The score experiment is proceeding nicely (in General)

Just wanted to express my regrets for the people running N*Bs in the 2.5+ mil MPR ranges, your stunted growth is an unfortunate side-effect of it all, but... well... you're still much better off than back when we had a dead zone.

I concur. I'm lucky enough that w/o this score bug my highest CB won't be higher than 5%, which isn't a big deal. So, good luck and keep on tuggin' along.

apology not exactly accepted but oh well...

So how bout this as a change to solve the score problem: First players cannot do what Sickone is doing that is: farm people less than 1/3rd your MPR (and in Sickone's case with the intent to lose in order to drop score) I think with all the complaints about farming of tiny clan members it should be implemented so young players don't feel abused and so that scores cannot be manipulated in that way.

Additionally I do not think that being beaten through triple hits should drop your score. Sounds ridiculous if you ask me.

And lastly how about a semi hard cap on score of a players MPR.

For example take Poison's char NWO:

3.5M Score
6.4M PR
4.5M MPR

CRAZY!

Score is too important to the reward system of the game to be maniupulated so easily!

Well you have dropped my 0 bonus to 0, screw you sickone, lol. But, yeah, I'm glad someone did this, because the score system really needs to be looked at.

Oh, so you are the one who dropped my bonus % from 75% to 10%...

Aha, that's why I now have 20% instead of 60% challenge bonuses.

I'm interested in what you're actually doing. Did I miss another thread somewhere?

I think you have proven your point. There is really no further need to drop people's score any longer.
I think most of us see the flaw in the current system. I hope you will end this shortly.

I hope you keep going until it gets changed so everything is nice for my NCB run :P.

"Oh, so you are the one who dropped my bonus % from 75% to 10%..."

And mine from 30% to 5%.

"I think you have proven your point. There is really no further need to drop people's score any longer. I think most of us see the flaw in the current system. I hope you will end this shortly."

Agreed.

Well played Sickone :)

"Score is too important to the reward system of the game to be maniupulated so easily!"

I wouldn't be so quick to ascribe any score drop to sickone, whilst he will have had an effect it is likely the latest change would have caused this without sickone's help.

if the forced unlearn of the junction skill came with a loss of score, that probably had much more to do with it.

finding a solution that cannot be exploited is the hardest part of this though, regardless of the trigger. after much thought i think an increase in score gain from fighting is actually the best solution while leaving the cap in place.

Haha I was wondering why so many people in my MPR range were at 800k score even though they only attacked ~450k score opponents. I did notice Occam's Razor in a couple fight logs, though.

So this is how I'm third? Thanks.

"I wouldn't be so quick to ascribe any score drop to sickone, whilst he will have had an effect it is likely the latest change would have caused this without sickone's help."

So a hacker shouldn't be in trouble, because it would have happened anyways since the gap in security that allowed the hacker to hack is what caused it? Sounds like kind of flawed logic to me. :)

While it may not be causing me much trouble, I would like to thank Sickone for potentially un-PGing some very expensive and possibly successful NCBs. Saying 'I'm sorry' is hardly compensation for the possibility of months of wasted time, millions of wasted CB$ (and possibly some actual money) just because somebody wants to have fun, or prove a point, or whatever in the world it is you're trying to do.

If you want something fixed, then point out the flaws, back it up with numbers (theoretical or from a little bit of testing. There's no need to spend a month gathering numbers at the expense of others; this is not a medical treatment being researched), and gently prod people in power until they do something. Heck, make a petition. But messing up the game for other people is an almost selfish way to run about getting a fix.

Then again, maybe I'm just in a bad mood from being sick. :)

Thank you Tyriel!!!


All I know is that my NCB could have reached close to 4M without some drastic crashes in rewards recently and I'm kinda angry about it.

Do your research, make your point, and in a reasonable world it will be fixed!!

Don't screw up the game for everybody

not all of it was due to Sickone's intervention; remember the score-dropping glitch a little while ago? quite a bit was lost in one hit.

Tyriel wins.

yah, but scores were starting to stabilize yet again. I've lost about 700k so far in the last 24 hours.

I believe there was an unmentioned drop in the amount gained per fight, previously it seemed as if score raced to get back to PR. It's taken me more than a full week to drag my score back towards mine.

Maybe a petition demanding Freed increase his PR will help.

Hey, I think it's pretty cool. ;)

I would personally like to thank Sickone for losing to me and giving me free exp. :P

Other than that, I don't really care about the score drops. Doesn't really affect me.

I take comfort only in knowing that everyone else's rewards dropped along with mine.

"I take comfort only in knowing that everyone else's rewards dropped along with mine."

afraid not

By "everyone" I meant those around my score range.

Those below the "experiment" are probably better off, and it annoys me. I added something to this effect in my last post, but deleted it before I posted.

Hey, this is something CB needs; a bit of a shake-up. ;P

Heh.... Glad that I just started my little NCB and hopefully won't have to deal with this by the time I hit that bracket...

Keep plugging it. You're doing a great job lol??

I'm glad I'm such a small MPR.

There was a better way to go about this, I'm certain.

I didn't even read any other post, but to the OP. I used to be the prime example of the dead zone, mainly because it grew and I grew not much faster. So was there for a year, probably more. The ONLY reason I got out was because I dropped everything (IE: My tat) and used a named RoE for a year, and then I finally hit 6/20 and the dead zone was pretty gone for me. Few months later, WHAM, it was fixed.

I'm just glad it was fixed, but I don't think ANYONE should complain at all. People had it tough. It used to be the centre of discussion, it got brought up in nearly every strategy. "What happens at the dead zone?" could've been a common question asked.

This latest round of score dropping is due to the AoJ being introduced.

And the way it was.

The highest score character was using his junctioned familiar and once junction was eliminated without the AoJ in place, his score dropped.

That started a cascade and ripple effect throughout CB.

Now we have to rebuild scores.

The same thing can be accomplished by people double tapping the top characters which has been done a few times in the past.

/me looks at sutekh.

Just two things:

http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002ffM
and
http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002fxY

This should be more than enough as to the reason why I'm doing this.
I have tried the reasonable approach, it failed.
So now we're on to the experiment time.

The experiment will end about a month after I stopped doing what I am doing now (and compare the sitiation with the one from when I stopped), and I will stop doing what I am doing now EITHER when the score system is revamped again OR when we have a situation in the top scores page resembling the old "dead zone" situation.

Or, alternatively, I think it would be enough to stop when #2, #3 and #4 scores are that of retired characters (top score for Conundrum)...
Shipping up to Boston (5321597)
Edyit (4736889)
Ofer (4448754)
...with the 5th place on one of the active characters, at around 4.4 mil score.

I fully admire your willingness to systematically screw over your fellow CBers.

It is refreshing to see such self sacrifice being taken on the part of so many others who are unable to see what a favour you are doing for them.

I don't mind you being a martyr but please leave the rest of us out of your plans in future.

Kinda the "I robbed the bank to show they needed better security" setup...

What do I _possibly_ have to do with this? I don't even know what _this_ is.

Getting pretty close to doing to CB what I did to FB. It's starting to make a lot of sense.

I have little idea exactly what is going on.

But I am going to try to sum things up.

There is a bug that when you untrain a large portion of your xp, your score drops considerably.

Then when you retrain that xp, your score does not catch up.

So when you defeat someone, since your score is low, their score drops a lot.

Causing a cascade type effect, IE lower scores for all. Giving a lower challenge bonus since scores are so low.

It seems that the creator of this thread is doing this often to prove a point. That this is a foolish way to have scores fluctuate since someone can abuse them and mess everything up.

Now, I have no idea what Flamey was typing about Sut. None what so ever.

And I have no idea what your typing about in doing to CB what you did to FB. I assume FB is Facebook?

Can someone in the know tell me if my assumptions above are correct and if not, correct them?

However,

If my assumptions are correct, how is this any different then someone double tapping someone to lower their score and cause the same type cascade effect?

When I was running Koy, this happened more then once. With the same lowering of everyone challenge bonus.

Still wondering what this has to do with me. I haven't untrained a gor-ram thing.

And yes, FB is Facebook. I ain't on Facebook anymore. Was on for a good year. Enjoyed Warbook and that ship game Johnnywas introduced me to (I got into the top 1400, JW!). Threw it all down the stairs at once and haven't missed it a bit.

I imagine doing the same to CB could be a little tougher.

But I don't imagine I'd have any problem doing it. I honestly don't understand the people and events going on around here much any more, regardless how I try.

Wife loves FB, I cannot stand it.

Perhaps Flamey was referencing the past when you used to double tap me and that caused a cascade effect of lower scores=lower challenge bonuses.

I think you did that at the time since I was running win streaks of over 10k.

The difference, Flamey, is that Sut did not do it maliciously to hose everyone over to prove a point. He just did not like seeing my 5 digit win streaks. Such is life.

However, the person doing it now is knowingly hosing everyone over to prove a point.

I still say it's a maladjusted score system. I had one person beating me defensively one out of every 10 fights and that was enough to keep my score down. Something isn't right.

And the difference, moreso, is that I have never done ANYTHING maliciously. For damn neart six years.

Moreso, STILL, this is a _game_ If anyone ever attributes malice, then that person should do the honorable thing. Leave.

Please.

I don't think anyone made aspersions concerning your intent Sut

btw, I think that all Sickone has proved is that there is a reason for the rule against gaming the score system

So there should be rules against fully utilizing the features provided by CB any way you see fit, namely the score system, instead of revamping the score system in the first place ?

The funny thing is, EVERYBODY that liked the no-deadzone-scores was actually taking advantage of a BUG in the score system, a bug that injected huge amounts of score points into it.
I am merely trying to rectify the effects of that bug, and in the process show that the score system needs a major revamp.
What I am now doing is exactly what would have eventually happened anyway, with each new NUB or NCB coming into the top echelons of the game - I am merely accelerating the inevitable.

If you are trying to blame me for that... well, blame away.
Unless an admin or Jon tells me I'm doing something wrong, I see no reason to stop trying to prove my point.

You are artificially altering score. Nothing about the N*B chart climbing has the sort of effect you're having. During tournament play it would be enough to get you fined.

dumbest reasoning ever....

I cannot actually think of a PG way to express how much contempt I feel for this despicable charade.

You disgust me.

Sickone - consider the phrase "in the spirit of the game."

So let me get this right :

* when a BUG allowed tiny MPR characters to get multi-million scores, scores that were then quickly picked up and spread across the top ranges, causing an EXPLOSION in scores (in less than one week, scores in the first couple of pages have gone up almost +50%), then the bug was fixed to a degree, everybody was happy with the effects of the bug

* when the other score bug came along (and made some of that inflates score vanish), everybody was up in arms to fix it ASAP, with no regards to HOW EXACTLY it was being fixed, in the process breaking another system that allowed the scores to rebalance themselves (the capping at PR)

* when I pointed out (repeatedly, both when the first bug and the second bug was "fixed") that the score system is not fine, everybody said I have no idea what I'm talking about, or that it's not so bad, and so on and so forth

* so finally, when I'm actually making an experiment to PROVE that the score system NEEDS altering, just because everybody has for the time being decreased rewards (which are, by the way, STILL HIGHER than before the first bug), I'm the bad guy, and I disgust you ?


Oh, my, I just feel the love all around me...

You're not proving anything except that scores can be manipulated. You cannot hit fast forward on your theoretical situation by simply gaming the system over a short period of time. The effects you're causing aren't natural.

"Sickone - consider the phrase "in the spirit of the game." "

It is in the spirit of the game.
You were all (me included) tacit accomplices to the benefits of the first score bug.
I've simply set out to show everybody that it was indeed that bug that made the score be where it is, NOT the adjustments to the score ratios Jon made later on.

If I am right, this means the exact same thing that is now happening WOULD HAVE HAPPENED anyway, it would have just taken longer... and as the story of the frog not getting out of the slowly heated boiling water goes, everybody would have just sat back and took it. So, in other words, I'm merely a whistleblower.
If I am WRONG however, soon after I stop, everything would go back to normal, so no long-term harm would have been done anyway.


So I still don't see what you're so upset about, other than the fact everybody higher up lost the unfairly high challenge bonuses.

"The effects you're causing aren't natural. "

The temporary current effects, maybe not.
But the recovery (or lack thereof) after I stop are the REAL test.

"The effects you're causing aren't natural. "

For that matter, neither those millions of score points injected during the initial ("huge scores") bug were natural.

Sickone - I was actually quoting what I've seen said before to other players who have manipulated the system (as you are doing now.)

I would like to apologize for bring such distasteful language to forums. Animosity of that scale is not productive.

I ask now, Sickone, what on earth gives you the right to make the determination of what is fair and right for other players like this?
If I were able to remove say, 10% of your char's growth after a month because I felt it was inflated you would freak on me (and rightly so).
How is this different?

You have made your point that there is a flaw with the scoring.
Now please be decent and stop out of consideration for your fellow CBers.

If you want reasoning, here it is:

1. Multiple-tap score drains are way, way out of proportion with how the scores should reasonably move. This is probably the first short-term priority in things that need fixing.

2. Stalemates apparently cause BOTH scores to drop, or at least the attacker loses a lot of score while the defender is mostly unaffected.

3. Score is mostly shifted around, not generated. When one person with a low score has a target of high score in their attack list, USUALLY the sum total of their scores barely moves up, one's score gain is almost the same as the other's score loss. This alone means there's a shortage of score to go around, and the fact people ABANDON their characters to start a NCB means that score is removed from the system (especially bad if the one retiring had a large score compared to MPR).

4. NUB and NCB *do not* generate noticeably more score per battle as they climb up, but they do generate up to 5 times the XP per battle (especially if in a bonus-earning clan and attacking clan targets). This alone causes the score-vs-MPR ratio to deteriorate, and the more NCB/NUB appear, the worse it gets. Combine that with point 3 above, and you should see where this is heading.

5. For a short while, we had a bug that injected massive amounts of scores on all people with a high score:MPR ratio, and that was mostly the case for the NUBs and NCBs. That score was quickly absorbed by people in that score range, and the bug was only noticed when some people created outrageous amounts of score in a single move. During the same timeframe, new score ratios were tweaked by Jon, and everybody MISTAKINGLY hailed that minor tweak as the cause for the score growths, while it was all the "bug". Meanwhile, the score system had been pumped FOR A WHILE already at all score ranges, with a nearly +50% rise in scores in less than a week. Nobody complained about a score reset after that.

6. The bug was fixed (details unknown on exact mechanism), but a new FEATURE was introduced alongside that fix, just after the bug - your score was slowly climbing, at the rate of your MPR growth (ratio score:PR was maintained if the score was not outrageously high, even if score was > PR). At the same time, ANOTHER bug appeared that made some big chunks of score dissapear.
Both those features-slash-bugs were re-fixed, so that now you would never inject additional score into the system unless score was LOWER than PR... and you will ALWAYS lose some score every time people would retrain and their score was higher than their PR.
Slow score:MPR decay was the only logical conclusion.

7. Coinciding with my decision to start the test, Jon introduced a new amulet (of junction) and forcefully untrained everybody's Junction skill, kickstarting two separate things : one, a massive score drop because of the above observation and the forced retrain... and two, a massive upheaval in score arrangements due to the new mechanic.


And here we are now.
With a broken score system, saved from the dead zone by a series of feature-bugs, "bugs" which now are fixed.
I am looking at a system I just KNOW can't possibly work, and try to explain a new dead zone will eventually re-develop.
Nobody cares about that because it's in some distant future ? Well, let's see how people care if that distant future would be much closer.

"Now please be decent and stop out of consideration for your fellow CBers. "

It is out of consideration for current AND more importantly future fellow CBers that I can't possibly stop just yet, before the point is made crystal clear, and a change for the better is made.

"so that now you would never inject additional score into the system unless score was LOWER than PR... and you will ALWAYS lose some score every time people would retrain and their score was higher than their PR.
Slow score:MPR decay was the only logical conclusion. "

Making it so that additional score is only injected into the system when score<PR is a simple way of preventing score from growing disproportionately fast when compared to PR. Effectively "score growth" becomes tied to "PR growth".

I have no idea how you can conclude that this will result in a gradual (indefinite?) score:MPR decay. At some point scores stabilise and begin to grow again, this is inherent in the score system.

To state that a dead zone will develop again is far too presumptuous given that the current score system is significantly different to the previous score system.

If you are trying to prove a point you are going about it the wrong way.

You know, the question I really wanted answered you have ignored.
So I will repeat:

"What gives you the right to make decisions regarding the scores and rewards of all CBers in this unilateral manner?"

Seriously, I would like to know why your opinion of how things should be is so much more important than any other players'.

You could have done research by measuring exact score drop from various scenarios and making calculations based on that. I'm fairly sure there isn't a huge amount of randomness so a fairly small sample would still be quite useful. Do you have any concrete numbers on how much score drops based on double taps, stalemates etc?

Frankly I rather doubt that.

Unless you can appreciate how disrespectful it is to be making these decisions for us I think it is unlikely that you will ever really contribute to the good of the community.

And for the record, I have experienced much less of drop in score and rewards than most folks. I also spent a very long time in the 'dead' zone as the highest 7/20 char in the game. The dead zone was bad, but at least I didn't have to deal with the fact that someone was deliberately creating that circumstance just to 'prove' a point.

Again, I would like to know why your opinion of how things should be is so much more important than any other players'.

Please if nothing else answer that.

Tread carefully...

I can recall someone once having a char reset for "cleverly utilizing the game's mechanics"... he lost somewhere around 6 months of gameplay if i recall correctly... Directly attacking the game's reward structure may just be an offense obvious enough to not need be written in the rules (would certainly be more obvious than saving up 50k+ BA before starting a NCB)...

Given Sickone said he was going to do this before commencing it would seem somewhat harsh were he to be punished when an admin could have just asked him not to.

Sickone is not doing anything against the rules, right? So why is all the flaming at him? Direct the attention towards changing the score system, if you all truly believe it is broken.

"rules" are somewhat flexible and subjective as you are not allowed to exploit any bug/loophole which allows you to do something which is obviously not intended...

Regardless of what rules may or may not have been broken or if the present lack of challenge bonuses are indeed caused by sickone he was always going to get flamed for this. I might flame him were I bigger on judgement ;)

Sickone is doing nothing illegal according to the rules.

That said, it is effecting most people in CB, especially those in/near the dead zone.

Sometimes in CB one has to scream to be heard over the mass of confusion..

Anyone see the amount of bug posts lately?

Where to start?

Just look st Dudemus' list in the wiki.

Now....

Sickone, we hear your screaming. I know NS and Jon have also.

Time to stop. Doing this anymore will not make it get fixed any faster.

Time to let Jon and/or NS do their admin stuff and either let it go or fix it. But let them do it on their time frame.

I am willing to give you the doubt of someone trying to make CB better by pointing out a huge bug. You even gave a warning about what you were doing.

But enough. Time to let things run their course.

Also,

Please next time you do sometime like this it is far better to post something like you did at 227AM then the more nebulous type of post you initially did.

I think that confused the hell out of a lot of people and make things flair up far faster then it should have.

It is always best to lay out your hypothesis first in clear statements, then conduct the experiment to prove it.

Maybe I'm the only one that supports Sick here. It's been discussed, it's been theroised, and like just about every other change in CB, it has to be *shown* to be broken before;

1) The community takes any interest
2) It gets changed

It's always been this way. WE can theorise all we like about Cloaks of Balrog Flame, single minion RoBF Evaders, EXBows, whatever. It's not until someone takes advantge and actually shows what happenes when these flaws are abused, that something gets done.

I consider what Sick was doing to be in the spirit of improving the game, by highlighting a flaw that needs to be fixed.

At least he's not doing this selfishly to exploit something and gain from it.

As for ruining some Bonus runs, again, yet again, something a Rolling Bonus wouldn't have to suffer from...

I agree that it is 100% within the spirit of the game.

I would have rather seen where scores ended up a little while after the junction unlearning before sickone started this. Some of the techniques he is using to drain score downwards have always been available and though what he is doing draws attention to the main issue I hope it doesn't result in a fix which addresses the sideshow.

You guys are funny... Attacking the rewards structure within the spirit of the game, eh? Guess I never looked at it that way... I guess intentionally defaulting on loans would be another experiment to teach people about a flaw in the loaning system that gives no guarantee of a return? Hell, why stop at CB, why not just running around punching people in the nose to prove that the nose bone is fragile?

I'm glad hostile takeovers are only conducted and, even worse, apparently allowed while I'm forging...

If continuation of this is allowed, I'll have lost a lot of faith in this game and those in it, and we might see the biggest contest yet sometime fairly soon... =/

those in it = those enforcing the rules*

if cb were a democracy i would agree more with your methods. sometimes jon's fixes are harsher than the bugs, especially when the system is exploited.

I fully back Sickone in what he's doing. If there is a problem with the score system (and obviously Jonathan thinks that there was, and maybe still is), then Jonathan will need some data before he fixes things. How can he generate data when he doesn't play?

I see Sickone as generating data. Sure, he's cutting into your and my challenge bonuses, and those of you running NCBs will certainly have far less growth than if Sickone hadn't started running his experiment.

However, the dead zone was a huge problem for everyone trying to make their way up the ranks, and from what I could see, also killed much of the clan warfare, since people simply left their clans when they hit the dead zone. That's why I stopped being interested in CB2 for a while.

If Sickone can stop the prevention of a deadzone in the (not so distant, if I understand correctly) future, I'm all for what he's doing.

Spirit of the game?

Isn't that anything 'competitive' that doesn't utilise a bug/bot?

Like putting bounties on clans to hinder your opposition. Or even something even more outside the box I've considered. How about putting up a reward for people to retire (permenantly) old unused characters.

Think about it.

Worried aobut your compeitiors coming up the ranks? Pay to remove all the 'dead' teams they use to actually grow. Sure, it'll cost a lot, but if you've got it....

I doubt he is generating much useful data for Jon, just a migraine ;)

Lurk,

"What gives you the right to make decisions regarding the scores and rewards of all CBers in this unilateral manner?"

CB isn't (heh go go internet meme) 'Carebear'. It's a competitive game. Why on earth *shouldn't* a fellow competitior do everything in his power, in game, clever use of mechanics or not, to make you suffer?

To the people in favour of this far over reaching experiment....

your probably getting a CB% BOOST from this. MY CB% has gone from over 30% (which is fair considering I was fighting people with almost double my MPR) to below 0%

I am getting NEGATIVE bonuses...and honestly i'm PISSSSED. This NCB would have been amazing and it is being sacrificed so that someone can scream and manipulate in whatever way thay see fit to get attention.

Theres a long list of bugs and honestly the junction bug is bigger than this.

Before Sickone manipulated things it wasn't too bad.



you talk about future CB'ers but what about the ones you're alienating right now?



SHUT IT DOWN!!!! NOW!!!

For those backing Sickone currently, consider the fact everyone at a certain point did in fact back Sickone. He gave forewarning when he was going to conduct his experiment. He then kept this up for a few weeks, to which he proved several flaws in the system. It is 'crystal' clear already, alas even after several people have told him to stop, he continues. The admins will not work any faster than they already have been. As Ranger puts it, let them get to it at their own pace/time.
There is NO reason to continue, unless there is more motive than just experimentation here. Things get changed without abusing the system for months. The bugs in dudemus's and novice's list will slowly get fixed over time. The current score bugs and problems are there, and it is an issue that needs resolving; however, there is no reason to make it worse than it already is, now. Its not in the spirit of the game to abuse the system after one has made his point and been asked to stop.
I, personally, am not too harshly affected, but I don't think this is for the good of the game any longer.

Fatality, you are incorrect. My challenge bonus has dropped by 40-50%

Like I said, the moment any admin (or Jon) tells me to stop because I'm doing something I shouldn't be able to do, I'll stop that very instant.
If not, I'll stop when I believe the scores are low enough to make a recovery test (wether they recover or not) pertinent after I stop. The scores aren't nearly low enough yet in the top areas to say "look, dead zone look-alike".

"however, there is no reason to make it worse than it already is, now"


There was no reason to let it be the way it was after the initial score bug either, you know, with the massively inflated scores.

Nobody complains about the overall GOOD effects of a fixed bug, but everybody complains about the BAD effects of something that's supposedly working as intended... I'd call that hypocritical.

"If not, I'll stop when I believe the scores are low enough to make a recovery test (wether they recover or not) pertinent after I stop. The scores aren't nearly low enough yet in the top areas to say "look, dead zone look-alike"."

I'm not convinced one person can achieve this.

As a side point how do people feel about draining score downwards using very one pointed strats, eg all EC robf etc.

"The admins will not work any faster than they already have been."

Jon changed the Stalemate 'gaming' the moment we showed it would work.

All in all we used aobut a set of BA before Stalemates were changed. IIRC.

As for gaming the score system, it's been a part of CB ever since I played it. From specialising your start to fight specific targets much higher than yourself, to defensie ammo/tatoo/minion set ups to stop people getting rewards from fighting you, to Clan Bounties.

well heres a question...seen as NS and Jon do major changes like this only every few months...that would destroy my NCB. Also what purpose does making people at the tops lives miserable before making this recovery test?

IF anything I ask that you attack me to drop my score...at least then I will get some extra xp from your lost fights. Without that I will be ridiculously disappointed in the way this was run.


Your desire to see fairness is honourable but at what cost to everybody else?

"As a side point how do people feel about draining score downwards using very one pointed strats, eg all EC robf etc."

Exactly.

I was 'gamed' this way by SP when I ran my first single minion UC competition. His 4EC team butchered me at a much lower MPR. LEading my score to drop massively when i wasn't fighting, only to leave me trying to reinflate it by fighting up when I logged back on.

But this is ok isn't it?

"well heres a question...seen as NS and Jon do major changes like this only every few months...that would destroy my NCB."

Important bug/mechanic fixes are made when necessary. They aren't saved for changemonths.

Last login at Mar 20.

What if Jon isn't around quickly?

I suggest you finish your research pronto Sickone and post the results. Jon can then see it and implement a fix when he returns. This whole I will do it until it fixed won't really benefit anybody if Jon isn't around to fix it

The quick and dirty fix would be very simple on Jon's side.
1. Reset all scores to PR+MPR (instead of 2*MPR or 2*PR)
2. Change the cap for score increase on training from PR to 2*PR
And done, crisis averted.

Afterwards, some time later on, different other things could get changed, with a quick but not dirty fix.

Rules of stalemates could be ammended (make them not affect score at all, but also give no bonuses whatsoever, simply consider stalemates as battles that never happened).
Also, rules on multiple-taps could be changed, make it so that double-taps barely affect scores, while triple taps or more don't even matter.
And the final issue, the score GENERATION could also be tweaked upwards a little, and new score generation could be made proportional to the XP bonus granted to the attacking character at the moment of the attack (in other words, comparing the score generated by a non-N*B player not in a clan with that of a NCB in a clan earning big bonuses attacking a clan target, the latter would generate a lot more score per BA spent).


Of course, all of the above assumes the score system remains similar to what we have now, just with the smallest of tweaks.
I can imagine better score systems that don't resemble the current version at all, like say, scores that are only updated at cache flush, scores that recalculate rankings only based on attacks made since last cache flush, a system that doesn't care about the scores before the cache flush at all, just about amount of won/lost fights, who fought with whom, and PR of people involved. I'm not asking for such a system, even if it would be actually pretty neat... but it would be too much work.

GL
"CB isn't (heh go go internet meme) 'Carebear'. It's a competitive game. Why on earth *shouldn't* a fellow competitior do everything in his power, in game, clever use of mechanics or not, to make you suffer?"

Excellent point, however, it I think matters that Sickone is not attempting to gain any advantage here. The past 'abusive' strats that allowed people to fight way higher that they ought were done to maximize the player's reward. This is certainly not the case here.

If I decided to manipulate game mechanics and jerk everyone around I'd expect to be flamed. I think it's fair that Sickone should expect the same. He is trashing NCB runs on people with no guarantee of achieving a fix or even know how Jon may decide to fix things.
This is irresponsible and disrespectful.

Though I'm sure he just loves being the center of attention....

<off-cuff remark about breaking eggs to make omlette>

Sickone,

Again,

You have proven your point.

Now I ask you to stop. Right now.

to expand on my earlier post. we are not a democracy here, we all have to wait on jon. convincing the community does nothing, convincing jon is the only way.

we have two ways of letting jon know of bugs, known issues and forum posts. your score issues have been brought up and have existed in both just as many other bugs have. now we wait on jon.

publicity stunts while waiting will likely not be looked upon favorably. it is difficult to wait patiently for all of us, especially when things are affecting our team.

as an example, my jiggy based ncb is now affected by at least three of the known bugs: the soc bug, aoj bug and now the lack of cb due to junction retrain score bug.

about the most proactive i have gotten is trying to email jon to make sure he knows we have many bugs on the list. i even worry about things like that upsetting him!

Except you're just breaking eggs and hoping something omelette-like results.

If there is no positive change as a result will you reimburse the people who have asked you to stop for their losses? Seems reasonable since you say we shouldn't object because we are going to benefit in the long run.

Ok, fine, I'll pause for 10 days or so.
If nothing moves until the 2nd of April, I'll restart.
Sounds fair ?

No,

It does not sound "fair".

Jon works on his own schedule and not on yours. This bug is well known by now.

No reason to keep bringing it up if Jon does not do as you want and address it within your specified time frame.

What you are doing now is nothing more than spite and the community will easily at some point react in a very negative way.

I again ask you to stop and let Jon fix this on his own schedule.

PS: Do you really think that the exbow bug of 10M drain in 1 hit for 1 damage is something that I think should not be immediately fixed. However, others do not and we wait patiently for Jon or NS to do it.

I suggest very strongly you do the same.

Oh well, I guess there's no point doing it anymore, too much anger all around and nothing radically better can come out of continuing, the point has kind of been made.

Ah, you finally saw the light.

Now let us see what happens.

Still, this leaves me with the bitter taste of premonition, namely people a couple of months from now forgetting all about this and saying "but that's how it's always been, no need to make any changes".
Would it be ok if THEN I restart ? :P

Sickone.

Take it from me, I have brought up many a bug in my CB life.

I have done things similar to you and have gotten the same results.

Doing this again will do nothing but create more animosity in the community.

Either it gets fixed or it does not. The world will not end if it does not.

Can't help it, I'm am OCD-ish perfectionist :(

...especially when the fixes would be so simple :(

thank you Sickone, I appreciate your willingness to work with everyone. And I agree with you the score system should have some tweaks and reworks.

as i said in the earlier thread, 2xpr has much room for exploits at the top as rarely does someone naturally have a score pr ratio that high.

to which you say, it wouldn't benefit people to exploit that enought to worry about.

get ready for it...to which i now say, isn't that exactly what you are doing. foregoing any benefit to exploit the score system merely to prove a point? people do stupid stuff for stupid reasons quite often.

now we see the violence inherent in the system!

"Time to let Jon and/or NS do their admin stuff and either let it go or fix it. But let them do it on their time frame." - Ranger.

Is it just me or does anyone else find the irony in who is saying this?

Also, I support Sickone and I am not getting an advantage from it thank you very much. We have seen that Jon and NS take long times to get to bugs, but we have also seen that the more we voice and show the problem the quicker it will be fixed. Think of the petition for the AoJ, that got fixed what, the day of? Before you all kill Sickone, just think about how it used to be. When people were stuck in deadzones with large negatives bonuses. Just thank Sickone when it gets changed, and we don't have that happen again.

Don't stop attacking me though, Sickone. :p

"as i said in the earlier thread, 2xpr has much room for exploits at the top as rarely does someone naturally have a score pr ratio that high.
to which you say, it wouldn't benefit people to exploit that enought to worry about."

I'm saying it wouldn't benefit (only) the individual doing it, it would benefit EVERYBODY if somebody actually exploited like that... while costing that exploiting individual plenty of MPR in the process.
And since this whole scandal here is about how everybody gets a drawback from what I'm doing, then the ones that WOULD actually exploit the system with 2*PR caps would be actually hailed as heroes, as much as I was just scorned as the villain.

being hailed as a hero seems like enough motivation to exploit then, especially given the fact that you are doing it for less than that?

i said also in one of the other threads that the more i thought about it the more i think we just need to increase score given by fighting, that is what we are here for isn't it?

think of it as a swimming pool with two pipes feeding it water. if the water level is falling and it is due to one of the pipes no longer putting in as much water, we can compensate by increasing the flow of the other pipe or by slowing down the drain.

training should have never given score anyways, real men get score from carnage! ; )

It's debatable.

I could swear prior to the recent fix I was gaining score up to my PR rather quickly. Now it's just under 1k score for every fight. I don' think I can attribute all of that to Sickone's experiment lowering people's scores.

"I don' think I can attribute all of that to Sickone's experiment lowering people's scores. "

Of course, why do you think I started this, out of spite or something ?
No, I saw a problem, tried to make people aware of it, and nobody seemed to listen, let alone agree... so I did something to raise awareness.

Again, finding a bug and posting about isn't the same thing as beating the system over the head with the bug. Thanks for the first part, and thanks for stopping the second.

It's just a game folks and all of you take things FAR FAR too seriously. Particularly for those here for a number of years... this stuff comes and goes all the time. MELLOW OUT!

"Excellent point, however, it I think matters that Sickone is not attempting to gain any advantage here. The past 'abusive' strats that allowed people to fight way higher that they ought were done to maximize the player's reward. This is certainly not the case here."

No it's better.

It wasn't for personal gian, it wasn't even a clever out of the box mechanic Sick used to make him a better competitor.

It was used to try to promote a positive change to the CB system.

And for that, look back at all the negative comments thrown at sick in the start of this thread.

And that depresses me. If it was only for personal gain, should we at least be congratulating Sick for a clever use of in game mechanics, in what is an utterly cut throat competitive game. But instead no. We flamed him for trying to do something non selfish and positive for the game as a whole.

Bad form.

there is no doubt as to his intention, it is just his action that are controversial.

I still don't understand how people think the "I'll keep shooting people until I convince them to outlaw guns" methodology is beneficial.

That said I do appreciate Sickone's decision to cease the score manipulation and I hope that he also takes the opportunity to examine score growth to help his research.

GL are you really saying that people who think they have lost rewards as a result shouldn't be complaining? If I was buying NCB BA in the affected zone I would be pretty annoyed (if I believed sickone had hurt my rewards)

It may not have benefited him so in that sense it is not selfish. However it IS selfish to destroy the hard work of others on such a widespread scale. in order to perform research.

However I believe that Sick has made a HUGE point with this. Earlier in this thread I asked him to attack me so that I could at least get the winning battles rewards however I found a major problem when I logged on.

he fought me maybe 40 times of which I won 19.
It dropped my score to 3.5M. Problem is that as soon as I fought AA's char the Immortals, blighted, and LR's char God. I reduced their scores by over 5% in terms of CB bonus bringing them all down from +5% to 0 or -1/2%.

This demonstrates the major problem with Sickone's research. It is not his battles that hurt the system. It is that by fighting me and reducing my score I subsequently reduce my entire fightlists scores causing a massive cascading result.

Now multiply that by his 15 person fight list. Every person on that lists score will drop by around 500-1.5M. Then when they fight to bring it back up they drop their whole fightlists score. Virtually everyone would be affected except perhaps novice (who nobody is farming and it thus immune except for his lowered CB%)

"As for ruining some Bonus runs, again, yet again, something a Rolling Bonus wouldn't have to suffer from... "

Can I get a "hear, hear!" for this statement?

"GL are you really saying that people who think they have lost rewards as a result shouldn't be complaining? If I was buying NCB BA in the affected zone I would be pretty annoyed (if I believed sickone had hurt my rewards)"

Just as much then, as eveyone should be complaining about someone beating them and lowering thier score should.

I guess I should have compalined bitterly about SP using a 4EC strat to butcher my UC minion and reduce my score/rewards.

Instead I saluted him for a great idea.

Should we all complain every time a smaller team beats ours and lowers our score?

Should we complain every time someone puts a bounty on our clans and lowers our rewards?

Should we complain that someone takes losses (lowering thier rewards in the process) to make us lower our score/rewards?

Should we complain at every Team out there that is utilising something 'not in the spirit of the game' to give them an advantage over everyone else?

Should we name and shame everyone using an EXBow?

Sure complain if you don't like what they are doing.

The intent in this case is different to all the examples you give so I don't really accept the comparisons anyway.

I don't really have a problem with what sickone is doing, I don't care enough but I will defend the right of those who do care to complain about it :)

But this is not an in game advantage GL. Sickone is losing A TONNNN in doing this and really does nothing for anybody but ruin their reward mechanics. This is not a strategy but rather the abuse of the system in order to extort jon into changing it.

Hatch was on the right track with examples:

IF you find a way to steal peoples money in CB should you go on a theft spree stealing everyones cash simply to show Jon theres a mistake. NO you should not do that!!

Should you compromise others NCB runs and in some cases (mine) expensive runs simply in order to prove a point and force the developers to fix it: NO you should not do that!!!

end of story

""As for ruining some Bonus runs, again, yet again, something a Rolling Bonus wouldn't have to suffer from... "

Can I get a "hear, hear!" for this statement?"

Hear, hear! Down with the N*B!

LoL!

;)

As for the intent, it would (in my mind) have been better to compalin, if Sick had said "Lolz, I've figured out a way to styme the groth of my competitiors, watch out ya'll I'm doing this to slow you all down!", but still 'in the spirit of the game'.

And really all people could compain about then, would be being beaten by someone smaller than themsevels.

Which happens every day in CB. Double Taps or no double Taps.

And if that's legitimate to complain about, then God help CB2! :P

"But this is not an in game advantage GL. Sickone is losing A TONNNN in doing this and really does nothing for anybody but ruin their reward mechanics."

I'm paying him USD to do this to stop new competitiors reaching the Top Ten, As I've been asked to help protect them.

And I came up with an out of the box way of doing so. Without me even needing to spend BA.

That satisfy you? ;)

deliberately lowering your score by fighting players and unequipping your weapon and then subsequentely double tapping players bigger than you?...

not exactly the same. If this was a case of double tapping for reaserch it wouldn't be bad but sick dropped his score by fighting people in the 400k mpr range with no weapon in order to lose.

"Should you compromise others NCB runs and in some cases (mine) expensive runs"

Why shouldn't you in any situation? This is a competition. If I can bring you down, why shouldn't I.

"deliberately lowering your score by fighting players and unequipping your weapon and then subsequentely double tapping players bigger than you?...

not exactly the same. If this was a case of double tapping for reaserch it wouldn't be bad but sick dropped his score by fighting people in the 400k mpr range with no weapon in order to lose."

So?

"Lolz, I've figured out a way to styme the groth of my competitiors, watch out ya'll I'm doing this to slow you all down!", but still 'in the spirit of the game'"

hmm, that would have just provoked derision as it won't work the way he is doing it, the way to do it is to pay someone else to screw all the scores below your level ;)

Heh you beat me to it :)

Yeah. ;) Like the Top Spot (anaolgy only! not trying to start any conspiricies!) paying Sick to do this to help them. ;)

Not out of CB rules, and not out of the spirit of the game.

Unless Clan bounties are...

Oh for an Edit feature to the forums! :P

""Time to let Jon and/or NS do their admin stuff and either let it go or fix it. But let them do it on their time frame." - Ranger.

Is it just me or does anyone else find the irony in who is saying this? " -AG Titan



Out of context, very much so (and I love making jokes about stuff out of context)... Within it's context though, it was likely said by someone in the one of the best positions to do so...


Sickone, thank you for stopping.

And while everyone else announces their intentions and motives behind their opinions, i may as well too... I'm forging right now, and this didn't affect me in any way, I just very much disagreed with the methods involved. Far as how abusable this is, I coulda found a partner and nuked the score system even with it's "over-inflated scores" before this happened... It's not difficult to bring down the system when your sole purpose is removing score faster than it can be generated. To "fix" score and the way it is accumulated would in no way prevent somebody from doing this again (though depending on the fix, an accomplice may be needed), our only counter-method to doing so would be just expecting that people won't intentionally sabotage it... Again...

what about a hard cap on peoples score equal to their PR?

and by cap I mean floor as in scores cannot go below that level?

there already exists the softcap known as auto-retirement. To not allow that to happen would mean that there would eventually never be a reason to fight chars under a certain MPR ~_^

"If you find a way to steal peoples money in CB should you go on a theft spree stealing everyones cash simply to show Jon theres a mistake. NO you should not do that!!"

Hypothetically, if you find this method and post a thread indicating that there is a bug in the money transfer system, and then the problem is not fixed for months, what is to be done about it? Anyone could abuse it, or do it "by mistake."

I agree with the sentiment that we should let Jon fix it in his own time, but I also wish his timing were more immediate. I guess that's mostly an issue of my own impatience.

I missed a lot, so can only pick out one bit:

Rubberduck says: "As a side point how do people feel about draining score downwards using very one pointed strats, eg all EC robf etc. "

I thought the whole gang around here loved such things? That's rock/scissors/paper, right? Live by the sword, die by the sword. So if you DON'T like such a thing, then there's a LOT about this game you shouldn't like. DM for one, probably. Talk about directed!

Well, if nothing else positive, at least it sparked a lot of interesting discussion topics :)

Oh, and one more tidbit to think about : I believe the "reduced penalties" for fighting downwards in score should be abolished >:)

"Well, if nothing else positive, at least it sparked a lot of interesting discussion topics :)"

Your goal throughout this entire thing, no?



"Oh, and one more tidbit to think about : I believe the "reduced penalties" for fighting downwards in score should be abolished >:)"

Figured that out when ya started this :P

I personally have to post finally. I wish to really thank you for doing this because I really enjoyed fighting in the dead zone for almost a year and then because I lost internet getting back online and seeing that they fixed it and to have someone like you make my bonus go from 7% positive which I hadn't seen in over a year back to 0% and negative % ... I really appreciate it. Thanks a ton.

Don't worry, it'll slowly but surely keep going down more even without my interference after a short recovery while scores resettle, so no "thanks" are necessary.

I guess you are just dense... because you don't seem to get the condescending tone I intended with my post. I was finally enjoying seeing numbers higher than 0% or negative after 1 year plus of the dead zone and then you just decide to do what you did to lower my measely rewards even lower..... so maybe instead of my joking comments I will just come out and say. I personally hope you get reset or fined for purposefully screwing with the entire system of CB on purpose. I know others have been reset for abusing bugs on purpose and this is the absolute positive of abusing something to prove a point. There were better ways to show your point. Thanks for hurting me and all of the people in my position trying to get out of the 7/10 area. I personally could care less to ever see another post from you or hear from you again. You didn't help the community you hurt it and I hope you enjoyed that.

I get it that you are angry, and I got that the last time around, that's why the word "thanks" was within quotes, like just now.
I also know you are under a lot of stress in real-life right now (I didn't miss the whole "loan cash" broohaha a while ago), so I can not blame you for reacting violently to something you perceive as an injustice.
When you had time to cool off, if you would bother reading everything again with a clear head, you'll probably understand it better.

Also, in case you haven't noticed yet, other than a NW difference and slightly altered stats (you having the advantage), our characters are nearly identical... so I'm hurting in-game-wise just as much as you do right now.

That's no small comfort when he's trying to improve and you're trying to reduce your rewards.

I still say a Rolling Bonus is the solution to ALL of these score issues, but whatever.

Well, a rolling bonus would be the solution to a metric ton of issues, but Jon just won't have it for some reason (yeah, I know the "promotes laziness" argument, I don't agree, but it's what Jon believes).

"Well, a rolling bonus would be the solution to a metric ton of issues, but Jon just won't have it for some reason"

Which is why we need to tweak BA regen rates instead.

The recent score drop on Conundrum due to Vectoidz's double-taps should be interesting to follow in the aftermath of the score experiment...

Hmm, he no longer even needs double taps, interesting :)

Nearly one week after the "action" phase of the experiment has concluded, scores have re-stabilized enough, IMO.



Now we wait and see how scores will look like one month from now...

what happened. These scores are not real. I want this score to go back to 4mil ish :D.

Not entirely sure but all through this my score - and that of my fightlist - climbed steadily. I didn't see any loss in rewards, in fact they climbed. Now almost overnight they've dropped. My average challenge bonus dropped by around 20%.

I guess I'm just unlucky.

Well, at first, it was a forced score siphon from some of the higher-scoring people and moving it on the lower-scoring population at the bottom, and some of it destroyed in occasional stalemates. After that phase stopped, the score that did get siphoned on the lower-ranking members had time to trickle back up, and at the same time, the ones higher up re-arranged their scores according to actual fighting power. It always takes a while for all that to re-stabilize.

I have a challenge bonus again! 4% :)

My challenge bonuses are almost back up to where they were before the Score experiment started. What about the rest of you?

Mine were between 30% and 50%... now between 0% and 25%.

this wasn't the only factor in it, but i had a fight list of all 100% challenge bonuses.. 6 or 7 at a time.

i haven't had a 100% challenge bonus since

my bonus went down from 75% to 15% and now finally is back up to around 40% again.

Now that the scores have almost leveled themselves again, is it time to do the experiment over again? XD

NO!

I went from 0-4 percent during this awful little experiment back to the mid-high twenties. Things are fine now.

DON'T do it again.

I'm down on the lower end of things, so I've seen a decrease in challenge bonus since Sickone has stopped. I think the score being dropped down here made it easier for me to get 100% challenge bonus, whereas I'm now only getting in the 70-80% range.

I've seen a decrease in CB and in targets since Sickone has stop or maybe it's because my MPR has been going up.

Nearly one week later...



Not much has changed, some scores went up, some went down...
I'll try to keep this posted once a week from now on, see how it goes...

I've noticed that there aren't as many people in the 2-3m score range right now compared with 6 months ago.

where is the table from before this started?

Didn't keep one.
The whole point was to see only how scores evolve after they stabilize after I stop doing what I was doing.
If I remember correctly, "Shipping up to Boston" (the highest-score retired character) was somewhere in the middle, and the lowest score on the front page somewhere around 4.6 mil or thereabouts.
But like I said, it doesn't really matter how they looked before. The only thing that matters is how they evolve from this point forward.

"evolve after they stabilize after I stop doing what I was doing."

how exactly do you know when they stabilize then if you do not know where they were before you started?

in the bug thread on this issue:

http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002ffM

you stated "As for the reason why that's a bad thing (as if the fact it's a bug is not good enough to call it a bad thing), it's score out of the system at the higher levels for absolutely no good reason whatsoever.
Everybody involved gets some degree of score loss in the long run, and it cascades both upwards and downwards, everybody gets slightly lower bonuses."

if that was your premise for doing the whole score experiment in the first place, then i would think that documenting the scores before starting would be the only way to prove your point, no? or did the experiment change and you decided to just show that score was able to be manipulated if someone so desired?

i guess i am just asking for clarification and a clear statement on what exactly you were trying to prove with your little foray into exploitation of game mechanics and if it was actually an experiment, why the hell wasn't it documented at least so that it might prove useful in some way to offset said exploitation?

If score keep going up, I was wrong. The faster they go up, the greater my error in appreciating the score system's reliability.
If the score remains about the same or even starts going down, I was right and the score system needs a big revamp ASAP, or else we will see a new "dead zone" appearing sooner or later. Depending on how much the system lags behind the power growth of characters, the more it lags, the more right to be concerned I had.
Simple, isn't it ?

P.S. I suppose I should also start tracking the top PR page too.

I accelerated the process a bit by bringing a 1.9M score char to 5.1M.

when doing research, rather than setting out with one hypothesis and then only doing the minimal amount to prove or disprove that hypothesis it is usually much more efficient to collect all of the data you can even if it seems pointless for your work. the reason for this is simple efficiency. you let the data guide you rather than attempting to guide the data.

a failed experiment can then possibly yield other results that where neither sought nor expected. i feel that this is one reason we have made leaps and bounds in the past century or so in many fields. my training has been in marketing research and things work so much better when you start out with a "what can we learn about our customers opinion of our customer service" rather than a "can we afford to cut back on our telephone support staff" approach.

my 2 cents and solely my opinion, but had you done some of this i would be much more inclined to look at what you did as experimentation rather than exploitation...of course i am running an ncb right now! ; )

What good would have that done ? The start point before the experiment was completely irrelevant, as it was heavily skewed upwards by a previous bug.

P.S. Also, the score system was slightly different, you could increase your score by training even if your score was higher than your PR (now you can only do it if it's below PR).

for one thing, daily or weekly score tracking could have shown us how much impact you had on it and how much was actually attributed to the forced junction retrain.

who knows what else could have been gleaned from the data since we do not have it though! that is my whole point, we do not know what we could have gained from it due to the fact that we do not have access to it because of a lack of documentation.

the two facts that you pointed out would have likely told me not that i shouldn't document the start of any experiment, but that i perhaps should wait until the score had stabilized somewhat from those changes before documenting and then starting.

Aww come on, it doesn't get more obvious than this : we had a dead zone, then we had a bug/feature which made scores increase a lot across the board, and the dead zone was magically gone before the bug/feature got even noticed.
And when it did get noticed, it only did so because somebody very low in MPR got the #1 score for a short while... and others quickly leeched a big portion of his score away before it could be "fixed".
You don't need a degree in statistics or anything like that to link cause to effect.

"You don't need a degree in statistics or anything like that to link cause to effect."

i have no idea why you made the last post, how exactly is that relevant?

to quote a professor I once had:
"Correlation is not causation"

ie: the fact these things happened at the same time is not proof that one caused the other...

I agree with dude though, some good fact gathering could have produced some interesting insight into the score mechanism....

But what else would have effected score so much.. the only thing that changes score is fights, so unless there was a large shift in the number of NCBs or something here, the correlation does suggest causation

i never mentioned what caused the initial score issue, i merely said that he probably should have waited to start his "experiment" until scores had stabilized and then documented his "experiment."

it is not important what caused it as that is what jon fixed. this is why i don't understand the relevance of that whole post. it has nothing to do with the discussion here and he's the only one talking of it.

i am also just trying to make sense of this whole thing. i ask for a detailed description of his premise and how we will know what it means. i am still not sure what we have.

he states that he wants to see how scores evolve. then later states that if score keeps growing then he was wrong. yet he's not giving us any kind of score. basically he's saying that it "looks like some grew while others didn't".

wouldn't it be more scientific to add all of the scores on the first page, if that total number is bigger then wouldn't score be growing? individual scores change for many reasons but the total of all scores on the first page would give a much better indication of whether score shrank, grew or stayed the same.

i am just trying to understand what the heck it was all about and offer some suggestions for future research. there is a fine line between doing and experiment and exploiting the system to make a point. it seems that many feel that line may have been crossed and i was offering some suggestions for the future.

as a preliminary figure i added up the top ten scores from each table. that should be a much better indication of whether the score pool is growing, shrinking or staying the same. (i think adding up all of the figures on the first page from both dates would be more indicative, but i do not have the patience and am not the one trying to prove something here.)

total of top ten scores on march 30th, 61,048,034. the total of top ten scores one week later 64,437,507. score grew a total of 3,389,473 within that population during that time frame.

more data points should be tested and compared but it does seem score is actually growing at this point. likewise, he could have waited for the forced junction retrain and the score loss that came with it and documented that whole thing without manipulating the score system in an abnormal fashion.

my whole point was that the experiment may have been pointless as his fears are not founded. if that is the case, perhaps we could have gotten some other good data and not wasted everyone's challenge bonuses for nothing.

i just thought of a great example of how a seemingly failed experiment, at least at this point in time with one data point, could have still offered important information for the community.

regardless of what you consider the reason (score manipulation or forced junction retrain) i don't think anyone can argue that challenge bonuses shrunk for many during this period. if we had weekly data points from before all of this started, we would know how sensitive the score system is and what it takes to reduce challenge bonuses across the board. basically were the changes we saw caused by slow score growth, score stagnation or actual score shrinkage.

Just a minor nitpick, I started the experiment (March 9) a couple of days BEFORE the junction changes (March 12).
Nobody could have predicted Jon would make that change right then in advance, so I couldn't have possibly "waited to start until that settled", since I started before.

what i meant settling was the person who got a fairly low mpr into the main spot.

no, you couldn't have foreseen the junction issue, but by documenting your experiment, we could have learned from it. again, this is my point.

"Aww come on, it doesn't get more obvious than this : we had a dead zone, then we had a bug/feature which made scores increase a lot across the board, and the dead zone was magically gone before the bug/feature got even noticed."

Jon actually made a change to the score system (increasing amounts of score gained per fight) that intentionally dissipated the dead zone; it wasn't so much a magical, random occurrence that took place due to a bug so much as it was an intentional fix from the game maker.

OB, it was my belief that the point of this "experiment" was to show that the new score system in place would quickly create a deadzone. The constant score removal was to simulate the effects of many people training, retraining, and fighting up... It's plain and obvious by the fact that our scores have continued to drop even after sickone's "experiment" has concluded that he was totally right and that we're spiraling downward into oblivion...

Wait, what? Scores are going up? Oh dear, guess this was just a big rouse for attention after finding a legal way to sabotage the game's reward structure... Seeing as this reply makes number 188, mission accomplished?

Meh, I see my own challenge bonuses still dropping, not increasing...

My challenge bonuses held firm throughout this and only started dropping afterwards and are still dropping.

Challenge bonuses aren't completely based on score. It's based on you PR to score ratio. It is possible that your PR had increased or some sort of loss of score caused by the junction nerf.

My score has been reestablished to a normal place though...a little lower but that's expected with no AoF buffing my familiar.

CB% is based on actual target score vs own PR, so the exact score of the target is calculated every time you make an attack. I find it funny that you can only update the displayed score for one target every 5 minutes or so (maybe 3 minutes?) when the scores are calculated for each and every battle...
And yeah, scores displayed on the main page can be quite off from actual scores, and the only way to be sure would be to manually update everybody while nobody fights any of them, which is kind of hard given the restrictions in place.

My PR has barely increased in the past week, nowhere near 1%.
Last week I was getting 20%-25% CB, now I'm seeing 10%-23% CB.
I'm wondering what next week will bring.

So... the week before it was...



and now it's like this...

I have been wondering about how much tournies are affecting the score ladder.

The score drop is a direct result of double taps. Apparently it's beneficial enough in keeping challenge bonuses high when fighting (by having an inflated score) to make the double taps worth while.

my score is usually 4.7mil I just equipped the RoE and it dropped.
On other news my challenge bonus went from 20% to 37% :)

My challenge bonuses are finally going up.

In other news: double taps - apart from where clan points are concerned - have always been beneficial. Rewards on an upwardly placed double tap can be better than two lower placed opponents put together. Even with the loss factored in.

that is not true JW, it has something to do with how much of the team you kill in the 1st fight. It seems when there is little "mpr/pr" left for the 2nd tap rewards can be low.

I'm only speaking from my own experience RD, which has been nothing but beneficial where double taps are concerned.

anyone ever get a total of all the scores listed for each date? wouldn't that be a much easier to interpret number?

Law has been frequently double-tapping Conundrum. I am sure this has something to do with a recent increase in rewards for most players.