New Idea to even out the gameplay (in General)

Ok we have the NW-PR link that imo does nothing to stop the big boys from becoming like CB1's Spid. I have an idea that would stop players from simply putting freakish amounts of cash into the game without thinking once they get to the top 10 (which has less of a penalty from fighting down). My idea is to to have a NW cap similar to the Tattoo Allowance just much larger. What makes this different is that if you are over the cap no matter where you are in the MPR race you will receive a penalty to your cash rewards OR your BA purchase price would increase depending on how it was chosen to be implemented. Alternatively players well under the cap could buy BA at a cheaper or receive a boost to cash rewards until they can get to a decent NW. As far as what the Cap should be i thought of a simple formula. Tattoo Allowance comes into play here, lets say your Tattoo Allowance is 1.5 million that Tattoo would have a NW of around 32 million. I think that a cap of between 5 to 10 times the NW of the highest level Tattoo you can equip would be cool. If you read all that i would like to thank you. Thoughts?

nice idea

"we have the NW-PR link that imo does nothing to stop the big boys from becoming like CB1's Spid"

good, because all the link is supposed to do is make PR a better measurement of, well, Power, which is important for the rewards-based-on-score-and-PR system to work well.

If that is so, and if tattoos are already figured into PR, why are they capped? I think MM's point still has some creedence on that front, especially in the Top 10.

Tattoos are capped so to prevent the abuse that was occurring at the lower levels.

That is small character with a massive tattoo=massive rewards. Especially in the beginning. VPR sort of helped but still, a large FF on a base character (without a MTL) is uber.

The MTL is sort of moot at the higher levels as there is no tattoos what high.

if that is the case Jon then why did you put it in to begin with? i thought the whole point of this game was to stop a Spid like dynasty from getting on top? if not then why even make CB2?

Mega,

The NUB is one of the things Jon is using to prevent Spid.

However, One of the reasons I have managed to stay on top is persistence. Yes, I have used USD, but there are at least 7 others that have used far more than I have.

There have been cases where characters were defeating me but for one reason or another changed strategy (Imp) or just did not see the little tweak they needed to beat me (Cosmos). Right now Mishras is very very close to beating me. A couple more items and he likely can.

yea Ranger i bet if chappy had 1200 bucks he might win but i ask the entire community this 1 question. should USD be required to be the best at this game? this is what my idea aims to prevent. i respect the time you've spent here playing hard but i think as it stands nobody can beat you without spending massive amounts of USD. imo USD should not be the difference between you and Chappy or Mantra skill should.

Ranger, why are tattoos at lower levels able to be "abused"? I don't know all the details, but doesn't the PR vs. score reward scheme still work? If a player with a large tattoo can beat people with extremely high scores, then the solution should be to make tattoo PR a larger part of total PR, no? Larger PR would then equate to lower rewards when "abusing" the large tattoo.

I guess I didn't realize that was why the tattoo cap was put into place...

Ranger pretty much nailed it.

I don't care if he or anyone else is unbeatable at a given point in time. In fact, to some degree it's a _good_ thing.

What I don't want to see is one player dominating to such an extent that his rivals give up, and the nature of the game preventing any new rivals from ever becoming viable. Hence the NUB.

but the NUB does not make it at all possible to beat Ranger without USD so if that was your goal you did not succeed same thing with the NCB. eventually someone will become so powerful that nobody can beat them it just takes enough NW.

"but the NUB does not make it at all possible to beat Ranger without USD"

It isn't intended to.

so how long before "people give up and stop trying"

MM, you make this argument every couple of months, yet we all keep going.

Making USD the issue between Chappy and Ranger falls flat, because Chappy has spent/spends plenty of USD himself.

Making USD the issue between Mantra and Ranger falls flat for 2 reasons: 1) like Ranger said, he has enough of an MPR advantage now that if he made the right start tweak(s), the 2 of them would probably have to start battling back and forth the maintain the edge over each other; 2) He just finished his NUB, and is the first "NUB contender" to keep going and not sell-out right away - the point being that it is way to soon to be throwing "the NUB failed" out there - now is when we learn how much "skill" he actually has.

One might even argue that the NUB has so far achieved the opposite effect and made the usd spenders even harder to catch. Most of the nubs that have fought hard recently have done so just for cash and increased the supply of cb2$ to the top. Personally I gave up on fighting usd some time ago but maybe in time mpr will beat nw, now that Mantra has overtaken Ranger there could be a snowball effect with subsequent nubs/ncbs further increasing the mpr gap.

MM, Jonathan cannot account for the "aberrant" cases. If I won the lottery and proceeded to spend 1 million USD on CB2 (if that were even possible), would you expect Jonathan to find a way to allow me to be beaten?

Yes, USD is frustrating, as the "careful what you wish for" transfer thread got into. But I am not sure what Jonathan can do about it. I do like your idea (and am still waiting to hear why tattoo caps had to be put in place instead of just modifying their PR import), but the "we need a way to beat these huge characters" argument doesn't hold a lot of water in the long run... If Ranger had just put in time and common strategy work, then the NUB _would_ be able to match and/or best him. As it stands, he has put in time, excellent strategies, AND real money. Why should any strategy have a guarantee of beating that unless it is formhidable on all three fronts?

BM chappy would not be close without the USD. Mantra needed USD to buy his 3rd minion if i remember correctly.

MM: still dreaming of the days when only those who were "good" at certain part of the game had a huge advantage?

Ranger isn't just top now because of USD. It takes a lot - and I mean a LOT - of determination to stick around near the top. You have to be here more often than not, spending as much on BA as you can afford. That's why Ranger is up there, not the USD. The USD spending, along with his shrewd buying and selling of items gives him an edge but that's all. You only have to look at Bast's char for instance - a third of Ranger's NW and yet a top 10 char for a very consistent period. I think people miss the fact that playing as often as possible and building up the XP is what really separates the so called Top players from the rest.

"MM, Jonathan cannot account for the "aberrant" cases. If I won the lottery and proceeded to spend 1 million USD on CB2 (if that were even possible), would you expect Jonathan to find a way to allow me to be beaten?"
Whilst I agree with this Jon has already made concessions to the 2 tier game we have here with the change to DD - lowering damage at lower levels keeping it the same at higher.

Novice no camper ever dominated the game

no camper ever dominated the game? Seft was up there with the top boys for quite a while I seem to remember....

Most were too busy filling their pockets :P

BTW MM, it's not actually your idea that I'm opposed to, it's the thought that you only need USD to be successful. Most people - me included - have given up near the top at the last hurdle. That last hurdle would appear to not be the NW itself, but the idea that HUGE NW is unbeatable. It's not, it just requires patience to get past it. Pretty soon none of those players are going to be able to afford to increase their NW anymore and then those determined mage teams will find their DD spells just getting bigger and bigger by playing.

johny notice how even with that he could never actually surpass Ranger? take time and think. do you not see the same CB1 pattern here? it is faster now without camping to balance it but EVERY member of the top 10 in score has spent 100's of dollars getting there. regardless of how much you or i play unless we use USD we can't even come close to Ranger in NW or PR same for NUBs.

johnny you must be kidding if you think DAWG will stop increasing his NW. did you play cb1? if you really think this way you will be sadly mistaken

Let me restate something:

When Cosmos was at the end of his NUB, before he went from a FF to a TOE, a very simple tweak to his strat would have made it impossible to beat him consistently. For all the USD, a 2 minion FB mage team was very close to drawing with me and sometimes beating me. You may say I am full of it, but it is the truth. If you ask Mantra, see that I was losing battles with him from time to time. That was when I was testing theories out.

Now I suspect chappy has spent more USD then me as have at least 6 others.

It is quite difficult in CB2 to be the top vs mages (cosmos and mishras) AND tanks (oduten). Especially with ELB's as they are in CB2. This is where we will see more and more people able to take the top spot. If Jayuu did not change Imp, he was well on the path to beating me easily.

Ok I have a question,
"Ok we have the NW-PR link that imo does nothing to stop the big boys from becoming like CB1's Spid. I have an idea that would stop players from simply putting freakish amounts of cash into the game without thinking once they get to the top 10 (which has less of a penalty from fighting down). My idea is to to have a NW cap similar to the Tattoo Allowance just much larger."
How would a NW cap work on a mage team? All a Mage supposedly needs is HP and DD.

Ranger this post is not aimed at you, you just happen to be the prime example. DAWG, Freed are also prime examples

OK, rewinding...can anyone answer my question about why a tattoo cap was put into place instead of just changing the amount of PR a tattoo contributes to total PR? The overpowered new character idea doesn't quite get there. Shouldn't a tattoo's contribution to PR always be concomitant with the actual clout it gives your team (i.e. ability to win)?

" it's the thought that you only need USD to be successful. Most people - me included - have given up near the top at the last hurdle. That last hurdle would appear to not be the NW itself, but the idea that HUGE NW is unbeatable. It's not, it just requires patience to get past it. Pretty soon none of those players are going to be able to afford to increase their NW anymore and then those determined mage teams will find their DD spells just getting bigger and bigger by playing."

Pssstt (Hmm, not sure how to spell that! :P )! Give me that recent 130 Million pound Euro Millions lottery win and after giving Jon some cash to buy whatever Server he wanted to house CB2 on, I'd use my leet USD skills to buy the top one of every item in the game, and the top character. You can all be bought, I'd match whatever price you wanted... There you go. No one would ever catch me then! MWUHAHAHAHAHAHA!

But I didn't win. :(

Tattoos were (still are I guess) xp efficient. For example a FF would add less PR than the equivalent DD and HP would add if trained on a minion. This seems fair enough as they also bring restrictions on the equipment the minion wearing them can use and tattoos cannot benefit from equipment directly. I was a particular problem with big FF on small teams, the reinstatement of vpr fixed the fact that you could just use a FF and not train anything else until you felt like it but that didn't entirely fix things so the max tattoo level was needed.

Hm, just seems sort of silly to have tattoos be "PR efficient" but then have to cap them. Yes, they do have other restrictions, but those restrictions apply to everyone...

I remember, before the Max Tat change, borrowing a FF from Borderliner for a Saturday afternoon. I probably had about 35k MPR, but the tat was like 300 - 400k, and I was absolutely massacring characters with 10X+ my MPR, PR, Score & NW. That is an example of a big reason why it was implemented.

Indeed. But had the FF made your total PR grow to 400K, then your rewards would have sucked (and you wouldn't have done it even if it did mean getting a huge score -- score is meaningless). That's the basis of my question.

Megaman, I just saw this - I play this game all hours god sends - I work an 8 hour + day having to pay for my computer time when I am in hotels etc. I put more effort into this game (yes and USD) than a lot of people. I spend USD becuse I can - its part of the game. I am 50+ years old and am not an unintelligent person but cannot spend all night chatting and arranging deals instead I spend time sleeping so that I can earn the money to buy the things I need. I have already been kicked in the teeth with cb1 closing and have lost several thousand dollars over the year I played there. I see that as dedication to a game i love - and moaning people who get (I see it as) their due with the NUB should just shut up and keep playing and try to get to the top.

Freed, MM is not attacking you or any other usd spender here, you have no need to justify your actions. He is just suggesting a change he feels would be good for the game (not that I agree with it)

I think NW caps are stupid because you already have exponentially diminishing returns from NW. The system is self-regulating.

The only problem I see with the current system is the ability to stick +170 DB on a 30 MPR character, but I don't think someone doing that is very likely. :)

I quite agree with Grant. There's going to be some point where people will not be willing to put in USD to upgrade their item values. For example, take a look if someone wanted to upgrade their Corn. from +13 to +14. That's $30M to dish out for a single point. Who's willing to pay a minimum of $300 (using a $10:1M rate) to add a single point? Again, there's going to be some logistical stopping point for realizing that one point isn't worth the value of adding one or two points to an item. Gotta love exponential functions. ;)

SNK hit the nail right on.

I have pretty much upgraded all my items to what I personally think the cost/benefit ratio is.

IE, for me to upgrade my +9 corn to +10 is 2.7 million. Is it worth that for only 2% more EO/ED? For me now, the answer is no.

Also, for armor, esp for something like an adam which just adds AC, each point only stops .21% damage. Is that worth a million CB2 to upgrade 1 point? Nope.

it's okie ! Just slap a millions damage on me per hit. you will see how quickly my blood comes back up. :)

"What I don't want to see is one player dominating to such an extent that his rivals give up, and the nature of the game preventing any new rivals from ever becoming viable. Hence the NUB. "

Now here is the problem I see with the NUB:

Cosmos now sets the table for the NUB/NCB with his highest MPR. It is over 100k more than 2nd place.

Some new NUB/NCB plays a single FB mage to close to 50k from the top. Then he sells out to Freed, Jayuu, DAWG, or even me. We then buy 3 more minions for another 150k MPR per. So the new character will have a 400-500k MPR advantage over the next higher character, which will be Cosmos if he plays as he is. So unless someone else plays a SINGLE minion NUB/NCB to the top, there is no way to catch that new character. Since a 4 minion team will only get to the top or just near it.

So basically the scenario you are worried about, that is new rivals, becomes moot. We will have 1 character at the top without anyone near him/her.

Sry,

I mistyped a part of that. The only way for competition to occur is for some new NUB/NCB character to go to the top. Hence, all the current characters people have played for so long are moot with no chance to compete at the top.

I slapped a nicely sized pair of HG, EB and a HoE on my new 1MPR character.

They added nothing to my PR. Or very close to it. My 700K tattoo added nothing as it was working at it's capped value (level 20).

I started my character with about a x15-20 weapon (from the moment I could sink my first points into UC.

There's not a lot at low levels that can touch UC. And I didn't even use a Gi...

At the moment I'm PR / MPR: 33,120 / 22,048 with +21 EBs, +11 HGs and +10 HoE. With a x30 +29 weapon. My PR increase includes my tattoo as well... (Max level now 26,470) Granted, I don't have a massive score to PR ratio, but thats only because I'm too lazy to hunt out targets far above me that I can kill.

Remove the Tatoo cap and I can't use it. I'd have 300K Str and Dex, but a PR to go with it and no HP. I wouldn't be able to fight at my level and get nothing for killing those I could.

If I had a +100 (if money was no object) pair of Hgs, I'd stick them on a new character in an instant. Same with DBs or any other low PR weighted armour. Armour that gives something in additon to AC is priceless for its weighting.

Weapons sohuld have weighting as well. A whip should not increase PR by the same amount of an equal NW BoNE or MH.

ranger: you seem to be under the impression that the NUB code thinks, "oh, so this guy has more MPR than ranger? I'd better up the rewards."

it does not.

and incidentally, since buying minions at the end of the NUB period is just another way to abuse USD... well, you may only be in the top 10 USD spenders, but you're still in the top 10, ya know?

sutekh: there are two reasons for capping tattoos. one is that for the tattoo PR delta to make any sense at all, it's inherently underrated at low levels (alternatively, overrated at high, which is clearly worse). is this an insurmountable problem? no, but it's something to keep in mind.

the second and more important reason is that a tattoo gives you a "free" way to keep some of the PR you earned as a NUB/NCB char on your next ride up the NCB ladder. I'm definitely not trying to encourage restarting every 4 months, and uncapped tattoos would be a powerful incentive to do just that.

(the alternative, denying proportional tattoo growth to NUB chars, conflicts with my stated goal "avoid another Spid." so I prefer the cap.)

Jon,

You stated numerous times that the NUB is designed to give new players a chance at the top. And that it is based on the highest MPR at the time. If that is mistake, I must have read things wrong and misinterpreted them.

As to the USD spenders, there are a few more than just me. I am saying a vicious cycle may occur if the NUB/NCB is based on the highest MPR out there at the time of character creation.

Until Cosmos, every single NUB that got to the top has sold out. While most have left, Mikel was the only one who stayed on for a new character. So if a USD spender comes along and buys a single minion NUB that made it to the top, then buys 3 minions, s/he will have such a large MPR advantage and may become another Spid, that is untouchable for at least 4 months. The next NUB single minion gets to the NEW MPR top, sells out, the USD spender buys 3 more minions, the top MPR goes way up again, and the cycle goes on.

But if the NUB/NCB is based on something else, rather than the top MPR at the time of character/account creation, then I am wrong.

Look at the bright side, ranger, FB stinks for four minion characters, so they'd have a bad score to power ratio. :)

I always thought the NUB was based on the amount of time since CB2's creation.......

Grant but getting what? 95% of your xp from your DD back doesn't

sorry 92%!

Jonathan, thank you for the answer. In any case, a cap is not much different than some sort of goofy curve that tries to control the PR (and advantage thereof) of tattoos at every different level of the game. I am better seeing the elegance of the cap now, and I very much appreciate you taking the time to answer my silly query. *smile*

Infact here is the relevant post from Jonathan stating that the rate of the NUB is based on time since CB2 opened:


I've already mentioned my two goals for the NUB:
- give motivated players a chance to get to the top if they're willing to work as hard as the players who are already there
- retain new players by showing them they have a chance to catch up

Since apparently a lot of people missed the explanation in what I call "the bartjan thread" even though someone else started it, the NUB works like this:

Rate * Duration ~ time CB2 has been open

Right now, Duration is capped at 4 months, so every day the rate a new player gets goes up a bit.

--Jonathan, July 3 2005 10:03 PM EDT

But I think he means the rate at which players are going up, specifically the top MPR. So then the top MPR would be calculated into the mess, and could cause the snowball effect Ranger's talking about.

Ranger: that is how I calibrate the NUB/NCB bonus, but none of the coefficients I described is automatically changed, except of course the time-based one(s).

I would like to amend this;

"There's not a lot at low levels that can touch UC."

There's not a lot at low levels that can touch a FF. :/