Goose and Gander: Fair? (in General)

From the char transfer log:

Nemerizt three4thsforsaken Single Minion Oct 3
three4thsforsaken Nemerizt Single Minion Sep 27
Nemerizt three4thsforsaken Single Minion Sep 7
three4thsforsaken Nemerizt Single Minion Sep 6

NightStrike had a char reset for less than this...

What does the community think about it?

Is xfering a char back and forth and saving up BA fair?

What could be done to keep this from happening?

Yeah, I knew about this; and while it certainly gives them an advantage, it's quite costly I'd imagine.
Don't know about fairness; technically they did nothing wrong.

Dunno actually about the 'doing something wrong,' as I may not be clear on all the details of CB's core rule-system.

Technically NS didn't do anything wron either yet he still got his char reset

I think that this should be against the rules. i mean its almost like being a multi and spending double ba on one char. It's just immoral

I think it's fair when you keep in mind how much it must be costing them to do it. Pretty ingenious actually. I don't even want to know how much of a cash sink that would be :O

How much does 1600 BA cost for an NCB in the top 20?

how much does BA cost when you transfer it to a person with no big active Characters?

What happened when NightStrike's character was reset?

(Can't the spellchecker check if it's a word without the 's?)

I tend to use the PoisoN/NWO test to measure "fair"

This isn't something that was possible to do as a January 1st char, NCB BA cost is high to match the price that's been paid by chars fought from the start. This is a direct unbalancing of that, since the saved BA isn't costing Nem what it would if he was buying it with the NCB.

I'm sorry for being the one to out this publicly, but I feel it needed to be brought to the attention of everyone rather than discussed constantly in PM while waiting for something to happen.

For cheaters they didnt do a very good job. 3.2 million mpr with so much BA??? Come on guys lol.

tis wrong. ba should just have the 160 hard cap. you can never get more than that, there is really no reason to have a cap higher than that.

I dont think we should have a cap. But what these two are doing is very wrong and they should be penalized in some way.

we have a cap already. it is just ten times higher than what we can normally accrue.

they must be close friend i guess. start almost same date, sharing boosted character, live 'real' close to each other.

I know three4thsforsaken in real life. Nemerizt is his friend and is in Iraq right now (I think).

I don't think this is against the rules, from what 3/4ths explained to me - I don't know about precedence, but I'm sure transferring a character to maximize BA isn't against the rules.

And before you start throwing fireballs at me, just know that I have helped to catch quite a few multis in my 5.5 years here, and I know for certain that Nemerizt and three4thsforsaken are two separate people.

Don't insinuate that they're multis, I know both of them we all lived in the same town. I think that what they're doing may be somewhat of an exploit, but they did do their best to make sure they weren't out of bounds before hand.

(throws the first fireball).. Its not a matter of if there two separate people or not. Its weather what there doing is fair??? Which I think most of us would agree its not.

Why isn't it fair? Anyone can do it, it's not something limited to just them.

what is "Fair"? It's not up to us to decide what is "fair". Many people have complained for months or years about something or other, claiming it is not "fair".

Evasion is not "fair"
the RoBF is not "fair"
and so on and so forth.

What is determined to be "fair" should be determined by the admins, not by a stone-throwing mob set out to attack what they don't like, didn't think of first, or just resent.

Furthermore, for all the parallels drawn between NS and three4thsforsaken and Nemerizt, this is definitely not the same issue. NightStrike had his character reset for storing up what? 10,000 BA and burning it after he got a NCB. This is why there is a hard cap on BA. The Admins took care of that, and since 3/4ths and Nemerizt have been doing this for quite a few months, I'm sure it has caught the eye of a few admins, and since the admins let them continue, whether (weather? seriously?) or not YOU think it is "fair" is moot. Again, it is up to the admins.

Mitt, I think I love you.

I think it's worth questioning in public... rock throwing mob?

NS hit 300k on the first day of his NCB... 1600ba burned multiple times could easily have gained much more than that.

You guys are lame for sticking up for that.

Sorry nov, I was being a little melodramatic with that statement :)

What I meant was that yes, this is definitely worth questioning in public, but this shouldn't become a thread flaming 3/4ths and Nem by people who don't think this is "Fair" - because "Fair" honestly is what Jon thinks "fair" is, you agree?

I just think we should relax a bit and let the admins sort it out.

I'm sorry for the double post...

... but seriously Plagues? Do you really have to try to attack me personally for disagreeing with you?

If lame is an attack on you personally than sure.??? Didnt know it was that important. Anyway the way i see it two guys one charactor. What happens when you exploit a bug on Carnageblender??? You deserve to be penalized. This isnt fair, this isnt right. And not everyone can do it. You already stated they live close to each other and are indeed friends. Not much people playing carnageblender have that type of relationship with someone else to accomplish something like this.

So it's not fair because you have no friends?

If something is possible within the confines of the game's mechanics it's not a bug or an exploit, it's a clever use of game mechanics...

it's a clever use of game mechanics...

^^^^^^^^^^^^
Isnt that what a bug or exploit is?????????

getting around BA cost for the NCB is most certainly NOT a creative use of game mechanics...

Isn't that cost being made up for with the price of transferring the character back and forth as well as the ba?

I'd imagine even without the NCB increase, the cost of 1600 ba is still pretty pricy

The cost is next to nothing for the BA since the charactors are so small.

Alright, hi guys. Sorry, I've been out all day.

Me and Nem have anticipated that this would cause an uproar. But let me give you some information.

Each transfer takes around 5 million in CBD, in total the money spent on this NCB has been over and beyond most NCBs in transfers alone and has dried up most of the assets of 2 NUB exploiting forgers.

In the end, our growth is still lower than that of Relics. With a similar investment we have reached similar results. At the rate we're going we'll end up at about 3.5-3.6 mil MPR.

If you want to compare us to Nightstrike, note that Nightstrike was penalized at the beginning of his NCB with very little investment. I would be surprised if the admins hadn't noticed at this point. I dunno, I figured if they didn't bother me about it it was fine. We've been doing this for 4 months, I would be a little annoyed if we were to be reset months after VERY heavy spending. I mean, on busy weeks for Nem we have done 2 transfer in a day just for his burning (that's 10 mil!).

As for rebalancing. This has already been rebalanced. This is one the last 4 month NCBs. A 6 month NCB would cost at least double in price as one would have to do 50% more transfers but at extremely higer costs.

I don't know what else to say. Kind of annoys me that the community brings this up this late (this was going to be our last transfer, since Nem is going to loose internet soon). Anyway, ask me if you need any numbers.

i wasn't aiming at multi issue, to be honest i am too drunk to remember why i typed that.

But anyway, isn't this almost the same thing as selling premade NCB char with 1600 BA?

thanks 3/4... honestly I was looking not for a fix for the current situation, but a group opinion and numbers to understand if this is going to end up being the norm...

Considering the transfers back and forth are cheaper than 1600 BA... I'm going to say it might have to be.

First off, even if you retire all other characters and have 240 purchaseable BA per day at a relatively small cost, it still takes 7 days to gather the 1600 BA, seven days that could have been used to earn at least money if not also MPR on your "main" character. I don't know about you, but 300k a day is linda' low, so you're looking at a 2 mil CB$ loss in wasted opportunities.
Also, the character transfer fees aren't small either, I can only assume they're around that high too.
Not only that, but you're only gaining around 2 full day's worth of BA (as in, fight all BA and buy all BA at NCB cost).

So, it costs them at least 3 mil CB$ per cycle to gain 2 days of additional NCB time every week.
At most, they can hope to use up 25-30% more BA as normal, for a combined cost equivalent of almost 80 mil CB$.

Doesn't sound "unfair" to me.
Just damned expensive.

Whoa 5 mil transfer not around 2 mil ?
o.0

You guys are crazy.

80 million split between two is 40 million. Thats not so much for a good run on a NCB.

You know what the really funny part is ?
That you're using up so much cash, yet due to the fact you're not in a standard clan earning big bonuses, you're losing a bonus of up to 20% (5% for fighting clan chars, up to 15% from clan bonus), so in the end, you use up so much money and don't even get a significantly better result :)

Sick. you must not of did your homework?? Go look at Death note. He was in a clan.

He's not in one now :(

Raw scores for 24 hours
User Score
three4thsforsaken 9,076

Nope not at the moment. but he was. When this took place.

Sorry for the 2x post, but my last line of text got cut out...

***WHAT!? OVER 9,000?!!?***

Hmm... yeah, well, they did burn almost 80k BA so far and still have two more weeks to go, I remember having burned well under 60k BA on my NCB... closer to 50k, actually.

no ROE? :D


/Shame

In the end, isn't this just another argument that the whole N*B system is "broken by design" and a rolling bonus system should replace it ?
>:)

Well, with a RoE they would have passed you as a single minion, and then could have hired (yeah right) 3 minions to pass you in MPR by a wide margin :D

Not sure about that. I hire my last minion at very high Mpr and 50mil for last minion is gaining me TINY mpr, enough to passed ranger.

We made lots of intentional choices that reduce efficency just for the cool factor. One was being single minion, another was not using an RoE all the way.

So what happens when the NCB bonus is finished? Who keeps the team? Or are you going to sell it and split the proceeds?

This was never really an issue since Nem is leaving for Iraq in about a month. He's currently training somewhere, so he occasionally has internet.

Frankly, this game has kinda burned me out, if I could have it my way, I would keep this character to forge ^^. Forging is stressfree and fun!

But Nem doesn't want that, so I'm probably going to pump his MPR until he comes back.

If you want to know the reasoning behind this, it was kinda a big "just cause". We had millions lying around after our NUB forging, and well, what better way to spending it a few months before he leaves?

But yeah, I'm hanging on to him until Nem wants it back.

I think it is morally wrong to save BA cost this way, but I don't think there is a rule against it. It is up to the community to notify admins of any potential mishaps, but its not for us to judge.

I think that sums up my position.

If you are wondering about the money I've spent:

I had around 30 mil in the beginning I think, I then sold my exbow to LA which got me a good 20 mil. After that I ran a sale and tossed down another 5 mil recently. Oh yeah, did I mention I bought BA for the first 2 months (while it was expensive during my "turn")?

Dunno about Nem, but he's been less stingy about spending money when BA is expensive. You could probably track his auctions, and sales. He's been disenchanting like crazy, and I have been lending him money when he was low as well.

4 mil left baby...

I'm going to start needing to sell my equips to buy BA :P

it has been known for a long time... nothing has been done about it... so i would personally assume that it is as feature not a bug... and hence i dont see anything wrong with it... about NS's char being reseted? i have no idea...

not that i would do it of course... waste of money

I personally think this is an unfair use of game mechanics.

I don't think they did anything wrong in the sense of breaking any rules, but I do think that they just used a feature of the game and used it to their advantage. The transfer fees at the beginning couldn't have cost near as much as now and I have a feeling ba was missed at a pretty good pace or they would be very very further along than they are now. At a much lower cost than someone that would be trying to buy ba during a NCB run. As long as the cost of the NCB ba is so expensive I have a feeling their way is less expensive and they could have passed #1 in mpr with just a little more try and then what would people think? Just my opinionn and again I'm not pushing for a reset or anything of the sort or calling them cheaters. I personally just think they used the game mechanics to their advantage and I would hope that game mechanic wouldn't be allowed again.

RoE SFBM
at least 8 different people, preferably more
180 transfers
24 hours on each account
1600 saved BA plus around 600 BA on that day on average
around 400k BA burned during the NCB
estimated 1+ bil XP at the end
add 3 expensive minions for over 1.3 bil total XP
= almost 15 mil MPR character
...for an estimated cost of about 10 bil CB$ :)

Wanna' try ? >:)

I didn't know about this, but I guess it makes sense now why 3/4 didn't have a character when I inspected him the other day.

To me, it seems like the same issue as one person buying up 1600 BA and spending it during XP time on a brand new NCB, and then transferring it off to a purchaser. The difference, though, is that I expect that the purchaser who is going to run the actual NCB run gives the launch technician a little bit of monetary compensation. It just happened multiple times, here. In this case, though, a significant difference is that neither user is paying the other to boost their character; in fact, it's not even clear to me whose character it really is.

One of the things about two-user accounts, like Todd-Spydah back before it was made illegal, is that they tend to just be working together for their mutual benefit, rather than having one working to boost the other one's character. There's no apparent compensation for Nem (or for 3/4, if he's eventually giving it away back to Nem) besides knowing that he participated in growing a big tattoo and making a pretty cool character and not having enough money left over for a new NCB run.

I don't view paying someone to give you a boost at the beginning of your NCB as an exploit, and in a sense I don't view this as an exploit, either.
However, one characteristic it shares with multiing is that there is no apparent payment for services rendered. It's just a fun thing for a couple of friends to do together. Then again, it would be fun for me and my friend to both log onto my account when the other one is busy with other stuff. We could REALLY power-level a tattoo, that way!

Sorry for the comparison to multiing, guys. I like both of you. I'm just stating my thoughts on the matter, because I see it as a middle ground that is hard to decide on.

Then again, if doing something like this without compensation is like to multiing while doing it for compensation is fine, then if someone helped me start out my NCB for free because they don't really play much anymore, would that then fall in to this or that category?

Bumped based transfer fee to 100k. If they still want to pay the fees I am OK with this.

So, everybody must pay an extra 50k when people transfer characters because two people took advantage of the system?
=C

Should have nothing to do with the extra 100k, considering they weren't transferring char early game.... it has been mid to late part of the NCB

The 100k thing is a separate matter, that's Jon's call on cash sink. But both of them should be reset, if someone has been reset before , why must there be allowance now? Punishment on system/flaw abuse should be consistent.

Well NS wasn't Reset... his char was just reset and no payback was made for all the wasted cash he spent on BA etc. If anything should happen, the only thing I would say would be a character reset of Single Minion, not a user Reset. the only other thing that shouldn't be there after that is the huge tat they have built up.... but that is a different matter.

Well then reset the char :P I don't know anyone of them including NightStrike, so I might be wrong about how the punishment was done. But the same punishment should be done if there's precedence.

The 100k thing should be listed in changelog, it has nothing to do with what novice is trying to tell.

AdminJonathan         9:14 AM EDT Bumped based transfer fee to 100k. If they still want to pay the fees I am OK with this.

Ryosuke, why are still trying to get them reset? Jon has said he is okay with this - that should be enough for you.
Don't take it out on them for doing something that you, me, and the rest of the CB community has not done out of fear, cost, or just plain not realizing it can be done.

Stop trying to convict someone who has gone to trial (metaphorically) and been acquitted.

Sorry for the double post, but...

... Again, I must stress that NightStrike's case isn't really a fair precedence. What he did was exploit a flaw in the system - it was defined a "flaw" when Jon put a hard cap on BA to stop people from doing things like that again.

and again, Jon has said he is okay with this. In NightStrike's case he was not.

If I recall correctly NS's NCB was reset very early on and he was refunded the purchase cost of the BA he had bought to that point....

I don't think resetting Single Minion would be a parallel punishment as this is much later after the alleged infraction. A small shortening of the NCB would be appropriate perhaps but that is up to Jon...

... of course he has stated he is fine with it

So, anyway I think we ought leave our two fellow CBers in peace.
They haven't profited financial (at least not in any significant way I can imagine)
They haven't upset the MPR tables.

The only issue I have is that there is one more person farming me...

Well, I'm glad this has boiled over quite nicely. I am quite the surprised that the community mostly supported my exploit. In fact, it isn't incredibly benefitial, unless one would have used an "old" RoE.

I do not recommend anyone trying this with the new 6 month NCBs. It might be worth it in the first month or so. But with less bonuses the higher ups will cost WAY too much. More (now much more expensive) transfers at higher MPR with less of a bonus will be completely impractial.

Finally, some information I though would be useful to point out. Is that the extra BA I got did give me a bonus in growth. It was about the same of that a RoE would give me comparing myself to other graphs, this is why I was so opposed to sickone's information way back when, since I understood about how much extra fights one needed to reach RoE exp growth (while growing a tattoo). Doesn't really matter now (single minion has died!)

Anyway, thanks Novice for bringing it up in the least hostile way possible. The community does need to know, but it would have been kind of strange coming from me ^^.

So if I am to understand correctly, NS bought a few dozen thousand BA (or so I assume) on a base MPR char, then used them all on a freshly created (after BA purchase) NCB ? And that's why we have a 1600 BA hardcap now ?
:)

Yes, that's basically what happened except he didn't create the NCB character - somebody else created it (that same day) and transferred it to him and then he burned his BA. He didn't create his own because he had created one earlier and gotten rid of it.

But everything else is right, from what I could tell.

yes sickone he did which of course led to the cap. He made 100k mpr in one day. Which is absurd.

Wow, this whole conversation went on without me while I was out on a training exercise. I'm glad that it has already been all worked out without too much trouble.

Just so you all know, this last transfer was 5.9 mil cbd.

It became more expensive to transfer the char than straight buying ba at around 1.4 mil mpr. With this new 6 month ncb and the 100k fee for transfers I would assume that the ba would become more expensive at around 900k mpr. At that point the ba the other person is buying is more expensive than regular ncb ba.

I have probably spent around 80 mil on this ncb myself.

I will be having internet for another week or so. After that it will probably be months before I have internet again and even then I am not sure if I will be able to access this site.