Light Vs Darkness (The Eternal Conflict)

klaas wrote:

it's easy to fight hard when you're winning. it's much harder to fight when you're losing. when you are playing a game. for your fun, enjoyment and entertainment.

I understand...but this is a competitive game and there has to be a winner and a loser. It is not possible to have two winners and no loser.

klaas wrote:

hence my point of not taking the non-fighters along into the equation, only count the real fighters. that would give a much fairer picture of actual effort.

I explained above why this will not work.

So I believe the DF members understand we are outnumbered and must fight harder to compensate for the imbalance. I think what some DF members believe is that there are more farmers in the DF and so, not only do we have to fight harder to compensate for being out numbered, we also get diluted more by more farmers. I don't know if that is true or not, it could very well be light has more farmers and their average cp rate is getting more diluted than DF's.

RuneSlayer wrote:

Also ...another thing...

Following your theory, we should apply the CP bonus to the Faction which has the most "farmers". Imagine a case where the true overpopulated Faction decides to "rest" for a bit...not fighting at its capacity..and receiving the CP bonus, because they "don't have enough" combatants compared to the other Faction.

No, this is wrong...

I don't think this is what Yso was saying. In his example, the amount of farmers on each side is equal, but since there are more *active fighters* on LF, the bonus goes to DF at a rate that represents the imbalance between active fighters. In your example, even if the light had twice as many farmers, the bonus would still goto the DF because they have less fighters. At least this is what I got from his post.

Personally, I do think active fighter discrepancy is the best measure of population imbalance, but I don't know how difficult that would be to implement or what kind of bonus should be given because of it. I do see that DF is holding up much better since the new bonus system was implemented, so thank you for that!

Oh I think most people don't want to completely remove the impact of nonfighters.. just more rewards for combat effort.?   

RuneSlayer wrote:

klaas wrote:

it's easy to fight hard when you're winning. it's much harder to fight when you're losing. when you are playing a game. for your fun, enjoyment and entertainment.

I understand...but this is a competitive game and there has to be a winner and a loser. It is not possible to have two winners and no loser.

I guess winning/losing isn't bad per se, but when people know they'll lose and game still goes on for months, now that's a bit hard.

Or winning based on effort.. that way both sides can somewhat win. Now the rewards are way too low though.

Rune wrote:

Knowing all that....do you STILL prefer not to fight? Are there any mechanics limiting their ability to fight?

Well as klaas said, motivation which is influenced by mechanics, and for example  how noobs don't contribute much.. why fight and die a lot and get like 6 cps per run.. Way easier to login to collect.

Rune wrote:

Does there have to be another bonus rewarding the players who actually fight in a war game..?

Personal rewards perhaps? Now it's either not enough or too much resources, and cps... Why not some daily reward? Not for login, but for 10+ battles? Like a daily quest. We can't now even see how many battles we did on any given day.
(yes yes, offtopic.. but i guess some personal motivation is good).

  Farmers in the sense of farming CPs and being OP, or being a non-combatant, simcity player who just collects? :p

And yup, let's not forget this (even if it's stalemate'ish atm...):

Dahk wrote:

I do see that DF is holding up much better since the new bonus system was implemented, so thank you for that!

guess i should now go read the rest..

great idea...great freaking idea...keeps interest going...so much more fun than staring at the screen waiting....waiting,,,waiting... and i dont care if cp earned is 85 vs 100..50 vs 100...it is a way to move forward, level up baby units, keep interest, earn a few bucks and cp's...it keeps interest...thank you ysosad...a great idea.

btw, light faction has farmers too...plenty of them...look at RG roster. I am in midst of ascertaining farmers status..and whether they have interest in game or not...with the intent of kicking those who don't.

and certainly, the game has become more competitive...it is harder to capture hexes... we have lost a few...is it perfect?, i cant answer that but it is certainly better...new ap's allow the dark faction players who dominate page 1 to really score...

can we consider increasing number of command points? is that helpful? or can it be a function of the cp bonus currently in place? personally, i would like a game wide increase in command point allotment but if it helps improve competitive balance i can live with it as part of the cp bonus system.

i know a number of light faction players who would be interested in switching factions IF they could switch with armies and development intact. I think it poses a challenge and there are many who would consider fighting on the side of the underdog.

I think Dahk understood my point. I was just looking at combatants.

Now if you are saying that a faction, or many of its' members might coordinate a period of inactivity...consciously trying to exploit the CP bonus as a Faction that assumes that enough people would attempt such a dishonorable thing.

However, fine, it is indeed an avenue for exploitation....but the current bonus is just as easy to exploit and it only takes one person to do so. If you are coming from the standpoint that if you did what I previously explained (which was not a suggestion, rather an explanation) you'd encourage cheating (in effect) then you must realize that the current mechanism already does that.

I don't think I need to explain how the current mechanism can be exploited, but I can if need be...it's not needed to make my point, which is that either way the ability to exploit the bonus exists...and it is not substantially more difficult either way.

I definitely would like to have the stats for 7/25/14.

Light Victories, # of Active Players, & CPs
Dark Victories, # of Active players, & CPs

Also, global regional container size if possible.

Thank you.

Maybe Light is just OP. Couldn't the stats be saying that? I do notice that when I go against Dark enemies it is much easier to win.

mitrac wrote:

Maybe Light is just OP. Couldn't the stats be saying that? I do notice that when I go against Dark enemies it is much easier to win.

I think exactly the same. This means  lower morale and longer healing times for DF than for LF.

ysosad wrote:

I definitely would like to have the stats for 7/25/14.

Light Victories, # of Active Players, & CPs
Dark Victories, # of Active players, & CPs

Also, global regional container size if possible.

Thank you.

Data for 25/7

Light

Active Players: 332
Total Daily Victories: 1345
Total CP: 172000

Darkness

Active Players: 256
Total Daily Victories: 762
Total CP: 113000 (without the CP Bonus)

Global Regional Container: 34000 (It changes every Wednesday, so it remained the same.)

----
A few conclusions which data reveal:

1. The Light Side has an average of 4.05 victories per active user, while the Dark Side has 2.97.

2. The Light Side has an average of 128 CP per victory, while the Dark Side has 148 CP.

3. If the Dark Side had 4 victories per active user as well, then the total CP would be 152k, which translates to 182k CP if we add the CP Bonus of 1.20. That would be 10k more CP than the Light Side.

Adex wrote:

mitrac wrote:

Maybe Light is just OP. Couldn't the stats be saying that? I do notice that when I go against Dark enemies it is much easier to win.

I think exactly the same. This means  lower morale and longer healing times for DF than for LF.

Not only that. Skellie healing times are longer anyway, for we have 25 troopers per unit. Number wise this sounds logic, but healing times for skellies seems odd anyway. For skellies it should be called repairing or resurrecting and in order to make it fair CP balance wise it shouldnt take longer than other races healing times.

Hey. i agree with rune when he says that more than the current bonus in cp cannot be given, and the point is that the light faction is fighting and winning a lot more.
This can be explained by the higher morale of a winning side too.

I appreciate also the suggestions (mine with many others ones) about using the AI army as balancing instrument.

What i think is that: in last war the dark side even if outnumbered was able to coop A LOT more than the light faction. I personally discovered the fct for us, when ur side was doing it (u call it archercavs, i guess) since a while. Now, after having fought so much, the dark side is fighting less. Also, in the light faction the greed for aether is acting as a good stimulation.

What i want to say is that the sheer bonus is not enough. The devs did a great work with it, now it is well refined. The algorythm is good, i see just few fixes for it when it will be needed, not great changes.
Maybe the problem is somewhere else.
We need both factions alive and steady to have a great war. We don t need a stalemate though. And, a too long one way war can be really dangerous for morale.

So, greater maps maybe were not the right path. Changing scenarios often, with different challenges, with (few) cohoperative wars between faction (1 every 5 wars), i believe it could be a great way to increase the satisfaction playing BC. Shorter wars, different from a long and boring agony, and every time different (having 5-10 different maps). This will raise the attention and the morale.

Also, some of the scenarios should permit to change side, for one great trouble of games with 2 different factions with free choice is exactly this. So, one scenario every some wars in which u can change side (with a good reason, for example all dwarves start fighting the rest of the world to keep their gold ) can help a lot.

More work for devs, i know, but once done the war will restart with a random chosen one from the already prepared ones. We will need some new one just sometimes.

I love this idea. Please answer about it, for im pretty sure that the bonus is OK now, we can t have more from it toward the solution of the unbalancing.

I'm totally aware that you think that numbers don't lie.... but numbers lie all the time. Just because things seem to look fine doesn't make it so. We're in a dire situation here. No players = no game. Just because people log in it doesn't make them active in terms of playing the game. Farmers are probably half of the active number at this point which is really sad because that means we're less than 150 on the dark side.


Dren