The lower ranks of the blender. (in General)

Starting an NCB and was just given 10 minutes to make a thread by my double-clicking mouse getting me suspended... Figured I'd point out that we should avoid telling newer players to aim for 100% challenge bonus. It's a great idea in theory, but in the bottom ranks, it's next-to-impossible, and quite discouraging to even try. Unless of course you have someone working with you using one of their established chars to help get your char off the ground or a large PTH weapon with knowledge on how to manipulate the score system.

All in all, poorly written thread due to lack of planning and a hurry to get it done before my suspension is over, but best summed up as "the bottom ranks are broken, don't get your hopes up when wading through."

I agree completely.

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

I also agree... it took me over a month before I started seeing 100% and even then it took 2 months before I could solidly see it on most of my fight list. Those first weeks were much different than my last NCB without ENC.

I totally agree with you on this gentlemen. Although I was wading through with a Single Minion Archer(which is possibly one of the hardest imho) it was still like wading through molasses in January.....in Canada!

Overall it took me 1 month, 1 week and a few days to get my first 100% CB and even then it was only one. Around the 2 1/2 Month mark I had several 100% CB opponents. I only had them for about 1 1/2 Montghs then the decline began quite rapidly.

Bottom Line I believe the best CB % NPs/NCBs can expect is roughly 60-70% on an Average Basis. In other words 100% is a pipe dream for a beginning char, and for an extended amount of time once achieved.


Just my opinion.......

Some kind of score regeneration for dormant teams would solve this problem. If it is in fact a problem the admins feel needs to be fixed.

I was getting 30-40% CB when I was starting out, but as soon as I got all of that good tank equipment from the Gladiator Tournament I retrained to a tank and it was 100% CBs until around 2 million MPR.

The real challenge at the 2 mil-3 mil level i've found is maintaining a positive clan score, so that your clan will keep you. As there are alot of people that can and will farm you, but most of the clanners you can farm don't give a good challenge bonus.

In other words, you basically all want NCB runs to become effortless? Sorry as far as I'm concerned... the harder it gets, the better! :)

I don't want NCB runs to be effortless, I want new people to the game to stay.

NCB runs of course will be a little easier, but people running NCBs are probably going to stay with the game, having the lower ranks rough like it is now just lowers the incentive for new players.

I'd be interested to see how many new active NUBs there are with 3-6 months of playtime. I doubt there are more than 10.

I just like the idea of the CB community growing instead of shrinking.

Actually I was curious, so I answered my own question.

There are currently 3 people in the game that have between 3 and 6 months of time with Carnage Blender, and are currently active.

That is a horrible rate of retention since I know alot more than 3 people find this game every 4 months.

But don't listen to me and Joel, we're new here, obviously we don't know what we're talking about.

It is my heart-felt opinion that we should do absolutely ANYTHING to attract and KEEP new players!
Why aren't we making such changes? Since I've been here, there have been a ton of changes geared towards balancing the battle mechanics, but not many that a new character would be affected by. There is the new reward for bringing in new players, but I would like to see if that has kept any of them around. So far, it has just made a couple of existing players filthy rich.
If we don't do something to make this game more fun for more kinds of people, then our community will remain small, and even shrink!
I staunchly advocate that we make the game easier at the beginning, as well as lower the rate at which BA regenerates, so that working people can actually compete.
We cannot exclude certain groups of people if we want our community to grow!

Shade, check out the other thread.

The lower ranks are a mess, with large MPR - low score charcaters making a mockery of fightlists down low.

Anything to change that, be it regenerating score, or making organising your fightlist easier and more fun, is a more than welcome change, and can *only* improve retention of new players.

It's daunting enough as it is t have to change your fightlist *after every single fight* due to bonus amounts.

But having to wade thorugh these abandoned out of place charcaters makes the process tedious, and unfun.

If the challenge bonus detail was removed from the fight result and was no longer visible would that make a difference?

Bee, i wouldnt remove it entirely from our view, maybe until a certain mpr, or our score starts to grow at an accelerated rate. as a vet running ncbs every 6 months i find the challenge bonus crutial to my ba usuage but 100% does not always yield the best results(score<mpr)


maybe with every ncb a vet gets an increase with starting experience to avoid said troubles and with that. the inability to xfer the character for 30days to avoid abuse.

US I think that is a pretty good Idea. A LOT of ppl have asked why I spent so much on my Char instead of buying one and going with that.

Well it is because 1) I had NEVER run an NCB before and I of course lost the chance at a NUB since I was around before it's inception. I had already bought several chars and while satisfying in their own way they were just not really mine.

So I decided to run a NCB, it was hard as all get out! Granted I chose to run an extremely difficult and expensive char(Single Minion Archer Tank)but the lower Ranks all but made me want to abandon it. It was simple hardheadedness that made me stick to my guns and continue on with my char.

Now to expand on this there are not many people that have the knowledge and ability to pull of a successful NCB. Nem, DoS, dudemus, Ranger, novice & Hatch are a few off the top of my head.

These players are Top Notch strategists in this Game! Do you honestly expect a New Player to be able to even come close to one of them? So far only two come to mind that are in the ball park Wraithlin and Joel. That is 2 out of how many?

Both have done an exceedingly good job but both have talked to and listened to top vets in the game(not to mention in Clans with top vets as well). Not that they could not have done well on their own but without the help they got they would not have made it as far as they have in the same amount of time.

This should say something....................

it is an unfortunate consequence of tournies and lack of people fighting down there. I wouldn't be opposed to everyone (new players and ncb) starting with some amount of xp.

Part of the problem of player retention is CB's competition--namely games like WOW. CB has little to no advertising or graphics and this hurts its 'face value' to a new player who isnt instantly hooked by CB's complexity.

Now dont get me wrong, CB is a great game, but these are problems.

Added to the the largeish learning curve, I think Cb should be easiest to play at early levels of MPR and should become much harder to play as MPR increases. There are a bunch of ways to accomplish this, and a few have been mentioned in this thread but a change like this is almost necessary at this point.

And to those who say NCB runs would be effortless, then shame on you because more attention should be given to the new player--changes to the NCB are easier to make later and have a MUCH lesser effect on CB than expediting the growth of CB.

To have some type of exponentially shaped 'difficulty of fighting curve' as mpr increases would be best for CB because then new players would see immediately some success rather than lots of losses and /quit. Then as they grow in mpr fighting should be harder.

Something like that.