A long thought on rewards (in General)

Hi All. First of all, yes, this is another thread containing the dead dog that is the New User Bonus. (for the purpose of this thread, I'm taking the NUB bonus period to be 4 motnhs. It might be/get longer)

Believe it or not (from my recent posts) I love CB2. The game and the people here. I've stopped playing now that brings me no joy.

I've got some thoughts on what I think should be done in order to lay the 'Bonuses' matter to rest, and what I see as flaws to the NUB and the propsed VUB. I didn't want to include this post in either of the existing thread, as they are getting quite cluttered now.

If this discussion offends you, I ask you to read no further and hit 'Back' now please!

1) The inability to challenge the top spot.

This is the most important point and the place CB really fails at. The inability to be able to challenge the top spot was one of the reasons for the creation of CB2 and the implementation of the NUB.

In CB, in order to pass the guy/gal in front of you, you must gain more rewards than them. Not too much of a problem in the lower ranks, where different strategies can pick and choose opponents, fight lists are king and you can try to fight higher then the person in front of you to get more rewards than them.

This starts to get harder the further up you get. Until you hit the top ten, are all fighting roughly the same opponets and have to wait for the person above you to fight less than you. If that doesn't happen, it becomes a waiting game of attriton.

Some might like this.

In order for a new player to even have a hope of getting to the top spots without everyone else in front of them stopping fighting, the NUB was implemented.

2) The New User Bonus.

Something is definatly needed to help new players compete in the game. Catching up to someone who has a time head start on you, without some sort of help, is just shy of impossible. The main concern with the NUB as it is, is the great disadvantage everyone else without a bonus is at compared to those with. This inequality has been mentioned and the forms listed so many times, I'm not going back there.

New users who have finished their bonus time, unless they have made it to a very position find themselves now in the same position as existing users.

This has prompted the idea of a Veterens Bonus

3) The Veterens Bonus.

Although a nice idea, this now strikes me as nothing more than a bootstrap. If implemented, it would in effect relegate CB to be a 4 month (Or how ever long the VUB period would be) personal re set. Play your new character for it's bonus period, if you've not got high enough for your liking (be that 1st, 5th, 10th, or so on), retire and start again. I for one dislike games that reset. If CB was going to be one of those, it might just as well be a global reset and not a personal one.

At the moment, without some change to the system, the creation of new characters is discouraged. You're forced to make one character from the start of your CB career and when your bonus is up, tough luck.

4) My suggestion to even the playing field

Radically change the way xp is gained. Make it a sliding scale based on your current VPR to the highest VPR in the game. So as not to seem a 'nurf' to the higher positioned players, have something along the lines of;

The number one VPR character (or MPR? Included untrained xp, but not items/tattoos) gains 100% (or x1 :) ) of their usual rewards for each target they fight. The smaller your VPR is to the top spot, you gain an increased amount of the xp your would normally get for the opponents you are fighting. Fighting up still nets you more, fighting down less.

Money is not effected by this. Only xp.

5) Money

This is where new users should be helped. more established character would have had more of a change to acrue wealth, regardless of how well they have leveled their character.

New users should get some form of bonus to their cash rewards, to help them even this gap.

Mind you, not so large that it becomes tempting to, cheat, and create multiple new accounts just to farm the increased cash benefits.

6) More characters

This would encourage people to take breaks and level new and lower characters, knowing they could come back to their main and still have a chance, with hard work, to catch up where they left off.

This encouragement for more characters can only benefit all players, who will have a larger amount of targets to fight.

7) The top spot.

Yes, the top spot would become more vulnerable. But it should be. With VPRs leveling out, strategy will play a larger part in the CB 'end game', hopefully lessening the impact USD has up there as well.

Let's bring strategy back to the game, and make all levels accessable for all. At any time. It sucks to have your one chance dependant on nothing going wrong in real life during your bonus period. I want to beat someone because my character is better than theirs. Not because they couldn't play for 2 weeks, and now can never catch me.

And let's not wedge a devide between existing and new players.

(It took me so long to write this, I timed out and had to log back in again... Luckily I c&p'd it! I'm sure I've missed stuff out, so expect me to expand on this once it comes to me!) :D

"3) The Veterens Bonus.

Although a nice idea, this now strikes me as nothing more than a bootstrap. If implemented, it would in effect relegate CB to be a 4 month (Or how ever long the VUB period would be) personal re set. Play your new character for it's bonus period, if you've not got high enough for your liking (be that 1st, 5th, 10th, or so on), retire and start again. I for one dislike games that reset. If CB was going to be one of those, it might just as well be a global reset and not a personal one.

At the moment, without some change to the system, the creation of new characters is discouraged. You're forced to make one character from the start of your CB career and when your bonus is up, tough luck."


i disagree. the VUB would be and the NUB is only meant to get you close. once you get there you need to do something innovative with your strat to get you over the hump. how fair would it be to have the same type strat as Ranger to overtake him?

I will give this 12 hours before it turns into the same as every other nub post.

Then I will lock it.

If people can have a conversation without blaming someone, snide comments, insults and the like then it will remain open.

It's Mr. Wuss's fault. Whatever it is, it's his fault.

Mega, unless the NUB and VUB got you to number 1, you're back waiting for Ranger (and everyone else above you) to burnout before you progress.

We need a change to allow anyone and everyone, and any time, with enough effort to forge their way to the top.

Regardless of Rangers social schedule.

It's 'fair' becuase the reward stucture is the same for everyone. It would be 'harder' to stay in the number one position, but the top flight have always claimed to want a bit of spice up there!

In that case MrWuss, can I request for the other two threads to be locked at the same time then?

#1 for number of posts award will go to .....GentlementLoser...Dee Dee Dee.

I think this idea screws the guys in the middle. Correct me if I'm wrong.

*Shrugs*

What else have I got to aim for kitty. ;)

i dont see how the guys in the middle would get "screwed" cause they get more rewards then those above them and less then those below them, if those below manage to fight enough to catch up then they get the same rewards,

but while i was thinking of that i thought of another idea, don't know if its been brought up in all of these post but couldn't your reward bonus be based on your battles fought compared to your time playing,

so say you been playing for 1 week and haven't missed a single ba, you would get the largest bonus possible, and then as time passed and if you where able to keep that pace you would keep your uber bonus, but missing ba would have the same effect of that if you had played for many months and missed ba, your bonus would get smaller, and this may even be able to be applied to vet's

who would the VUB be given to? those that have been here since the first month?

no its more of a new char bonus tony

I finally looked at how long it took me fighting almost everyday to get from 100k to 200k, with a few harsh bumps (retraining), it took from July 1 st to October 1st, three months to gain 100k, xp rewards could be a little higher, and I don't think it'll hurt anyone.

Some interesting points...

My first thought was one of BA usage... If someone _really_ puts forth the BA effort (I am talking 3-hour alarm clock here), should they not have an ever-so-slight edge on the competition (strategies and USD usage being equal)?

So, I like your idea, but I would want the 24-hour BA lump allocation idea to go along with it. If you miss an entire day, then yeah, you miss the whole or who only have an hour a day to check in, they could remain competitive. Strategy (and strategy alone) would reign in that area.

GL, going with this idea, don't you think USD would still cement the top spot? Wouldn't be a whole lot different than the top spots now, would it?

I would prefer to see the rewards for the top 10 revisited.

As I understand it, currently the top ten do not receive reduced rewards for fighting characters scores lower then their PRs. I would like to see this removed to make it much harder to retain the top spot. I am sure that would slow down their growth, but not sure if it would make things competitive yet.

I feel that the top spot for PR/Score in CB should be very dynamic and take a lot of time and effort to achieve, and just as much if not more so effort to maintain. Someone like me who gets in about 1000 BA a day should never be allowed in the top 10 obviously. But NUB or not anyone who buys all their ba and makes 80% of their ba should have a shot of getting into the top 10 after a month or two of consistent play. Anything less then that is just a frustrating experience for those who want to be the "best".

"currently the top ten do not receive reduced rewards for fighting characters scores lower then their PRs. I would like to see this removed to make it much harder to retain the top spot."

If nothing else, removing this "bonus" for the top players would mean they would have to stop farming characters with a third of their score, and split up into separate clans, which in turn would give others a better chance at getting to the top of the clan rankings.

The problem then would be that the top players would get (even more) horrible rewards, and have very few people to fight. Sure, there are some NUB players who are getting to the top, but not enough.

Why not give the players in the top 10 a bonus to XP and/or $cb2 when fighting other members of the top 10? That would increase competition at the top, and maybe reduce the huge PR gaps.

(did I just go off topic? I can't remember my point...)

Thanks Sute! :)

To be honest, I'm not sure on the lump sum BA idea, I'll have to cogitate on that one for a while. I think there's something inherant to CB with the 'three hour alarm clock'. You mess up your real life schedule that much, you should get rewarded for it.

And yes, strategies and USD equla, BA useage should decide the edge. I don't think it's anything I would want to get away from, even if we could.

USD would still cement the top spot, but bar using USD (which is never going to happen...) it will always be that way. If getting a MPR equal to the top spot becomes easier, we should see more diversity with strategies, Mages, GA teams, etc to help counterbalance, or lessen the effects of USD spending.

Mael, giving the top ten any more of a special bonus would make them so much harder to catch. It's hard enough already, with only new users able to. The idea to to allow any character (Regardless of when it's created), with time and effort, have the possibility to reach the top.

Then the system is a level playing field for all. (But not the game.... If that makes sense!)

It's threads like this that leave me longing for the old method of upping a char, Huge AC and big bow...whammo, 2 mil pr in 6 months

Perhaps if we removed NW/PR then anyone can rent a huge bow/MH and fight their way to the top.

That's how Shabble did it in CB1.

But not the best option I think! ;)

cant we all just get along?

Actually, I was saying that instead of giving improved rewards the top players for beating up us little people, we could give them improved rewards when beating up each other.