Underlying Issue with Balance System

[Eldrad]

Clearly Mur would like people to balance their fights. To get this result the reward for having balanced fights should be higher than any other state of player wins/losses.

Ignore for the moment the issue of honor as most people will be able to gain honor unless their Wins-Losses is significantly higher than the global average and as long as you're gaining a bit honor isn't that significant.

Looking at XP:

A balanced profile gives your creatures twice the XP and 1.75 the XP to your stats. For the high end MP5 players who have little trouble leveling creatures stat XP is far more important than creature XP

as creature XP only affects the principles you get for sacking a creature not the other stats

. But for the sake of simplicity we'll ignore that issue and pretend that you get twice as much XP across the board for a balanced profile. Average fights repeatably available at MP5 on the good end run about 3k-5k vitality (there are a lot which are <2k and you can sometimes get a fight which is over 40k). Let's assume that the average is 5k vitality. Therefore fighting with a balanced profile will give you an extra 5k XP (10k total to creatures instead of 5k, and 35k to stats w/heat instead of 20k).

For having a much lower Wins-Losses than the average you get a flat bonus to XP. Making the same assumptions as above if the average extra XP you get from a fight due to getting more than 200 honor is greater than 5k then it's better than having a balanced profile. Unlike a balanced profile there isn't a limit to how good a high loss profile can get, as time goes on it'll just be better and better, it could give you an extra 100k XP per fight or 200k... it's only a matter of how many losses you have.

Again the fundamental problem is that players are rewarded more for having an extremely low Wins-Losses than they are for having Wins-Losses=0. Clearly there are a number of problems with people being motivated to generate as many losses as they can, so I won't go into those here.

[Morgana Le Fey]

I agree there should be half as much reward for having to many losses and gaining over 200 honor from a fight the reward is honor itself that should be enough

then that would stop people from taking advantage of it and wanting to have balanced profiles as much as possible you are the generic version of a genius nobel prize winner lol

that is unless you have one lol

[Glaistig]

The honor system was meant to encourage people to attack others who won more fights but instead discourages them from keeping a balance.

I agree with Eldrad; if balances becomes more rewarding, then the honor system will work as it's supposed to.

[Eldrad]

As a note this issue could easily be fixed by simply removing the bonus XP for honor greater than 200.

[Glaistig]

Why do that? The honor system is a good concept; the only thing that makes it work so badly is the fact that it gives a better reward than balance, making getting it the priority for players who therefore do so by farming losses. If balance is made the priority, then it will work fine even with the bonus. Also, the bonus make honor actually worth something.. if removed, players will be encouraged only to keep in the positive, not get the most they can. In fact, I think that there should be multiple exp bonuses of varying degree directly proportional to honor value, or else players will only want to keep 200 honor (except to get MD items).

Well, I suppose more features connected with honor are to come in the future.

[SoulTear]

As a note this issue could easily be fixed by simply removing the bonus XP for honor greater than 200.

Indeed this what I suggested should be done in my original post on the Battle System Poll. With the current system people will still try to get loses rather then be balanced it will be just harder for them to do so (this will become more apparent after the heads contest is over). As long as the reward for being balanced is a set value while the reward for high honor attacks is unlimited its better to have lots of losses rather then be balanced so things will slowly go back to the way they were before the reset.

Glasitg you say honor should be worth something but just what do you think its supposed to try and accomplish in the game?

Honor is (or I should say was) supposed to punish a particular playstyle (if you prey on the weak or not) and not just be a stat players should try and pump up so they can us it to get things. The more artificial incentives (like Xp bonus, items, features etc.) are put in for its aquisition the less it will do its job and be an indicator for a players relative strength to your own. Players will then just spam attack so they can get more honor from attacks and use it to get what they want in the game. You may not like it but that is what will happen. Which will turn the honor system on its head since the best players will actually have the most losses and therefore give the least honor while the weak players will give lots of honor and be their punching bags.

[Glaistig]

Maybe I'm confused..

The honor exp bonus is a bit muddy in my head. The only thing I knew was that there was some sort of bonus and people were spamming attacks to farm losses and get honor easily. Someone said that there was an exp bonus for 200 honor, so I assumed it was a definite multiplier for exp (like balance), but it seems like that's wrong when you say that the reward is unlimited for high honor attack.

In that case, I still think honor should give an exp reward in some way, perhaps a "set value" like balance, only the balance reward should be greater no matter what. It would be better if the honor reward was exponential, increasing at every defined increment (like 500 or 1000), because then players would continue to try to get honor to the max. The balance reward could be significantly more than the reward of honor at max value, and then the system would still work.

Like I said earlier, I think the concept of honor is good. It was supposed to "punish preying on the weak" as you said, and if it can still work with some adjustment I don't see why the exp reward needs to be removed.

[shadowice]

ive never liked the fight system from the start, to much reward was always placed on ones farming the losses i always felt people should always try to win. The new way though makes it so much harder to gain a win. I attacked 14 or so people the other day won all 14 but only 1 was victorious. I was trying to win and get a higher win count but only 1 out of 14 fights counted. Thats the real problem in itself of keeping things balanced. Its far to easy to gain losses, but incredibly hard to gain wins. I liked the old system alot more where a win is a win no certain vitality needed. To encourage people maybe change the bonus from xp to stats. As mp5 i want as much stats as possible xp i could care less about, id even be happy if i got a smaller xp reward for being balanced like half as much xp as normal. I sacrafice creatures all the time because their xp is high and i can lvl a new one just as fast because no one tries to win