suggestions

Max out the amount of participants per clan to 20 or less instead of fixing the tax problem. Escapism having roughly 160 bots in the tourney are never gonna be beat and is not fair on any one else playing who agrees?

Yes, that looks like a good idea, or they could be made to pay extra kudos per bot over 20 bot limit, or deduct the attack and defence points per bot over 20 bot limit. maybe Ender has looked into this and decided that its best how it is.

Pretty sure this is on Enders radar, he's not happy with the way the current system (accepting a lot of bots on tourney day and removing them before treasury is taken).

You could also move the time for treasury tax per day to match the tournys and allow treasury to go massively negative at the same time. Pretty sure you wont add 160 bots to a clan when treasury goes to -1000000000000 good luck fixing that gap even with multiple 350+ level bots.

I like the idea of maxing out the amount of participants per clan to 20 as this would parallel how the energy race works. I think the key question though is: how do you choose the 20? It can't work the same where it does for energy where the top 20 are automatically chosen because that doesn't address the real problem.

One idea: what if clan leaders had to choose the 20 manually?

first 20 signed to tourny bots

Manually choosing sounds dreadfully tedious.

Also, this would just apply to the trophies associated to clans correct? I assume any bots beyond 20 in the same clan would still be rewarded their respective category trophies, as if they were unaffiliated to clans? I'm wondering how entwined the code between those is, if at all.

It could work by lottery. If a clan say has 40 bots and they all sign up for the tournament, 20 could be randomly chosen from the pool. So say 4 members put 10 bots in each, they would all have a random chance of 5 (more or less) of their 10 bots each put into the tournament. This would result in people just making more 20 member tournament clans (which is good since certain clans are over represented by having too many members competing). The amount of trophies to those people would be the same, it just wouldn't have such a high concentration in one clan. Therefore any and all 20 member tournament clans would be able to finally compete against one another for 1st rather than have the clan with whoever has the highest tournament bot count win all the time. Wouldn't it be cool to see say Bazza's clan of 20 tournament bots fight Escapism's 20 bots on the same level for 1st?

This would result in people just making more 20 member tournament clans (which is good since certain clans are over represented by having too many members competing).

Agreed, but with that being the goal, I think a limitation rather than a system is more appropriate to achieve it.

Don't agree with the lottery idea, what's the point in working all month to make your bot good for a tournament, with only a chance you might get to enter it?

At the minute, anyone who scores tourney points for a clan gets the plat. Make it so only the 20 highest contributors get it, just like energy. That'll put people off pulling all their bots into a clan as itll mean their main accounts/the rest of the clan don't get the plat/win.

This could be achieved with very little or no code on Enders part. Let the clan leader choose <=20 bots to enroll within his clan for the tourney, if the clan happened to enroll >20 bots, then all bots enrolled within that clan would be classed as unaffiliated, This could help activity between clan leaders and members.

Manually choosing sounds dreadfully tedious.

Agreed, I don't think that idea can really pan out.

Also, this would just apply to the trophies associated to clans correct?

I think this starts to get into some of the details that need to be sorted through, were a cap of 20 to be put into place:

• Does the cap apply for trophies? (my answer - it probably should, yeah)
• Does it also apply for clan ranking purposes? (my answer - it probably should, yeah)
• Does it affect which bots even battle in tournaments? (my answer - this seems undesirable because it's fun for everyone to see how their bot performs in the tournament)

Different combinations of answers lead to somewhat different systems.

It could work by lottery. If a clan say has 40 bots and they all sign up for the tournament, 20 could be randomly chosen from the pool.

This idea might have legs. I like that it doesn't require tedious manual effort from clan owners, that it reduces the benefit of stuffing a clan to the brim with special bots right before the tournament starts, and that it still allows as many bots to enter per clan as you want (if the cap only applies to trophies and for clan ranking purposes). With some tweaks to clan pages to add visibility about which bots are enrolled in the tournaments and also warnings about exceeding the cap of 20, clan leaders would also be in a position to understand the advantages/disadvantages of exceeding the cap.

Don't agree with the lottery idea, what's the point in working all month to make your bot good for a tournament, with only a chance you might get to enter it?

The idea is that if it's important for a clan for a specific bot to get tournament trophies and count for clan ranking purposes in it, then they wouldn't enter more than 20 bots from their clan into the tournament. That would guarantee that that specific bot counts for trophies and clan ranking purposes.

And actually, I could imagine some combination of the manual and lottery ideas. What if there was a page for clan leaders to see which bots in their clan were entered in the tournament, with checkboxes to toggle each bot? This checkbox wouldn't control whether the bot participates in the tournament (all entered bots would participate), just whether they count for trophies and toward clan rankings. When bots in a clan enter the tournament, the first 20 would have this checkbox automatically enabled. After that, the checkbox would not be enabled, but clan leaders would be free to make changes to the lineup. That might not be too tedious to manage for the clans that want fine-grained control, while being hands off enough to essentially be random/lottery-style for other clans.

And yes, I just double- (now triple-) posted and swung around from agreeing that an idea would not pan out to ultimately putting it back on the table (albeit in a modified form). Game development is fun. :)

The idea is that if it's important for a clan for a specific bot to get tournament trophies and count for clan ranking purposes in it, then they wouldn't enter more than 20 bots from their clan

With the energy system, members earn their spot and if they can't reach the top 20, they've no one to blame but themself. This sounds like it just becomes an admin nightmare, and something I certainly wouldn't want to have to do as clan owner. If your clan won the month, you're going to have to explain to that new guy, who's super happy he placed 9th in the tournament, why he essentially didn't help your clan in the tournament and won't be getting any of the rewards.

It seems like these ideas are to stop bringing bots in just to compete in tournaments right? How about just requiring a bot to have been in the clan for a week, so no treasury abuse can happen? Or just the 20 best ranking bots count, just like the energy system.

I really don't like the idea of clan owners choosing, or even worse, a random number generator, who gets to take part in any aspect of the game. It should be based on merit. If you want to stop abuse of a system, I'm all for it, but this idea focuses too much on preventing that abuse and doesn't take into consideration how it affects peoples experience of the game.

Minimum clan membership for a week would be ideal IMO. Tournament clans would still exist like Bazza's, but itd force Rene and Myriad to make their own and compete against each other, with Escapism taking a back seat and coming 4th or much lower most months.

this will kill cat 1, only way how i know i do against lyrad and myriad is in tourney, choosing just 1 or 2 would kill it. Cat 1 is small anyway.

So as much as I was hoping this thread would die without much further input, it seems I'll need to add my perspective as one of the few players who has actually built a significant number of bots designed specifically for tournaments.

Firstly, there is no competition when it comes to tournaments from a clan perspective, not because there is no cap on number of entrants per clan, but because there is actually no competition. Only 3 players in the game, Rene, Bazza and I have actually made any attempt at making a significant number of tourney bots. Neps made a few workshopped bots prior to tourneys being implemented but I wouldn't really count him since he quit a long time ago. Limiting the number of entrants would not stop Escapism from winning every month, as we are the only clan with a significant spread of bots across all categories, whereas Bazza's bots all fight amongst themselves in the lower level categories.

Secondly, capping tourney entrants per clan would have an adverse effect on the overall quality of the tournament. The bots that really need the trophies are the scorers, however they are pretty much always weaker than workshopped bots. Therefore if you limit the number of entrants based on merit, the likely outcome will be that the bots made specifically for tournaments won't enter at all, so that the scorers occupy all the high ranking positions in each category in order to get the trophies they need.

Thirdly, the tourney bots that we have taken time to build have been made by us. Escapism members. Therefore it only makes sense that these bots are entered under our clan name. We can join with and score with as many bots as we like (within the rather broad confines of clan tax), so why should we be restricted with how many tourney bots we enter? In the end there are a finite number of tourney trophies, just like there are a finite number of energy trophies.

I find this suggestion somewhat akin to all the knee-jerk discussions we've had in recent months about changing the energy system simply because one clan is winning. This system has worked for 2yrs, and there is no evidence that arbitrarily changing it now will have any significant impact on the game other than piss off some of the few remaining loyal players. Given Ender's limited time available to work on this game, I would rather he spent his time busting obvious cheaters or adding some content to the game such as the long overdue showroom overhaul or PvE.

+1 could not have said it any better

While I'm up for any changes that shake up the game and make it more interesting, the last paragraph is an interesting point. A lot of suggestions recently seem to be "punish people for being good at the game", not "make the game better". The players who put the most effort in shouldnt find the game fighting against them, that's the players job.

I don't see where you guys get all these other ideas from. It's simply maxing out tourney bots to 20 per clan. Just because 3 people only make tourney bots doesn't mean that others won't. The reason they don't is because these 3 have so much of an advantage over new players with their hundreds of stars and fight calculators that aren't available for the public. A good tournament bot could be made with 3-6 stars (maybe 9, max) and the reason why the tournament isn't attractive is A) there's no hope of winning 1st, B) it takes quite a number of tournament bots to even try to get 1st (having 1 is normally not enough to guarantee 1st in a category every month the way it is), and C) the number of bots that can enter for one clan is too high.

I just suggested a way to fix option C. It is just one part of the way to fixing tournaments. While doing one thing to fix them may cause a knee jerk reaction without overhauling the entire system, you guys have to be more open to ideas. If you are just going to overthink everything and not fix anything, then honestly just give us autoclickers right now and never look at the game again Ender. And Myriad, if Ender wanted to be working on those ideas, he would be already.

I'll leave it there because you guys are complaining and overthinking too much about something that would barely change the game at all. So what is Escapism or Bazza puts 20 bots in another clan, they'll still win and have 20 trophies or whatever. I have 1 tournament bot that I don't even enter on a monthly basis because what god damn good is one bot? I'd have to make hundreds to even probably get 2nd in a few categories on a monthly basis. It would just be better to have 20 member clans fight each month because then people would just make 20 bots and not worry about making more really because they all would be fighting on near equal grounds for 1st monthly *given a spread of levels etc.). Any system that is too complex to care about is not going to have many admirers.

Mind you I find it laughable that the tournament even exists since Escapism uses their personal fight simulators not available to the public to guarantee them wins regardless. The rest of us essentially have to throw shit against a wall. I would've disqualified every one of you for cheating (in this regard using a program not available to others to guarantee you success, much like an autoclicker) a long time ago if I were Ender.

I just love your comments about the fight calculator I made. If you wanna use it, yeah ask for it. Nobody asked it from me anyways. Warning: this fight calculator isn't user-friendly and its use is complex (you need to install programs and edit script's commands). That's like that because I'm a very noob programmer and I dont know how to make it better :P

I'm more split on this than you would think, Zal, but this didn't sit well with me:

Mind you I find it laughable that the tournament even exists since Escapism uses their personal fight simulators not available to the public to guarantee them wins.

This is honestly peak Escapism hatred with absolutely no indication you want to improve the game. Are you suggesting players should be prohibited from doing things to increase their chances of success at a game?

• There (is?)/was a public fight simulator
• No one is banned from making their own simulators. Someone else work on a way to improve their bots? God no! Just complain that someone actually put a bit of thought into a strategy game.
• It's essentially just a calculator, there's no requirement to make it "public"
• I'd never heard of it until now, its not some Escapism sinister ploy, no one told me about it.
• It's obviously not guarenteeing wins, as Nep gets lots of wins and Bazza is doing pretty well in the lower categories.

Are you expecting Esv (apparently) to release it and publicise it to every possibly player? When the first person invented freaking, was it their obligation to publish a guide and tell other players about their efforts so they wouldn't "unfairly" benefit from hard work?

I better get in touch with all the

• Football coaches in the world, they better tell each other their tactics so everyone has exactly a 50/50 chance to win!
• Mobile phone creators - its unfair if they have some new technology like curved screens or better cameras that other phones don't have!
• League of Legends/DotA2 teams, they better reveal exactly what their intentions are in tournaments to the opposite teams

I'm seriously amazed at the stupidity in that quote so I'm gonna stop now, but I could go on.

How about just requiring a bot to have been in the clan for a week, so no treasury abuse can happen? Or just the 20 best ranking bots count, just like the energy system.

This seems pretty reasonable. The combination of these two ideas would close the existing "stuff the clan to the brim right before the tournament starts" loophole without much downside IMO. There would still be large clans with tournament bots, but it would require active high level bots to keep the treasury full.

Limiting the number of entrants would not stop Escapism from winning every month

I think that's okay. My intention to patch this loophole actually predates Escapism's tournament dominance, FWIW. I don't want players to think I'm out to punish top clans or handicap them or make the game more tedious. The reason why I haven't done anything about the existing loophole is because I haven't been able to come up with a solid way of addressing it. The goal of these changes is to avoid a system that requires you to use a loophole to be competitive. Having to temporarily add a bunch of bots to your clan for a few hours every months is weird game mechanic that shouldn't have to be done to win. If Escapism continues to win after that's no longer the case, that's not a problem.

The reason they don't is because these 3 have so much of an advantage over new players with their hundreds of stars and fight calculators that aren't available for the public.

That seems exaggerated and pretty far fetched to me. Most people who give a damn about participating in tournies have and are doing so. There's plenty of personal accomplishment with it (which I think is the main appeal) and the clan trophies related to it are just a bonus.

The stars I find pretty laughable in this instance, you literally only need them for a day or two unless you're doing the very top categories. It's also not difficult at all to find somebody to borrow some from, which also can be said for ratio whores if you do want to do the higher categories.

Also, I too haven't heard of the simulator Esv made, or have at least forgotten. It's not rocket science anyway, a simulator is really only needed to see like a 1% margin. Anything larger than that and you can call the build trash at a glance. I've won in 3 different categories without using a sim on my first build attempt in each (uncommon ones at that), it's completely unnecessary to have a sim.

I think that's okay. My intention to patch this loophole actually predates Escapism's tournament dominance, FWIW. I don't want players to think I'm out to punish top clans or handicap them or make the game more tedious. The reason why I haven't done anything about the existing loophole is because I haven't been able to come up with a solid way of addressing it. The goal of these changes is to avoid a system that requires you to use a loophole to be competitive. Having to temporarily add a bunch of bots to your clan for a few hours every months is weird game mechanic that shouldn't have to be done to win. If Escapism continues to win after that's no longer the case, that's not a problem.

The only reason Escapism/Bazza have to use this 'weird mechanic' is because of the outdated treasury/clan tax system. It's no secret that this game has been losing players and activity slowly throughout the years, and having a tax to weed out inactive clans is pointless when there are already so few clans/players to start with. Back in the early days of bots2, there was no treasury system, and only once the game became more active/popular was it implemented. A couple of months ago there were less than 100 clans in the entire game, so that even broken whores on the server got an end of month trophy.

We hear complaints from players that there is nothing to do in this game once energy targets are drained - well the obvious solution is to remove all clan tax/member limits and allow a free for all. Seems like a win/win scenario to me.

In any case I am curious to know what implementing this tourney bot limit will actually achieve. If you really want to promote tourney clan competition, the best place to start is by actively recruiting and retaining new players so that we can actually have a proper inter-clan competition rather than intra-clan competition. Changing the rules of a one clan race does not change anything.

You say you're not out to punish top players, well why not prove it and add something that will actually benefit everyone rather than neuter the top players and have absolutely no effect on the others? If you are serious about trying to improve the player base I would have thought the best place to start would be to focus your attention on new features that aim to give, rather than take away.

The only reason Escapism/Bazza have to use this 'weird mechanic' is because of the outdated treasury/clan tax system.

I disagree with the premise a bit. In bots4, the clan tax system also serves to provide a soft member cap. You can go past the expected 20 bots in a clan, but then pay exponentially more tax as you go beyond that. This allows more established clans to have more members, which in turn makes high level bots provide more value with treasury filling.

In any case I am curious to know what implementing this tourney bot limit will actually achieve. If you really want to promote tourney clan competition, the best place to start is by actively recruiting and retaining new players

I don't think these are mutually exclusive options. In fact, I think the combination of (a) attracting/retaining more new players and (b) lowering the barrier to entry for competition to more reasonable levels will work well to create healthy competition.

You say you're not out to punish top players, well why not prove it and add something that will actually benefit everyone rather than neuter the top players and have absolutely no effect on the others?

I would have hoped my openness about all this and sharing my thought process would have already demonstrated that I'm not out to blindly hand out nerfs. I've given this a great amount of thought and have listened to a lot of player feedback. If I wanted to "neuter" top players, as you say, then I would simply implement the first and easiest thing I thought of.

At the end of the day, I don't like how the current system encourages stuffing transient mercenary bots into the clan once a month on tournament day. That doesn't fit with the kind of game I want this to be.

I disagree with the premise a bit. In bots4, the clan tax system also serves to provide a soft member cap. You can go past the expected 20 bots in a clan, but then pay exponentially more tax as you go beyond that. This allows more established clans to have more members, which in turn makes high level bots provide more value with treasury filling.

How about only taxing clans for exceeding 20 members then :D

I disagree with the premise a bit. In bots4, the clan tax system also serves to provide a soft member cap. You can go past the expected 20 bots in a clan, but then pay exponentially more tax as you go beyond that. This allows more established clans to have more members, which in turn makes high level bots provide more value with treasury filling.

The value of the soft member cap is also debatable given that only 20 members can contribute toward the clan monthly energy total per month. You mention that high level bots can contribute towards bigger clans by filling their treasuries, well why can't tourney bots contribute towards their clan by claiming points in the tourney?

I don't think these are mutually exclusive options. In fact, I think the combination of (a) attracting/retaining more new players and (b) lowering the barrier to entry for competition to more reasonable levels will work well to create healthy competition.

Maybe they're not mutually exclusive, but focusing on capping tourney entrants instead of new player recruitment/retainment with the goal of creating healthy competition is like plugging a few holes in the Titanic after the iceberg has just gutted it. There has been a lot of mention of changes to revamping new player experience and the like, but no real action nor improvement in game activity aside from old players transiently returning. It just feels like the game is in pure maintenance mode given that on the rare occasion there is a change/addition made it is a minor bug fix or tweak that doesn't actually improve anything significant in the game. If that's the way it's going to be fine, but at the very least don't make changes that are going to negatively affect a significant proportion of the already small player base.

We can train the tax easily anyway, but for capping the amount of players per clan sucks, Escapism has 1 third of top 10 level almost, choosing who would participate is not acceptable.

Played time over 3 years combined, game exist 6 years.

Dont try to drive out the most loyal players because some idiots cant win a tourney or take top clan.

We worked hard for this, i understand its a setback for newer players, but if you want to succeed you have to work, and most of new players have a 6 year disadvantage.

If the leader has to choose to enter a bot, we have 3 in top 10 level, wtf is that about.

just leave it like is, and add more rounds to it, and top clans of at 80 or 100 members, clan tax would prevent them to be there non stop anyway.

Boy, how many times have you escapism guys used that canned speech in a reply to something you don't agree with Ciuc2 (and you disagree with everything that might make the game better and a bit tougher for you.)

escapism is the main reason why many online browser games perform a complete reset every 3 to 6 months. And I'm not saying that should be done here because everyone whether they are long term "loyal players" like escapism players, have done a lot of "hard work." You aren't the only ones.

Just saying, that canned reply is rather tiresome. Is that posted in your clan forum someplace and you are programmed to use it as a response all the time? Seems that way. lol

So escapism players are "the most loyal" players while everybody else that aren't in escapism are idiots? Pretty condescending thing to say isn't it? Absolutely no one else in the history of this game has ever "worked hard" according to you. Thats not just condescending it's insulting to a lot of people. You're attitude is sickening actually.

And you don't think what you just said is tiresome?

Im going to keep it short havent had time to read everything, great suggestion although the main clan race being the energy race is in more urgent need of a cap.

I dont dislike Escapism they are nice people but we cant do 1-4 vs 15-25 active players each month and claim there is competiton because the team thats 3x bigger only won by a small amount this time can we?Haha I mean come on Ender? Escapism as a clan are not being tested in any aspect of the game its just that simple ...hopefully you will wake up soon.

So Pothead, you would like each clan capped to 4 competing members each then? Is that what would be fair? If you only have 1-4 active players you can barely even call yourself a clan and you shouldn't expect to come close to winning. I mean come on, Bazza has made more score for MV this month than Eternal combined. In any case, your numbers are a gross exaggeration. This month Escapism has about 5-6 active scorers. If you want to only score on your main, then that's your loss.

People seriously need to stop complaining and making half-assed suggestions on the back of laziness and unwillingness to adapt. Call it elitist or whatever, but if you want to win something in bots, you need to plan, prepare and above all else put in time. Time recruiting, making bots and going ftw when the time is right. These aren't new concepts, but you wouldn't know it looking at the forums these days. In the end, the one thing that would address all these complaints is new blood. That should be the primary focus of the game right now imo, not chopping and changing what has worked for years.

how many times have you escapism guys used that canned speech

I love how we constantly get lumped together as one even when it has no relevance to the clan system. I'm pretty certain several of us have shown varying and opposing views on suggestions, but I guess nobody ever sees that. We're just one big hive-mind, yup.

And I'm not saying that should be done here because everyone whether they are long term "loyal players" like escapism players, have done a lot of "hard work." You aren't the only ones.

So escapism players are "the most loyal" players while everybody else that aren't in escapism are idiots? Pretty condescending thing to say isn't it? Absolutely no one else in the history of this game has ever "worked hard" according to you. Thats not just condescending it's insulting to a lot of people. You're attitude is sickening actually.

LOL what? Where has any Escapism member said, or even inferred that? Pretty ironic of you to put words in our mouths and call our attitude sickening.

People seriously need to stop complaining and making half-assed suggestions on the back of laziness and unwillingness to adapt.

Sums it up. The game saw ridiculous dominance by Eternal early on and it took a massive effort, months of planning and recruiting and then months of failing for Escapism to take the #1 spot. The recent challengers seem to think it should be a close battle between #1 and #2 regardless of how much effort they put in.

The staleness of #1 has nothing to do with Escapism, we're quite weak at the minute. Any eternal team from a year or more ago would be smashing us if they were scoring. Instead of complaining that a team is too good (which we aren't), how about you recruit, build infrastructures and organise yourselves?

Haha I mean come on Ender? Escapism as a clan are not being tested in any aspect of the game its just that simple ...hopefully you will wake up soon.

Missed this. Absolutely ridiculous sentence. Game developers should never "balance" a game based on a group of people not wanting to put as much effort in as another group.

Fishwick, I don't know you because we have never talked or corresponded. I will say this though after reading your forum quips. You have no business being a moderator in this game and for one reason. You have absolutely NO impartiality. Everything you say is biased and that bias comes from your association with the clan you always side with. Ender would be doing a service to this game if he were to remove you from being a moderator. But then ender himself shows plenty of bias towards the escapism side of things so nothing will change.

I'm not defending eternal or pot head but he is on to something here. The fact that eternal dominated the game a few years ago has nothing to do with the "situation" now. That was during the early part of the game and what they were doing doesn't seem like what you are doing. In addition I believe that Pothead is a descent person (I'm NOT saying that you aren't so don't put those words in my mouth) and the fact that he "only" uses his main to score on is a commendable thing and its not something that escapism should be finding fault with.

Escapism... Take a look at past threads and YOU count the number of times YOU and different members of your clan have used the "we work harder than other bots players do" statement. I wouldn't have brought that up if I haven't seen it many times. My point is that other people work just as hard at what they are doing and that you are not the only ones. Why don't you give other players some credit for a change instead of putting them down?.

The bottom line here is that YES, the main problem here is the two year domination of escapism in this game as far as OTHER non escapism players go and something needs and SHOULD be done about it.

Ender. How about starting up a blue server and let other players go there and start up domination by somebody else for a change. Then escapism will have no competition what so ever here and can win unimpeded every month. Wait a minute, thats already what they are doing. I wonder how many long time bots players would defect to a blue server? It would probably kill the play here. Other games have many servers and they do server resets as well. Maybe that should be done here.

If there was no problem with what is going on here then so many different people would NOT be bringing it up all the time. Its not just one or two people, it's many people that find things distasteful and bringing in new people will only make them find things distasteful too. Why bother because nothings going to change... I give up trying to make common sense points because a lot of people here are just to thick headed with personal bias to see the other side of the coin. Most of the players are escapism so let them have the game, who cares anymore. I'm going back to my little training clan. Cheers.

Plus Fishwick "the biased moderator". I'm not saying it's you (although it probably is, so I'll say it) but different posts in other threads seem to be mysteriously disappearing. Why is that?

Stuff about me being a mod and impartial

Thankfully, mods are allowed opinions, or I'd just ask not to be a mod. That being said, I like to think my opinions aren't biased as I've agreed with sensible changes (such as coming up with ideas that'll stop our dominance in tourneys). I don't agree with bad or ill-informed ideas though, and thats what this thread is. It's essentially "one clan is too good, lets change the game purely to combat that", when that has never happened in the history of any game, ever.

That was during the early part of the game and what they (Eternal) were doing doesn't seem like what you are doing

Shows you didn't play then. Eternal had complete and utter dominance that Escapism haven't even come close to. Their win streak record still exists, they would frequently triple opposing clans scores with no effort, and even beat Alan when he was ACing (Escapism could not beat Ville when he was ACing, using Alans AC).

Why don't you give other players some credit for a change instead of putting them down?.

It's not about putting them down. It's about understanding that the changes proposed are literally just "that set of people are achieving too much because they put the most time in, in the past and now, lets change things so they can't do so".

Blue server

I'm all for it. It'd probably make me play again. Pretty much every player would be for that as everyone would appreciate a new server. Contrary to what you think, winning isn't everything and every Escapism member would relish a chance to start fresh. Ender has said it won't happen, though.

We're going round in circles with these posts, so I'm going to make this my last one. No matter what is said, your comment is "Oh no that clan are too good, we should change the game to mess them up". You aren't suggesting good changes that will get new players, or more active players, just things to fuck over someone that IS playing the game. It'd be like FIFA going to Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern and breaking all their players legs, then saying "Football is more fair now, different teams can win the champions league".

You need to stop grouping Escapism as one big hivemind. Our clan forum is shamefully inactive and (I at least) don't discuss things with other members. We are all individual players with our own opinions (look at mine, Gpof and Myriads contributions to this thread for example, if you actually think about it for a second, you'll see that we didn't actually agree with each other. You just instinctively think OMG IT SAYS ESCAPISM UNDER HIS NAME HE MUST BE A BASTARD.)

I'm all for positive changes to the game, and don't care about losing months when I'm not playing, but changes to the game that just annoy a portion of the player base, without increasing or expanding it, is not a good idea for the long term health of the game. If "the only remaining players are Escapism" (not that they are), why would you want to scare those players away?

You just don't get it so why bother.

Ok then. Let's talk about your propensity to offhandedly delete posts in other threads that aren't offensive or off topic just because you don't like it.

You have no business being a moderator in this or any forum.

No responses to anything, no disagreements then?

Thats off topic, and the perfect candidate for deletion as this thread has nothing to do with that.

Why respond to anything or disagree with it. If you don't like the response then you just delete it or give one of your canned and apparently copy and pasted biased opinion statements. Let's face in dude, your bias indeed does make you ineligible to be a moderator on any forum. Moderators should not have personal opinions or attachments to or about anything. They should just sit back and watch that no profanity or other such stuff is posted. If that happens then then they moderate. Besides, who are you to say what is right or wrong.

I've not deleted any posts in this thread, so how exactly does me being a mod affect anything? I'm just another player with opinions about how the game should evolve in this thread. I don't want to be a mod if I can't have an opinion.

Suggestions thread isn't the place to decide that just because I disagree with you, I'm a terrible, biased mod. If you've actually got a problem, speak to Ender. Don't decide you can't argue back to any points and just start personal attacks when no one else has resorted to that.

From this point on, keep it tourney related. Take your issue with me as a mod to Ender.

Jeez... You just don't get it do you? I give up. Talking simple logic to you is a waste of time. Oh well, go ahead and delete this and I'll just repost it. Over and out...

From this point on, keep it tourney related.

Okay, so instead of making a sharply worded speech about the merits of my idea and the random things I/others have said, I have a new, totally radical idea that will REVOLUTIONIZE the tournament system! It might be hard for you people who have a problem and can't comprehend having 20 bots participate in the tournament for a clan, but stick with me!

Ok ok, here it is:

We switch all the tournament results links to this song. Get it? Because only 3 people actually give a shit who wins it! That way this song, Love Song for Myself, will make them feel happy inside because they do indeed love themselves! Plus it has Batman! Who doesn't love Batman?

So, you guys like this idea more? A toddler could implement this idea =D

The fact that eternal dominated the game a few years ago has nothing to do with the "situation" now. That was during the early part of the game and what they were doing doesn't seem like what you are doing.

The bottom line here is that YES, the main problem here is the two year domination of escapism in this game as far as OTHER non escapism players go and something needs and SHOULD be done about it.

It's like you haven't even played this game. The current scoring meta is not something that took an entirety of 2 years of one clan facerolling the game to develop. I'm pretty sure Bazza was the first adapter of using dumpers, and that was in the damn beta. As part of the picture I provided depicts, Rivan was also buying dumpers quite early in the games life. Anyway I think my point should be clear, dumpers are not a new thing.

Ok, so maybe dumpers aren't the issue, but we have all the players! Also the same case. Sera united so many powerhouses prior to the beta ending and they just came out of the gate swinging. Even with bots being at its peak activity, with absolute minimal energy due to lack of inactive bots (essentially the closest thing to real wars we'll ever see) Eternal still came out on top.

Hmm, wow, deja vu. Alright, now I'll list some things that are different or have changed. We have far more established ratio whore chains, win dumpers, basically everything, owned by several people in varying clans. This makes building energy dumpers (or anything) much easier, so people without resources can get them faster. Some people might not have the time though, and that's fine. You can still put up some decently competitive scores without anything but your main scorer. Let's look into that next.

There's way more bots in general, naturally. Lots of said bots are often clanned leaving plenty of stagnant energy, particularly at lower levels (looking at you Zal). I'd also like to mention low level scoring is much more efficient than dumping when targets are available, for those that don't know. You get twice the energy per attack, and it's far less hassle maintaining one bot instead of dozens. The only time it isn't as good is if you run out of buffs/trophy points. If you're running out of buffs however, then that means you're doing at least 1k attacks a day. If you can manage that, then it seems like you have a decent amount of time you're willing and able to put into bots. If that's the case, it may be time to invest in dumpers if you really want to squeeze out energy more quickly.

Again, none of this is new.

Take a look at past threads and YOU count the number of times YOU and different members of your clan have used the "we work harder than other bots players do" statement. I wouldn't have brought that up if I haven't seen it many times. My point is that other people work just as hard at what they are doing and that you are not the only ones. Why don't you give other players some credit for a change instead of putting them down?.

In regards to scoring as a clan, as of late we have been working harder. Results show that very clearly (that's kind of the reason we're even discussing this, is it not?). I don't really think that's been stated often, but I can see how it's easily inferred. Anyway it's a moot point in relation to your following statement because I fail to see where we disregard other players efforts, let alone putting them down. Pothead for example, Fishwick and myself at the very least have acknowledged his scoring on multiple occasions. Even when him and I were flaming each other you can't ignore the numbers that guy puts up. Rith and Zal have probably built half, if not more of the bots that are generating energy available to anybody to steal. In fact I mentioned Zal on this very post already. I could list on and on about the people I have shown respect for but I think I've made my point.

However, I'm definitely no saint. There's people I won't show respect to, mainly because they haven't earned it. Said people might include ones who blame the system, or more talented, or more motivated players for their own ineptitude and shortcomings. This game is 15 years old. The scoring meta has not changed for over 5 of them. The fact that there's still "veteran" players around who express their concerns and gripe over the current state of scoring without even understanding or partaking in it is sad. They have no willingness (or ability) to adapt, and they actively call the people who did, the problem. It's a 15 year old text based game, and there are people who still can't figure out how to play it without being fucking spoon fed. Honestly, it's pathetic.

Myriad I think a cap to 10 would probably be very healthy for the games activity, I would certainly play more anyway and I shouldnt have to play on multiple bots to make up for a cap thats out of sync with the activity of the game. When Eternal were dominant the game was much more active and what does that have to do with the current situation?

Fishwick thanks for your opinion as always, chill out though its only a game remember and at the moment it's pretty boring and stale unless you like to participate/watch one clan win against opponents that cant compete

Also Fishwick it shows how absolutely ridiculous and biased your brain is to say i dont put in the effort of rival clan members i scored more than anyone else in nov/dec on my bot and didnt come anywhere near winning a clan race because of a pointless cap.

Stop taking things personal Pothead, none of what I've said was about you.

I guess all this bitching is normal when someone dominates something. "Usain Bolt is all dopped, check him and if you don't find anything, well let's change the rules and make him start 10 meters back from other runners so everyone has a chance to win".

We have all the same speech (we deserve to win because we worked harder): because its the truth.

Ender is biased towards Escapism: no he isn't, he just agree with us because we are right, what we say is logical. If you can't get it that's not our problem. Learn how to play bots first.

Change the game so we can beat Escapism: it doesn't matter. We will win with any rules Ender puts on. We will win tourney and most of monthly energy competitions. Why? Because we understand how this game works and most people still doesn't know how to make proper ratio whores, wins and energy dumpers, tourny bots, etc, which as Gpof said, is pathetic. We know how to play efficiently too and most people don't know... yes, we have lots of stars and ratio whores which means lot of money invested, but except Benny, I don't think there is any Escapism member who used more money in bots than Lobster or Pothead for example. Many stars where got by deals (ratio whores rapes, bots building, wins dumping, etc).

So, in my point of view, these guys that don't stop whinning by saying things like "the game is broken, fix that Ender", "bots is all biased to Escapism domination", "Fishwick is biased", "Ender is biased", "tournaments are broken", "we can't beat Escapism because game is broken", instead of being humble and recognize they don't have the power/knowledge to win and they should improve their gameplay, they are just mad because they can't win. How can you beat Usain Bolt if you can't run as fast as he can? Train harder instead complaining.

I'm tired of all this bitching. You are such a cry babies for god sake. I was refraining myself from posting but I can't read more things like this. Please, stop doing shit suggestions to the game just because you can't win. It's very pathetic from your part. If you don't like the game, don't play it.

The only thing Ender said that needs to be fixed is tournaments regarding how Escapism accepts all their tourny bots and then kicks them before tax is being paid. Well, if it isnt working as he would like to work, I'm fine with him making changes. I don't care if Escapism will be harmed. I know we will do our best to continue winning the tourny. Now that I'm thinking on it, if the participation of members of a clan is capped, I guess the clan competition will be more like individual "clan" competition, ie, rene, myriad and bazza would have their tourny clans and the winner clan will represent one person instead of a true clan. That being said, only Escapism is competing in the tourny as a true team, why it shouldnt deserve to win clan tourny trophies? Bazza is competing with his clan alone, fifty was doing the same... why dont they put their bots in Eternal too and then Eternal could compete as a clan like Escapism does? I don't understand. Afterall, we win because Rene and Myriad made more or less 1 bot per cat and each one usually gets top 3. All other bots are scorers and can be easily beated by tourny bots. Another reason is people dont have ratio whores to build high level tourny bots or any other type of bots honestly.

Ratio whores are the key in bots gameplay, so each clan should have his own ratio whore chain and pool of stars to lend them to his members. If you are a new clan, start working in building a chain of ratio whores to make it accessible to your trusted members. Then you may think in how to beat Escapism without recurring to the easy whinning "Ender please change things to help us win" and what's stupid is if he does change anything, we will continue to win no matter what!!! :)

Before this thread went a bit sour, it did have some reasonable discussion of tourney dynamics. I wouldn't mind responding to some of the off-topic comments that have been made in this thread and others recently, after which everybody should try and return to slightly more civil discussion re: tourneys (Although it may already be past that point).

i scored more than anyone else in nov/dec on my bot and didnt come anywhere near winning a clan race because of a pointless cap

Actually, Eternal didn't win in November because it only had 3 people score >100k. More importantly, it only had 4 other bots in the top 100, with basically every other bot sitting at x1.00 energy. No clan cap is going to save an Eternal with that kind of activity.

This brings up the general point of 'Escapism having too many people/it's not fair' etc. Gpof and Fishwick did already try and provide a bit of perspective on this topic - our current 7 month streak pales in comparison to Eternal's 17 month streak. Yes there were more people active at that time, but the same theme of opposing clans struggling to put together a line-up to challenge the top clan with any kind of strategy, dedication or longevity is very much true currently. Please re-read the previous sentence to make sure you understand this key point in the context of what I'm about to say:

• It is highly unlikely that a clan with only 3-4 active players is going to beat Escapism, particularly in the way clans have tried in recent months.

Pirate Haven did an alright job last month of staying within reach of us numbers-wise, but in reality were never that close. You're never going to steal a last minute win against Escapism, our strength has always been our scoring potential, particularly at the end of the month as motivation for plats increases. You only have to analyse the way months have gone that we didn't win to realise one key fact - the winning clan put in a large effort early in the month and maintained a good margin for the entirety of that month. A bit over half a year ago Malicious Villainous won doing exactly that with only 3-4 people. Their wins are an exception to the statement I made above, but nevertheless demonstrate the way you should go about trying to win the clan race. I shouldn't have to point things like this out; advice to this effect was even given in another thread recently.

Summing up, from where I stand there just seems to be a complete lack of planning and cohesion in Eternal, Pirate Haven, PMS and Malicious Villainous. It's like some of you think you deserve to win just because you put in a good effort. Many of you quite frankly don't have the dumpers, whores, experience, etc. to compete. There is no reason to change the clan competition because of certain deficiencies and other factors in the player base that prevent it from providing competitive opposition for Escapism. I see more than enough potential amongst all of you to even form 2 ultra-competitive clans. Honestly.

I therefore direct what I'm about to say to the owners and members of the aforementioned clans (And those maybe not in a clan) - you can beat Escapism if you think about what you're doing. Communicate with players in other clans, form partnerships, etc. Have your own personal plan about how you're going to score in a month. Are you going to use dumpers? What level ranges are you going to score in? Are your builds up to standard? (Short answer: No, some of you have bots that could be drained within an inch of their life) You then need to communicate with others in your clan and integrate your plans. Help the less experienced members in your clan. Most importantly you then need to have a bit more dedication to scoring as a clan when your ftw month actually comes along. Esvrainzas' above post is a tad brutal but he talks honestly about some of the general points being discussed these days and has some good advice.

As for the actual topic of tourney dynamics, there have been some interesting issues raised and suggestions made; some reasonable, others not. I too have thought about tourney dynamics in some detail, but also haven't come up with an all-encompassing suggestion to address every issue. As such I'd like to reserve judgement on some of the suggestions made in this thread, but I do agree that tourney day mass enrolment is a loophole of sorts. Myriad did bring up a good counter point about this loophole though and it's relation to the clan tax system and the state of the game. Whilst the intention was to provide a soft member cap, over the years I think the relatively quick loss of clans/energy to the tax man may have been harmful.

To those of you calling Fishwick biased, I have only ever known him to be extremely impartial. He, along with the other mods, are 100% entitled to their own opinion on suggestions being made, particularly when they are game changing. Being a mod is a thankless job on a sometimes bizarre forum with such a negative vocal minority. I speak for experienced and new players alike that don't really use the forum when I say that most of the discussion doesn't entice you to post anything.

You know, with all your long political, non-logical posts Escapism members, you're not really helping yourselves here. While you might be thinking that "we're the best, it took us forever to get here so we deserve everything" attitude is helping your case, you do the opposite. You actually make more of a case why this game should straight out die. If one clan has so much more than others, what is the point of competing at all then?

This just came to my head is all. Instead of all our clans joining together to defeat you should just idle forever. Delete/make our whore clans worth 0 energy. With no competition you would become bored to the point the game truly dies. You'd have to fight among yourselves to keep entertained. You'd gain your stupid platinum trophies with no difficulty. You'd gain numbers but have no pleasure in having defeated anyone. All your money and time spent would be for nothing. And Ender would pay for his inaction of doing anything to stop it.

Generally speaking though all these words have been for nothing because the original idea will never be implemented in any way, shape or form. Just another stupid Zal suggestion to throw away. Escapism and Eternal have been playing you for years to keep you in your rut and not have anything happen to the game. I present you with basic logic from a development perspective and you need 100% of everyone's opinion to actually do something. Just grow a spine and do something you want, don't give a shit about us. Blizzard does it all the time and people still buy their garbage lol.

While you might be thinking that "we're the best, it took us forever to get here so we deserve everything" attitude is helping your case, you do the opposite. You actually make more of a case why this game should straight out die. If one clan has so much more than others, what is the point of competing at all then?

Personally them taking forever and actually managing to get to where they are makes more a case that if one were to work harder + smarter than them, it could work out. Logically speaking, if one group could bridge the gap, others could, given equal or more effort and knowledge. If other clans know what they did, why don't they simply do the same? Maybe they simply have other priorities in life.

In most games, even after the most game-breaking nerf, the best players will always still come up on top, unless they leave the game or become less active. The ones who consistently stay on top in any game are usually the ones quickest to adapt to changes and who play a lot more than others.

If there are bugs and loopholes they should be dealt with. But a change for the sole purpose of crippling the top clan -not improving the overall game- seems short-sighted and possibly ineffectual.

I cant read this nonsense posts anymore, everyone here just bitching and crying about escapism but nobody actually is even trying to beat them at all. just shut up for a month or two and build some dumpers and after that stay active every fucking day for at least 2-3 hours and dump that energy on your main bot, it is fucking EASY to get 1mil energy ! make a fucking team of 5 players and stick to that, you dont need to change any fucking rules of this game

This talk about "how great we are because we work harder", how "we're smarter than everyone else," how "everybody else except the guys in our clan are lazy idiots" and on and on is BS. You can pat yourselves on the back and say how weak you have become all you want but it will never change anything and it will not help improve the game in general for EVERYONE and everyone should benefit, not just you.

Thats the problem here, you are so dominant that you dictate what happens and the admin goes along with it and he consequently does nothing. Just admit it, you do not want any changes at all simply because it might change things around and maybe make it harder for you personalty.

Don't do anything to increase the energy targets because you don't want anybody to have anything to fight. "If" people did band together then you just might get beat and that can not happen because of the thousands of hours and thousands of $$ that you put in to the game would then have gone for naught. Right?

You have all the forum moderators that can shut down opinions different from yours in the forum. You have the game owner / administrator in your back pocket. You have the deep pockets that not many others have because it just ain't worth it. You have all the dumpers and whores that you shut down and keep for your personal use, you online people, infiltrate their clans to spy and do whatever it takes to win at any cost.

Is this game really that much fun for you playing like that? I understand thats all part of the game and thats fine. I'm not going to do it. Why should you open up YOUR whores for others to rape you say, but then you can gang up on other clans whores (and say that wars and changing the scoring system would destroy the game) so that they have nothing to fight and thats ok.

You don't play hard because you don't have to. All you need to do is keep the score close and you activate your dumpers during the last day and pull out another easy win. But then you did spend years to build up that ability while everyone else is just plain old lazy according to you. Have at it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, clans like yours are why a lot of games perform resets or have several servers. It's to control domination because some people don't like it and they will leave and never come back.

The bottom line here is that you do not want any changes made to the game if it will interfere with the way you want the game to go. You spend thousands of hours building up your dynasty, so what. There are some guys that do not agree with you and other new guys that are in such awe of you that they blindly agree with you, that is until they stay around long enough to see how it really is........ Whatever...

you online people, infiltrate their clans to spy and do whatever it takes to win at any cost.

Honestly dude, when you're saying stuff like this, it just makes you seem like you're hating for hatings sake and not actually thinking about things. Without trying to blow our own horn, Escapism are reasonably "nice" and will never online or use dirty tactics first. Besides, I've not heard of that happening for like a year now at least? Malicious beat us half a year ago and as far as I recall, we didn't do anything like that to try and win. Nor did we last month when Pirates came close. Our first resort when it comes to close races is the 135s we can rape and scatter dumping, onlining people is a waste of time when you have better "backup" scoring options.

Hate on the "unfair" system all you want, but don't make us out to be something we aren't.

If you have the time and patience to actually online us while scoring you have more than enough to beat us :P. Pirates gave us a good run last month to a point i rushed my plans to reset my bot from 330 to a 130 blaster to getting plats for fighting :P.

...it will never change anything and it will not help improve the game in general for EVERYONE and everyone should benefit, not just you.

You want to improve the game for yourself, not for everyone. The best players should get the benefits not every noob.

Thats the problem here, you are so dominant that you dictate what happens and the admin goes along with it and he consequently does nothing.

We don't dictate nothing, we just give our opinion like you are doing. What happens is that our arguments are logical, solid and valuable due to our understanding of the game, while your suggestion are just meh (read whining).

Just admit it, you do not want any changes at all simply because it might change things around and maybe make it harder for you personalty.

I'll admit: I dont care if changes are made or not. Sure, lets change things, atleast there will be something new to do and we can be stimulated to think in new strategies. I know we will adapt and we will win. I dunno what makes you think we will have trouble if anything is changed. Maybe it will be even harder for you to win ;)

Don't do anything to increase the energy targets because you don't want anybody to have anything to fight. "If" people did band together then you just might get beat and that can not happen because of the thousands of hours and thousands of $$ that you put in to the game would then have gone for naught. Right?

Increase energy targets? Anything to fight? Ah you mean low level scoring. Well that's your scoring strategy. It's a valid one and I admit is hard to counter attack. So, we need to score at those levels too because the obvious problem for you is the fact that energy is public and we escapism can benefit from it too. So, if you decide to build whores, dont be pissed up if someone steals that energy because you made it public. Now, build dumpers and you will have YOUR own energy, you wont ever have anything to fight. So, I dont care if you have or not have anything to fight. I have because I built dumpers to prevent that situation. What have you done? You built low level whores which are super easy to do. Please...

Thousands of hours and $$ gone for naught? Because someone beat us? It can happen and it already happened and we are still here. Bring that band together and beat us, we dont have a problem if someone does that.

You have all the forum moderators that can shut down opinions different from yours in the forum. You have the game owner / administrator in your back pocket. You have the deep pockets that not many others have because it just ain't worth it. You have all the dumpers and whores that you shut down and keep for your personal use, you online people, infiltrate their clans to spy and do whatever it takes to win at any cost.

There are 3 mods and just 1 is from Escapism. So you are getting something wrong there. You mean active mods? Yeah, he is from Escapism. Ask Ender to be a mod yourself if you think you can convince Ender you will do that job well (from your posts I would guess you can't convince him). That leads to the argument "Ender is on your side because you paid him". Please, look at the last contributions in the homepage. NONE is from Escapism. Now explain me how we have Ender in our pocket.

We keep dumpers for our personal use because thats WHY WE BUILT THEM. Duh? Do you see how stupid you sound? We online people? Yes, I remember Gpof doing that to Pothead and probably that was the biggest case I ever seen an Escapism member doing so. As I'm aware of, no heavy onlining is occurring preventing scoring from other players. We infiltrate to spy? It's our fault you accept every bot that applies to your clan without ever asking who is that player? I don't know if we have spies in Escapism but we surely try to avoid it at maximum. I would even say that our recruitment process played a key role in our success as a team. Do whatever it takes to win at any cost? If it's legal, why not doing it? Ofc I'm not ok with using an AC like some people seems to be still using, but the things you said are legal and ofc we will do them.

Is this game really that much fun for you playing like that? I understand thats all part of the game and thats fine. I'm not going to do it. Why should you open up YOUR whores for others to rape you say, but then you can gang up on other clans whores (and say that wars and changing the scoring system would destroy the game) so that they have nothing to fight and thats ok.

Personally, this game is funnier when we arent dominating. On the other side, I enjoy looking back and see how we established as the strongest clan. However, I already play this game for too many time to know the current status will change someday eventually. So, I just try to keep my team motivated and when we aren't the strongest team, I do all I can to make it better again. We can gang up on other whore clans because, I will repeat myself, that energy is PUBLIC. It's not our fault that you guys do those type of bots. You can always try to steal the energy from our dumpers, nothing prevents you doing that. So, we can always try to steal the energy from the bots you built too no?

You don't play hard because you don't have to. All you need to do is keep the score close and you activate your dumpers during the last day and pull out another easy win. But then you did spend years to build up that ability while everyone else is just plain old lazy according to you. Have at it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, clans like yours are why a lot of games perform resets or have several servers. It's to control domination because some people don't like it and they will leave and never come back.

So, start building that ability for your clan too. We made it because we needed to make it to beat Eternal. That is competition. That is how this game works. Again, stop complaining about it and do something. Talk is easy, work is hard. How many times do you need to hear it? Bots never done resets. I agree it may be harmful for the competition. However, if resets do occur, well, I would definitely play more actively in the season I choose to play. And I would hopefully do very well with my current knowledge of the game :)

The bottom line here is that you do not want any changes made to the game if it will interfere with the way you want the game to go. You spend thousands of hours building up your dynasty, so what. There are some guys that do not agree with you and other new guys that are in such awe of you that they blindly agree with you, that is until they stay around long enough to see how it really is........ Whatever...

With the way we want the game to go? The game is what it is. If it is completely changed, it wont be bots4. Well, bring wars then. We will make the best whore clans and we will win. Cap the scoring members to 10. Well, we will have lot of people competing for those 10 spots, we will win. My feeling is, no matter what changes are made, we will always adapt to them and try our best to win. Do you have any doubt on that? if we dont win the first month, we will win the second or third or fourth, but we will win because we want to win.

So, the bottom line here is that I had a lot of work to answer you line by line because as I said before, I'm sick of posts like yours. But anyway, keep bitching. In some sense is fun to think all this whining is just due to jealous of what we accomplished. I'm perfectly fine with your bitching because I know in the end of the day we will beat you again if you continue doing what you currently do.

Maybe they're not mutually exclusive, but focusing on capping tourney entrants instead of new player recruitment/retainment with the goal of creating healthy competition is like plugging a few holes in the Titanic after the iceberg has just gutted it.

This is probably more a reflection of my work style. I tend to be exploring several paths at once in a breadth-first style as opposed to depth-first. To put it another way, I work on multiple changes at the same time instead of sequentially fully finishing one, moving onto the next, and so on. It's not that I'm completely focused on problem A instead of problem B, but that I happen to be in a thread discussing problem A at the moment, so it looks like I don't care about problem B.

Haha I mean come on Ender? Escapism as a clan are not being tested in any aspect of the game its just that simple ...hopefully you will wake up soon.

In your defense, you said you didn't read the whole thread, but a lot of the back-and-forth in this thread is actually Escapism claiming I'm only out to blindly hurt the top clan simply because they're the top clan.

The recent challengers seem to think it should be a close battle between #1 and #2 regardless of how much effort they put in.

That's very much not my intention, FWIW. For those that were around in the bots2 days, you might remember my lengthy arguments against the tournament point system used in that game which effectively made it impossible for the top-level bot to win, all in the interest of putting all bots on "even" footing. I've worked hard to avoid falling into those same sorts of traps with bots4, not wanting to add the equivalent of a "catch up" feature from a racing game.

The staleness of #1 has nothing to do with Escapism

Just to reiterate, I have no problem with the same clan winning repeatedly. That is not the problem I'm trying to fix, though a lot of the arguments presented in this thread are missing this nuance and seem to be treating that as a starting assumption to argue against.

But then ender himself shows plenty of bias towards the escapism side of things so nothing will change.

I don't think spending my time on this thread is very productive. It's clear that everyone's going to see what they want to see. If you're Escapism, I'm an idiot that just wants to make all clans have the same chance at winning regardless of effort. If you're not Escapism, I'm an idiot that only cares about Escapism. Very draining to feel like my attempts at impartiality and rationalty are not recognized whatsoever.

Plus Fishwick "the biased moderator". I'm not saying it's you (although it probably is, so I'll say it) but different posts in other threads seem to be mysteriously disappearing. Why is that?

I replied to your bmail demanding (!) that Fishwick be removed as a moderator before I saw that your demands spilled out to this thread, so I'll just copy/paste my response for all to see because despite this being extremely off-topic, I want everyone to know that moderation is something I take seriously:

Which thread(s) are you referring to? I only see one deletion from the past few days and it looks pretty uncontroversial, but maybe you're referring to something older?

Also, moderation in general is a thankless job and Fishwick has been a reliable moderator for awhile now, so it would probably lead to a more productive conversation if we shift the discussion away from "this person should not be a moderator" and more towards "I disagree with this specific instance of moderation". In other words, if there's something got moderated that shouldn't have, let's make it a teachable moment instead. I keep a close eye on what gets moderated and do step in occasionally when I feel a moderator has overstepped their bounds, so I'm happy to dig in further if I've overlooked something.

I've been on forums and games where this is a problem and it sucks. I can guarantee you that no one's opinions are being silenced or squelched in this thread (or more widely this forum). Just look at how often I take a beating if you need proof of my word. You have it extremely good here.

It's essentially "one clan is too good, lets change the game purely to combat that"

Again, this is 100% NOT what I am trying to do. I am apparently wasting my time trying to tell people not to misrepresent my intentions though, so yes - it's that simple, you figured out my grand plan...I spend all of my waking moments trying to dismantle Escapism. Everything I said before about taking my time to find a solution with the right balance of fairness and not penalizing the top clan simply for being the top clan was all a distraction to try to fool you.

...I'm not even half way through this thread, but I don't think I want to spend the next hour of my life sifting through the rest of it. I get beat up enough on these forums as it is and it's extremely taxing on my desire to work on the game further. This toxic environment makes it all very NOT fun. Damned if I do, damned if I don't. No effort of mine feels appreciated anymore, all I see is complaints and questioning of my motives, despite me trying to bring a positive attitude and a daily presence on the forums (I had to take a few days off after the most recent round of replies on this thread and suspect I will be needing another break now). I think I need a community manager so I can just focus on what I like to do (coding and game design) instead of having to justify and re-justify and explain the same points over and over. I'm very much aware that you'll never be able to reach a consensus on a game design question with the players of an online game, but I was particularly disappointed with the way the discussion in this thread went (or maybe this is more reflective of my generally feeling burned-out on these forums). My repeated attempts at providing reasoned and rational arguments have been distilled into nothing more than simple straw men to argue against.

Silly Ender, the only reason you have any of these problems is you ignore all my awesome ideas :P

I think I need a community manager

Pick me, it'd be hilarious.

Generally speaking though out of all these long posts, I'd just like to say this to Ender:

I know that come March 3rd you'll be in a line buying the Nintendo Switch and we'll never see you again if you get it. So it's been fun ;) Maybe one day if I get one we'll be friends on it so I can beat you in Splatoon 2 or Mario Kart 8 lol.

I do agree that this thread has devolved somewhat into an Escapism vs everyone else discussion, regardless of Ender's intentions. For the record I don't think Ender is out to intentionally screw Escapism; I feel that a lot of the comments in this thread were directed at people like Pothead/Project XYZ rather than Ender himself. Just the fact that Ender's initial plans aligned with the OP's post perhaps dragged him into all of this.

However it doesn't change the fact that we don't have competition at tourney level simply because there aren't enough players with enough resources and/or deep enough knowledge of the game to make any significant number of relevant tourney bots. Until that problem is fixed, all other interventions act merely as band-aid measures. Only difference is that the band-aid fix in this case serves to improve nothing immediately, at the cost of impairing the enjoyment of the tourney for the few players that have actually dedicated time specifically towards making tourney bots. It doesn't appeal to logic that the most dedicated players get adversely affected by a change catered to people who don't care enough about tourneys to make bots for them in the first place. Maybe that's not the goal, but it is the outcome of a change such as that proposed ITT. I feel like a better solution is actually to have 'tournament-competitor' ranks in the clan similar to the old NC ranks, wherein the bots cannot generate energy. The difference would be that the 'TC' bots if you will would not contribute towards clan tax, and would therefore bypass the loophole of joining with tourney bots on the day of the tournament and leaving within the next 7 days.

I think that I speak for most players when I say that the players remaining in this game do appreciate your regular presence in the forums, Ender. However a lot of this unhappiness expressed in the forums that is unfortunately taken out on you at times stems from the fact that things in this game aren't progressing in a positive direction. Reduced player numbers, reduced competition and no major changes all add up to the toxic environment you mentioned. I said it before in this thread and I'll say it again, the solution is new players. I don't think the solution is quick or easy, but it is the right way forward for bots4 imo.

You all are all over thinking this.

Any bot can enter the clan Tourney, only the top 20 get the plat the first place plat.

You already have a point system in place for Tournaments. The bot that finishes first in their category gets 25 "clan points" towards the clan rankings. All you have to do is use this clan point system to award top plats.

So the top 20 bots with the most clan points get the tourney plat, just like the top 20 bots in a clan get a top clan plat - simple.

The only thing you have to figure out is a tiebreaker, (so bots 18-22 all gained 12 clan points) In this case go by overall win/lose record for the bots in the category.

The 20 bot limit isn't the issue, it was a proposed solution.

You all are all over thinking this. Any bot can enter the clan Tourney, only the top 20 get the plat the first place plat. You already have a point system in place for Tournaments. The bot that finishes first in their category gets 25 "clan points" towards the clan rankings. All you have to do is use this clan point system to award top plats. So the top 20 bots with the most clan points get the tourney plat, just like the top 20 bots in a clan get a top clan plat - simple. The only thing you have to figure out is a tiebreaker, (so bots 18-22 all gained 12 clan points) In this case go by overall win/lose record for the bots in the category.

Lol, not sure if serious. What would this achieve? This does not address any problem that has been raised in this thread, such as the loophole of joining a clan on the day of a tournament and then leaving right after, nor does it promote more competition. It is just a straight nerf. This suggestion doesn't even match your original suggestion at the start of this thread.

This is the very type of suggestion that we are referring to when we talk about players making half assed suggestions with the sole purpose of bringing down the top players in the game. Essentially all you've done is manage to create a microcosm of the entire thread in one post, wtg.

Well if only the top 20 bots get the tourny plat, that means your scoring bots will not get plats, nor will your tp bots that you reset every month (unless you build a workshop freaked bot) will get plats either.

It seems like a perfect solution to me.

So you can feel free to enter all the bots you want in the tourny, but you are going to be taking away plats from your precious scoring bots.

Only the top 20 bots get energy plats, you don't reward the entire clan for monthly energy.. just apply the same premise to clan Tournies.. problem solved.

Enders question was "How do we determine the 20" - because he liked this idea. We determine the 20 based off the top 20 finishes in the tournament via clan points earned in their respective category.

Problem solved.

If you idle the whole month and end up with a x1.00 EPH multiplier and finish outside the top 20 scorers in your clan, then you didn't contribute anything to your clan so of course you don't deserve a top clan plat. However if you score points in the tourney, then you did assist your clan in achieving their no.1 position, and so you should be rewarded for that.

Funny that you finish your post with 'problem solved' when you still haven't mentioned what problem you are fixing in the first place. While you're in the process of suggesting straight up nerfs, why don't you suggest we also remove top clan plats from the game and just award gold trophies for top 10? Oh that's right, that will unveil your true intentions for making suggestions like this. People like yourself remind me of players on other games who beg for nerfs for classes they don't even play just because those classes happen to outperform their own class. The difference in your case, is that you can achieve what we can achieve with a bit more effort, but you're too lazy to put in that effort. If I can't have it, no one else can have it, right? It's honestly a pathetic mentality

I'm not sure if Mentos came up with this himself Myriad but I did make the same suggestion in this thread. Specifically I said:

Max out the amount of participants per clan to 20 or less instead of fixing the tax problem.

Now Mentos had a different idea than me on this. Mentos aka Lobster or Carlton seems to be more targeting Escapism more than anything else but it I think his idea boils down to "the 20 bots that enter are the only ones that will get the trophies, not any other bots". He decided that clan points in the tournament (a sign of participation) could be used for this. The problem he is trying to solve is the fact that scoring bots/other bots are being rewarded to a degree by being in the same clan as tournament bots, which is true. Gpof was level 30 and got 4th in the tournament but got a platinum for just being in Escapism essentially. He didn't really deserve it since he didn't win say 1st or 2nd or 3rd. Same with other bots that didn't even enter the tournament. Essentially the problem is "getting something for nothing".

And we'd all like you Escapism members more if you gave some damn suggestions sometimes rather than arguing about why everything sucks. Dismantling every argument and not offering any suggestions of your own makes it look like you want nothing to change.

Well said Zal, You`re growing on me :)

Escapism scorers aren't 'getting something for nothing'. If you read my previous post you will note that I said if you scored points for your clan in the tourney you deserve to get rewarded with a clan trophy. If you don't score any points in the tourney, you get no tourney cat trophy nor clan trophy. You could argue the tourney bots deserve it more, which is true, but you can apply this concept to other aspects of bots. For example the bot who finishes the month at #10 in the monthly energy rankings gets a plat, the same as someone who just did a 2.5mill month and finished #1, who you could argue deserved it more than someone who may have scored as little as 300-400k. Likewise, the clan who just pushed the top clan all the way and scored 10mill in one month will get the same top 10 clan trophy as a one man clan who scored hard for all of 1hr in the month and snuck in at the last second. The scorers who benefit from the tourney bots are no different to the scorers who scored hard on the last day of the month and snuck into the top 20 scorers in the clan to secure a top clan plat on the back of the hard work of the scorers who finished inside the top 5.

And we'd all like you Escapism members more if you gave some damn suggestions sometimes rather than arguing about why everything sucks. Dismantling every argument and not offering any suggestions of your own makes it look like you want nothing to change.

Again, if you had read this thread then you will note that I have made some suggestions. Suggestions over ways of addressing the 'loophole' which seemed to be the main driving force behind Ender wishing to make this change in the first place, and other suggestions in regards to proper ways of improving competition in this game. But I guess that would get in the way of your irrational Escapism hatred wouldn't it? I don't know how anyone can take you seriously when you mentioned earlier in the thread that we were somehow 'cheating' by utilising fight sims we made ourselves. The reason we (I) seem to spend most of my time in my posts in this thread dismantling arguments is because they are illogical, unreasonably biased and do not add anything to this game. Contrary to your beliefs, we do want changes to occur in this game, just not those that are catered towards people who want to bridge the gap without any effort of their own.

"the 20 bots that enter are the only ones that will get the trophies, not any other bots".

As many bots as any clan wants can enter the tournament.

If the clan wins the plat for having the most clan points in the tournament, instead of every bot getting a platinum trophy, only the top 20 bots in the clan (ranked off clan points earned towards the victory) get the platinum trophy - just like we do energy.

Fair and balanced for everyone, and we don't have to change the clan treasury to fix the loophole.

You can't just limit bots based on their contribution to the tournament from a clan point perspective. There are 18 total tourney cats. It takes no time to make a bunch of workshopped level 30 bots, compared to making a cat 1, 2 or even 3 winner. With your suggestion you are essentially saying that a cat 18 win is worth just as much as a cat 1 win and more than a cat 1 runner up. A suggestion of capping tourney entries like yours will lead to people abusing the tourney system even more by entering loads of bots into the lower level cats. Ender himself has already cited this brute-forcing as a problem, and making a suggestion that will exacerbate the problem is not a solution.

You keep bringing up that you want to restrict top tourney clan trophies to 20 just like top clan trophies, however what you fail to realise is that tournies are a different kettle of fish altogether. It takes time every month to keep your bot in the top 20 to get the top clan plat. In contrast, once a tourney bot is complete, all you have to do is enrol it once a month. Therefore, given a bit of time, it is easier to have >20 competing members in a tournament from 1 clan than >20 competing energy scorers. A suggestion like yours will lower the competition barrier too much to the point of where strategies such as brute forcing/quantity-over-quality that I mentioned become viable ways of winning, which goes against the ideals of tournaments in the first place.

I guess it's time for my 2 cents concerning this matter. Probably more like 4 cents worth seeing how long this piece of shxx is.. lol...

First some of MY opinions and observations about this game and then on to my tourney thoughts which actually tie in to what my suggestion is. This change shouldn't offend anyone (especially the top players) because they are going to win no matter what change is made. If you want to bash "my opinions" because they don't agree with your opinions then go ahead. I don't care, been there and done that numerous times. I'm not going to get in to any name calling episodes so why bother.

1. Like my opinion or not I "think" that Energy and Trophy points have made Bots 4 in to primarily a low level scoring game. Trophy's cause players to (yes) become lazy simply because it only takes a few minutes to get bot(s) to a level so that they can score or be whores so why bother doing any more than that. New players will do this simply because they DO NOT know and will never know anything else because experienced players won't help them, not unless the new player has pledged allegiance to their clan. And why help the enemy to increase competition, right?

2. With #1 said Bots 2 was actually more of a higher level game because thats where having a level 140 cs bot and a bunch of level 140+ whores paid off. Bots 4 is still like that kind of but its more geared to the "top players" simply because they are the ones with all the infrastructure, knowledge and resources. It's really not about being lazy and it ties in with building a tourney bot or any type of bot really and that brings me to point #3

3. It's not easy for some players that have limited $$ resources, that are new players or just plain old lazy like I am to build bots to high level. The main reason is that there are virtually very few high level ratio whores like there were in Bots 2 and people here WILL NOT SHARE and why should they. Trophy points don't really help much in the higher levels unless you have high level whores. If building a high level main is difficult what makes you think that building high level helper ratio whores will be any easier.

4. Your leveling will stop or slow down to a crawl when you run out of trophy points. I run out on this bot all the time and it pretty much has caused me to rethink my goals with this bot and that is to just get this bot to level 175, get the plat and give up. I remember the days back in Bots 2 where I would chat and converse with people and we would share ratio whore knowledge and other ideas in order to level a bot. I got Master Blaster to level 240 (which really isn't an accomplishment at all but I did it and I was proud of it.) Then the game abruptly ended as you know and Master Blasters quest to get to 250 or 300 died. Who cares because the same thing happened to everyone.

In this game there is absolutely no cooperation between anybody other than maybe the few friends that might come together because of common goals like is present between myself and the 3 other guys that are in my clan. And of course in the top clan. So the game remains quite unfriendly and down right hostile while being divided between two unequal sides with ender (and his good intentions) stuck in the middle.

Here's my tourney suggestion. Like I said above, don't bother telling me why my suggestions suck because I already know it, plus I have seen it all after reading this very long thread.

Let clans enter unlimited tourney bots. Take all the clan restrictions off because the top clan is going to win no matter what others do. Do this and it might actually prompt people to build some higher level bots instead of sticking to the now very boring low level crap that trophy points promote.

Have a sliding points system meaning that the amount of points that each category will receive for winning or getting in to the top 10 will be much greater the higher the level the bots in the category are. Cat 1 points might be something like this. 1st = 100, 2nd gets 75, 3rd gets 50, 4th 25, 5th -15 and so on. The lowest levels (like level 30s in their cat) might get 10 points for 1st, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 , 1 etc.

In closing this long winded (probably waste of time) posting I'll say this. I entered this bot in the last tourney and was quite thrilled that it placed 3rd and got a whopping 15 points. (Shouldn't this bot maybe have gotten a few more points?) Granted there were only 6 entrants in that category but it was also the only points any of my bots ever scored in a tourney during the almost 6 years that I have on and off been in this game.

Have a great day.

Bots 2 was actually more of a higher level game because thats where having a level 140 cs bot and a bunch of level 140+ whores paid off.

I miss doom mauls :(