Why? (in General)

Why are people not joining clans? I'm genuinely curious. My list has been steadily shrinking for months now, and it's getting worrisome.

I mean, there was a time when the top clan had 15k points daily and everyone who had any amount of MPR tried to be in a clan. But that seems to be dying off. I mean, between 3.5 mil and 5 mil MPR there aren't even 20 people in clans. Above that you have a good few people in clans, but that seems a ridiculous spreading of the active clan people.

So what's going on, people? Are the free rewards not good enough? Can you not stay positive? Hate your clan leader?

I mean, there are currently only 26 clans with any real amount of points (above 100). And I imagine a few of those are single person clans.

I would even ask an admin who has the time to make a poll. Find out why more and more people are leaving clans and not joining them again. If it's something that can be fixed, maybe it should be? Or maybe it's just time to totally redo the clan system?

Oh, too easy. Clans are stupid. *smile*

...and overall numbers are declining. So, of course the clan numbers are going to dwindle.

Hope against hope, maybe people are really starting to want the choice of NOT joining a clan, and are taking it despite the fact it means lower rewards. However, I doubt that.

People do like choice, though. And clans are no choice at all.

I get what you are saying, we've always had at least a decent clan. There was a while where we were consistently top 5, now we always have a bonus above 10%, yet still have this "The max VPR you can accept is 33,716,709." Don't know what's happening.

I know there are a ton of new ncb's being run right now. I'm not sure if this is effecting your fight list or not.

Well, that's sort of the point Sut. Why would people be taking such an obviously easy answer and choosing the other option? Maybe ethics ARE accounting for some of it... But no. I really doubt they are.


NCBs could definitely be affecting it, but that wouldn't change the amount of active clans, just the distribution of people at the top/middle versus the bottom and working up.

Maybe GW they(NCBers) do not want to be farmed into oblivion in the beginning and are biding their time until they are at a decent size to rejoin.

I would be a member of a clan, but:
1. It's expensive for me to join (100k+)
2. My clans keep getting farmed to oblivion (auto-disband)
3. I'm not playing enough to stay in a top-15 clan at the moment because of real life.

The old Dead Zone made it too difficult to run clans in the middle. But its also a side effect of people running chars that aren't disposable funnily enough. Look at the chars in the big clans - long running chars in clans that are also long running - crucially with no room for new members.

People don't necessarily want to start a new clan, I suspect they'd sooner jump onto a clan that's getting the points. Especially if they're starting, or in the middle of running a NCB.

Could it be there are less people actively fighting?

A couple of high MPR characters have left the building and our number of active players are slightly dropping. We are close to 200 now.

Personally, I was tired of getting destroyed. There were only a few clan members with a descent CB% for me to fight, but I was constantly being hit my people with 2 or more times my MPR and much higher net worth. It made virtually impossible for me to stay consistently positive for my clan.

So, when the clan was disbanded by the system, for low score I do never saw, I decided not to join another. When I am higher and not just a whipping toy, I might join another clan.

Now I can find anyone I wish to fight that has the best rewards and I do not have to be concerned with clan affiliation.

I joined a battle clan a long time ago, and found myself quickly booted when I went out on the weekend. Although I don't go out as often as I used to, I'm not interested in a system that requires 24/7 commitment.

Huzzah! The people are thinking it over and tired of the forced clan-up! I love it!

Go Go GDIs!

I have no idea why people think getting "destroyed" in a clan is bad.

Getting attacked 1 million times a day does nothing to you character personally. It will lower your clan bonus but hell it is FREE xp and money.

The current clan system is not optimal, but it still is --- FREE xp and money. It is the biggest no brainer to be in one since the wheel.

Ranger: having to reapply to a clan because it was disbanded is not free. Therefore it certainly does not make it free money.

I can understand the people who are going through this and this does not make it the no brainer you say it is.

Ranger, I must reiterate: Rejoining a clan is certainly not free. If you want the extra XP, sure, join a clan. However, it means paying out a whole pile of money every two weeks or so if you're a punching bag for other clannies.

Then I stand corrected :)

I have not had problems keeping positive clan points even without characters at the top.

I guess we should have a point of diminishing returns from people attacking.

the trouble zone seems to be caused by the lack of a score spread. it was less of an issue before some of the score changes reverted it back to being a problem.

at about 1m mpr to 2m mpr a growing character gets enough score to start showing up on people with 3 to 4m mpr's "add clan member's score close to mine" auto-generated list. while many will then be beating on them, they have relatively few targets with low enough mpr that they can beat.

if they focus solely on clan fighters, which is about the only way to stay positive, even with a solid strategy and a capped tattoo they may only have four or five people in their list. add to this the fact that you do end up trading higher challenge bonus targets for clan members in order to attempt to stay positive or not so negative and you have a pretty frustrating situation.

just a jigoro is just now starting to actually contribute regularly to our clan again and i rarely miss ba, of course i really can't afford to buy ba but during xp times and this also compounds the issue further for ncb's with shallow pocketses.

this was better when there was more score available in the game and this particular situation was predicted by many when the the score calculations on retraining were changed. i do understand why it was changed but at the time asked for more score to be brought in when fighting to replace that lost with the change.

Ranger, I think that's exactly right. There is a point at which it is possible to maintain positive clan points.

From my own experience, it means burning around 70% of all natural BA once you hit 8/20. Sure, it's not very difficult, but it means that you can't be a casual player who, like me, hits 50% of natural BA during the week and little on Saturdays.

Dude, I agree with you 100%. I think you've hit the nail on the head.

I found that high MPR and USD goes a long way to keeping high clan points, from my own experience.

I had absolutely no problem, as a singleton, staying in very nice positive point land when I had all my gear, massive tat, etc. I could even stay in the top 15 or 20 clans, sometimes peaking over 10% bonus (when clans were left in the list so as not to tier bonus levels too sharply).

As soon as I sold some precious items such as HoCs and large Corns, GDI (my clan) was disbanded -- within the first week. I believe it happened even before I got rid of my tattoo.

So yes, Ranger, it is nice that you don't need to worry about getting dis-banded, but that is the whole point of the thread -- pure start-ups, non-USD folks, and folks who aren't lucky enough to have a huge tattoo are not able to keep their heads above water.

So once again, the score is Stupid 1, Clans 0... Actually, worse. I'll give clans a score of -1, because they are a forced behavior that now many folks cannot maintain. That's worse than no choice at all.

Clans are great for the low MPR players. They have lots of BA to burn, lots of clan targets, and no real farming since players scores can change dramatically.

Clans are good for the higher MPR people. They have few BA to burn and, therefore, need that extra clan bonus and they have few people that can farm them.

For the middle MPR people (like myself, will cross over 2 mil MPR next time I train) it does not help. When I was in a clan, I had only 3 people that I could fight with reasonable rewards and those were lower than the others in my fight list. However, I was constantly being hit by 8 or 9 players.

I usually fight about 90% of my BA a day, only missing a little over night sometimes. I was generally between -250 and +250 clan points. I will try again in a couple of months, when there are fewer people that can actively farm me and I can farm a larger pool. Until then, I will save my Clan 'Buy in' money until I can be useful for a clan.

this is also a downward spiral. as more people decide to do just as vscountstrum has then there are even fewer targets in the mid to low range clans and even more fighters will be discouraged and drop out.

by increasing the score variance from the top mpr teams to the lower ones it will spread out the range where lower mpr targets will show up on higher mpr clanners lists. it will also decrease their challenge bonus more and discourage them from fighting them in that way while increasing the challenge bonus on higher teams with higher scores.

this should decrease the amount of auto disbanding and frustration throughout the mpr curve.

right now we have a max score that isn't even double the game's max mpr. i tend to think that our score to mpr ratio should be 3 or 4 to 1 to alleviate the clan issue. this will have the side affect of making challenge bonuses higher though but i think that might be a good thing as well!

Clans aren't for the casual player.

I'm a casual player, sometimes I burn every BA, sometimes I miss it for a long time.

Clans aren't for me.

OB makes a point, but I would ask is that really how we want it to be, ESPECIALLY in a game this small?

I mean, wouldn't the ideal situation be that 13-15% clan bonuses are for hardcore players, but that CLANS are for everyone? That's how I always thought of it. But now it's not that at all. Now it's "Hardcore or nothing." Or, at least, that's how many non-active clan people say it feels like.


Could this not be remedied in a variety of ways? Could we not, say, restructure how clans are made and how they are disbanded?


Something that keeps the nature of clans alive, but doesn't penalize those players who are getting farmed by everyone within 5 mil score.

Remedy: clans are disbanded through long-term inactivity rather than negative or positive clan points

the most recent battle time is recorded in the clan history, if nobody in the clan fights for a week, it dies


This would kill off a ton of our inactive clans that are unnoticeable and just sit, and would allow other clans with members who sometimes get farmed into oblivion to stay alive

"Remedy: clans are disbanded through long-term inactivity rather than negative or positive clan points "

Funny, OB, I thought of EXACTLY that while writing my above post. But I disregarded it for a simple reason.

Not only would this allow everyone to join clans, but it would take our any real competitive aspect. The bounty and grudge threads would disappear.

What we need is a way to make it competitive and yet accessible to everyone. I thought of some sort of "numbing system" where part a certain negative, the how fast you went down greatly slowed.

So that, say, if you're above 300 CPs positive, you get full negative from a loss. Once you're below that, you only get 3/4ths. Below 0, you get half. Below 300, you get 1/4th. And you give a hard cap at -500 CP.

This would make bounty threads still possible, but they'd have to target CLANS, not just the weakest members of them (Because -500 from one players will almost never, in itself, disband a clan).

An idea like this, I think, would be better for all involved (and also make things like vacations less costly)

Why does it make things less competitive for clans to not get disbanded through negative CPs? You're competing for the top spot, not competing to see who can disband who.

OB that would hurt the clan bonuses

i am with ob on this one and do not see how it would hurt competition or bonuses, please explain why you think it would!

"Why does it make things less competitive for clans to not get disbanded through negative CPs? You're competing for the top spot, not competing to see who can disband who. "

True, but no one would want to be in a clan and be negative constantly. People DO have pride :P

I know, it's not always fun to cater to the less hardcore and uber dedicated players, but it MUST be done. MUST.

And I should be more clear.

Negative bonuses are't fun, but that's not the real reason. The real reason is because no one wants to be trapped in the negatives. Whether or not the clan will be disbanded, that won't change the fact that a lot of players will never go positive. Once again, the option to just stay out of clans will look far too good, from what I would imagine.

I'll agree to disagree then, I don't see that scenario forming. :P

GW's situation would work. It would set a limit on how much people can be hurt by farming. OB the big problem with removing all those extra dead clans is that the bonus for most clans is generated by them. If you ever work to get the 15% bonus in the second hour of bonus on Monday you would know that it is usually 15% for the top clan 10% for the second clan and 5% for the third place clan. The bonus probably wouldn't look quite that bad with the few extra clans coming in who wouldn't normally be there but it would be almost that bad, with likely only the top 5-8 clans getting any bonus at all.

Yes, so instead of many clans receiving a more spread-out bonus, it would be competitive for a fewer number of bonus slots. Just because we're accustomed to the bonus being spread among so many clans due to the dead ones, doesn't mean the system was designed to work that way.