Game Balance Issue

[SoulTear]

The balance system was originally implemented to prevent players from massacring newbies and to make the game unique. However the way the game is now its impossible to get a balance without fighting to lose on purpose by using one healing creature suicide rituals. So I want to know is this the way the game is supposed to be played becouse if it is not there needs to be some major changes?

I have tried playing the way Manu suggested by attacking to win but not stopping when my creatures are weak and I am losing but its just not enough. Stupid idiots just keep forcing wins on me with suicide rituals and I end up getting more and more wins with no xp or skill increases but they have more loses so they can gain by winning against weaker players in the future. That makes it impossible to play that way and ultimately newbies will still massacred becouse players will just build up loses before attacking them so they won't lose honor or go out of balance. The MP division keeps that from happening but then what is the point of the balance system? For people to try and lose on purpose to maintain it?

I have resisted doing that until now but it looks like I will have no choice now but to finally give in and make suicide rituals unless something in the game is changed. Otherwise I will never get enough losses for balance which makes it impossible for me to attack at all.

Maybe it could be made so there is some special advantage to having high wins and low loses or low wins and high loses just as there is now for being balanced. Remember an RPG is about giving players the ability to play different kinds of characters and not just pursue a single goal in a linear fashion. Honor could have been useful in this respect but it seems pointless now almost somthing superflous since it is good only to have positive honor becouse you need it to buy items and is capped in both negative and positive directions so its not even a good indicator for balance now.

I know its still alpha and all but the sooner these issues are dealt the better since they determine the basic strategy that will be used in the game by players. I know evolution is supposed to be a big theme in this game and I think it would be nice if there was something you could evolve into rather then just pumping up wins and loses

[thrall]

i'm starting to have losses problems. i'm almost at the finish of mp4 and even with suicide rituales i have a great problem with losses. the only thing i could think is to wait and win some big fights (that will drop my honor) and reach the next mp so... i can make suicide rituales to losse there (becouse there i'm week) to keep my character balanced

now with that said (i will doit becouse the game is forcing me) i don't think thats fair, meaning with my character geting losses for balance i will unbalance some of the players by giving them wins with no exp.

i know that the wining/lossing sistem is the base of this game and that this is making him thiferent from all others but somthing shold be done so you don't have to warry about this making things dificult for others, for example i sugest that the amount of honor neaded to buy things and reach next mp shold be bouth + and - meaning you have to reach one or onother

this could be useful if, when we will belong to one place, we get positive honor by defeting players from other realms and negative from the player that r in your realm with the exception that you will get positive honor by defeating negative honor players and vice versa

i know this will ruin the sistem we all know but i can't think of other meanings to solve this

[Chewett]

[Redacted]

Edited December 18, 2012 by Chewett
Redacted

[Glaistig]

I know at least a couple of other players feel this frustration as well, me included (there was a similar complaint in the bug board). I was eager to get into mp5 because I thought other players that were stronger than me would attack me more than the players in mp4 (when they did, they almost always lost), so my horrible win:loss ratio might become balanced. It really hasn't changed much at all, because most of the mp5 players are more concerned about getting losses than wins. People who had a unbalanced ratio in the first place started using weak rituals, defense and attack, to gather losses, but that made others get empty wins. In addition to these wins, people will attack for wins to level up creatures and gain stats, so it makes logic that there will always be more wins than losses. And then these people gather losses with the weak rituals and force empty wins onto other people, and it becomes a cycle.

It's really tedious for me, making rituals that have no strategy besides picking a weak creature. I lost hope yesterday and began using weak rituals as well, but that just made me feel like I was contributing to the problem. For now I think I shall begin ignoring the ratio, although it will probably make me disadvantaged later because I'll begin losing tons of honor... that is, unless others rack up a ratio similar to mine. I'm not quite sure what the system is for, but I hope this problem can be resolved...

Heh, I feel like I'm just copying what I posted before, so I'll stop.

[Chewett]

[Redacted]

Edited December 18, 2012 by Chewett
Redacted

[Muratus del Mur]

you should think how the game would be if there was no limit in winning ... imagine players with huge armies attaccking nonstop others ... believe me , it will be much much worse then having to fight for getting losses. getting losses has its advantages , it helps out new players that realy want to win , and it helps to the overall game balance.

ITS A CHALLENGE TO KEEP FIGHTS BALANCED

It should not be easy! you are percieving this like a curse, and losing is just somthing you do in order to keep honor and win later, but actualy keeping the fight balanced is more of the purpose than anything, and its not easy at all.

Players with a balanced fight profile will gain stats and xp much faster than unbalalnced players, this allows new players ro gain better stats than old players ... this is a MAJOR feature of the game, and allowing players to recover days and days of playing and overcomming ancient players is something that usualy no other game does like that.

Its tru that having to avoid spam fights for loss farming is very annoying thing. ..but i have no solution for that yet.

The solution is communication.

If you only knew waht type of fight the player needs maybe you could just farm for losses the ones that need wins and the oposite.

[SoulTear]

Yes it would be be nice to find players who need wins and then agree to lose to them but the problem is most players that need wins are in MP3 and most that need loses are in MP4 or MP5 and becouse of the MP divison those players are prohibited from fighting each other. Maybe the game should be changed to let players from different MPs fight each other? Or maybe change it so that at higher MPs 'balanace' is definded as a greater ratio between wins and loses so that at MP3 you need 2:3 wins:loses for balance at MP4 1:1 wins:loses and at MP5 3:2 wins:loses or something like that.

I can see how you intended balance to serve as a check on older more powerful players but it doesn't work as you intended. Those older players just use suicide rituals (unless they are like me and refuse to use this tactic on purpose) to artifically increase their loses so they can be balanced forcing newer players up in wins while giving them little xp in return which keeps them weak even though the game thinks they are stronger becouse of their wins. Its also easier to lose on purpose when you have certain powerful monsters that new players don't have access to like the 'protecting tree' found in Loreroot.

The result is that older players will have just as much advantage over newer players as long as they pump up their loses with suicide rituals. The game mechanics virtually forces you to use this tactic and the players that will benefit the most will be exactly those ancient players its supposed to keep in check becouse they have learned to use it the best forcing other players to continually try to lose for balance rather then fight for wins and xp. Keeping balance is not optional becouse if you don't keep it low honor will prevent you from attacking at all.

[Glaistig]

I agree with Aqune.. the idea of helping out the newbies and protecting them with this sort of system sounds ideal, but it really doesn't work, at least not the way it is now. It doesn't give the new players an advantage because even if they are the ones who other players try to lose against, they don't gain any stats since usually the players farm losses with one creature rituals. Even if you mean that the stronger players don't target weak players for wins, they do. Once they use weak rituals to gain losses to match up for it, of course. And as far as I can tell, there is a very minimal amount of people who don't use one creature rituals to get losses.

The mp divisions also play a role in this... the weaker players do eventually become the strongest players in their level, and then they have more wins than losses (naturally, probably if they're smarter than me they would use the weak rituals). They go into the next level, the weakest of the players in the division, and their balance just worsens because they gain empty wins.

The way it is now, the people who do have a balance of wins to losses don't have balanced fights. Instead, they gather wins to train creatures and just spam weak attacks . . . unless that's what you mean. My idea of balanced fights are losing with fully charged creatures, giving the winner stat rewards.

It's not like everyone is so considerate, either. People can tell if the other person has a bad win:loss ratio based on the honor reward for attacking, and yet I, who needs more than 100 losses to achieve a balance of wins and losses, get spammed all the time by people who give me negative honor. Maybe this problem has to do with the players, the way they reacted to the system. But if the players aren't going to change their ways maybe they should be forced to.

Well, maybe I am missing something or getting overworked. This is just the way I see things... your arguments didn't really convince me. But I do feel like there is something wrong, and maybe if you consider this a problem it could be given priority.

[Steadfast Steno]

I just find it annoying that I really need honor. Yet, I can barely attack anyone for positive honor, and when I can, even when I have massive advantages and a very good ritual, I ALWAYS lose, without fail, and then, I lose honor, yet every login, I have lost more honor in the 'idle' stage, from what I had before log-off, and I have somehow gained 20 wins in the meantime, yet when I get attacked and lose, I lose honor, but I don't appear to gain any from being attacked and winning.

[Muratus del Mur]

i initialy intended for fair loses in real fights not spam attacks indeed. but i cant realy see what would prevent this from happening. the honor penalization for losing its not that efficient.

the target of this system is to get self balanced and to allow new players to attack and win against old players. The mp stages should not be a problem because if they all merge there will be just the same, a huge mp level for all.

I understand your point of view, i am playing myself without cheating and i can notice how dificult it is to keep the fights balanced (i am at -513 honor right now), BUT i also know players that manage to do that and not by luck. So i think that the main chaos created is because most players dont understand this and even if they need lost fights they keep strong rituals as defence and players that need loses dont bother to ask and they just spam.

I could make an indicator like black/white thing to show if a player needs wins or loses and reward more the players that attack players that need the oposite. This will probably make them to self balance, but for that i have to almost cancel the definition of a fight and consider them more like "matching ritual". Losing is also a strategy and as you can see its often much more dificult than losing, itr true but you are not accepting it.

[Chewett]

[Redacted]

Edited December 18, 2012 by Chewett
Redacted

[smartalekrj]

maybe once you hit that low you end up in a special area where only others like you are and you can attack them freely for x amount of honor until you reach 0 and then you are transported back to public areas with the option to fix your balance witha lil more freedom.

[Glaistig]

Above all, I think that if the system was implemented to help new players and really isn't, there is something wrong (maybe with the players, yes, but then the message should be given to them).

I praise players who are able to maintain a balance even while others assault constantly with weak rituals and little compensation. It would take a long time for me to do that even if I could, because it is rare that people attack me for wins in comparison to when I am attacked for losses. I'm even using fairly weak creatures with fairly low vitality in my defense ritual, and I find that by the end of the day I have gained more wins than losses. Unless people stop using one-creature rituals with only a defensive creature, it would be hard for me to gain a balance using only a weak defense ritual . . . maybe I am missing something, but I have no idea how those other players manage (could I get a hint?).

It would be really fun for me to spam a person back twice each time they use a one creature ritual on me . . .

[Eldrad]

Generally it's not just a weak defence ritual but one which actively attempts to lose, rituals which do 90+% damage to themselves even if the opponent doesn't do anything.

Also if someone's attacking and getting a win they're going to want lots of VE so they get lots of XP. It's a waste of a win for them if they get only a tiny amount of VE cause then they have to go and get a loss to compensate for that win.

The most effective loss gathering rituals are those which damage themselves, have a lot of VE and regenerate that VE either from the creatures own regen stat or the players. That way it's hard for people to attack you and lose, they're rewarded with lots of XP beating you, and you can reuse the same creatures in a copy of the same ritual again and again.

[Lucren]

well the only thing i do to attempt to keep balance <wich i do need losses again> is to have a very weak creature

and hit a guy id get negative honor on and die it sux but ya gotta do what ya gotta do

by the way I still dont see how a guy with a whole bunch of maxed out charecters should give me negative honor

perhaps honor should be based on what you attack with compared to the opponent <this should only involve about 25% of the honor results though>

[Grido]

it might be a good idea to also have the amount of honor rewarded/lost from winning a fight dependant on the honor difference between the two players fighting as well as the won/lost difference, so if for example;

player 1(original i know) has -500 honor, and they're fighting someone with a similar win/loss ratio but different honor level say -300 and they win then they'll get more honor, something like a % of the difference of honor so (a bit high maybe) 25% of the difference in honor is gained/added onto what they'd gain from the won/loss ratio alone.

not that any of that neccesarily makes any sense to anyone else but yeah, might be a good idea