Idea to spice up clan fighting. (in General)

I was re-iterating in a recent thread that what I like the most with CB is the fact that no strategy can be full proof against all other strategies.

Now, lets say this advantage was incorporated into Standard clans?

Here is how I would see it work:

(1) Current scoring system remains.

(2) For each trainable stat, the clan that gets the most wins against it gets 500 bonus clan points for the next 24 hours.

Here are the advantages I see...

- Standard clans with only one or two members become obsolete. That would be a good thing. After all, the point of having clans is to get people to interact.

- Specialized clans would start appearing.

- Clans comprised of a lot of lower level members would start getting unexpected bonuses effective for a period of 24 hours.

I am certain there are a lot of things I am overlooking, but I am also certain my fellow CB'ers will not hesitate to point them out. :P

I don't understand the concept of "wins against a stat"... How do you define a "stat"? Largest in game? Any existence of it? Beating a base train of something? What happens when a change comes along, or when something gets nerfed?

And if you do away with 1-person clans, I guess I won't be seeing you any more. You can't force interaction, and when you do, ironically, choice suffers. I don't understand why so many folks can't see that NOT wanting to be in a group clan is part of the whole clan choice/lifestyle. I'm certainly not expecting any special privileges as a clan singleton, but I don't plan on being barred from it entirely, either.

In summary, I am not sure I understand your idea fully, and I think changes in the game would make this idea too hard to keep up with (especially for larger/older teams).

> How do you define a "stat"?

For example, the clan with the most wins against characters that train MM gets 500 bonus clan points.

And so on for every other stat. Although I would probably exclude HP/ST/DX.

And no one is forcing anyone to be part of a clan S137.

I was just pointing out that the goal of clans is to get people to interact and cooperate with each other. Right now, I haven't been part of a clan in which every member actively cooperates which all other members.

BR is the clan that comes closest to doing that in my personal experience. However, it could be a lot better.

I can imagine if a clan is five battles behind the clan with the most wins against MM, then members will let each other know and try to close the gap. I think it would be fun.

Apologies for double post...

> In summary, I am not sure I understand your idea fully, and I think changes in the game would make this idea too hard to keep up with (especially for larger/older teams).

I think larger older/teams would eventually adapt because of experience and raw power. Although it is a factor, I don't think making older users adapt to a change should be a significant factor if it does not mean retraining/losing XP.

Falling behind by 10-15% isn't a "force"? I think it is, and have thought so since the inception of clans. I was appalled the instant I found out the weight of clan bonuses and Jonathan said clanning was linked to real rewards (wonder if I could dig up that original post! *smile*). So yes, I have to be in a clan, considering I cannot even keep up with the top players currently. How would I do so with an additional 11-12% reward loss?

You can talk about how great the "ideal" clan is all you like. No matter how much you talk about, there will be those who have had bad experiences with clans, or maybe just "meh" or "no choice but to" experiences. Those folks want to have the choice of doing their own thing. Why is that a bad choice?

As far as this stat-beating idea... How would you handle stats that are trained base, or stats that can be foiled by a single tactic? For example, I foil Haste, Giant Strength, VA, AS, GA, and Protection pretty effectively. I know that doesn't mean I will beat those people, and I suppose if there are a lot of base stats out there things will cancel... But I guess my gut feeling is that almost EVERYTHING will cancel. People train a lot of different things, especially if you take any five characters and combine everything they have trained.

Finally, this sounds like a book-keeping nightmare. Jonathan would have to save the target stats (at least what is trained) for every single battle fought. Because people can train and untrain things, especially base things. Therefore, every time I beat a team with PL, VA, Protection, Evasion, AMF, EC, GA, and AS, the victory would have to keep track of all that. Then the queries would run against victory tallies and group by stat beaten. The calculations wouldn't be bad, but the data gathering would likely be a coding, database, and performance nightmare (compared to the gains in "fun" this would entail).

Like I wrote, every strategy having its counter is what I find fun about CB.

Base stats would count just as any other stat. Familiars would be considered as one single stat.

Book keeping nightmare? I see a simple table with one counter for every "stat" for every "clan". It's simple and it's small in terms of space. Would it be a strain on the server because of the amount of queries needed to keep the counters up to date? Maybe, Maybe not. Just as most non-admin users, I don't know enough about how the database works to give a fact-based opinion.

S137, you are correct. Not everybody likes clans. But clans exists and those users that like them are unanimous in saying that they can be improved by encouraging clan member cooperation and inter-clan competitiveness.

Keeping track as a counter on the clan page is still a lot of work. Every battle, Jonathan either has to have variables throughout fight.tcl denoting what stats have been run into, or just do a full scan at the end -- one more scan through all the target minions assembling all the "stuff" they have trained. Your counter ideas is good, smarter than mine (I think), but still not a no-brainer implementation.

Finally what about the parts of strategy that aren't stat-related? For example, high AC? High HP? A massive weapon? Ranged vs. Melee? Offense vs. defense? In many cases, the fact that a team concentrates on offense is a FAR better indicator of "strategy" than whether or not they, say, have a base Protection trained. So would your idea be showing a truly meaningful representation of one clan "taking out" another?

And now for fun, my first and second reaction to clans -- ever! I was "NerfHerder" at the time. Looks like my stance hasn't changed much!



Sounds neat.

Can I get explicit clarification on what advantages a clan member has as far as the overall CB community goes:

- slightly higher rewards when fighting a team from a different clan - extra spot awards for clan members of clans that do well

And the disadvantages:

- none

Is that correct? Just want to clarify before starting a "balance" discussion. (In case you can't tell, I don't want to join a clan).

-- NerfHerder, March 11 2004 9:27 AM EST

(in between is where Jonathan announced that clan bonuses apply to REAL rewards...)

Because having to join a clan, even a one-person clan (try to be gender neutral, Todd *smile*), is retarded. So we all make one-man clans, we all get inflated rewards...what is the point?

Take out the inflated CB rewards and I love this idea...a separate layer of fun. But the current implementation ISN'T separate, meaning folks will all have to clan up. What happened to choice?

-- NerfHerder, March 11 2004 10:33 AM EST

"Finally what about the parts of strategy that aren't stat-related? For example, high AC? High HP? A massive weapon? Ranged vs. Melee? Offense vs. defense?"

Good point. I was just thinking trainable stats (HP/ST/DX excluded) and tattoos (RoE excluded). As you point out though, it would need a lot of ironing out.

As for the counters, I would not be surprised if a lot of them already exist... but again I am just guessing. I don't know if this idea is implementable. I just think it is very interesting.

It is interesting, definitely, if for nothing else than some intriguing instrumenting... You are right, perhaps Jonathan already does some captures to at least check out things like DD vs. physical damage and such...

And you should definitely wait for someone who actually LIKES clans to weigh in! *smile*

i dunno...personally i think that might lag up the server...having to keep track of each win against a person for each stat...for every person!?

may just be too much for jon to do :P

"i dunno...personally i think that might lag up the server...having to keep track of each win against a person for each stat...for every person!?

may just be too much for jon to do :P"

Please assume the idea can be implemented without consequences to game performance... what do you think about the actual idea?

I think the process of selecting opponents is already limited and complicated enough... nice attempt at an idea... but way off target

Were you scruffy looking at the time Sut?

Tal,

you say 'for each trainable stat, the clan that gets the most wins against it etc' But that leads me anyway, to envisage certain stats getting ignored for instance, or those who train in them getting beaten to a pulp. For instance anybody training ST/Dex would be clan point fodder for evasion and EC currently. Which means tanks would suffer greatly in clans. At least as things stand right now.

And do you count HP as a stat that can be beaten as well? Which means anybody beating HP could in theory get the bonus. Which could give you more of the extra bonus than not. Which kind of becomes 'hand out the extra bonus to everybody'.

At higher levels if you're fighting above your weight like I normally do clan fighting becomes a nightmare, because you can beat everybody you can beat. The rest who you cannot defeat all gang up on you because you're smaller but within the clan target zone. So not only do you lose points - which leads to clan dissolution - but you're handing out free extra bonuses to the big hitters around you.

Unless you take away negative points of course, which means that clan fighting is about the attaining the positive rather than trying to stay out of the negative.

(Don't know if any of that made sense. It's a nice idea, and certainly food for thought. Guess I'm just not enamoured of the clan system...)

First of all JW... What?? I didn't get half of what you wrote.

Also, I posted a few time that the HP/ST/DX stats would be excluded.

Lol Tal, ignore me, I'm trying to cook dinner while I'm doing this. If I can get my brain in gear I'll try and explain what I'm getting at.

But it is an interesting idea.