NCB concern (in General)

So I haven't gotten the replies that I had hoped for yet from the concern I have been having about the way NCBs are being started. So I'll just toss it out there. I don't think it's right with the things many of us consider 'exploits' in the game, how they are being used to take advantage. I won't name names, since singling out people isn't the intent, it's the hope that the rules will change. The latest example combined pretty much everything that you can do and put it into one big package to launch a NCB into 500MPR in a ~6hour time frame. How?

1) The allowance of several people to spend 1600 BA on someone's NCB for them
2) Having the people who spend the 1600 BA join the clan that the person is involved with to not only receive the 15% top bonus, but to guarantee it for the duration of the bonus time, being that the bug for CPs is there.
3) Transferring a high MPR character with a huge score to someone else who is willing to click 'enter' on it during that time to make it 'easier'. As well as (this part I hate) gimping that character which allows a NCB to wallop a 3.4mil MPR character. This alone I have seen in tournies, and taking notice of it more and more is infuriating. Gimping characters on purpose should be an extreme penalty offense imo. This element also includes the manipulating of score for bonus if so attempted.

I just don't like the trend that is going on, and I know others are perturbed about it as well. I would hope that as a small community, against a lot of odds, still trying to grow, the regulars wouldn't blatantly take advantage of what we have with the limited involvement from the game creator as it stands now. But it is going to take a little more I guess to accomplish this.

Do the right thing people. And admins, please change the rules in a harsh way.

i understand you want a more balanced playing field, and i dont doubt this mal-practice exists. But honestly how could anyone watch every character. removing equipment is not really gimping cause lets say i could be renting it out or selling it. and who is to say that i want to re arrange my minions, in turn that has its advantages and probably larger draw backs yes.

and finally its not an exploit if everyone can do it, it just takes a clique or circle of friends to accomplish such feats. grats to them on organizing that outcome and depreciating the value of the game.

Look around the forums... chat... the admins do a pretty dang good job about noticing what happens, and the players in this game also are aware of what goes on. Just because everyone can do it, doesn't mean it should be allowed. What a 'lemming philosophy' to say the least...

1) That requires immense amounts of time and money to do, as the person who organises that will have to pay for transfers, the BA and the time spent by the other users. It is by no means cheap and the reap the benefits because of that.

2) That can be fixed quite easily by other active users, if you don't like that you get your clan mates, friends and enemies to farm the clan.

3) Gimping characters to be easily fought by tourney characters IS against the rules, but the problem there is that Admins are unaware of the situation as they do not have the time to go through each persons fight list and check for it. Manipulating score (i am assuming you refer to retrain) is rather annoying but as of yet is not covered by the rules.

1. When it comes to what is right vs. wrong money shouldn't be an issue. I know Jon has stated being that some things are ridiculously expensive to do and thus he allows it... but this one I argue whether it should be allowed.

2. There is no argument for this one. It is a 100% bug that needs to be fixed. Farming shouldn't even be an option/consideration being that it shouldn't exist in the game.

3. When found out there should be harsh punishment. And the score thing is brought up yet again for consideration to have rules set for it.

The point is that it is cheaper than it would be for buying BA yourself, and that it lets you get further than the NCB is calibrated to let you go.

Were you around for the whole DAS fiasco?

Who cares if they do this?

It didn't give them a top spot in the game.

It didn't even put them into the top 10%.

It just means that people in the 500 MPR bracket now have someone new to fight and since they were farming a 3.4 mil char, they have a very inflated score, so perfect for others to farm.

Unless the exploit affects the top 5-10% MPR chars and thier standings, it doesn't really matter too much in the long run.

Now in all of this, allowing someone to keep a clan in first place by transferring and spending 1600 more BA for the same clan is the only part that can affect the top people. In my opinion a transferred character should incur the same thing as someone that just left a clan, so that this exploit can't happen anymore.

Wraithlin, please re-read your post in 6 months. Thanx.

Wraithlin, your logic is wrong.

Typically it takes a normally run ncb around a month to hit 500k mpr. Not one day. These ncb's that kevlar has mentioned are a few weeks ahead of all others, which will amount too a few hundred thousand mpr at tbe end. Just imagine if zenai or lightning raider did this for their run.

So they get a good start, there is still a long 5 and a half months ahead of them. But it's good they spent all thier money on transfers and spent BA instead of the gear that is going to help them more 3 months from now.

If you want to compete at the end game, you have to prepare for it, and plan accordingly. Spending all that money in order to make the easiest part of the journey to top even easier is not the way to go about it.

But you're right, we won't see how this plays out until 5 and a half months from now.

an extra few weeks of tat growth under the ncb bonus is pretty valuable as well. i get about 250k tat levels per week with only buying ba twice a week during xp bonus times.

as for the clan issue, i think we just need to make saved ba past the 160 mark not count for clan points.

^I have to disagree with that. If a person saves 1600 BA they are not applying days worth of BA in the meantime (@6 regen, 432/day). It's the whole issue of players hopping in and out of clans, and the CPs remaining that is the problem. It's when the person who accumulated the 1600 BA worth of CPs leave, and the CPs remain.

the problem that i have with pulling clan points as people leave is that there is really no good stopping point. if it doesn't affect the 24 hour score why should it affect the yearly clan scores?

i think of clans as a more active daily sort of deal. saving ba and clans just seems counter-intuitive to me. it should be about constant competition and therefore saved ba really shouldn't affect the numbers, even briefly, imho.

About transferring characters, I was told that it is perfect acceptable to do so, since the money involved eventually becomes considerable.

About the part of gimping a character and having someone click enter repeatedly so it can be fought constantly, I have a problem with that.

But lately I see hardly any developer interaction, so I expect nothing will get done.

again I raise the question is $ really the reason something should be considered right vs. wrong? And isn't transferring a character that is small a lot less than transferring one that is larger? What is the avg. cost a NCB has to pay to transfer a character to the several people boosting the 1600 BA? Regardless of the answer, I think things need thought through.

I agree in that xferring a character to start a NCB that way is just plain bad.

However Jon and NS have stated it was ok.

The xfer fee on a 500k character is under 1M. A pittance.

Character Transfer Cost

VMPR is equal to all trained & untrained XP. If all of your XP is trained, then VMPR is equal to MPR.

4/3*VMPR + 100k

Over time on this game I have noticed one thing is constant. People tend to try to "bend" the rules as best they can. Not every scenario can be tied down with rules and at some point things have been let go, but unfortunately some people keep trying to push that envelope and come up with more and more ways to keep pushing what should be right and wrong in the game.

Scenario. What is to stop me from getting 10 or 20 people to store up 1600 ba. Then I start the first 1600 ba and start the transfer process off. Then at some point I change training up on Sox Jr and just sit there hitting enter and allow someone that I sent the NCB char to to fight me and get great rewards. If this happened enough what is to say a person can't get 1 mil mpr in one day? 2 mil mpr in a day. Is there an end?

Just because there is no rule for something sometimes doesn't make it right, and then when the process is thought to a larger scale then it really seems wrong. Just my opinion.

That exact thing is happening. Just 10 people have not gotten together yet. 4 or 5 have. And most of it is perfectly acceptable by the developers given the "cost" involved in transferring a character.

IMO, 10M for 10 people doing this is nothing compared to the MPR you can get on day 1 of a NCB.

The NCB is calculated on 1 person running it as a NUB would to get to 95% of the top MPR. This is just insulting to many of us who play by the rules.

Normally 1600 BA would take 800 minutes, unless you are lucky enough to find a real player fighting you can farm. 800 minutes = 13+ hours.
However, gimping a character, having someone sit there pressing enter on a 1 MPR character to avoid being unconscious is just wrong on many levels.

an aspect of the game that needs addressed/changed.

Why do you guys keep acting like this was a big deal. I could be hitting higher than 1.3M after the first week if I pulled out all the stops.

it is a big deal, and it has nothing to do with your name. It's the fact that it is allowed period.

Sounds like the 1600 ba cap need to be toned down even more... No reason at all allowing 1600 BA cap, what was the reason for allowing this much cap btw ? I really couldn't remember.

It's not only allowed, it's now the preferred method of starting an NCB. I think it's awesome that team work and community are coming together to create powerful characters. It creates another segment in a market desperately in need of more action and allows for easier NCB runs (wasn't that a goal for some of you... oh I see, solutions not packaged and handed to you by the devs aren't good enough).

In any case, cats long since out of the bag and any fix implemented now would be patently unfair considering the #6 mpr char (soon to be #5) was based on a two person run using this method all the way to nearly the end of the NCB.

why wouldn't it be the preferred method? LOL, wow. And just because someone has gotten to a point now, doesn't mean the issues being brought up can't be addressed and changed. That kind of thinking is just absolutely absurd.

1) jon encouraged team work a long time ago when he gave CB clans. So team work in this instance costs lots of CB. Anything that cost you lots of CB dollars jon always liked. I wouldn't call it a cheat bec everyone is free to do that if thats whats they like to be doing. My opinion...not worth the trouble if you have a life outside CB :) if you don't ..well your CB creativity has no boundaries..

2) I dont know about

3) was always considered low life CB tactics and at one time was a reset-able offense for abuse..In tourny's, even more so letting people clobber a good character thats taken his clothes and weapons off, unless the char was made for the tourny for that purpose..They need to clean that up indeed..

when you accept the fact that what we do here in our spare time from work or home is ingloriously wasted...you start to feel better about the whole mess now known as Carnage Blender <:)

well I have had cm'd to me that #1 is fine, and #2 is fine... and #3 not so sure. definitely not what I expected. guess the way you view the game, Nov, seems to be how it will end up.

I have to admit I'm kinda shocked and let down, especially with #2... that to me seemed like an obvious needed fix.

The big thing with #2 is that it cannot be done consistently. At best a person could do it once a week.

Kevlar, what you didn't point out is that Titan spent 12M just to have the 3 people use their 1600 BA, so don't go around saying it's an exploit when he spent a huge chunk of money to do it.

to me it's not about consistency.. it's the fact that whenever a NCB starts a run, it is guaranteed the #1 rank/ 15% highest bonus throughout the entire 6 hour EXP time. That's wrong in its own right. Not to mention the points counting towards other rankings as Dudemus stated.

again, Smallpau, I wasn't trying to single out Titan, like you are now. And if you read all the posts, I don't think $ should be the reason something is considered ok or not. To me, and some others, it isn't right.

same with the USD problem, anyone can do it. Same with the start of this NCB run, if you have the money, you can give it to people if they help you out, is that what a regular job is after all?

And don't tell me you weren't singling Titan out... Who else has done it?

why support an obvious 'problem'? *sigh*

Is that not why you made this thread? I was just letting you know people think the USD ->CB is a problem, but look where that complaint has gone, nowhere. I don't see a problem with either, it was really expensive for Titan to do his NCB start. And now he's even got to keep it going for another 6 months. Not the same way obviously, but he's still going to be spending alot if he plans on buying BA everyday.

small, seriously read the thread. The USD part of it is only a part of #1... seriously, my second feeling for a facepalm ever.

That looks a bit like singling out people. Hate to be the blunt end of the stick here.

I don't like it, and I don't see how anyone can really support it (it's gaming the system), and it's just another side effect of the Bonus structure.

That said, I'm still happy to wait for any upcoming changes to the bonus structure, in the hopes things like will become a thing of the past. ;)

(Flogging that dead horse again, this wouldn't be an issue with a nice rolling bonus... But you would still be able to save up 1600 BA, and get as many other people you cuold to do so as well, and then make sure to *only* start a new character at XP time. But at least it wouldn't make such an effect on *how* well your character performs, by so heavily weighting every single BA you can get in your bonus period.)

Thanks for the back up small, but don't worry about it. If they're screaming now. Wait a year.

To be honest, I've never understood why some 'gaming' is wrong, and others ok.

Like gaming as a community to get a group that's set up stalemate each other is the wrong side of gaming, but getting another group together to power level a NCB in it's inception is ok.

Stalemating can be used to push a team into and past first place.

Transferring characters just gets them an early boost, doesn't work at end game, you still have to be good at higher level to compete.

You can still do the xfer 1600 BA 'gaming' (among others) at the high end. Folk don't, because it costs.

It still doesn't justify why some type of gaming is legit and others not.

Ok Ive been reading a bit and have had to sit and think a great deal on this before I decided I needed to say something.


First in a way both LR and I DID do something like this just on a different level if you think about it. We both geared up, named our items, got ahold of CBD in one way or another, saved up 1600 BA and went for gold. I used USD to a great extent to get my CBD, LR from what I noticed did not.

Take a lesson folks, seriously I'm tired of this stupid argument that USD = win or guaranteed top spot. If this is the case why not from $1600.00 am I not in the number one spot right now? Case in point here is that LR is a far more experience player than I was and played/planned a better route than I did. That should say the entire game is going right as my influx of USD to buy CBD won me nothing of a Top spot.

Yes I am doing good now sitting comfortably in the second tier of the Big Dogs. However, it took me 2 months to actually get everything straight as this was my first NCB. Did the USD help? Heck yes! did it get me #1? Not by a long shot! This is with a LOT of planning, USD, Tactical advice from some of the Top players in the game and a ton of freaking luck!



Wraithlin made the right statement in that in the short run yeah it looks good but it is Endgame that matters. If Titan rocks this NCB then he did it right, if not then it was a waste of his time and everyone's in this thread period. All of the tactics used for now no matter how unethical they may seem is still there to be used as there is nothing against it. In a lot of ways all Titan did was circumvent a months worth of time, we all circumvent a weeks worth of time when we save up the 1600 BA anyway. I say Titan Congratz on a job well done!

Should something be done about this? Maybe it just depends on what facet you are talking about in this circumstance. As far as gimping chars well that may seem low but honestly I think that was well played and a result of good organization. On the CPs well I have always felt that if you leave the CPs should go with you instantly. For the multiple 1600BA accrual and pump an NCB plan well it is expensive as hell to start so there is one facet down. If I had my way in this I would say that no more than 8K BA spent on a char per day should be implemented as a hard cap. There is already the unspoken rule as it is with what happened with NS back in the day. Titan stayed under it from what I can see so honestly folks he's still in the green as far as I'm concerned. Maybe a no more than 4 Char Xfers per day would settle this a bit but honestly there is no REAL way, without just killing the game for everyone, to stop anything like this happening. Where there is a will and the braincells to process it there is a way to get around things as you can see.

Don't get me wrong folks I'm not saying that I agree 100% with everything that happened. I do, however, have to say this was a good way to see that Tactics have now taken a new turn in CB. This may be for the better as it may cause some good or better things to be implemented in the game. Overall this is not something to hit the fences and cry "Foul" about more like a "Hmmm that was a pretty good plan maybe I should keep that in mind for later. or Ohhh goody someone new in the ranks to farm soon!"


Just my thoughts and opinions peeps :-)

SP,

There have been others who have used the same "tactics" to grow a NCB.

As novice pointed out, it is now the preferred method of growing a NCB.

Others aside from Titan have done this exact thing, and while Titan is the latest to do it, the principles Kevlar brought up need to be addressed.

Otherwise we will have someone, or Titan as he has stated, really abuse this system, spend 20M (which is not much now a days) and get to 1.5M MPR the first day. Then really screw up the MPR structure of the game.

1600 usd would have likely gotten you much further by buying the highest single minion you could and then purchasing the other minions and dumping the remaining money into gear.

what was your breakdown for usd spent on gear and that spent on ba?

Personally I've never understood why you're allowed to accumulate 1600 BA. But I certainly did it for my NCB run.

I also can't see why you'd be allowed to swap Clans more than once a week.

On the gimping side - why doesnt the community police itself? When someone spots this going on why don't we all just hit the gimp.

Some of us tried, but then it is easy to just equip your weapon, fight a couple times to get the gimped character up to a high score for as the target.

Nothing we as a community can do vs that except point it out and hope the developers decide it is not a good thing for the game.

Between x-fer fees, BA costs, payment for other players, timing, scheduling to be on at the same time, finding someone reliable, someone willing to ruin a character, etc... I see it as exchanging a hefty amount of CBD for an MPR increase.

Which sounds like buying a minion to me. Didn't CBers complain once upon a time about being able to run the N*B to the top and then buy 3 minions? (hint: answer is yes)

I just see it as another facet of the game, honestly, but then again I'm totally unaffected by it and don't really care. I -hate- upper game play anyway, and I totally approve of anything that mixes it up.

Gee, I have an extreme solution in the other drection.
Allow people to buy XP from Jon for USD.
I bet everybody agrees that THAT would be wrong.
Now explain to me how this is any different.

Sickone.

One can buy xp with CB/USD by buying minions. Something I have never liked. I always advocated a 0 xp minion for a nominal cost.

But this, especially the gimping a character who continually fights to avoid being comatose is just gaming the system.

One cannot have a rule for everything but some things just fail the smell test.

To me this fails such a test.

You can buy a limited amount of XP (max 11% of top minion XP) for a limited amount of time (3 times max).
This other method allows limitless XP at constantly increasing costs... extremely prohibitive eventually (costs-wise), yes, but limitless nevertheless.

>
--QBnovice, January 3 11:42 PM EST

Wrong logic, considering they spend what... 150m? 200m? to accomplish that?

Big difference from 5+ people doing it with a cost of around 10m...

I thought if a character lost to another that was vastly below it that it lost money? To the point where it would go into minus cash by quite a distance? Or was that removed?

long gone