A forward look at the N*B (in General)

As the NUB/NCB is now, it works very well. In fact, I'd agree with Ranger's post in another thread that it does its job perfectly.

However, the Bonus is now at around what, 475%? It's pretty darned high. Whenever I was running mine, for the short time period that I did, I attained 500k MPR in about a week. That's very fast, but the speed at which one grows counteracts itself.

Fact is, I had to change my fightlist every day/other day in order to grow at optimal speed. At what point does the new player or NCB'er intending to hit the top spot have to make a new fightlist every 10-20 fights?? We're not far from that, given my experience with the N*B as it is now.

This is effectively due to being constrained to a certain period of time. Some have suggested lengthening the N*B to a greater period of time, to allow newbies to learn the game better and to reduce that incredible growth rate. This solution would work, but only temporarily.

So what will you do about that, Jon? I'm really concerned about the direction this is taking. We've already seen a potential solution, the rolling bonus idea that Ranger proposed some time ago. I know this has been discarded as an idea, since Jon feels like it takes the work out of the game, but isn't a semi-good system better than one that is simply ticking down to impossibility?

Fact is, the idea behind the rolling bonus is that you don't have to keep creating new characters. You can actually stick with a team, even if you have work-related problems, family vacations, technical problems, power outages, whatever. It decreases as one approaches the top spot, so it isn't as though it is a N*B for everyone - there would still be quite a bit of work required to reach the top, much less overtake it.

And for the newbies, they could simply have double the rolling bonus until they reached half the top MPR, and then it turns into a normal one. Isn't this a better solution? Nowhere NEAR the dropoff they hit now. They could get their free purchased BA still too, which would help tons with the money issue...

I suppose I just don't see how this isn't viable. Is it because a member of the community came up with it? Either way, regardless of the reason, the current system is simply an effort in futility. It works SPECTACULARLY right now, but one can easily see that this success cannot last.

SO: Since Jonathan disagrees with the proposed idea of a rolling bonus, does anyone else have a better solution? The basis of one's proposition must be without a time constraint, as rewards increase within that constraint to a point that becomes counterintuitive - or at least that's how I see it.

Questions? Comments? Solutions? Please post!

Note: I had to change my fightlist after every EXP time. It would be QUITE the hassle to change your fightlist every 5 fights mid-EXP time.

as I said before, I believe rolling bonus is only affecting the scale of XP. In effect, the gap between 1-1m will be smaller than the gap between 1m-2m etc. It sort of reduce ranger's "practical" MPR a little to the rest of us. I agree with Jon that it takes the committment out of the game and doesn't give the same or close to similar help to NUBs.

Well there will be a time where the NUB is too high.

That is every set of BA they have to update their fightlist. Which is quite tedious and boring.

With the rolling bonus, if you play a lot you catch up. If you do not you fall further behind. The rolling bonus will take you to 90% of the top so it does not completely compensate for not playing.

I agree with OB and have for some time.
I am not against a bonus for new players, or even players who leave/slow down. It is just the present situation is too much too fast.

For the record, I need to change my fightlist every 160 BA, if not more often. It removes a bit of the satisfaction brought by beating stronger and stronger opponents, making me feeling like im "out of breath" from all the quick jumping around, instead of feeling accomplishment.

nobody ever listens...

BONUS = 300%(FIX)
VARY = TIME

Actually Lost,

That is a great idea. The longer CB goes on, the longer someone has to stay and play his entire NUB to get to the top. Obviously it would skew up 1/3 as fast as the time the game goes on.

Just figure how long someone needs with a 300% bonus to catch FTW. Then every 3 CB2 days, 1 day gets added to the length of the NUB. Which would by default be the length of the NCB (same bonus).

Also for NCBers, that would help a bit, giving BA would only cost 3x the normal BA for the entire NCB. Making it far more affordable to buy BA.

Brilliant, just brilliant.

FINALLY someone sees the post =x

i still like the rolling bonus idea mainly for the fact that you can stick with one team and still build it up instead of our current era of disposable teams. it would also increase the viability of single-minion teams in the high ranks which i think is needed still.

if jon thinks it would make it too easy, then you can always adjust the bonus and make it give less thus requiring people to fight more.

as i have stated before, for the money part of the nub, just extend the period they have free ba until the magic number is reached. all monies made can then go into gear.

i usually trust jon's vision on things, but on this i completely disagree with him and his stated reasons thus far. it is his playpen however so his word is final.

Please understand, the rolling bonus idea is my first choice.

Due to the fact people can come and go and still play intently for the time you want to catch up.

Knowing that Jon will not put in the rolling bonus, Lostling idea is a great 2nd choice.

rolling bonus would definitely make the game less errm homely... i could just take a leave of 1 year... come back and still catch the top mprs with minimal effort

"minimal effort"? Hardly. I don't think that's anything close to what's been proposed.

Minimal effort in comparison to spending 140M on BA purchases and then another couple hundred M to hire 3 minions? Yes, minimal in that arena. But USD takes that effort away.

I don't understand why everyone thinks a rolling bonus means when you come back you could immediately go to the top. Is the idea really coming across that poorly? Or is there just an extreme lack of understanding that plagues the CB forums regarding this concept?

i would call it minimal effort as compared to the people who have been here for the past year :)

side note: USD solves alot of problems

You would have to fight more than them to catch them, though. See, they'll be at a point where they are slowly catching up to the top, and you'll be catching up as well - maybe I'm not making myself clear. I don't especially know how.

You're going to catch the spot they -were- in quickly, but since they've moved forward, you're only gaining ground on them, rather than catching them as they are now.

This is difficult to explain in text, as I'm a visual thinker.

The bonus would get smaller and smaller each day as you get closer to the top. Remember it is based on the top MPR each day.

At the top it may only be a 15% overall bonus. Not enough to catch FTW in 1 day, but perhaps 1 year.

And if you leave for a year, you have to catch back up to that 15% point, and then you have to play for another year to catch him. Whereas people who stayed have played for that year, and now they've caught him. Maybe that explains it a little better, lostling - there's still a downside to leaving the game, but it isn't to such a point that one would have to abandon the character outright and spend ~500M to get back where they were.

bascially they are moving slower then you and you can still catch up with them :) i so get that... so would it mean that if i stay at the edge of my tattoo lvl i can lvl my tatt faster? :)

I don't know, I'm trying to think how that would work but my brain isn't cooperating ;'P

if you keep your max tat closer to your tattoo lvl that would mean that you would have higher rolling bonus = faster tatt lvling :)

What you're saying, I think, is to fight less so you keep at a point near your MTL. So you get more EXP per fight due to bonus, but you are still fighting less - that seems like it would even out.

fight as much as you want and retrain ;)

Ah, gotcha - so you retard your MPR growth in order to increase your tat growth, in a similar fashion to the RoE losing tat growth to gain more MPR.

Anyways - so we have at least 2 alternate solutions to the current NUB method. Anyone else have any? Comments on why the N*B is broken/not broken? Etc?

yep... so at the end of the day you would have a larger tatt then the person at higher MPR would have... THEN you make your way up and own them... OR you can just sell it

So you'd get a larger tat than ordinarily held at your level, limited only by your MTL - however, you'd have lost a severe amount of ground, which has to be made up over a longer period of time. Sounds to me like people who train a tattoo up with their N*B.

Except you don't have to abandon a character to do so.

Plus, that would give another avenue to catch the top player, having a bigger tattoo. Currently, there's a 6/20 refresh that means you're unlikely to ever have a chance of burning more BA than them. Plus, the top players are in the best clans, so you can't catch them via clan bonus.

So really, that's a plus!

One could make it that tattoos do not grow faster then normal.

But right now one could make a NCB over and over and do the same thing growing a tattoo.

personally? anything that gives me a bonus would be a + since i play for money :)

im just looking at it from a normal NCBer point of view... would you rather spend an unlimited time catching up or a fixed time... that you will definitely be somewhere near the top...

however... if your saying taht 15% is the max rolling bonus you will ever get... i would like to say its probable that you will NEVER catch up with the top say 50... simply because your getting less base rewards per fight... and simple because of the tiers system

Nope, not saying that, it was merely an example.

"however... if your saying taht 15% is the max rolling bonus you will ever get"

not at all, lower down you get a higher percent, at the top you would get a much lower percent though, that is where the 15 percent was mentioned. i think though that the lowest percent would need to be around 30 at least though as when ranger and i tested some rewards numbers, he got around a 16 percent higher average reward than i did just from fighting higher people than i could. it would possibly be higher due to the automated fight list maximizing rewards for us.

something i have pushed for would be a working vacation system... but yep... ah well no point discussing this unless we have some other input from jon... and as it currently stands he doesnt want it... so i hope he will consider my idea

The beginning bonus would be close to 200% in most examples being suggested now.

2x the difference in MPR as a %.

Ie 100% difference (just starting) = 2 x 100 = 200%

Yes, I think either solution is better than the current system.

Although, as I've said a number of times in this thread, the current system is working perfectly. It just can't last, is all.

I would have to say that I am against a rolling bonus. Either everyone will be at the top (say within 80% of top mpr) or the game will stagnate.

The only way this could change were if it were almost impossible to burn all ba. As the game is right now it is quite possible to burn 100% of your ba especially in the 6 ba regen.

lol so if ranger has 4mill MPR and i have 1 i would get errm 2x4mill = 8mill %?

oh so max at 200%?...
pretty cool... i would be getting 300% almost all the time whoot! =x but yea probably aint such a good idea...

lol but yea... i would prefer the length of time instead of bonus thing

Nah lostling, 100% MPR difference. Then 99% difference, etc...not each individual piece of MPR x2%, that would be silly.

For example, say I'm half ranger's MPR, we'll call that a 50% difference since that's how close I am to him. x2 = 100% bonus. Get to within 10% of him, and get a 20% bonus.

Too many posts to read so late, sorry if this has been said:

Make the N*B an amount of BA. BA Pool. The pool grows, time can vary at the whim of the user. I have said it a million times. for some reason, it never sticks with anyone. Seems obvious as hell to me. Bonus BA can only be used for fighting, not for forging or anything else, and bonus BA doesn't count toward clan points, etc. etc. It can work, and it lets a new player do what they want to do: Play.

Having a ba pool also would not work. It can be taken too much advantage of. You could burn it only during exp time and then when you have a good clan bonus. It would be far easier than it is now to overtake the top spot.

true that :) but yep... i dont know what you think but i think the easier way would be what i suggested...

length = change
bonus = fix 300%

rolling bonus would require ALOT of things to change...
BA pool quite easily abused...

Yes, both of those are good ideas IMO. I'm more in favor of rolling bonus, however, because it doesn't require you to drop your character in order to have a chance at the top. No more of this throw-away character business that I hate so much...

...But that's entirely personal. :) The time variable bonus only has the problem of eventually being really really long, but that'd be in the far distant future, quite a bit further ahead than the current system's inevitable breakdown.

I agree that the ease to burn every single BA up top is bothersome too, Nem. Making it easier to allow for time constraints is a good thing. Making it impossible for competition to flourish due to equivalent BA usage across the board is not.

Could you explain the stagnation thing, btw? I didn't quite understand your point. =\

What I mean about the stagnation is that things wont change. The people who are in front will stay in front, and the people behind will stay behind. Because we can only use a certain amount of ba the difference in gains are very small. With a rolling bonus the gap decreases. But you wont overtake them.

The effect of a rolling bonus would be that the wall where most people are at will slowly rise up into 6 ba regen and all the newer players who start later will always be behind the wall, they wont ever actually catch up. They will get closer but never overtake.

A rolling bonus could work if the ba regen were changed back to 10/10 minutes. With that amount it would be very challenging to burn 100% of ba, and so with enough effort be able to overtake people, because most everyone would not be burning 100%.

not really... it would just mean that the active players would form a wall :) i still dont like that idea... not that i have a very large problem with it... just dont like the idea...

So it would be what we have, but on a smaller scale (i.e. everyone will be up near the top, but still with the current can't-pull-ahead problem due to BA usage)?

And the solution EITHER way is to go back to the 10/10 - I wish Jon would do that - but I think too many people like the easy, cushy spot they've filled with the current BA regen rate.

Either way, an improvement on what we have seems better to me, even if the overall issue still stands.

Then again, I could be entirely wrong and missing what you've said. I hope I interpreted your post correctly! :)

10/10 is kinda bad... i wouldnt be able to sleep like 6hrs...

You got most of it. The one thing that i want to point out is that a newer user will always be behind. They wont have a good catch up. They will always be that half a lap behind because they came late.

This is where the n*b works a lot better. It gives a good chance at getting up there into the race. I could see having a rolling bonus after the n*b ran out. But it wouldn't really change the game much other than making it easier.

I see exactly what you mean now! With the */20 refresh rate, everyone hits their BA at the same time, and that new player is always at a certain point behind because everyone's catching up at the same rate...

And yeah, like I've said, I think the n*b works spectacularly now - it just cannot forever, as the original post points out. I'd like to think of a solution of some sort that works just as well and doesn't blow itself up.

However, with the */10 rate, those who can hit all their BA advance and those who do not are still in the game, just in their proper place within it. IMO, with that refresh rate back, the rolling bonus would be just as good as the current n*b system, but without the countdown to impossibility.


And lostling, that's EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

"But without */20 refresh, I couldn't sleepallday/workandmissnoBA/dowhateverIfeellike and still be just as competitive as a person willing to spend at a */10 rate!"

The PROBLEM with that is that with everyone increasing at a linear rate, everyone stays in their place and the game stagnates, as Nem put it. That's more or less where we're at now, minus the N*B and people like NS using a RoE to make teensy gains over time.

i would be permanantly sad that i miss BA due to sleeping =\ kinda bad as i say...

but as i said your "solutions" would require a large change... *smirks*

You weren't here during the */10 refresh? It hasn't been */20 for very long, you know...

Putting "solution" in quotes makes me think you're poking fun.

One solution requires change, one solution will result (after a great long time) with a 5 year long NUB.

I can poke fun back, mister.

it only becomes solution when jon says so :) and yes i prefer a 5 years nub compared to what we have now

What we have now works.

However, these proposals are because the current system will eventually break, and everyone can see that coming.

Do you like it better when I call them 'proposals', rather than 'solutions', even though that -is- the correct term for what we are trying to come up with here? Better yet, I'll compromise and call them tentative solutions. *smile*

*pulls out a pop gun* *pop* lol whatever the name is :) yep 3 whatever has been proposed... now we just have to wait for jon :)

Unless anyone else has an idea.


I truly am curious if Jonathan has any plans for when the rewards inevitably grow to this extent. :P Betcha they've been talking about it in the secret forum for months!!

Here is something that I think could help.

1 eventually the nub bonus could be lengthened out to 6 months if the bonus starts to prove too much.

2 Give say 3 options at the start of an ncb. A 4 month option, a 8 month option and a year option.

You could have the 4 month option give the most efficiency for buying ba basically exactly what we have now.

The 8 month and year long ncb would have less efficiency for buying ba, but because it is more spread out it is easier to buy the ba over a time. So you would be making it more convenient but in actuality be paying slightly more than you would running a 4 month ncb. The year long one would of course be the least efficient.

It would work like this:

4 month ncb: same as now

8 month ncb: half bonus, ba costs ncb of bonus+ 5%

1 year ncb: 1/3 bonus, ba costs 33% ncb of bonus+ 9%

I don't know, with my current NCB, it finally (sort of) stabilized, now that I'm getting closer and closer to 1 mil MPR.
But yeah, the first few days, it was kind of crazy.

I am totally for a rolling bonus, it would be the ideal solution.
As you said, I blame most of the negative sentiment (towards the rejection of the idea) on the simple fact most people just don't grasp how it would actually work... and a minority actually understand, but don't like how it would work (as to why, I guess it's my turn to not understand).

But barring that, well, I guess a longer N*B period with a fixed (relatively low, between +100% to +200%) bonus might be marginally ok too.
Still, I hate how that would work compared to a rolling bonus. Heck, in many ways, it's even slightly worse than the current system, especially for a NCB (for a NUB, it would be very beneficial).

And, eh, a "no bonuses at all" but "free BA pool" idea, while slightly bizzare, it does have an interesting appeal... still, that's a whole lot of battles, and I guess the sheer "oh my hand is numb I'm done for today" effect will undoubtably make itself heard sooner rather than later.


All in all, what I'm saying, I guess, is that the current implementation of the N*B is my second choice out of the ones presented so far for the NCB, but only my 3rd choice for NUB.
The first choice in both cases goes for the rolling bonus (which kind of eliminates the term "NCB" altogether, everybody will get treated as one).

i dont really understand... is spending a longer time on the game such an adversion to you? not to mention that this would discourage USD farmers... considering you have to take a long time ?

For the NUB (the one with the cash bonus), no, not a problem at all... like I said, the current one would be the third best choice after the rolling bonus (on first place) and the variable time fixed bonus option (on second place).

However, for the NCB (with no cash bonus whatsoever, but with "extra BA" costing a bundle), the sooner it's over with, the better. Either you have the funds to buy the BA (in which case, over the course of the NCB, they end up costing the same in total), or you never buy any BA, same problem. The difference in cash you earn during a NCB now and a slightly longer NCB has a minimal effect on the amount of extra BA you can buy overall, so it doesn't make that much of a difference overall.
Therefore, the longer, drawn-out NCB option would be much, much worse (as if it's not bad enough you waste so much cash in the process, you have to do it a lot longer ? No thanks).

If the NCB was longer, the price of BA would then drop.

IE: IF the NCB was 3x longer, the price would drop by 1/3, putting it within reach for some people, especially during bonus xp time.

easy. Instead of having a fixed length N*B, have it a variable length. It is locked in at the first day of your N*B the top player (ranger's) MPR, then take 95% of that. Your N*B ends when you hit that mark, as long as it takes (maybe that amount decays by 0.1% a day or something, so bad starts mean you have less MPR at the end of it).

If a BA pool were filled with specially labeled BA, it could be controlled -- no using for wacky times, for example. Only normally accrued BA could be used for that. Or somesuch. It could work.