suggestions

I'm considering some fairly big changes to the monthly competition for November, but I wanted to run this by the community before doing anything because historically, surprise updates have not been well-received. You guys are the ones actually playing the game and so you sometimes have perspectives I haven't considered as a developer.

I'll try to keep this short. I consider these two related things problems for the long-term health/success of the game:

1. Dumping - You should be able to play on only your main bot and do well in the monthly competition. Right now, you pretty much have to create lots of dumper bots with high EPH and attack your main bot with them if you want to compete.

2. EPH - Once you get it high enough, it's not much effort to maintain your rank. 3 of the top 5 clans right now are not "real" clans, they are dumper clans. Probably a majority of the top 100 monthly bots right now have an energy ratio of close to 1, indicating their rank is almost purely from idle EPH. Maintaining rank should require effort.

Note that I'm more interested in discussing *solutions* to these problems rather than *whether* these are problems. Here are some ideas to get this started:

1. Less energy transfer for losses - The current setup is that on average, you gain 20 energy for a win, and lose 10 energy for a loss. This makes it so that if you win 1/3 of the fights, you break even on energy. If the energy transfer for a loss goes down, it reduces the incentive for attacking on dumper bots (slower to transfer energy) and makes it more lucrative to attack on your main bot.

2. EPH cap - Variable EPH exists to make it harder to build dumpers, but as we've seen, people are still willing to put in the effort to build high-ratio, well-maintained dumpers. The current EPH formula has no cap, but with a cap that most bots can reach fairly easily, everyone would be on a level playing field once they reach this cap. EPH would still be variable to make dumping harder, requiring effort to still be put in to maintain a bot collecting EPH.

3. Less energy transfer for larger levels gaps between fighters - I'm not sure about this one. Would it help any?

Thanks for reading. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

use this

Less energy transfer for larger levels gaps between fighters - I'm not sure about this one. Would it help any?

to scale that

Less energy transfer for losses - The current setup is that on average, you gain 20 energy for a win, and lose 10 energy for a loss. This makes it so that if you win 1/3 of the fights, you break even on energy. If the energy transfer for a loss goes down, it reduces the incentive for attacking on dumper bots (slower to transfer energy) and makes it more lucrative to attack on your main bot.

Less energy transfer for losses - The current setup is that on average, you gain 20 energy for a win, and lose 10 energy for a loss. This makes it so that if you win 1/3 of the fights, you break even on energy. If the energy transfer for a loss goes down, it reduces the incentive for attacking on dumper bots (slower to transfer energy) and makes it more lucrative to attack on your main bot.

This will cause a shift in "dumpers" to "whores" where as rather than spending a lot of time building a magnitude of lower levels dumpers (even this this could still be cost effective depending on how much of a hit you actually take on the win/loss of energy per attack) people will shift to build bots higher than their mains. certain individuals do this already, but due to the easiness of building whores it hasn't been wide spread. It also requires more effort because you have to "whore" the bot in order to guarantee a win every time thus maximizing your buffs and energy gain. If you do indeed follow through with the proposed change, you would just see a shift of that nature. It'd also put a much larger gap in clan competition because then it would truly be a game of who has more stars can build more higher level dumpers thus putting new clans and clans that don't have a lot invested into this game out in the cold.

EPH cap - Variable EPH exists to make it harder to build dumpers, but as we've seen, people are still willing to put in the effort to build high-ratio, well-maintained dumpers. The current EPH formula has no cap, but with a cap that most bots can reach fairly easily, everyone would be on a level playing field once they reach this cap. EPH would still be variable to make dumping harder, requiring effort to still be put in to maintain a bot collecting EPH.

I could see the benefits of this, but you will also see the backlash of people like Draoi or even me or Rivan who put a lot of effort into leveling our bots past the "typical 80-120 range" of answerers, mega mauls & sapphire blades so we could reap the benefits of higher level EPH.

Less energy transfer for larger levels gaps between fighters - I'm not sure about this one. Would it help any?

This wouldn't solve anything, truthfully. Although the majority of us build our dumpers at the bare minimum level as to not gain XP on our mains, we'd just change focus and build them a little higher so if our mains level we'd be fine. IE rather than building a lvl 115 to attack my 155, I'd build 119s or 120s and be set for a very long time considering the XP gained would be so minuscule.

I could see the benefits of this, but you will also see the backlash of people like Draoi or even me or Rivan who put a lot of effort into leveling our bots past the "typical 80-120 range" of answerers, mega mauls & sapphire blades so we could reap the benefits of higher level EPH.

I know I only mentioned Eternal members, but Myriad and Rene both have taken the time to put effort into their "main" bots so they would be worth something in the race and not just a high level bot in the clan.

What if your EPH could go negative?

Like, if your Energy Ratio was under 1.0, it turned your EPH negative?

that would take us back to the problem of 0 EPH and making it worse

I'm very curious whos clan you consider a dumping clan, me or neps :)

Just to add on, you could add some sort of "dumping" limit, say once I have lost 500 energy to one person, I have to stop attacking him and give some error message like "Don't you think you should fight someone you can actually beat". Means dumpers have to switch bots more often, if they still exist.

Some suggestions to these problem.


Everyone starts off with a clean slate at the beginning of the month. Level, wins and ratio doesn't matter, every month is a month on its own. Everyone gets 50?? BASE EPH.

Dumping - You should be able to play on only your main bot and do well in the monthly competition. Right now, you pretty much have to create lots of dumper bots with high EPH and attack your main bot with them if you want to compete.

If you start gaining or losing energy your level, monthly wins/losses and monthly ratio will be taken into account and determine your real EPH on top of the BASE EPH. This way dumpers will be forced to score for their energy, rewarding the more active players. Keep track of bots that have gained or lost energy/wins/losses while in a clan, NC'ing (or kicking and reinviting) them should not reset their EPH for the month, only their energy. Lower level bots will have more targets, thus increasing their chances of climbing in the rankings.

EPH - Once you get it high enough, it's not much effort to maintain your rank. 3 of the top 5 clans right now are not "real" clans, they are dumper clans. Probably a majority of the top 100 monthly bots right now have an energy ratio of close to 1, indicating their rank is almost purely from idle EPH. Maintaining rank should require effort.

On top of this let EPH decay (towards the BASE EPH) far more quickly the more inactive a player becomes, reducing the possibility of bots idling their energy throughout the month.



Now I'm not here to change the entire complexity of the game, but I noticed that all these problems and solutions focus on dumpers. To be honest I don't feel these are the problem, lack of players (and to some extent, maybe EPH) is. High level bots need dumpers in order to compete, I can count all targets in my range on 2 hands. I feel that this change will at least require players to do more work to get their top 100 positions, because everyone can harvest energy in abundance. Particularly at the lower levels.

If there is any chance you might be interested in not only changing the way dumpers and idlers work, but EPH as well, I really wish you would make the formula to EPH available and let some players have a mindful eye at it.

For that last one they'll just be still more dumpers made, everyone will have 1K dumpers instead of just neps, and neps will make more still.

Everyone has some valid points in here but I think one of the most obvious(and easy) improvements could be made through the buff system.

For starters, having 500 charges on energy buff pretty much makes endless energy whores a must. Secondly, being able to dump more with a buff.

I am not so sure about the 2nd one because it will it could really suck for higher leveled bots. Example: 100 attacks 101 and wins 40 fights with buff, obviously loosing less because of the buff 'change'. I suppose this could be remedied by having a revenge system, but there isn't one.

Implement clan merges.

I think a limit on how much you can "Get rid" of is the best solution.

• Max of 300 energy able to be dumped
• Only give 5 energy for a loss
• 30-40 energy for a win
• A lower EPH for bots that have done mulitple "Max dumps" like in my first point.

Reward the main bots. Nerf the dumping bots.

but then people will level bots past their level to fight them for example at level 100 you could easily make a clan of bots at 100 of the same build and beat it 55-45

Not to mention rewarding wins over losses too much will result in shitty bots under your level stealing energy and there's nothing you can do about it, similar to what happened in March.

Note that I'm more interested in discussing *solutions* to these problems rather than *whether* these are problems.

That's a bit narrow-minded imo. If you have already made your mind up that they are problems, then share your thoughts with the community so the rest of us know where you are coming from when/if you implement the changes. If not, why consider solutions to something that you're not even sure are problems yet?

I think that despite whatever change is made to the energy system, there will always be whores in some shape or form. As some people have already mentioned, reducing the efficiency of dumpers will simply cause a shift to whores that are higher levels, which is even worse, as stars are more important for whoring higher level bots. If you reduce EPH for idle bots, there will be shift towards people making freaked bots to drain active scorers in rival clans, which will again favour players with stars since whoring freaked bots is so heavily dependent on them.

Players with whores will always hold the upper hand over players who only play with their main bots. And I don't really think that it's a problem that players who invest more time making whores and other supplementary bots have an advantage over people who prefer to spend their time on only a few bots.

Imo, the only way around this is by making it fulfilling to play on one bot. When you can follow a build path to make a 'perfect' bot at any given level, there is limited scope for what you can achieve on a single bot. Once you have the same build as other energy scorers on your level, there's little else to do but drain the weak bots that generate 5 EPH or go 50/50 against other perfect bots.

If there were some way of constantly improving your bot, it might be worthwhile to focus on only a few main bots rather than build a multitude of whores. But while easily obtainable perfect builds are possible, I don't see how whoring will ever be less efficient than playing on only a few bots.

Btw,

but I noticed that all these problems and solutions focus on dumpers. To be honest I don't feel these are the problem, lack of players (and to some extent, maybe EPH) is.

I'd have to agree with this. I admire all the work that you have put into the game Ender, but the reality is that nearly all of the 'main' players currently playing bots4 are old players from bots2.

Only give 5 energy for a loss
30-40 energy for a win

Losing 15-85 to another bot would gain you 25 to 175 energy, unbuffed.

It sucks but I don't think there is a way around whores, no matter what you do, people with a lot of stars can just whore bots, rape them, then un-whore them. Maybe it's best if you at least try to even the playing field and let shitty bots with 5 EPH regenerate more energy for people like Shoegazer/Costillo who dont have dumpers

Imho any dumping nor EPH change will not make any more competition between clans. At the moment there simple isnt enough players for health competition. Just look at top 2 clans. Other one is using multible bots from same user (=at least I see that as they dont have 20 active persons). And other one is running less than 20 bots. And after those clans there is just this and that clans but nothing so "serious". So to make competition with this player base clan size should be 5 (+nc). I have feeling that some people would like to get clan size to 30 or even 40. But seriously for what purpose? To fill clan with own bots and get some "hard worked" plats? In this month in Eternal like 8 bots will get monthly plat for just idle and doing nothing. Imho to get monthly you should atlest try to maintain your place to get something, not just idle 30 days. But then again if clan size would be 5, those bots would actally need to do something to get something.

And for individual competition between bots. That person wins who has/uses most time in this game. And there is nothing that will chance that and personally I thing that is fair. If you train harders your reward should be biggest. Ofc you could make team bot with fried or two and keep it online all the time or get energy dumped constantly...

tl;dr Clan competition -> clan size to 5 (do some work, dont just idle) Individual competition -> Person who uses most time wins, not matter if there is any changes, and that is ok atm.

It sucks but I don't think there is a way around whores, no matter what you do, people with a lot of stars can just whore bots, rape them, then un-whore them. Maybe it's best if you at least try to even the playing field and let shitty bots with 5 EPH regenerate more energy for people like Shoegazer/Costillo who dont have dumpers

You hit the nail on the head Fishy. All that really needs to be done is change the current 5 eph to 20 back to near open beta. People will still use their dumpers yes, but people who use whores will have some form of means to compete with those people getting millions of energy. If whores can generate 14,400 energy each month, that means that whore clans can generate 288,000 energy each into the game.

Even then that is a piss in the bucket compared to the 3 million or so energy an idle +ratio higher-level clan can get. That is why I think that the EPH should be lowered for idling. Getting 200-300k energy for nothing? Why not just give us all medals for not participating? I think the maximum you should be able to get from idling should be anywhere from 50k-100k energy. This should be fine for dumpers since an average dumper 100+ WITH the double energy buff can only achieve 108k energy to be dumped onto one main bot. Mind you I hate the idle energy system anyway. Anyway you look at it the system will be broken. Mind you all games are broken so I don't see why any of this is such a big deal. Ender has just made a level of such high broken-nimity that people for some reason roll with it and make dumpers through some form of iron will I will never understand.

I like hayabassie's ideas the most. Implement them. Also, the main reason nobody but old players gain energy is because there's no real entry level participation. Whores are meant to be entry level participation and dumpers are supposed to be the "pro" level. Too bad their results are so unevenly matched.

In this month in Eternal like 8 bots will get monthly plat for just idle and doing nothing. Imho to get monthly you should atlest try to maintain your place to get something, not just idle 30 days.

First off, you're quite ignorant. Secondly there isn't a bot in the Top 10 who didn't put forth some effort at one point or another during this month. I for one (Nosferatu) scored the entire first week non-stop. Granted that shows a lot of how lazy the remaining player base is that I can score for 1 week and still currently be in 7th place. It however does not state that we do nothing to get what we have.

They spend a good amount of time building and win dumping their bots so their ratio doesn't drop below 3.0, then they spend time dumping the energy so why shouldn't they be rewarded at the end of the month with a top ten trophy and no 1 clan trophy.

The biggest problem with this game is Ender's idea is he wanted "real wars" where actual bots fight actual bots and gain from it.

The issue with this is people follow the path of least resistance, thus creating our so called whores to supplement and circumvent this and gain more with less effort.

The reason that older players win more is due in part to this because we've been around long enough, Bots2 didn't always have whores either, to know that this is the most obvious path to follow if you want to guarantee a win.

And so you can't remove the systems that people use, because it'll diminish your current player base and alienate those of us who actually play the game, regardless if it's in the intended manner or not.

I think the main thing that people need to take from this is the ability to adapt. Regardless of what Ender does, there will always be those that don't want to put forth the time and effort it takes to be at the top and they'll still whine about something, regardless of what it is, because they "can't" win due their lack of effort.

I agree nos. +1

-rithy

firstly, i am really happy that you are considering dumping a problem.

I think some of this things could work :

1. ) Make energy transfer progressive while losing, meaning

lost 1 fight - lost 10 energy lost 2 fights in a row - lost 18 (10+8) energy lost 3 fights in a row - lost 24 (10+8+6) energy lost 4 fights in a row - lost 28 (10+8+6+4) energy lost 5 fights in a row - lost 30 (10+8+6+4+2) energy

That could stop dumping, right?

1. ) Make xE count only energy gained by that bot while that bot is attacking. So xE doesnt change if someone attacks you and you win, it only changes when you attack someone and win. That way, players that play with their bots and actually attack other bots will have better EPH. While people like Myriad would get free 500 energy per hour by EPH, they wouldnt have the ability to increase xE, making it more level playing field all around.

any opinions?

Progression sounds like a great idea.

If you win with a dumper, does that reset the progression or just bump it back one?

the more fights you lose the more energy you transfer? that'll take care of dumpers for sure ...

Nice ideas. And gaining 30E vs 50E is significant, maybe decrease faster. As for if/when the progression gets reset it could time out like every day or 12H, because just winning would be an easy reset.

Taking this from the context of dumping and into someone main bot, the only negative about losing then would be loss of ratio and EPH since not a lot of energy would be lost with losing. So if you can go against someone 3-5 you would end up with even energy and lower EPH.

making it fulfilling to play on one bot

I really like this.

I think the main thing that people need to take from this is the ability to adapt. Regardless of what Ender does, there will always be those that don't want to put forth the time and effort it takes to be at the top and they'll still whine about something, regardless of what it is, because they "can't" win due their lack of effort.

Let us be honest, the actual game-play is pretty damn boring. There was a lot of talk of exciting features when the game was new, but basically those are shelved(prolley permanently, we can basically expect 2-4 updates a year). We can talk all we want about what 'feature' is best for the clan competition but no matter what it is, eternal will still win it. Know why? because we play because of the drama we cause.

If there was ever a surge in game activity, it will because of exciting new stuff. People won't pick up a game when it's boring as fuck, nor stick around when there is a established player base that knows the ins and outs.

I would also like to point out to all you fucks who are never even involved with the clan competition that your opinions are naive at best and range into retardation.

tl;dr Do something with buffs to make it more attractive to play your main and implement revenge attacks so you can defend yourself.

Mith, no that's not what it is.

• Fight#1 : Loss (Energy lost is 20)
  
• Fight#2 : Loss (Energy lost is 15)
  
• Fight#3 : Loss (Energy lost is 10)
  
• Fight#4 : Win (Energy gain is 16-24) Bump Loss Progression by 1
  
• Fight#5 : Loss (Energy lost is 10)
  
• Fight#6 : Loss (Energy lost is 5)
  
• Fight#6 : Loss (Energy lost is 1)
  
• Fight#7 : Loss (Energy lost is 1)

I think this would stop dumpers in their tracks. You could even do this on a bigger scale for wins, to stop whores.

• Fight#1 : Win (Energy Gain is 40)
  
• Fight#2 : Win (Energy gain is 38)
  
• Fight#3 : Win (Energy Gain is 36)
  
• Fight#4 : Loss (Energy loss is 20) Bump Win progression by 1
  
• Fight#5 : Win (Energy Gain is 34)
  
• Fight#6 : Win (Energy Gain is 32)
  
• Fight#6 : Win (Energy Gain is 30)
  
• Fight#7 : Win (Energy Gain is 28)

All the way to ~10 or something. Just so you can't attack whores(higher than your level) a lot.

You could do either of these if the their level is +/- 5 or something.

Take away whores or dumpers and you kill the game IMO. People like having high ratios and low losses.

The nature of this game is repetitive. There will always be a perfect build for a specific lvl so theoretically you can only go 50/50 so there is your stalemate.

I like the idea of lowering clans to 5 people that will make it more competitive. Unless nos Rivan neps Rene lyrad are in one team.

5 man clans would be kick ass.

Random idea: Even out whoring and dumping so they are equal or near equal in +energy gain and reintroduce diplomacy. Just roll with me here. The system would be unchanged, a win gains you 20 energy or so while a loss gives the other guy 10 energy or so. What we do is nix eph a ton so dumpers are more in line with whores (if you think of it the gigantic amounts of energy are pointless, less is more) and make it so that you can only get that 20 energy er win if you are at war with your targets clan. Any clan that wants to put hostile on another clan can still attack them for their energy but at a highly reduced rate (I'd say 90% since if a whore has 400 energy after 20 hours of 20 eph one could rape it 200 times easily enough). Dumpers, other than their eph values, would be unaffected in their usefulness. The owner of the dumpers would simply war his own clans. And thus competition would be renewed.

I'm so going to look back on this post and laugh someday.

Lol I already shot my idea down: clan size wouldn't allow it. There'd have to be more members in all clans or whore/dumper clans and/or more diplomacy slots. I'm so silly.

who votes to keep everything how it is?

For the health of the game, I think something should at least should be tried.

I don't, I hate dumpers. They have no fun value at all. You spend hours upon hours camping equipments (unless it's super easy to camp for). You need to gain like 5k wins on all of them to keep them useful every month if you use them well enough. They gain way too much energy by idling. And the worst part is that nobody can really attack them effectively, thus making them impossible to gain energy off of unless that bot is your main bot. There is just too much reward for the people that make them while all other players are subjugated to the only other option to gain energy, whores, which are at such a ridiculously frowned upon state energy-wise it's barely useful to make them other than to win dump.

Btw, thought of a couple alternate ideas. 1st) Have all bots inherently gain energy without being in a clan. Only bots in clans can gain that energy though. This would add targets for all those whore attackers out there. 2) Have buffs that add attack power to bots. This would make it so that others can attack other people's dumpers on more than a 1-1 basis and thus make it more uneven, because the problem there is definitely not being able to win more. Hell, if you wanted, you could sell these. Rake in the money.

2) Have buffs that add attack power to bots. This would make it so that others can attack other people's dumpers on more than a 1-1 basis and thus make it more uneven, because the problem there is definitely not being able to win more. Hell, if you wanted, you could sell these. Rake in the money.

0_o

And drive away 90% of players in the process? No battle-outcome affecting buffs.

I would also like to point out to all you fucks who are never even involved with the clan competition that your opinions are naive at best and range into retardation.

^^^I agree with this guy.

MGK, i didnt come that far in my thinking yet, but yeah, the example you proposed would make sense to me.

MGK == Alan == ALL IDEAS NULL AND VOID BECAUSE HE'S .... Well yeah Alan ....

I would also like to point out to all you fucks who are never even involved with the clan competition that your opinions are naive at best and range into retardation. ^^^I agree with this guy.

Of course you would because the person who said it was you.

@neps I was just making up silly shit. All my ideas are null and void because of two factors really: 1)my serious ideas take too long to enact and would probably hurt the entire "real wars" feel of the game and 2) they have inherent flaws. But that's to be expected. Games aren't meant to be balanced. If they were we'd all have crab whistlers only and all weapons/armors would be the same afterwards. Brokenness makes games fun.

I just have ideas Mr. Nos. Figured I'd put them out there. It helps spark other ideas.

This is bots4, an evolution of sorts from bots2 (since 3 wasn't finished). Players who played the previous one will always have an advantage, that being experience.

It's like trying to dumb down a first person shooter and giving people who suck at them some types of benefits. Deathstreaks in Call of Duty for example. These types of things can't, and never will, close the gap between rookies and veterans. Things that get made specifically for this impossible purpose will just make the game worse.

I understand an FPS isn't a great comparison, but you should get the concept here.

gpof, i really dont think that dumping and eph changes would help new players...i think its more to try and get players play the game in the spirit its creator intented.

as much as i remember, Ender wanted something similar to real wars. And i support that, and would welcome it tbh :)

but at real wars, older players would still have big advantage of know-how

No one wants "real wars". NO ONE. People like to see big numbers, and they follow the path of least resistance. "Real Wars" would kill this game.

Real Wars would be awesome, IF you could only have one bot. When one person can make entire clan of perfect bots to attack another person, that's what destroys Real Wars.

The concept of "Real Wars" is only good on paper.

It also baffles me as to why a player who had his bots locked and reset due to his blatant disregard for the game thinks he deserves to have his input (read: "ideas") listened to at all.

It baffles me also how you think you are the god of bots4.

It's not that I hope my ideas get added, I say them so we have more input. It helps spark other ideas. You must be baffled beyond disbelief that it doesn't help in some way shape or form.

"Real Wars" or whatever be,i am never leave this game...i am for all ..

peac ...

If it's not for bringing in newer players, why bother making any changes? If things keep getting changed with only the current players in mind, it will just drive them away because there will always be a select few who don't like the changes.

100% agreed with nos about real wars. The bottom line of real wars will be everyone going 50-50 with each other at any given level range.

Nos is the god of bots4 Alan how dare you!

tbh nos, i want em :P

Real wars turned out really awesome in bots2, right?

Nos is the god of bots4 Alan how dare you!

Ender is the only God.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMj7UcjPZ0U

This thread needs the people in it to share a little more love for their fellow man.

i think you should slowly get rid of dumpers.my clan usually does good without dumpers. we do it the RIGHT WAY,we bust our tails by fighting not by giving energy to our other bots to raise your clan..dumpers take the fun out of the game..

It baffles me also how you think you are the god of bots4.

I see and understand how you think attempting to belittle me and thus making my argument invalid might be a nice strategic move in your mind, but it still draws me back to my original point that you were locked and reset on the majority (obviously not all since we know this is you) of your bots thus giving you absolute zero merit in your attempt.

It's not that I hope my ideas get added, I say them so we have more input. It helps spark other ideas. You must be baffled beyond disbelief that it doesn't help in some way shape or form.

Read first comment, locked players should stay locked, and remain voiceless as they should obviously have zero input at all.

Yikes, there were a lot of replies to this! I read through it all and there's a lot of good feedback here, so thanks. Here are my responses to stuff that jumped out at me:

EPH cap - Variable EPH exists to make it harder to build dumpers, but as we've seen, people are still willing to put in the effort to build high-ratio, well-maintained dumpers. The current EPH formula has no cap, but with a cap that most bots can reach fairly easily, everyone would be on a level playing field once they reach this cap. EPH would still be variable to make dumping harder, requiring effort to still be put in to maintain a bot collecting EPH.

I could see the benefits of this, but you will also see the backlash of people like Draoi or even me or Rivan who put a lot of effort into leveling our bots past the "typical 80-120 range" of answerers, mega mauls & sapphire blades so we could reap the benefits of higher level EPH.

I'll attempt to make these changes as nondisruptive as possible, but no promises sadly. I know some of you have optimized for the current system, but if it's broken, it's broken, and for the long-term health of the game it needs to be fixed.

I'm very curious whos clan you consider a dumping clan, me or neps :)

That wasn't meant as a sleight if it came across as one. 3 of the top 5 clans have the "similar name/color/flag" thing going on, so I assumed they weren't "real" clans, but instead were owned by a small (1?) number of people just making lots of bots.

Now I'm not here to change the entire complexity of the game, but I noticed that all these problems and solutions focus on dumpers. To be honest I don't feel these are the problem, lack of players (and to some extent, maybe EPH) is. High level bots need dumpers in order to compete, I can count all targets in my range on 2 hands. I feel that this change will at least require players to do more work to get their top 100 positions, because everyone can harvest energy in abundance. Particularly at the lower levels.

This is a fair point. Lack of players definitely plays into this, so the two obvious solutions are (1) get more players and (2) don't make number of available energy targets scale with number of active players. The former is something I'm always focused on and the latter falls more under the category of a potential PvE shift I've been kicking around for awhile. In any case, implementing that would take considerably longer than the short amount of time I've allocated to just get things into a more healthy state quickly, so I'll table that for now.

If there is any chance you might be interested in not only changing the way dumpers and idlers work, but EPH as well, I really wish you would make the formula to EPH available and let some players have a mindful eye at it.

I'll consider this, but the EPH formula is probably going to change for November and it's probably not going to be as important, so this might not matter as much soon. Most "real" bots will have the same low EPH (from hitting the cap) to put them on the same level.

For starters, having 500 charges on energy buff pretty much makes endless energy whores a must. Secondly, being able to dump more with a buff.

I'm not clear on what this means. Would more buff charges make things better or worse? I'm not against tweaking buffs if there's good evidence it could help.

I am not so sure about the 2nd one because it will it could really suck for higher leveled bots. Example: 100 attacks 101 and wins 40 fights with buff, obviously loosing less because of the buff 'change'. I suppose this could be remedied by having a revenge system, but there isn't one.

I'd consider investing resources into getting a revenge system up if there were sufficient evidence that it could help things out. It's honestly just one of those things I don't hear much about, so it's not prioritized.

Implement clan merges.

I'm not clear on what this would do to help the current state of the game. It would be a considerable amount of work for what sounds like a "nice to have" feature.

Note that I'm more interested in discussing *solutions* to these problems rather than *whether* these are problems.

That's a bit narrow-minded imo. If you have already made your mind up that they are problems, then share your thoughts with the community so the rest of us know where you are coming from when/if you implement the changes. If not, why consider solutions to something that you're not even sure are problems yet?

Perhaps it is, but that's my prerogative as the sole developer of a hobby game. I get to work on the kind of game I want to work on. My goal in stating what I was interested in discussing was just to keep this thread focused on what's already a pretty open-ended subject.

I think that despite whatever change is made to the energy system, there will always be whores in some shape or form.

This is probably correct, which brings me back to the PvE idea. I can make all sorts of changes to try to make it less efficient to build dumpers/whores, but what history has shown is that for the most part, most players aren't interested in fighting other players. Since dumpers/whores are essentially player-created PvE in what is technically a PvP game, maybe the solution is just officially supported "whores". As I mentioned above though, this is a bigger project that would take time/thought.

So to make competition with this player base clan size should be 5 (+nc). I have feeling that some people would like to get clan size to 30 or even 40. But seriously for what purpose? To fill clan with own bots and get some "hard worked" plats? In this month in Eternal like 8 bots will get monthly plat for just idle and doing nothing. Imho to get monthly you should atlest try to maintain your place to get something, not just idle 30 days. But then again if clan size would be 5, those bots would actally need to do something to get something.

This is a pretty radical idea that I actually like a lot. There'd be two main challenges with getting it done: (1) implementation will be a bit of a pain as the current cap of 20 non-NC is unfortunately hardcoded throughout the code, (2) some sort of a rollout plan to migrate clans with more than 5 non-NCs at the moment to the new rules.

So there can't be any change with this for November, but possibly December. We all want more competition in the game and I think this would be a great way of doing it. As the game grows, the cap could potentially shift higher, but right now, I think 5 is a reasonable cap.

You hit the nail on the head Fishy. All that really needs to be done is change the current 5 eph to 20 back to near open beta. People will still use their dumpers yes, but people who use whores will have some form of means to compete with those people getting millions of energy. If whores can generate 14,400 energy each month, that means that whore clans can generate 288,000 energy each into the game.

Increasing min-EPH sounds good to me. Combining this with a lowish EPH cap could help provide more targets for those that don't invest in dumpers.

The biggest problem with this game is Ender's idea is he wanted "real wars" where actual bots fight actual bots and gain from it.

The issue with this is people follow the path of least resistance, thus creating our so called whores to supplement and circumvent this and gain more with less effort.

This concept isn't lost on me. When considering system changes, I'm thinking of how it will actually be used, not how I want it to be used. The trouble is that this is never clear. From freaking to dumping, I don't think anyone could have predicted the direction bots4 would go in based on the changes from bots2.

Make energy transfer progressive while losing, meaning

lost 1 fight - lost 10 energy lost 2 fights in a row - lost 18 (10+8) energy lost 3 fights in a row - lost 24 (10+8+6) energy lost 4 fights in a row - lost 28 (10+8+6+4) energy lost 5 fights in a row - lost 30 (10+8+6+4+2) energy

This could be a really neat idea. I'm going to play around with some simulations to see what different progressions mean for different win rates because the math isn't immediately obvious to me.

Make xE count only energy gained by that bot while that bot is attacking. So xE doesnt change if someone attacks you and you win, it only changes when you attack someone and win. That way, players that play with their bots and actually attack other bots will have better EPH. While people like Myriad would get free 500 energy per hour by EPH, they wouldnt have the ability to increase xE, making it more level playing field all around.

xE went away pretty quickly because players really didn't like losing their energy. I don't have any plans to bring it back at this time.

And here are the ideas I'm currently kicking around (and when they'd be implemented):

• EPH changes (November) - Higher min EPH and introduction of a max EPH, probably pretty low. Aim is to provide more targets (min EPH) and put "real" players on the same level (max EPH).

• Progressive energy transfer (November?) - If you win a lot of fights in a row, you take progressively more energy. If you lose a lot of fights in a row, you give progressively less energy. I need to work out the math/details on this still though.

• Non-NC cap to 5 (December) - Pretty simple, 5 people competiting per clan instead of 20.

• PvE options for gaining energy (?) - A big system change that would need to be designed and implemented, but could potentially address the virtually unavoidable dumper/whore problems of today.

I'm sure some of this will be met with resistance, but I also recognize it's impossible to reach consensus on these sorts of issues and that it's my job to be the decider here. I'll do my best to balance what you all have to say, what I think is going to be the most fun game to play, and what kind of game I want to make. Stay tuned!

Non-NC cap to 5 (December) - Pretty simple, 5 people competiting per clan instead of 20

Whoa.

Lowering clan sizes won't change anything, it will only be the same people competing. Most likely it will be the same group of 5 winning every month too, and then there will be even less people competing once it becomes obvious how much effort it will take to beat the group.

I'm not sure what to think of the EPH changes. Based on the past I have a feeling I won't like it, but we'll see what happens. Progressive energy transfer sounds like it could work for the purpose you're after, although I find the purpose pointless. PvE options which I remember seeing on another thread I actually like the sound of.

xE went away pretty quickly because players really didn't like losing their energy. I don't have any plans to bring it back at this time.

I've phrased it badly sorry, i didnt mean xE as in the old xE that had effect on how much energy you take from someone...i meant energy offset that we currently have. If a player dumps, he should have 1.0 energy offset, if a player plays with his bot and attack other bots, his energy offset should increase. Hopefully i made it clearer now.

So as energy offset has a say in EPH, i think that providing advantage (bigger EPH because of offset that isnt 1.0) to players that dont dump could be beneficial in achieving your goal.

hopefully im understood now :p

thanks for considering my other suggestion though Ender :)

Lowering clan sizes is a good thing for example all the good scorera in eternal arnt gonna stand around in nc they will go find their own clan an compete that's the way I see it anyway

And is this a permanent change or can dumping be done in December??

wiggin if restricting to just 5 scorers are you going to change the treasury formula?

if not you've pretty much killed off social clans :P

also you'd need to consider adding another tier of permissions for NCs. 1 simply isn't enough as i strongly suspect admin players will now be NC'd.

5 players per clan is obviously going to annoy a lot of people and hugely change the game, but with the small player base at the minute I think it will really help competition. Sure 75% of eternal are gonna be bummed out they don't get a #1 plat every month, but the 5 "best" Escapism members can sure as hell compete now, as they couldn't really before. Maybe 5 Eternal members that (are forced to) leave could compete, and heck even the best 5 Immortal Gods members. Kinda like it.

So you think there are 5 people who would have a chance against neps, Rivan, Shoegazer, thing, and Draoi? (just using them for examples) Honestly, the gap between 1st and 2nd place will be even larger than it is now.

A lot of us, including myself, rarely spend any time scoring and just ride off idle energy. I know I won't be scoring if clans are slashed to 5 people and I'm sure most people feel the same. Even if they say they don't feel that way, I bet their actions would be different than their words once the change was implemented.

Not with dumping as it is no, neps and friends would obviously dominate, but if energy was changed to the point where it only matters how much time you spend on your main bot, then I think we would see some decent competition. Sure Neps could spend 10 hours a day energy scoring, but whats to stop anyone else doing that (at the minute its their lack of dumpers). Especially if there is an EPH cap and the normal leaders suddenly have to work to reach top 10 monthly.

EPH changes (November) - Higher min EPH and introduction of a max EPH, probably pretty low. Aim is to provide more targets (min EPH) and put "real" players on the same level (max EPH).

So basically, the energy system will be reverting back to the way it was before EPH, where many players complained of how easy it was for lower level bots to gain energy and therefore how useless it is to be a high level in the energy race. This sounds like a bit of a backward step to me.

Progressive energy transfer (November?) - If you win a lot of fights in a row, you take progressively more energy. If you lose a lot of fights in a row, you give progressively less energy. I need to work out the math/details on this still though.

A few other players and I have already mentioned that this will make the clan race even more lopsided in favour of established players with stars. The new tactic will be to build bots below the level of the former 'dumpers', and whore them when desired to drain massive amounts of energy per rape.

Non-NC cap to 5 (December) - Pretty simple, 5 people competiting per clan instead of 20.

I don't think this will change much in terms of the overall clan standings tbh. The main players of each of the top clans will still remain, but the fringe players who don't contribute that much anyway will be omitted. This means new players will have no hope in hell of being part of a winning clan unless they manage to score consistently well for a few months, and hope they get noticed by one of the top clans. Even then, they would need to outperform one of the established players in those clans to get a scoring spot.

PvE options for gaining energy (?) - A big system change that would need to be designed and implemented, but could potentially address the virtually unavoidable dumper/whore problems of today.

Dumping and whoring are already great PvE options for gaining energy. If PvP is ever to work, there need to be BIG changes made to the battling system so that you can actually 'work on' your bot to constantly improve it without necessarily levelling up or swapping showroom gear. Perfect builds have killed real PvP. Where is the fun in attacking a bot that is exactly the same as yours? A greater degree of complexity or randomness in the bot building process would be a welcome addition that would encourage players to stop building whores and focus on only a few bots, which seems to be your main objective. It might even attract more players to the game which definitely can't be a bad thing.

I think most of these proposed changes are bad ideas tbh, and implementing them with such short notice will just make things worse. Perhaps you have a good vision of where you would like this game to be at in the future Ender, but until you start giving these suggestions more time and thought, they are not going to have their desired effect. I'm not saying this to be argumentative, but because I truly believe some of these suggestions have the potential to do more harm than good.

neps, Rivan, Shoegazer, thing, and Draoi could very well be strong team, but what when 2 or 3 of them has to work for a month or two?

and whats to say those 5 would get in it together, what about nos and rivan vs shoe, thing and easy if they decide to make 2 clan out of one.

can you tell me clear winner month in month out here? I cant.

I truly believe some of these suggestions have the potential to do more harm than good.

I agree with this.

i'd like to see bigger clans maybe raised to 30. we have about 7 members in the Non-NC area of immortal gods that wanna gain energy but with only being able to have 20 active members we have members just sitting around in the clan doing nothing but helping with the treasury

So basically, the energy system will be reverting back to the way it was before EPH, where many players complained of how easy it was for lower level bots to gain energy and therefore how useless it is to be a high level in the energy race. This sounds like a bit of a backward step to me.

This s the only area I disagree with you heavily Myriad. If you want new players, the only way to get them is to have something for them to do and feel important doing. If you want the same 10 people to keep playing the game and have that play out continuously for years to come, then by all means keep the system as it is. In bots2 you had change at least in the #1 spot. Why? Not because there was any real heavy difference in the newbies vs. old players. It was because there was a more even playing field. What mine and Fishwick's idea was that you commented on was an easy fix that Ender could implement to keep new players interested in the game. I agree there needs to be more done but if you read my entire post on upping minimum EPH and putting a max on EPH values then you'd realize your dumping will be unaffected really. The max EPH is so that dumper clans don't show up as easily in the top 10 and the +min eph is so new clans can take those spots instead. You do realize there is only a certain amount of energy you can possibly dump per month right? Right now the idle energy outweighs that amount.

I truly believe some of these suggestions have the potential to do more harm than good.

I agree with this.

I agree as well.

EPH changes (November) - Higher min EPH and introduction of a max EPH, probably pretty low. Aim is to provide more targets (min EPH) and put "real" players on the same level (max EPH).

Can you reset my level back to 50 if you do this?

I'm not clear on what this means. Would more buff charges make things better or worse? I'm not against tweaking buffs if there's good evidence it could help.

With only 500 charges, you go through a lot of buffs and burn a lot of points. Plus, that limits you to 500 attacks/day to gain the maximized score. Dumpers are essentially throwaway bots to keep your main alive.

It's honestly just one of those things I don't hear much about, so it's not prioritized.

Well, that is because no one attacks real bots.(for the most part)

Progressive energy transfer (November?) - If you win a lot of fights in a row, you take progressively more energy. If you lose a lot of fights in a row, you give progressively less energy. I need to work out the math/details on this still though.

How exactly does this prevent or discourage dumpers? Put 1 star on a bot to swap out weapons and viola, you win 100%. In this scenario, the 'dumpers' are your level or above.

(5 member clans)This is a pretty radical idea that I actually like a lot. There'd be two main challenges with getting it done: (1) implementation will be a bit of a pain as the current cap of 20 non-NC is unfortunately hardcoded throughout the code, (2) some sort of a rollout plan to migrate clans with more than 5 non-NCs at the moment to the new rules.

Couple things will happen with this one. Either people will just quit, be permanent NC's or create 5 'clan' bots that people dump score on.(or attack with). Out of all the idea's you are considering, I consider this one to be the worst.

This is probably correct, which brings me back to the PvE idea. I can make all sorts of changes to try to make it less efficient to build dumpers/whores, but what history has shown is that for the most part, most players aren't interested in fighting other players. Since dumpers/whores are essentially player-created PvE in what is technically a PvP game, maybe the solution is just officially supported "whores". As I mentioned above though, this is a bigger project that would take time/thought.

Almost every game on the internet is pve or single player. I would suggest this idea above others to prioritize. With this in place, players would not be level restricted to scoring. The only real restriction would be how good your bot is against the 'pve bots'. Also, this would allow new players to come in and be able to figure out the game quicker. New players just don't stroll in and realize they need to create secondary bots to feed their main.

,

Progressive energy transfer (November?) - If you win a lot of fights in a row, you take progressively more energy. If you lose a lot of fights in a row, you give progressively less energy. I need to work out the math/details on this still though.

How exactly does this prevent or discourage dumpers? Put 1 star on a bot to swap out weapons and viola, you win 100%. In this scenario, the 'dumpers' are your level or above.

You dont have "unlimited" energy buff on one bot as you have on multiple bots, your weapons and armors would wear down on your main and most importantly, this would make dumpers essentially whores, and whores can be attacked by anyone. (if you un-whore it for half an hour, there is nothing to prevent other people to attack that bot for that half an hour)

but if i whore my bot and someone starts to fight it unless your thick as pig shit and dont unwhore it your gifting them with energy

I've noticed something here.

Eternal members are shooting every idea down. Everyone else, takes the changes in stride.

/end enlightenment

Myriad is an eternal member?

I'm all against it too Alan so it's not just eternal members I think it's a stupid idea aswell if everyone else commited as much as they do to the game they would understand why they are shooting every idea

I'm actually for ender locking and resetting this bot to "MGK" as it is clearly yours Alan and you did make a colossal mistake and break the rules.

November will be here in a few hours. Here's what will happen:

• Min EPH will be raised. Exact value TBD.
• Max EPH will be introduced. Exact value TBD.
• 20 => 5 non-NC clan cap change is shelved for now.
• Progressive energy idea is also shelved for now.
• A true PvE energy system is replacing tournaments as my top priority.

So the short term change will address the second problem I listed in my OP, of it being too easy to idle at the top. This will make it so that you have to work constantly to maintain position. I recognize that we're sort of going back to what the system used to be like where low levels were the best energy gainers because they had the most targets. This isn't ideal, but I think it's better than where we're at right now because it will at least require active effort to maintain rank. This leads me to...

As I touched on and as others agreed with, the long term solution to the dumping/whoring problems is a true PvE energy system. In the absence of this, dumping/whoring will always be around in some shape or form because it's more efficient to create your own targets. This will be a big change for the game and I'm sure it will have its own set of problems and challenges, but I'm excited about the direction this could take the game in and look forward to unveiling something soon. I've already been going over some ideas in my head for this and will continue brainstorming over the coming days. I would love to have something in place for December, so stay tuned!

make EPH drop a lot quicker so active players get rewarded and idle gangs cant get into the top 10... something like your eph is based off the energy you've made in the past 4 days, plus all the other jazz you have in the eph algorithm

My idea of this post is to resume how this game is in the reality. Sorry for the long post but I feel that the community is discussing the same thing (real wars vs whores and now dumping) since forever! And I’m tired of this discussion. The people that don’t like the fact that you have to build other bots to be a competitive player (except leveler bots where there is an official PvE system) must accept the game is like this. These people want a completely different game, they don’t want bots.

Flor and then Ender created this game with the intention to be PvP. The truth is that the majority of the playing (>90%) was never PvP and this is solely because of how the game was built. Real wars will never work because everybody can have the best build, I mean, what’s the point of winning 50% of the times? This kills the motivation to play in a PvP mode. I never fought other real bots because I simply don’t like to lose. No one likes. That’s why people bitched about xE. Also, veteran players will always share these builds with new players because that’s the only way to make them helpful, competitive.

With the current setup it’s impossible to make real wars more efficient than attacking/get attacked by a bot built by you to fulfill a single purpose (transfer of energy, wins, kudos or exp). With that said, I see only two possible options: (1) admit once for all that the main gameplay of this game is not PvP and stop wasting time in trying to discover a solution to this since its impossible or (2) make BIG changes (and consequently change the game essence in my opinion) that prevents everybody to have the best build and then you can try to solve ways to encourage PvP. (I guess we are following the 1st option giving the willing to implement an official PvE system).

Adding new equipments don’t change anything. A best build will be figured out quickly. We need randomness (not the showroom randomness, where eventually all equipment can be bought). We need TRULY unique equipments. That idea of putting a range for each bonus stat in the equipments will be only good if the maximum stats armours are REALLY rare (like one or two in the game, this may be exaggerated but you get the point). However, I’m not sure if players should have these best armours by luck (showroom as it is now – I can see players spending one year camping) or by merit (like trophy system, where you are rewarded for completing tasks).

Now I will focus in one of the purposed changes. I can’t believe how the idea of clans of 5 people is still up in the table. This is like the question of real wars vs whores/dumping system, where the goal is one and what is achieved is the opposite. Of course everyone wants to see more competition and dividing the teams could do it. The problem is that with 5 bots, there won’t be any teams around there. You can start by remembering that you can legally log in 5 bots at same time. Voila, you are competing with one full clan. Then, there is already people competing alone with 20 bots, with 5 it will be much easier! So, the practical result would be that neps would make his clan and win every month. Of course he’s human and can be beat, but c‘mon everyone knows that it will happen. He never did that so far because competing alone against 5-10 people (each player can easily compete with 2-4 bots) is extremely hard, despite I believe that he could have win one month with the current state of the game if he tried it seriously.

So, this is my contribution. Of course there will be people that agree with me and others not. I admit that some things I said is not always particularly true but my goal was to capture the big picture.

I completely agree with you that people need to understand the game has evolved because of the players playing it, and the game isn't PvP any longer and is truly a PvE.

This is what made whores so much better than dumpers, and is probably why so many people liked them, because the entire clan could benefit from the individuals hard work of building a whore clan rather than the way it is now where each individual has to put in the time and effort to build his/her own whore clan.