[DEV] Tournament Bugs

We apologize for our lack of action on the bugs players have been getting from tournaments and arena. We will be looking into those much more thoroughly in the next couple of days and hope to get a fix soon.

Also we are aware of achievements not activating in the Live Arena. We plan to make a bunch of changes to achievements so players will be able to get them.

Lastly based on player feedback we will consider components from factions being switched from requiring faction level to loyalty instead, or some type of middle ground.

Here are some suggestions (mostly pilfered from other players) on how to implement crafting so that it (1) is accessible to both casual and hardcore players while (2) rewards hardcore players with faster access to these cards:

Component Alchemy using Gateway nodes

Basic idea: Gateway node + common component = rare component.

Rationale: Gateway nodes are easily accessible and require little effort. However, their rate of acquisition is relatively slow. Logging on is the one aspect of the game all players have in common. If players do not wish to participate in PvP, they can use component alchemy to create capacitors. Alternatively, players may be able to produce 10 nexus beacons so they don’t have to redo raids.

However, for each component being replaced, it increases time to completion by that factor. Therefore, hardcore players willing to participate in the preferred activities will get these cards faster. However, casual players will not be locked out. This way, you can craft cards without playing in a tournament. It would just take a longer time.

Predictable Gateway Node Acquisition

Basic Idea: Get a Gateway Node every X days, with demarcated progression.

Rationale: This rewards daily logons. This also synergies with the above suggestion. It then becomes possible to control more or less when cards will be available. Gateway nodes acquisition is currently unnecessarily random. Please reduce randomness in this game. Players like predictability in acquisition of cards. Randomness just causes frustration. I ardently do not wish to see gateway nodes purchasable for WB, since this would imbalance our hypothetical Gateway Node economy.

Predictable Component Acquisition

Basic idea: Make all component drops occur at regular intervals with progression bars that informs you how far to go.

Rationale: Players hate randomness. Bitterly. Due to confirmation bias, they always feel like they’re getting the short end of the probability distribution. Strategy game players generally tolerate luck, but when the variation is as high as the expected outcome (something something Poisson distribution), it becomes rage-comic inducing.

Loyalty/Faction Rating determined Generator Drops

Basic idea: Use the higher of either Loyalty or Faction Rating to calculate generator drop rates.

Rationale: This would reward players for joining a higher level faction immediately, but allows players to choose to engage in lower level faction play and still craft all cards. This provides a nice boost to players with high loyalty (finally). The exact formula needs to be worked out, as loyalty gains are made much faster than FR points. Thus, loyalty based drop rates must scale with FR gains or else mathematically inclined players may just end up ditching top level play entirely.

Lower threshold, level dependent generator drops

Basic idea: Give low level factions a drop rate. Drop rate scales with faction level and not loyalty.

Rationale: This more strongly promotes consolidation of top level play, while giving casual players a chance at acquiring these rare components. This probably fairly easy to implement and only involves tweaking of the drop rate. This will exacerbate the difference between casual and hardcore players, and potentially increase burnout rates.

These suggestions aren’t meant to be taken wholesale. (In fact the last two contradict each other.) However the underlying theme remains: Allow all players a path to craft cards, no matter which areas of the game they wish to participate in. However, reward dedicated players that engage in all aspects of the game with much faster access to the craftable cards.

In one hand
Wow, all my 20 000+ LP will be needed for something!
In other hand
Thats mean now players will stick to they dead faction and any idea of merger will be destroyed?

Originally posted by Propovednik:

In one hand
Wow, all my 20 000+ LP will be needed for something!
In other hand
Thats mean now players will stick to they dead faction and any idea of merger will be destroyed?

+1 people need an incentive to join top tier factions and there need to be more incentive to surge successfully. Both will be lowered with that change…

Actually small faction are very useful too, people need to start from somewhere and then if he wanna more competition they can move to top tier.
But about surge/fight yes, Hoschisack right….. people already tried only to fight – to get more wins and received more generators. And if they will need also much more LP…. Need separate drop rate for surge and fight then.

“Lastly based on player feedback we will consider components from factions being switched from requiring faction level to loyalty instead.”

This seems to be EXACTLY the opposite of what is good for the game.

Making components drop based on faction level will encourage players to get out of dead, inactive, and semi-active factions and move into active factions so that faction competition can continue.

Making components drop based on loyalty will encourage players to stay in these dead and dying factions because they do not want to reset their loyalty and have their drops punished.

That creates a bunch of low activity, low social interaction, low competitive factions all over the rankings. That is not good for the game. If there are only X active players in the game, they should be encouraged to leave their started factions and actually engage in the real faction wars of higher level factions. Players should be encouraged to move up, and not be penalized for it. The component drop rate boost was the only thing that higher level factions really had to offer as an in-game reward for success. It was the best part of that patch. Please to not go entirely backwards on this and encourage the perception of most players that this game is dead, by encouraging people to stay in dead factions where nothing is going on but wars against other dead factions.

Do note… I am encouraging faction level based drop rates over loyalty based drop rates and I have the highest loyalty out of any player in this game.

These are good points. We will also consider some type of middle ground for faction components, suggestions welcome.

Originally posted by Propovednik:
Thats mean now players will stick to they dead faction and any idea of merger will be destroyed?

Good

Thanks for listening! :)

It’s not necessarily a bad idea to give incentives to join upper level factions; consolidation of factions has been a problem since the beginning.

There was a suggestion to have the higher of either faction rating or loyalty be the determining factor for generator drop rates. That way, players are incentivized to join upper levels to get rewarded right off the bat. At the same time, players who don’t want to join those crazy folks can take it easy in low level factions and still eventually get access. Benefits of loyalty max out at a bit under 7k anyways. The best of both worlds.

Originally posted by retsamerol:

Thanks for listening! :)

It’s not necessarily a bad idea to give incentives to join upper level factions; consolidation of factions has been a problem since the beginning.

There was a suggestion to have the higher of either faction rating or loyalty be the determining factor for generator drop rates. That way, players are incentivized to join upper levels to get rewarded right off the bat. At the same time, players who don’t want to join those crazy folks can take it easy in low level factions and still eventually get access. Benefits of loyalty max out at a bit under 7k anyways. The best of both worlds.

now if we can just have a Thanks for acting! :)

ya tournaments are SO buged to help u guys out the main bug is generally wrong cards played at the beggining and sometimes wrong graphics. Then you would get an error and have to relaod then u ralize you’ve played emp or IM as the first card.

how about adding maximum loyality limit based on faction level?
both entering higher faction and staying in old with max loyality will be acceptable for player.

use the highest of:
either
1) faction level
or
2) loyalty/1000
or
3) (faction level + (loyalty/1000))/2

i think makin it depend on LP is great. Sure, the higher factions wont be able to hold as much power on the lower guys, but who cares, they are doing well enough already

Originally posted by Beefhouse3D:

I have the highest loyalty out of any player in this game.

not true.

Originally posted by inorix:

Sadly I’m too lazy to update that searchable list, but here’s current top10:

Mark_T          27314

Artydent        19561

GevatterTod     19375

Beefhouse3D     18772

SiCcMaDe        16621

pi3o14          15998

GeniusLee       15630

necksnapper     15606

hancock_hancock 15384

MsButterworth   15177

On another point, the following need to be re-evaluated
Capacitator drop frequency
Gold grinding
Generator drop rates (Seriously, 0.5% is just messing with us)
And a way to use up loyalty points

And dammit, fix tourneys AND let us keep our history.

i thought beef had over 30k?

beef has 36k
I have 30 even

Hmm… that worked a moment ago.

http://cache.gyazo.com/c0b4e8f6c3701c1f9d1c2909aede2d0d.png

35,918 as of right now.

Originally posted by Floorstone:

use the highest of:
either
1) faction level
or
2) loyalty/1000
or
3) (faction level + (loyalty/1000))/2

maybe my brain is playing tricks on me because Im working for 14+ hours already but the 3rd option would never be the highest (alone) or?

A couple of points:

The devs have already tweaked capacitor drop rates. Accusing them of not acting is just ignoring facts. However, capacitors remains inaccessible to those who do not enjoy PvP. Especially notable are WB players have expressed their frustration about this to me in personal communications.

Mark_T is no longer with Raynor’s Raiders, so I don’t think he has the highest loyalty anymore. I was very sad to see him in DCLXVI.

Personally, I’m fine with the Artemis drop rates. It’s incredibly low, but a rush when you get one. Long-term goals.

I think that gateway nodes can be a key to alchemy. All formulas require gateway nodes. This will restrict the rate of conversion, so that crafting remain a long-term goal. However, the randomness of gateway nodes is annoying. Better to make it daily progression. (1 every 4 days, 7 days, whatever the math works out to be good.) This would reward daily logon in a much more meaningful fashion.

Originally posted by discowookie79:

Not sure where you get those numbers from, Shadow, but TheRealPip currently has 27,553 LP

Fight for the users, Pip!

List is old, whoops. My bad :P

Current drop of Artemis generator switch people from surge to fight – reach more wins.

And about daily chances – remove from them this useless uncommon cards, wich no1 ever use, even young players :P
Return 10 and 25 WB to crates and make capacitors drop rate higher. Currently newcomers very short on WBs – when I started this game we had 60 extra WBs from open Elite vault and higher drop rate from daily chance. This will be fair for non-wb newcomers I belive and wouldnt ruine WB empire =_+

And remove, please, Cell Chamber from tourny rewards ;)

And may be add more cards – rewards for levels (100-150, dont need add reward for level 200 yet lol) and finally new tourny reward card.

I’m too lost in dreams?

Originally posted by Beefhouse3D:

With so many top players quitting lately, I don’t know who still has fierce stats.

Anyone else over 30K?

Originally posted by inorix:

No, 5 others are within 5k of reaching it though. Right now we have 30 players who passed 20k.

Edit: 464 over 10k

damn, i was gettin excited with my 11k lol

Forget the top factions.
You coddle them way too much.
The main thing that attracts people to top factions is the card rewards. The other thing is to inflate their ego for thinking that they accomplished something for being in the rank that they hold.

You keep forgetting your casual base. Do something to allow people to feel like they can come back to the game without feeling like they lost energy because they couldn’t log on or that they have to sleep.
Faction wars are 1 hour 40 minute intervals, which is a really short time-span for many people to find a computer, or have access to the internet to “help” their faction. Maybe reduce the time-span for how long wars last? Or slow down the regen rate of stamina for 6 hours. so 100 stamina will regen for 100/360= 0.27 rate, so about ever 3-4 minutes for 1 stamina regen. Also, Stamina will be filled the moment an attacking or defending war is started. Maybe make a new stamina bar for each war that is declared?
Edit:For WB refills, you could probably scale it back to 10 stamina for 10wbs, or some other workable solution, so that wb refilling doesn’t become a demonstrable advantage, unless you sink a significant amount of money into the war.

And move component drop rates to side missions. Nobody wants to grind missions with terrible rates.

You know your player base has a highly addictive nature, so just make them feel like they are playing the game with very little to lose.
Makes sure they get that random instant gratification somehow, and people will probably keep coming back without feeling like they are losing anything, even if they are :)

The other reason is that a lot of older factions are sinking quick- so some of the older, high-LP players are having to find new factions or merge.