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View Full Version : To 'fix' or not to 'fix' that is the question....



Agent Orange
01-23-2012, 08:18 AM
The more I think about it the more I wonder if any sort of fix to the fight and raid mechanic is going to make things worse.

Right now everyone is just scurrying around trying to build up their bases and forces and not attacking which is weird since the whole object of the game is to attack and raid. But the the problem we have is that there are a number of players who have shot past everyone else and who are pretty much invincible.

That means for the rest they really don't stand much of a chance of really doing well or at the very least advancing through the game since they will get attacked and raided into oblivion should things change giving a big advantage to those with huge forces.

And that is the problem, you build up a huge force so you can attack and raid without a lot of losses and yet you run the risk of killing the game for newer or weaker players. Yeah I know that is the whole idea of the game but if the scales are tipped the other way too far then I think the game will die and that is most likely the problem the devs are facing right now.

How do you keep the whales happy and at the same time prevent the feeders from being wiped out thus killing the game for everyone?

The other thing is a lot of what I'm saying is probably not obvious to lower level players since the game up to a certain point is keeping their rivals lists pretty evenly matched. Where the trouble begins is when players cross a certain threshold which seems to float between L50 and L60 at which point you jump across into the rivals lists of the most powerful players in the game. At one point we discovered that the more allies you added the faster you got bumped up to whale territory but recently I'm noticing that some very weak players are also turning up.

What is interesting is that an attack on these players can = heavy losses though this seems inconsistent. Right now I have quite the mix in my rivals list, players are all over L50 but range from a low of 16 allies up to 500. (the game only shows the max number of allies usable in a fight though the profile shows the true amount).

Dividing up the players over L50 is probably going to anger the heavy gold buyers since they are the only ones up in the high levels and I'm not so sure it would be much fun just having them fight each other though my warped sense of humour would find it interesting.

But at the same time shouldn't the fights be a bit more evenly matched, and if that is the case then I would guess that losses would be heavy since that would be logical.... hmm this is a fine mess....

Dover
01-23-2012, 08:47 AM
"Dividing up the players over L50 is probably going to anger the heavy gold buyers since they are the only ones up in the high levels and I'm not so sure it would be much fun just having them fight each other though my warped sense of humour would find it interesting."

As much as I want gold buyers to be happy, what I read from your post is all is about even until L50. So below 50 is your time to learn, grow, develop and the such. Then somewhere between 50-60 you will be put out to swim with all the heavy gold buyers no matter what level they are or no matter what level they are. And stopping them from fighting people their own level or "range"will upset them.

As much as I agree with how you wrote it I do not agree with it. I just think it sounds too goofy that one I hit 60 all Level 100 people can see me whether they spend gold or not. We almost need to tell everyone if you do not plan on buying A LOT of gold please avoid level 50 and above. I dont think we should be concerned with whether gold buyers are upset to fight each other, that is how they choice to play.

The more I read from Level 50's or above that are not huge gold buyers the more I think we need to add "do not cross over level 50 unless you spend a ton of cash on gold." That way all the level 40-49 free players (minimal gold buyers) can just hang out and fight each other. We all go into 60-70 we end up getting poached and will worry about gold buyers and loose site of taking on people with closer stats that we have.

I hope that makes a little sense, it sounded ok in my head. :-)

Agent Orange
01-23-2012, 08:52 AM
Yeah I know, that's what it looks like to me right now and why people are always telling others not to level up or not too fast.

But the problem is there are quite a few players over L70 with strong armies 20K+ attack and defense though it might be closer to 30K. Then there are a few that are over 70K attack and defense.

But you pretty much summed up the rest of what I am seeing.....

Dover
01-23-2012, 10:21 AM
Would it be beneficial to tell people not to cross a threashold until they have a certain amount of D? I am at L41 with almost 4K defense but all I am doing is upgrading money buildigns and farming troops as meat shields. What number should I have before I think about becoming L50?

I am not sure I want to stop pve or pvp at L48 and just try to become really tough against people in that range. I am thinking I will level and if the game starts to fall apart at higher levels just stop playing. But what would be good info is a number of defense to have before hitting 50, 60, 70. Would that help?

Wildfire
01-23-2012, 10:44 AM
Would it be beneficial to tell people not to cross a threashold until they have a certain amount of D? I am at L41 with almost 4K defense but all I am doing is upgrading money buildigns and farming troops as meat shields. What number should I have before I think about becoming L50?

I am not sure I want to stop pve or pvp at L48 and just try to become really tough against people in that range. I am thinking I will level and if the game starts to fall apart at higher levels just stop playing. But what would be good info is a number of defense to have before hitting 50, 60, 70. Would that help?

The numbers probably change over time, what I'd suggest is looking at your rivals list and comparing your defense to your rivals. If you keep in the upper third you'll get left alone a lot more.

osubuckeye
01-23-2012, 11:00 AM
I think this is going to be a business decision. One seems to extend the life of the game but decrease the whale's buying. Another the opposite. They decide, we live with it.

one thing we did in Crime City that seemed helpful was come up with an appropiate number of Att per ally and D per ally. This will help people with 50 allies figure out how they're doing vs people with 500 allies.

Though, if I'm hearing you correcly, once you cross, it doesn't matter how many allies you have, so the more the merrier? and if you are not maxed out you're basically committing suicide?

So what is a good attack per ally? and defense per ally?

Aidan
01-23-2012, 03:37 PM
I am lvl 49 with A 10533 & D 10892(no gold unit) n i'm doin great @ this lvl bt i dnt know if it will b enuf once i cross to 50.I'm pretty much safe among my rival list. Rite nw i'm just upgrading vault n money building n trying 2 get A n D to 12k b4 i lvl up. Just hope tht it will be enuf. Any higher plyr would like 2 comment on this? Wht will b the gd A n D stat to go at 50+?

Wildfire
01-23-2012, 03:56 PM
Aidan, you should already see people in the low 50s in your rivals list so you should be able to judge from that. Before the changes to losses a week ago the assumption was virtually nobody would attack you with 10K defence in the 50s as there were always softer targets. I went through the 50s over the last two weeks with around 10K defence, by and large the people who attacked me would still have done so if I'd 20k-30k defence, I'm talking 80 plus gold units including 10 robot walkers on one occasion, there's really nothing you can do about them. As it is at the minute I don't think much attacking is going on with the high losses.

To get back to the original question in this thread, maybe it was too easy to attack and lose nothing before, but now you lose too much and it's virtually completely killed the pvp aspect of the game, the answer has to be somewhere in the middle.

As part of the answer I think the protection the game gives in terms of "player is too weak to fight" needs to be looked at, whether it's through increasing the protection period or restricting the amount one player can pick on another within a time period or a combination of both. Doing this would enable reducing but not eliminating losses again but at the same time protect the weaker players better, so I think it would help everyone get a better game experience.

EnjoyLife
01-23-2012, 04:27 PM
The numbers probably change over time, what I'd suggest is looking at your rivals list and comparing your defense to your rivals. If you keep in the upper third you'll get left alone a lot more.

The numbers have and will continue to change. I firmly believe that the threshold is based on a percentage of players and their levels. e.g. As more and more players reach the current threshold, the threshold will be a higher level.

Agent Orange
01-23-2012, 05:31 PM
The numbers have and will continue to change. I firmly believe that the threshold is based on a percentage of players and their levels. e.g. As more and more players reach the current threshold, the threshold will be a higher level.

I would tend to agree, it seems to float. Also suspect that our particular ally lists may have some impact as well. Eg if I have lots of allies in the same range then the program tries to fill up my list by picking lower ranked players perhaps outside of it's normal parameters.

When I first started playing high level players would complain that they had very few if any rivals listed. Some had 1-2 and I recall having as little as 5. Now it seems I always have a full list though sometimes flushed out with some really low powered players.

nighthunter
01-23-2012, 07:07 PM
The more I think about it the more I wonder if any sort of fix to the fight and raid mechanic is going to make things worse.


One word says all - IMBA
But then again, very few games are well balanced, especially "free" games.

Speed ump
01-23-2012, 07:49 PM
When I Raid now, I look at higher and higher levels, as most lower level guys have upgrades enough o make it worth my while. That means I hit a lot of the sme people over and over again when it is lucrative. Most are level 80 and above now. I do attack others tht are closest in power, in addition to lower. I look more at how much I can get from each building. The building has to be worth t leat 10k each attack. I will hit a few that are a little lower if I found some higher value ones, but not much lower. It is more lucrative to keep going back to the higher levels, as I have to look through so money lower levels to find anything worthwhile, so they are fairly safe, unless I just get interested for some reason. one ure way for them to get me to visit regularly is to get nasty or personal. Then I think they are jut sling for a little extra personal service and extended visits to their bases.

Agent Orange
01-23-2012, 09:38 PM
Good point about nasty messages, I confess to going after those one's as well.

zynshmily
01-24-2012, 12:02 AM
I am lvl 49 with A 10533 & D 10892(no gold unit) n i'm doin great @ this lvl bt i dnt know if it will b enuf once i cross to 50.I'm pretty much safe among my rival list. Rite nw i'm just upgrading vault n money building n trying 2 get A n D to 12k b4 i lvl up. Just hope tht it will be enuf. Any higher plyr would like 2 comment on this? Wht will b the gd A n D stat to go at 50+?

15k defense is good enough.
as a player with 50k+ attack score, i dont actively attack ppl with 15k def because i value super hornets too much.

Aidan
01-24-2012, 01:00 AM
15k defense is good enough.
as a player with 50k+ attack score, i dont actively attack ppl with 15k def because i value super hornets too much.

Wildfire n zynshmily, thnks for the feedback. N 50k attck score rlly does sounds scary. Lol.
I luv them super hornet too bt they r pretty quite vulnerable. Lost 1 last two days when i did a test attack.

As for the rival list, i noticed tht i cn only see people at lvl 50 at most. Before this the highest is 52. Myb they did add the 51-60 group. Oh n i cn see more n more people @ 49. Lol. Afraid to cross over the mark.

Aidan
01-24-2012, 01:11 AM
To get back to the original question in this thread, maybe it was too easy to attack and lose nothing before, but now you lose too much and it's virtually completely killed the pvp aspect of the game, the answer has to be somewhere in the middle.

As part of the answer I think the protection the game gives in terms of "player is too weak to fight" needs to be looked at, whether it's through increasing the protection period or restricting the amount one player can pick on another within a time period or a combination of both. Doing this would enable reducing but not eliminating losses again but at the same time protect the weaker players better, so I think it would help everyone get a better game experience.

I agree. Part of the problem is becoz before this it was too easy to attck/raid wif practically no loss. So people hv alrdy set their mind/target/strat to that. We will not even tolerate 1 or 2 loss against much weaker plyr. It's like giving people drugs n then suddenly u stop giving. Dudes n duddettes will go loco.
N i agree wif ur suggestion on the protection period. It will certainly help if nt solve the prob.