, devalue the VB (or beef the ELS, but I think that would create more trouble in the Morg/BoNE/BTh/ELS balancing issue)

Interesting idea Ranger. How can you show both the effective and actual levels of enchantment on a weapon under your suggested system?

I mean. If I equip a x100 +100 ELS on my brand new 1PR character, what do I see? Does the weapon show up as
x100 +100
or
x1 +0 (current max x100 +100)
or
show the real x and + when the weapon is in your equipment list, then show the effective levels when you actual wield it
or
something else?

Vorpal should 1/3 AC and cost more to upgrade. Simple change that might bring balance.

Sukotto.

Your idea of x1+0 (max x110,+100) is a good one.

i like that idea as well, but how will you determine your "ability" to use the items? depending on the strat, you could very well be able to effectively use a vastly oversixed weapon, whereas other strats might not be getting decent use out of even really low items... would a tank and a mage of equal MPR be able to get the same use out of that x100+100 bow?

Why not, maulaxe?
A tank already is the one that gets most of the benefit from a bow.
If someone is really able to make a viable mage-archer, I would say more power to him.

Im not writing about the ability to use the weapons properly. Your strat will determine that of course. Of course a mage with a x100+100 elb will not use it correct even at 1 million MPR.

But, To prevent abuse of high level weapons only a certain percentage of uber weapons/armor would be used until your MPR is high enough. Its just that in order to use that x100+100 weapon you need to have a high enough MPR.

If your strat sux, then youll use it poorly. But its to prevent that 100k MPR character from using a x100+100 elb that is the basis of my idea and I suspect the NW/PR linkage. Such a character would be able to effectively use x20+20 of it (at 5k MPR per x or +).

The same can be made of armor, but ill can leave that to Jon's capable mind to figure out.

Also, about tattoos, in order to include them, your max effective tattoo level would be about .7 times your MPR. Of course, tattoos that are already equipped will have to be grandfathered in, until that is they are unequipped and then the new rules will apply.

Not sure about the "grandfathered in" thing :)

I think a cash back deal (has been done many times) would be more appropriate. Obvious question would then be what do you do with the cash you have and the answer to that would be save it for new EQ or upgrade different items or even buy BA for a month or h/e long.
I prefer cash back to grandfathermathingybob.

GB, the "cannot equip if too small" has been mentioned numerous times in the past.

I stopped bringing it up simply because it is such a common RPG tactic that I assumed Jonathan just didn't want the game that way. It certainly cannot be an idea that hasn't crossed his mind, so there must be another reason it hasn't happened. In my opinion, I would guess that the reason is "don't want to do it that way." You can ask "why not?" all day, but that still isn't going to get it off of Jonathan's internal FORS list.

Education would go a long way toward alleviating some of these these NW/PR issues. And by education, I mean game-enforced and game-documented rules. For example, a newbie tries to rent a weapon that makes 90% of PR be NW-based. The game says, "You cannot possess this weapon because it will make your total PR too dependent on NW." This can be as elaborate (showing lots of fractions, ratios, rules) or as simple (just saying, "Nope, not yet, n00b!") as Jonathan wants to make it.

Jonathan knows all the formulae. He could even say, "Wielding that weapon will mean 81% of your damage output is from net worth, so it is probably oversized for you." I doubt he would want to give figures, because we would eventually divine the complete set of Damage Equations. But I don't think possessing weapons like that needs to be anything more than an "oops don't do that" type of thing to at least save newbies from rental fiascos.

While Ranger's idea seems reasonable, I do not see much difference from the present situation.
I mean, the main field of application would be weapons: if you wield too big a weapon, you get only a fraction of its benefit.
However, with the weapon allowance, we already have something very similar: if your weapon is not too big, you get no malus on your NW.

Another point: I think that newbies, instead (or as a partial replacement) of NUB, should get a (partial) exemption from the NW/PR link: in this way, they could rent big weapons/armour, mentors could loan equipment to them, and so on.

I'm sorry if this was posted already but, I got bored and stopped reading them all. Ok with the NW/PR thing if i fight someone with a higher PR because there NW i get higher Rewards but some people i fight are mages and i get lower rewards just for the reason that they have a low NW. I think if anything make it all done by MPR because then it will truly show the power of someone and the rewards u deserve. So if this was true Jon could actually totally get rid of the NW/PR thing or maybe nerf it a bunch so that the effects are not as great or possibly leave it because it wouldnt effect things as much. Well thats my opinion on this sorry if someone already posted but as i said at the start i got bored.

Dan, someone the biggest factor in fight rewards is your PR vs. your opponent's Score, not PR vs PR (FAQ's>fighting>#10)

Erm... can we get someone to help poor UC ? :) They seem neglected... always

Currently they are quite balanced defensively but I think they lack of offensive ability. I don't remember which post, but Mags has pointed out that a UC of up to level 77 couldn't produce damage near a x50 MH. I think raising the base damage multiplier of UC would be a good help. If you really wanna help noob , this is the one skill that is cheap to use with no NW linked worries.

Boo your not understanding wat im saying so plz read it over again and then comment

...if i fight someone with a higher PR because there NW i get higher Rewards but some people i fight are mages and i get lower rewards just for the reason that they have a low NW.

Dan I was just trying to point out that your opponents NW/PR doesn't have as much to do with rewards as their score does. Maybe I misunderstood what you were trying to say as a whole, and for that I apologize.

But we really get rid of the link between NW/PR? I hate for the trend of putting a huge ranged/melee weapon on a lowbie farm to start up again. New players are the future of CB2 and the longer they stay, the more this game will flourish. Huge weapons on low characters are a discouragement to a sound strategy, and therefore make the game not as enjoyable.

Now if there was a way to lessen the impact of the link NW and PR, but still keep lowbies from wielding oversized weapons I'm all for it. But if it's gone, we open up the door for high NW to be a strategy again. How boring is that?

I see your point but I think it would be an advantage for new players to be able to acquire or rent a big item to help them get started.

How about a sliding scale for weapons allowance for new players where they get significantly more ala the rewards bonus but based on some MPR limit rather than for months on end.

That would be a better incentive rather than telling them they aren't good enough yet to use nice weapons.

how about making the ToBF effect other minions the way the ToE does.

well my opinion on the NW/PR link is on cb1 it works and it always has Huge NW lower PR chars and they do quite well but u know they have a way higher level of stuff there so its not quite the same but eventually the NW/PR thing will no longer be needed but i guess for now why the game is still a baby only 6months or 7months almost old its important i now see.

This just came to me, I'm supposed to be sleeping, but i had to post this...=)

I thought of having like something for chat that could label people as afk if they want to be, like have a little button in the PM text line sayin

**afk: [ ]**

and then you check off the box if you wanna go afk, and everyone could know by having your name in the name box on the right as follows, (an example if i went afk and my name were to appear in the PM box)

**smallpau1 (afk)**

I thought this could also work for the people who's chat goes idle...

**smallpau1 (idle)**

Just a little idea, although i dont know how little it would be for Jon....=P

G'nite everyone!!

flame it if you want, but I'm 3/4 asleep right now, so even i might wake up tomorrow and flame myself..=P