Linear Upgrade Costs and Increasing Rewards (in General)

Thinking about Rewards in my Drop thread just sparked another thought.

Is it any surprise that we needed cash rewards decreased?

Consider this. Rewards gained are continually increasing in size, as they increase with the size of your and your opponents.

This isn't too bad for items with curved upgrades, as item upgrades can be kept on target with increasing rewards.

But Weapon X is linear in cost.

So as rewards continue to increase, the effective cost of increasing Weapon X will continue to decrease over time.

True to a point... But you're misinterpretting the ways x work in relation to other upgrades. Boost an EG from +2 to +3, and you'll notice the same boost as boosting the EGs from +15 to +16. On the other hand, you'll definitely notice when you add 1k x to a x500 weapon, but to an x15k weapon, the result is much much less noticable.

Hatch, I was under the impression that each X (or each amount of equivalent STR) adds the same damage, regardless of the current size of the weapon?

If you deal 1,500,000 damage, and boost your x, and now deal 1,5010,000 damage, do you care?

If you target has 1,500,001 HP, def! ;)

1M + .1M = 1.1M ; 1.1M/1M = 110% ; sqrt(110%) = 4.88% damage increase

10M + .1M = 10.1M; 10.1M/10M = 101% ; sqrt(101%) = .499% damage increase

Take it from someone with a X 40k ELB you need to upgrade in ever increasing amounts to gain the same increase in Damage % I figured his through trial and error : -/

as additional damage it is linear. as percentage of your total damage of course its not. it is exactly the same for mages though. 1m xp into fireball will yield the same type of increases based on what you start with or as a percentage of the whole.

for a true look at non-linear damage you need to see the uc curve:

uc damage curve graph & table

This. ;)

And that surely is why the x does not count towards PR...

But it should.

Rather having more X than whatever is considered 'balanced' for your STR.

Conversley, your PR should actually lower if you have less X.

But that's another thread. I made one in Debates about this a while ago.

reward people for doing more with less rather than just pumping more money into the damage mod? your talking crazy captain! ; )

That makes no sense GL, apart from the fact it's unworkable (equipping enchanters with base x daggers) it would be the same as X giving PR, basically via opportunity cost.

Since I've got back the more I've played the more and more I've seen how the game is actually superbly balanced and i've been increasingly impressed by the hidden concepts of how things work.

Even the much very unbalanced items could be solved made okay with just a little tweaking, like 10% off the RoBF damage, and 10% x and + cost increase to exbow, there nothing major as made out. CB now just needs a few more items which offer a few more strategy options and a few wide ranging buffs to the mid range weapons / armour that have no use whatsoever.

Actually, this is a problem with Armor not Weapon X.

Weapon X scales as a square root curve, to keep your damage up to normal you need to keep upgrading. You need to upgrade just to keep your damage on par with increases in health etc.

Armor on the other hand has the same percentage benefit no matter what your PR. Over time armor gradually gets more powerful. This is why the Steel Skin/nerf to armor was needed, but it's only a temporary fix. As rewards pile up, people get closer to the magical invincible armor number.

I hate to say Cube nailed this thread. It's the reason I never invested in armor, once the game becomes more and more inflated, it's going to be easier to get near 100% DR, then armor will get a nerf, then again.

Cube, that's true, but the relative cost to continue to upgrade lessens as your rewards grow. That's the issue.

Myth, C&Ped from the debate thread;

"Weapon X ws removed, as;

"Tanks need weapons to function"

And they do.

I was caught up, for ages (I freely admit), over the problme of a x1 Whip adding the same PR as a x10,000 Morg. That is, nothing.

Obvisouly the Morg has much more 'power' than the whip, and surely this must be represented somehow.

So I thouht weapon X being free was absurd.

But, ruminating longer, I started to see the reasoning behind this. And i'm sure I posted it a while ago.

Mages only need to train DD. Tanks need to train STR and DEX and have an equivalent Weapon X, as thier damage is related to the two amounts.

Lets make a base assumption that a Mage training 'x' DD and deals 'y' daage is balance to a Tank training 'a' STR, 'b' DEX and having a Weapon X of 'c'.

The Tank *can't* function equivalently to the Mage without a Weapon X of 'c', so requires that amount to work. They shouldn't have thier rewards penalised for purchasing 'c' Weapon X from an increase PR, as they need this amount to be balanced.

That's all fine.

But.

Having 'c' less than expected, means they are less powerful compared to an equivalent Mage, and conversly having more 'c' means the are more powerful.

I feel strongly this needs to be represent accurately in the current system.

Lower Weapon X than usual should reduce your Power Rating, while higher should increase it.

I hope this explains everything! ;) "

Why not allow people to spend their money how they wish and not penalize them for it. Allow them to put it where it helps them the most strategically. CB should give incentives to beat bigger people, letting you choose what to upgrade. Instead, we have a system where I spend my NCB fighting without armor, and one that Nem un-equips every time he starts fighting.

and I'm not saying just for tanks either. I don't think mages should be penalized if they want to create +300 DBs, or +18 NSCs, it's just stupid to penalize someone for having larger armor. But, alas, tis the game I play.

My OP in that old debate thread was exactly about that. ;)

GL, it'd be nice if it was that way... but it's not. Base rewards don't scale quickly enough to make up for the CB lost. Ask anyone at the top.

So long as you can buy extra CB, it'll always be a problem mate. :(

Sorry, shouldn't use acronyms, CB = Challenge Bonus. You receive more rewards fighting a little lower while unequipped. It's pure fact.

Hi there new player. Welcome to Carnage Blender. A 100% PvP turn-based strategy game where you can customize everything to a tee. Don't buy that armor though. In fact, don't buy anything but a small handful of necessary rares for your team. Don't upgrade that equipment! It will slow down your growth. Don't buy a minion, it'll be a bad time for your character. Don't sell your $CB or you'll be tarred n' feathered. Don't go. Hey! Come back here!

oh, my point there:

Tweak encumbrance as needed, and kick nw-PR to the curb. If encumbrance is too big that it would be silly to expect nonUSD users to keep up, then how can you say it is keeping USD in check? If encumbrance is set to a level where users should be able to keep up then they should be penalized for not doing so. No?

Sounds good Hatch.

I think my debate thread is locked, but I can make another.

I spelt out why we need the NW-PR link, and no one really had a counter arguement to it.

Not even Novice. :P

I thought it was such a bad argument that I didn't bother creating a counter argument.

Actually, looking back, you didn't argue against anything I have said. I agree that NW should increase your power, the more NW you have, the more powerful you are. What I'm saying, is we shouldn't punish the powerful. Btw, this is what nov was saying too, which is probably why he didn't come up with a "counter" argument.

if you don't punish the powerful then you are left with rewarding those who do more with less. isn't this what the challenge bonus does now?

And for the sake of being thorough:

"maybe what I'm looking for is an alteration of how fight rewards are done"

See, this is nov ^

"But as for being penalised, in actual fact, he's not. And nor are you. "

This is still not true ^ (you meant fight btw)

Why do those who do more with less deserve more rewards? I thought CB was about doing what you want, but as Hatch pointed out it's not. Let's reward GA teams b/c their easy as pi and they don't take NW. See why this is a bad system. So much for creativity.

the main reason is this: there has to be some kind of balance set between melee and non melee teams. if you set the balance on high net worth teams then low nw teams cannot compete. if the balance is likewise set for low nw teams, then high nw teams rule the day. therefore you need some sort of balance between the two or some other reason for people to regulate their own net worth.

you say the game punishes people for nw while i think the game encourages people to control their nw. you say this stifles creativity while i feel that throwing more nw at something and coming out ahead would stifle creativity.

who is right? in this case it is likely a case of the devs choose what is right for their vision.

Yeah, we can tell their vision is doing stunningly too:

197 active users from the past 7 days
9 new users in the past 24 hours

we lost many more users during the time period that cb2 was more of a usd-fest though & our numbers have stayed fairly steady since the game became more balanced! ; )

But, how can a system that encourages NCBs and NUBs not to equip some of their armor, or use other less effective armor is good?

i have never stated that the current solution is "good" but getting rid of it wouldn't necessarily be better either.

In other words you would rather see a tweak what you know rather than change to something that you don't know......picking the lesser of 2 evils so to speak. I can understand that.

I'd rather improve the currently flawed system.

I haven't read this whole thread, so I may be missing something. However, I would prefer to see the game encourage players to invest in their equipment as much as possible without turning it into another "I Win" fest. Lower encumbrance however needed, but understand that it's fun to build equipment, and fun is all that's important in a game. The PR:NW link goes against that.

While I'm sure the PR:NW link provides other benefits to balance, I don't believe it makes up for the loss of enjoyment.

Wow, thank you Demi. I'm sure you're not the only one.

i think the best bet is to somehow combine pr & encumbrance in a way that is easily understood and explained to new users. the reward system would then need to be tweaked as well. i feel that score is useless and easily gamed and that we need to compare pr to pr or whatever replaces pr, call it true power. if someone with less true power can then beat someone with greater power, they should be rewarded for that rather than penalizing those with high power.

the other alternative is some kind of formula that allows people to equip whatever they like for simplicity's sake but can only use a certain amount of it, like the max tat. the downside of this as i see it would be lost flexibility that we now have in choosing how to equip items even when we are limited by our encumbrance or pr.

it is a very difficult situation to balance though and deserves much more thought than just saying get rid of nw pr linkage and i feel we need something that is obviously better (easier to understand, explain, intuitive, while allowing some freedom of choice, etc.) before we change what we have.

i just thought of something but haven't had a bunch of time to think it through though i wanted to throw it out there so i wouldn't forget.

first pr no longer exists at all. rewards would be based on mpr vs mpr. now to equalize people who have the same mpr but higher net worth, we retool encumbrance to be based solely on the xp each minion has trained. encumbrance would be set at a fairly liberal mark. if you are under your encumbrance level, you would get a bonus on all stats for that minion. for example (numbers would need tweaking for balance)if you were 90 percent of your encumbrance in net worth, you would get a 9% bonus to all stats, while if you were only 10 percent under your net worth you would only get a 1% bonus to all stats on that minion.

similarly, if you go over your encumbrance number that would start to negatively affect your stats on that minion. if you were 200 percent over (twice your encumbrance) you would get a 20% penalty to all stats on that minion. if you were only 50 percent over encumbrance it would be a 5% penalty.

these bonuses/penalties would be applied after all other calculations are made.

i typed this up pretty fast as i need to go check my fire down at the creek and i may have made mistakes but hopefully you can get the idea. other balancing might have to happen as well, but i am trying for a system that is more intuitive than the double-edged sword we have now.

Bad arguement? Seriously?

I set out everything step by step, and covered everything.

If 'power' is to be a meaningful Stat in CB, it *needs* to reflect, and acurately reflect the diference in power a x1 Morg has over a x1000000 Morg.

Everyone loves uping thier items, but this still need to be supported by game balance when CB rewards growth.

If you beat someone with lesser NW, you're doing 'better' than someone who uses more. You should be rewarded for your strategic acumen. Actually, you *need* to be rewarded.

If people (And I noticed Nov's mentioned removal of NW-PR link in Myth's thread!) want to debate this again, I'll make another Debate thread, with my same posts.

But if the only counter arguement is;

"It's more fun to disgregard game balance"

Then we're going to have little to debate about.

God modes were fun, modding weapons in Borderlands were fun. Still takes all the challenge out of a game, and removes compeitive competition entirely.

Let's not get extreme. Fun and balance can still get along. But remember that PR:NW wasn't linked in CB1... yes, Todd-Spyd helped create the need for the link by creating "I Win," and that alone proved we need to limit USD involvement in creating uber-gear. But we also don't want to motivate more people to run naked strats just to save money and sell out.

For example, you can limit the PR:NW link by only having it reduce rewards once you're beyond 50% of enc. It will still "reward" someone for having a cost-effective strat, but it won't punish as many people for investing in their gear.

GL: the problem is that even if you can already beat someone with an x1 morg, you're punished for upgrading it.

Another sane one, yes!!!

But X does not add to PR, only the +.

Still why should you be punished for that? Why should someone be punished for uping their DBs either. Saying I have five person fight list. All 100%. I realize that I can upgrade my DBs 25 points and gain another person of a higher score. In doing this, all my other opponents go down to 90% CB. Does this make sense? Penalizing someone for trying to gain another person. Yes, he could drop the other five people from his fight list, but come on, we want to retain people.

Titan, and those with similar views:

If you have 5 people on your fight list that you beat 100% and you gain 2% MPR on them while fighting them because you're a better player, you will then get a lowered challenge bonus.

Even though with your higher MPR you can now beat 2 new people, you now have lowered CB against those first 5.

Is it fair that you get reduced rewards against someone you already could beat before you got stronger?

If you're curious how this is on topic, MPR and NW both add to your PR. If you think that your NW doesn't add to how powerful you are then you're slow.

Why would you base Challenge bonus on only half of the reason why a team is at the power rating it currently is, that makes no sense. Either you judge a team by how much MPR and NW they have, or you take how powerful they are out of the equation entirely. Just using the XP side and not the gear side makes no sense.

I find the concept of the challenge bonus silly in the first place. It's a system that encourages mindless specialization rather than the careful crafting of a team that can defend against many different types of teams. A team of 4xEC + RoBF could probably get a much higher challenge bonus than a theoretical team which could beat any strategy at or below its MPR.

* Stands up and applauds JS.

what is your solution titan?

My solution is to make rewards only based on the MPR of your target without taking your own MPR or NW into account.

This would mean that equipping NW does not penalize you against opponents you could already beat, and allows you to beat new opponents.

It also means equipping NW doesn't give other people better CBs, in fact it will be in your best interest to get the highest NW possible that you can equip.

You also don't have to worry about VPR and Score calculations with this system.

Wow sorry dude, I didn't even see your comment. Eliminate CB and create a rolling bonus. Make sure the rolling bonus is larger than the base rewards. Make the rolling bonus based off of your MPR. This will incentive you to fight as high up as possible. I would also like to find a way to penalize you for being farmed, but that would make CB into a completely different game.

All this is fine. CB could work without a NW-PR link, if you radically changed the system.

Currently, with the current system in place, we need a NW-PR link, and can't get rid of it.

I've always been talking about a reward system change. So has everyone else. I think you've been arguing against yourself.

I've been argueing about how CB would continue to work if all we did was remove the NW-PR link.

For system changes, I've started with trying to get score removed from the reward system for ages.

Removal of NW-PR would take a massive change of game systems. Probably akin to going from CB2 to CB3. I just don't think it's feasible to do under the current game.