How about this for a solution? (in General)

What if the N*B was removed and a new type of bonus enabled?

Based on this formula:

100% - (your mpr/top MPR)%.

So a new character would get 100% character bonus while someone 1/2 the top MPR would get 50%. Someone 75% of the top MPR would get a 25% bonus.

This bonus would apply to all characters who are not the top MPR.

For new players this bonus would apply to money and xp, for accounts older then 6 months apply only to xp.

Bought BA would be free the first 4 months and normal price after that for all characters.

This would let those near the top, ie people like NWO, get a bonus of about 6-7%.

If someone buys minions to take the top spot, then the former top spot then gets a bonus to try to retake the top spot.

No time limit on the bonus, it is just there. Recalculated each day at cache flush.

Leave clans alone in this situation as the character bonus would get someone within 1% of the top MPR accounting for the difference in the 1st to 5th place clan given equal rewards from fights/battles etc...

My apologies if anyone brought this idea up before. Just seeing if this may be a solution to the problems of cb2.

Sry 1 more thing.

Leave challenge bonus alone as that is based upon who you fight. This is to replace the N*B.

:D Very similair to my post! ;)

I need to go away and think on this more! :P Well, what else is work for anyway! ;)

Very elegant actually. I like this.

I would tie the free bought BA time period into the bonus to cash period.

;)

Sounds good. Gives all players a chance at the top spot, not just those who are supposedly new users and those with a lot of cash to burn.

Add sub-realms in Gondor and your idea is about the same as the one I previously posted. Needless to say, I like it.

i like any solutions that allow single-minion teams to stay that way and this would do that.

i also like that fact that new players don't have that limited "window of opportunity" and can get a bonus as long as they are fighting. that goes for old players who fall in the ranks.

as i said about ob's idea in the other thread, it looks good on paper. i am pretty open to any change as what we have now definitely seems flawed.

Wow! Convergence of ideas instead of divergence. Things are looking up. I like it!

i just figured my bonus, it would be at almost 35%. i think the bonus would need to be figured at least daily at cache flush.

another plus to this solution is that it is always self-correcting. in effect, we wouldn't need a rescale to make things fair.

I like the sound of it too (I CM'd with GL a bit yesterday about it...) except for one thing...

Since using all BA is fairly easy at this point, this would serve to basically just, over time, raise everyone to the top, the very top. We would have a bunch of 3 million MPR folks running around in a year or so, wouldn't we?

Perhaps that is what we want, I'm not sure... Folks would still have to click a lot and stay up on BA, and anyone not buying BA would fall behind _very_ quickly (but then be able to catch up again, I guess...)

One potential abuse(?) -- One could wait and get behind, have the daily calculation give them person a hefty bonus, and then burn all BA, purchased BA, and maybe even some stored BA (at least the hard cap would help prevent over-abuse). Wait to do this during high EXP time with an RoE on, and that could be a huge growth spurt in one day, even at high levels. Then again, would that be an abuse or a feature under this new system? I suppose bonuses could be recalculated more often than daily to prevent that one. It does not seem like a too-intensive query to simply ratio a player's MPR to the highest MPR and have another percentage stored with each character record (or however Jonathan stores characters and their bonuses). Then, that percentage would be multiplied in with everything else (clan bonus, wacky time bonuses, and challenge bonuses).

One final issue -- tattoos. One could perpetually hand a tattoo down the ladder a bit, giving it greater growth. I would expect this new system would result in more and more tattoos being maxxed out to the highest MPR's MTL, because it would be easy enough to hand it down to someone who still had breathing room in their MTL and was receiving an extra 15-20% bonus. So, growth of tattoos would all rise to the largest tattoo as well.

Interesting... Don't get me wrong -- my tone above might sound like I am saying things as bad things. I assure you, I am just saying things. *smile* No bad or good. If the idea is fully embraced and pushed through, it seems so elegant and symmetrical that it can't be bad. That is, if you embrace it. This idea is going to, in large part, do away with small, medium, and large score ladder teams, compressing everything into a high, tight range: scores, MPR, and tattoos. I just don't know what to think of that just yet...

"Folks would still have to click a lot and stay up on BA, and anyone not buying BA would fall behind _very_ quickly (but then be able to catch up again, I guess...)"

That's the way I see it. ;) Even with this, there's no way I'd reach the top, I just don't click as much as I should/could/as most. ;)

But if you put in that dedication, then you reach up there, and everyone with the dedication has a dynaic, flowing competition with everyone else up there. ;)

As for Tattoos being passed down, cap them to 1/3 XP. ;)

If you want to see what this would look like just watch a tournament. Which is fine to a degree - I like the scramble that ensues. However......

If everyone is in a position to take on everybody else in terms of MPR, then you're left with three things that give you an edge. One is strategy, same as now. the other is - again same as now - NW. Mostly where NW is concerned tanks rule. Biggest weapon rules. And the other is most clicks.

I'm not sure it would leave us any different to now, except for that scramble....

An easy way to circumvent the problem outlined by GL and S137 is give smaller bonuses when fighting characters with lower MPR.

So the players with the top characters will eventually be the ones that are very smart and/or very rich. The others will simply not be able to overtake the top spots because they will keep fighting down instead of fighting up. Thus never gaining any ground.

In other words, adjust the rewards or the bonus so that when one fights characters that have MPR much lower than its own, he gets less than when fighting bigger characters. Of course, this MPR difference would have to be substantial enough not to penalize the top character, which will already be without a bonus.

So a 1M MPR character with a fight list filled with 750K MPR characters should get less rewards than a 1M character with a fight list filled with 1.25M MPR characters.

I like the sound of it. Looks like a good way for those who missed out to catch up and also those who came back to cb to compete. Good idea!

I think this is a far superior solution to the awful N*Bs. I endorse it.

I like this idea much better than N*B. It is simple, yet effective.

Well with tattoos, the MTL can be lowered to just above what someone should have with their current MPR. And let us not forget loaning tattoos can get quite expensive. Giving a tattoo to a friend has its problems also.

Yes, it may in time create a lot of higher level characters, but not everyone gets in all their BA. However, it would let someone who has strayed from CB for a while, rejoin, get a medium level MPR character and have a realistic chance to gain some ground on the top people.

I like this idea. Go Ranger! ^_^

Yes, tattoo growth could be controlled via existing transfer costs/issues and tweaking the MTL.

I was just writing a CM, and thought my reservations large enough to post here -- other issues this scheme might bring about:

I'm just not sure about it pushing everyone to a continuous "top scramble", as JW put it.

Net worth will still reign supreme, especially since tanks still have a weapon allowance. If everyone essentially reaches the same MPR, then the WA will give tanks an advantage (because they will actually have more "power" tucked away in that WA). And buying BA won't help as much on the mage side, no matter how much BA is made available for purchase, because people will be able to catch up anyway. In fact, buying BA will almost be pointless, since one could forego buying BA for a month and then simply splurge a bunch in one day (with rewards inflated from falling behind) to catch back up...

The idea would also make retraining essentially free of charge, since retraining would drop your MPR, thereby raising your rewards till you caught right back up.

Again, are these bad things? I think the tank/NW issues are, actually I mean, just imagine Freed with his 800 million NW catching up to the top -- I think he would be virtually unstoppable unless someone played a blow for blow USD game against him). As for the buying BA and retraining issues, those would probably be OK in light of the totally new paradigm.

That's what people need to realize -- this is a whole new deal, a change to the face of CB entirely. This isn't some small tweak that can be balanced later. If this were to run for a while and compress a few hundred characters to near the top, the only thing that could put things back (if it turned out to be a failure) would be some sort of reset, rollback, or rescale. This is serious business we are discussing.

a thought on the intentionally falling behind to get a jump idea, what about a kind of rolling bonus where, for example, your bonus would be the lowest that you had over the last week or other term. The system is already in place sort of to track that info with the rolling stats info (clan, forging, etc...). The period would have to be long enough that the boost you would get from lowering your relative MPR would not be worth the wait.

I also don't see a reason why the bonus itself could not be calculated almost constantly like the current fight rewards system.

Yes, constant would work, and Ranger already made a good point to me in CM -- even when being behind by 20% or so, gaining on the top spot would still take a long time, and would take daily dedication. The nice thing about being able to fall behind a bit is that you can save money not buying BA, and then slowly crawl back. As it stands now, even missing a couple days of buying BA can be a big loss for someone trying to gain...

So, constant "rank bonus" (or whatever we would call it) calculations would make spurts less possible, and the rewards gains would be small enough to take a while but large enough to matter...

I still worry about NW at the very top. For me (easy for me to say), a NW rescale and then lockdown of transfers (i.e. no transfers at all to stop USD) would be the ideal way to start this new idea. *smile* But that idea may be a bit to close to "CB3".

I would think that in this scenario, the ROE issue is solved. One can use it if they want. One still has the ability to grow even without it and does not have to cram in the first 4 months all they can.

100% - (your mpr/top PR)%.

^^

Changing MR to PR could work (maybe change it for both parties, but it still doesn't change the WA.

Who cares (for example only) if you go against Rangers MPR or PR, when his 800 Million NW weapon doesn't increase his PR due to being absorbed by the WA>

But the WA is a seperate issue, one discussed to death I feel. ;)

If you change it to PR, all I have to do is equip every weapon I can to get my PR to 6M or so, have a massive bonus to every other character and watch the inflation grow and grow.

MPR is the only way it can work, PR is too labile and too easily manipulated.

You could of course do that, but it would help everyone else in the game bar yourself.

So why would you want to?

;)

I could do it for a few days, then Mikel could do it, then Edy can... etc...

MPR inflation would occur. Best to use MPR to keep it non labile.

"Since using all BA is fairly easy at this point, this would serve to basically just, over time, raise everyone to the top, the very top. We would have a bunch of 3 million MPR folks running around in a year or so, wouldn't we? "

LOL wasn't that the whole idea of having chance to catch up?

I personally like it just for the fact that catch up isn't equivalent to waiting for top dogs to quit / sell out. Also we can see much more variety of strat up on top after a year or 2. Lastly, no one would need to restart their char over and over again to use NCB, since everyone has a fair playground. What determines winning / maintaining the top spot = a lot more clicks + all round strategy + USD :)

I don't like this idea as I'm convinced that giving people a chance to catch up to the highest MPR Char gives Ranger an unfair advantage.

All joking aside it sounds interesting, effictive and straight forward...

This would be an excellent solution to a very imminent issue. Unlike the NCB, which doesnt give $$$ bonus (so old players cannot make much money) and the NUB which only applies to new players, this is a solution which benefits the whole of CB.

Nice job again Ranger!

I am slightly curious as to this part:

What about new players all growing quickly, leaving the bottom, and then those starting out at the very bottom having nobody to fight and grow from?

AKA there's a cluster at the top, yes, but then nothing at the bottom/middle for the newbies to hit in order to reach the top....would this be a problem? yes/no? *ponders*

there are so many random chars all over the place, I can't conceive that

And if people are concerned with the lower rate, 100%, at the beginning compared to the N*B now, it can be raised 50-100% till about 1M or so MPR if needed to speed things up in the early stages of ones character.

"In other words, adjust the rewards or the bonus so that when one fights characters that have MPR much lower than its own, he gets less than when fighting bigger characters. Of course, this MPR difference would have to be substantial enough not to penalize the top character, which will already be without a bonus."

I believe this would be why Ranger said the Challenge Bonus should remain, Talion.

Exactly as Mem said.

What I proposed will ONLY take the place of the N*B.

The challenge bonus will not change or the effects of money/xp time.

I believe that it would not be prudent to establish a precise number(i.e. 1 million MPR) for any additional bonus gained at the beginning. Perhaps a percentage between 25-33.33% of the top MPR could work. It would, naturally, have to be recalculated at every cache flush. A sliding scale seems like it'd be most effective on the extra bonus-- 100%, for a grand total of 200%, plus Challenge Bonus, at 0 MPR, and 75% at 8.3-11.1% of the top MPR, and 50% at 16.6-22.2% (all depending upon which percentage you've established as the terminating percentage for the extra bonus).

Firstly, should tournament characters be treated the same way? I would think not, but it would seem difficult to make them exempt...

I like the idea, but I do suggest everyone go back and take a look at what OOB said. This really may reduce the amount of people there is to fight in the lower scores.

When you consider it from the standpoint of the top, it makes the game more competitive. But what would it be like starting over fresh?

I think there are enough characters that are forgotten or farms at the lower levels.

And remember not everyone plays 24/7 so there will not be a clumping of characters at the top ranks for quite a while.

And those that do spend every possible BA will still pull ahead of those who don't.

You get a bonus, but it doesn't mean you don't have to fight as much if you want to catch up.

You can make tourny chars special in that when the tourny is over, they are auto-retured... BUT the char will still be able to be fought.

"When you consider it from the standpoint of the top, it makes the game more competitive. But what would it be like starting over fresh? "

Is there a need to start a fresh char, when all you need to do is untrain everything / fire unwanted minions, then you are good to go again :) The new bonus if done right, should be able to auto adjust for your latest MPR compare to the top dog and thus back on track for more competition! You can test gazillion of strategies by untrain / retrain, but your char is still relatively competitive as long as you continue to be active, which is the real point of this whole idea.