suggestions

I know there are some threads about this already such as:

http://bots4.net/forum/4/606
http://bots4.net/forum/4/188
http://bots4.net/forum/4/183
http://bots4.net/forum/4/607

There are some good discussion going on there. Some deal with the energy and some deal with what I wanna talk about which is the whole everyone against everyone thing.

Whilst this is nice and good, theres a major drawback. In a sentence its not noobfriendly. Why do we want to be noobfriendly you might wanna ask? Because whilst this game is mostly at the moment played by veterans from blue and green it will not survive if its not approachable to other players.

Clans are not only a vehicle which people use to compete against each other but also a social tool. The current system disregards it as a social tool. Yes theres no clan profiles/forums and whatnot but I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about is theres no incentive for players to join up a clan, because joining a clan will just get you focused and you stresses you to make your bot the best. Meaning that any bot that isnt a perfect build will have stress. If new players come to the game, they will see that this is a text based game where its mostly repetitive action of clicking on a link in training or fight and camping in showroom. Clans give the added ability to talk to the other players, and feel belonging. But if the new player join a clan all they get is basically harassed endlessly for their energy, no incentive to gain energy except that it helps the clan and generally seeing that their bot sucks, cause most noobs will probably have int and not have alot of redistribution points.
Then theres the fact that theres no point in social clans in current system- that is a group of friends who don't want to serious compete, are just leveling bots, or are bots that belong to a single person.


Possible solutions:

PS: When I mean gain energy it also include steal energy ofc.

1) Bots will not gain energy until lvl 50-80 (depending how extreme you want it to be). This will basically be some kind of noob protection buffer which will allow bots in low levels in clans not to be a target anymore than bots without clans. Most pros will rarely build a energy gaining bot in the section 1-50 anyways as the bot will level too fast fighting and only a very few will build ones that are up to 80. Yes some might build ones to win the tourneys but those again a rarely used to gain energy. Thus most energy focused bots will start from lvl 80+, only a minority will be affected.

Pros: Helps alot of leveling bots to join clans without the worry to just have painted a bullseye on them by energy focused low level bots.\
Helps Community/Social based clans at least in the start up until a possible lvl of 80.
Helps nooblets that dont know that they will get focused when joining a clan.

Cons:
Doesnt help "training focused" clans.
Doesnt help social clans that are high lvls.

2) Bots will have a box when creating that will allow them to opt out gaining energy - forever/Have a onetime ability to change this option to gaining it/not gaining it.

Pros: Will allow those bots who just want to train to high lvls to do their own thing.
Nooblets could hold out longer before getting in the clan war.
Social/Community/multiple bots of others can opt out of the war and be in a clan.

Cons: There will be alot less energy based bots around. But then again we didnt want a whore based game in any case right? And training bots are generally quite high lvl soon anyways if the owner knows what they are doing so they arent in the energy gaining target range anyway.

3) Clans will have a box opting out of the clan war for all their members. Changeable per month or is a choice upon creating of clan and will be permanent whether your in or out of the clan war (or have an onetime option to change this like in option 2)

Pros: Will give the rise of social/community based clans which does not exist at this moment.
Very noobfriendly.

Cons: Less bots with energy to fight around.
Possible spam in Enders mailbox from owners who have changed their minds after a while to want to gain/not gain energy for their clan.
Possible abuse (cant think of any way atm).

4) Theres an A and B league similar to football/Forumla racing. Clans choose their league and will only gain energy from other clans with the same league.

Possible extras such as the top 1-5 clans in league B will move up to League A and the 1-5 lowest clans in league A will move down to league B.
Or no monthly moving of clans, but that League B cannot gain energy beyond a certain amount as stated in another topic that I'm too lazy to read up and reference.
Possiblity to move in between leagues every month?

Pros: Will change the game concept a bit, into a more friendly than the current environment.

Cons: Probably annoying to code this thing.
Lots of critism of this concept as its a new concept.
Less bots for energy to fight for.
Annoying HoF for Ender to code.

5) Some extra XP gain fighting other bots in clans whether they have energy or not.

Disregard any incoherent sentences as Im half asleep during the writing and didnt bother proofreading this ^^

It's very clear that a lot of though went into this. I feel that right now, clans are a bit difficult to deal with, and making clans more user-friendly would definitely improve the game. Right now, there are mostly veterans playing the game, so I'll bet that there will be a lot of posts saying this is a bad idea.

I want to say right now, that I am a veteran of bots, and would absolutely love to see more combat/tournaments between clans. I miss having clanscore a lot.

I agree that clans should be able to decide whether they are war based or just for socializing, but I disagree that it should only be a one-time option. Perhaps a clan should just have to pay a large amount of money (based on how many members) to switch between hostile/friendly disposition.

>I miss having clanscore a lot.

I also miss having alliances with other clans, it made clan to clan interaction a lot more fun, and really expanded the socializing within the game.

>though

Thought*

Sorry for the triple post. =/

The whole money thing, particularly based on members could give a poss of abuse for clans that got few members, they could switch gain energy, pay switch to not able to gain energy and so on.

With a high lvl gaining the money for it.

>could give a poss of abuse for clans that got few members

I didn't even think of that. Perhaps clans that have fewer members have to wait a certain amount of time before paying to switch again?

No, then they could just add members, switch, then remove members again.

Hm... =/

Good job on answering your own thing :P

I enjoy having arguments with myself, specially in public. I just felt like defusing that particular suggestion, in case someone else might bring it up.

Big post :P

1) i dont like. Excluding all players just because of their level is too crude.

2) From a clan leader point of view, i dont really encourage this. But it'd be a nice feature to have. Instead of leaving their clan, players could bench themselves when taking a break.

3) This would be nice for clans who decide to take it easy for a while

4) Leagues is nice, but tricky indeed. Do you let clans choose what league they're in? Or force? As in: does the top 10 of league B automatically transfer to league A the next month?

5) I suppose a personal reward for being in a clan couldnt hurt


New suggestion:
6) To make it a bit more newbfriendly, how about new members dont generate any energy in the first two weeks after joining a clan? So no 20/h, but they can collect energy from others. The result is a lot less attacks. Maybe this should only apply to bots up to a certain level. Or make it optional.

1) agree with jans

2) i like it.

3) also like it.

4) kind of agree with jans... whats to stop the top clan, just dropping to league B for a month to get some easy wins?
i think its a good idea, but i think it would be hard to make it balanced.

5) in bots2 you had extra xp for war clans, but since there is no war clans, i don't see why it couldn't be exta xp for fighting any bots with engergy

and jans 6)... so kinda like number 1) but instead of level based, time based in clan? may work...

6)

Quite long 2 weeks. Potentially more abusable than my number one suggestion due to:

Okay if my suggestion is from lvl 1-80, thats for a veteran player like max 7 days, if he on average plays around 3 hours a day. Thats being quite lenient even for players who are idling a lot and doesn't press train every second after its done. Furthermore I said 50-80, it could be even earlier, although any earlier is quite useless as you cant join a clan much earlier anyway. So for like lvl 50s its gonna be even less time. And really how many players do a perfect build in those lvls to rape energy? Those scarab blade builds are really tourney builds and not farm energy for what? 2-3 days before you lvl past it anyway? Even a lvl 65 conq axe or whatever is considered as a perfect lvl 65 build nowadays, will be not that common after say 2 months of release. Yes we might get off to a slow start, but in long term its not gonna affect like even anyone of us, but just the newbs.

Your suggestion is problematic in the terms:

Any new member.. Unless we get something like a WoW account where all bots could be potentially under one account name, every new bot is a 'new member'. Therefore every new bot will fall under your rule for protection of 2 weeks (cause of no energy gain) after joining a clan.

So basically I think atm its a 20 member cap?, if we take the case in beta, if 20 bots of Rivan and Kerrod lvled to perfect lvl 80-90-and 100 bots and stay clanless till those lvls and until rediss, then wait till the 15th day of the month, make up a clan on the 15th day, join up, they are untouchable for the rest of the month and have a potential to get into the top places in HoF for clan energy, because they could potentially steal all the energy from the other bots- even if the other bots have the same build, cause if you cant loose energy even if do 50 wins 50 losses against it, you cant loose energy, but only gain.

Ofc course it would be a one time thing, but someone funny/with too much time on their hands, could potentially do a stint like this and basically ruin the HoF for everyone.

I want to comment on this post Sera, but I need some time to digest it as I'm too tired atm :P

I will say though that leveling bots like to be attacked ... hence the reason for me being in a clan, free xp \o/

1) I support the first idea, with the minimum level being 60 or so. Level 80 just seems a little too high.

2) I don't like the idea of having to make the choice only once. Also, part of the game is being attacked, and this would take away any reason to attack the bot that opts out.

3) I like the idea of the whole clan opt out of war thing, with the stipulation that it has to be within the first two or three days of the month. That way they can't get a bunch of energy and then opt out of war mode destroying that energy.

4) Depending on how its done exactly, I could go either way on this idea. It could change the game and make it too convoluted.

5) I also support this idea.

@sera; i didnt explain my suggestion well enough.

I meant that new members would not gain the hourly 20 energy, but they could attack others and collect their energy. What i left implicit was that once they've collected energy, they're vulnerable to attacks from others, trying to steal (back) the energy. The overall result would be less attacks though, because they dont generate any energy themselves.

Hm its getting there to what I like.. not quite yet.

More brainstorming needed =D

That´s what I thought you meant :P.

The problem seems to stem from energy regen. There's a reason for every weak bot to be attacked every hour.

Would making energy regen only apply to bots with some threshold amount of energy, say 100, fix this? That way if your bot really sucks, it will stay under this threshold and will not accumulate reasons to be attacked (energy). This also has the nice side effect of making whoring even harder.

If i understood you correctly, someone would need to collect 100 (or whatever amount) energy, before the 20/h regen kicks in?

Could work, but how about high level members without any targets to fight?

Apply the threshold, but only to bots above a certain level. (30? 50?)

Actually, how about making the threshold 1 energy? The idea is to prevent noobs from having their energy being taken every hour, so this prevents this from happening once a person reaches 0 energy. That would then only require 1 win from a high level bot to have their energy regen enabled.

I'm against this.. i HATE fighting bots with the same build as i do, and i like to win when i fight. I'm ok with making it so you can't gain hourly energy up to level 40 or 50, but it's too much to make it so newbs/idle weak bots don't gain energy ever.

It would maybe take out too many potential energy targets. The problem lies probably still in the fact that perfect builds are too easily build and the player base is too little to introduce something such drastic.

Not 100% sure though, its sounds good and sound, but might end up being only perfect build vs perfect build.

Hmmm, it does sound like people will find the perfect builds like Sera is saying pretty quicky and may take some of the fun out of the game - especially at intermediate levels. Not sure that this is easily counterable though... Thinking

Ender, it's hard enough to gain energy as it is without making the 20 energy per hour apply to everyone in a clan, the level thing would be a better idea than that..

Also, clans need to be more 'boobfriendly'

manboob?

So having 3 redissed energy gaining bots I figured:

So basically at the moment the best energy gaining levels would be lvl 65-80 range considering the top energy gained bots are in that range yes?

So if we take the top energy gaining bots as an example.. They dont fight each other. I have a lvl 75, now lvl 77 bot and I pretty much never got attacked except:

frankTHEtank [76] attacked you 16 times.
You won 8 times and lost 8 times.
You gained 417,618 exp.
You lost 301,554 kudos.
20

Twisted Reflection [75] attacked you 1 time.
You won 0 times and lost 1 time.
You gained 1,870 exp.
You lost 602,275 kudos.

I took those two because they have high energy. Basically both of them I think are equalizers I forgot like my bot. Basically they are perfect build bots. The whole point of energy was that bots attack each other, however no1 is doing that, or will be doing that even if the game goes live. Essentially its still the whole cs/whore fighting just very very limited, meaning that everyones just trying to kill all the weak bots, and all the good bots stay untouched.

So without saying that energy is bad, we gotta look how it affects this game:

Energy based bots:

Only two paths to choose from if you play longer than a few month:

- You start a leveling bot like Warden/Diablek/Nix and go at it. If you get really high you pretty much out of any harms way and hope to gain HoF 1-10 in levels or whatever your goal is.

- You build a perfect build bot and have a go at anyone who isnt a perfect build bot. Anything less than a perfect build bot will pretty much result in unhappiness.

CS based bots:

- Everyone could build a crappy bot AND still gain cs, because whores are more crappy than crappy build.

So without singling out anyone lets take for example Jans:

Jans is in the range lvl 75. Now not saying its a bad bot, but its not a perfect build in the lvl 75 range. My equalizer bot I think beat him 7-0, and he compared to most other energy positive bots in that level range a poor ratio. Of course he probably isnt fully perfect build. But he has enough to probably gain energy off any other below 1.0 ratio bots or anyone bad bots. Basically if it was the old game he could potentially CS without much fear of anyone stealing his CS/retribution. Without thinking that his bot sucks. (Sorry Jans). Now lets take a new player.

A new players mindset will almost always want to have a good bot. Which is almost always includes that you dont loose too much, gain cs fairly fast and whatnot. In the old system even if say 20-30 points are off (thats after all 4-8 levels here), that is if they bot has 20 int and 10 less con or so, he was still able to fairly decently gain cs, without retribution or fear of perfect build bots bashing on him. Yes he wont win the tourney, yes he wont be the fastest CSer, but the person playing the bot probably will not know/care/or have to change his bot to suit it. Basically theres no survival of the fittest, whereas it does apply now.

Nowadays if a new player was Jans and earns all the hardearned energy and then 10 equalizer bots rape him 100 times for all the energy simply because all the other weak bots have no energy/no more targets left, I dare say the majority will go ask/figure out/clanhelp to build a perfect bot build sooner or later or quit the game. Eventually we will just have lvl 75 equalizers, answerers and whatnot around, pretty much the current top energy gain bots are probably those bots.

So thats my viewpoint of how energy is. Its not changing the way the other veterans play the game, its basically an all out whore clan war of any weak bots in any clan within their target range. Perfect build bots are refusing to fight each other and I dont really blame them.

Of course most people will know that, but somehow has to post it too.

lol well said

what can be done though :S

This whole system is aimed at making perfect builds fight perfect builds.

It would be best to and quickest to fight people with low energy, but when energy gets low, they are supposed to take it from the leading people and that way they will gain energy.

That isn't really happening though. It's far easier just to log on every hour and fight the weak bots, and because the bots are at lower levels (50-75ish) fighting someone with a high ratio just isn't worth it since you level past a bunch of easy targets.

Like i said.

However, since some people already have well over 30k energy, they have to be fighting the 'good' bots also.
I have a lvl ~50 and it has just over 10k energy. Thats with me NOT fighting good bots, because I'm well past my level range.

Its great to be lazy and get the 10k every few days, but if you wanna be a bad ass, you have to buckle up and fight the good guys.

I have several bots over 30k energy that haven't fought any decent bots...

Well up here in the 100s, I'm fighting anyone who's in a clan as there's only 10 targets, just because all the weak bots have no energy left, I'm forced to fight all the perfect builds.
Hurry up and level people! zz

I don't think it's ever going to be possible for 'real' PvP to succeed unless there are extra incentives. Like Starfyre mentioned, attacking strong bots with good ratios isn't a great strategy in gathering energy due to the faster levelling, as well as longer fights (=slower gain) and the losing factor.

It's no secret that people tend to have most fun when they're winning or succeeding at something. Therefore there will always be a tendency to attack weaker bots, and now that whores are gone that void has been filled by less experienced players.

There just has to be some sort of extra bonus for attacking stronger bots. An xp boost doesn't do anything for energy gainers. Perhaps taking a larger quantity of their energy, I dunno. I don't think splitting clans into A & B leagues or whatever is going to improve the problem either, as that is just going to reduce the number of potential energy targets and make the game even less interesting.

Okay lets take this bot for example.

This bot has been aronud for 20 hours as you can see on my profile. Now you have to take my word for it, but it took me around 15 hours to get to 75 and camp my full armors. Since then I logged on this bot only to gain energy, it has not been used to dillydally or read forums, but just pure energy. It finished 2 days ago. Therefore it took me 5 hours to get 14.5k energy. I have never attacked a perfect build bot more than 3 times max. Go figure.

I tend to still fight bots with perfect builds like this, I even did it often with my non perfect level 86 bot. Don't know what the problem is

This is my viewpoint. You might have different viewpoints but if you do, it helps to have some facts. Like you said something and I offered something in return, hard cold facts. For example:

Alan:

>Like i said.

However, since some people already have well over 30k energy, they have to be fighting the 'good' bots also.
I have a lvl ~50 and it has just over 10k energy. Thats with me NOT fighting good bots, because I'm well past my level range.

Its great to be lazy and get the 10k every few days, but if you wanna be a bad ass, you have to buckle up and fight the good guys.

Now I posted a bot of mine that had less than 20 hours of gametime on it (atm 22 hours due to playing it today), with at 20 hours 14.5k energy. At 22 hours I have 18.7k energy. So its not THAT hard as everyone makes it to gain energy to 30k. And I can say for myself I have never fought more than 3 times a perfect/good/3.0+ratio bot.

This is pure hard cold facts there. Yes you may dispute that I took less than 15 hours to build the bot to 75, but seriously how many hours could you say I supposedly lied about? Camping stuff can be a quite long or short depending on luck. My point:

No its not hard to get 30k energy. You could do it in prolly 4 days without every fighting a good bot.

Then theres the perspective of another player:

Rivan + Kerrod. Owner of the highest energy gaining clan at this moment. Arguably a good example. I don't want to put words into their mouth, but basically they told me that they have never more or less fought lets say.. more than 10 times a perfect build bot.

Rivan and Kerrod own at this moment the monthly energy HoF ranks 2,4,5,6,9 and 10. Out of the top 10 they own more than 50% of the bots. They say they never really gain energy by fighting any perfect/hard/good bots. Their bots in total- just the 6 top 10 placed ones have 211k energy gain this month. We are at day 9 of this month.

Champion your post.. Basically I have never seen you fight my bot and Im withing your level range. Not once to even see what build Iam. Its hard to prove that you have never attacked so everyone else have to take my word for it. Furthermore if you were to attack any perfect build bots, wouldn't it make sense say if you attack Ascendance bots? Considering Aflac and Ascendance are vying for the top spot at this moment if anyone then their bots as stealing their energy would give you more energy, because even if you loose you will loose less than what you would gain.

Well apart from a very few fights and never a full rape, Rivan said that he hasnt really seen you fighting him. Again thats what I heard after asking him, and Rivan may come here and dispute that, but at this moment I cannot verify it better than that. Besides the point, theres no way any of you have done that on more than one or twice occasion otherwise ALL of your win/loss ratio would be significantly different. Based on your energy and your loss ratio, its almost impossible than a full rape of a perfect build bot has occurred more than possibly once.

Champion 86 has at this month no more than 4k energy with a +132. Whilst it has a total of 36k energy, it still hasn't seen much action at this month.




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No matter what I am not here to point fingers.

I am here to tell you of how I see/experience this game. I do not see this so called perfect builds fighting against perfect builds. I am not saying energy is a failure, my point is to want people to THINK/BRAINSTORM what can be done about it. Ender is one person, yes maybe even a genius, I don't know, but in the end still one person. We are a community with a game in OPEN BETA. Open beta means lots of testing, lots of suggestion from the community, lots of possible solution/advice/help/feedback to the developer. Even if your suggestion suck its better than none.

Several typos. Not much a fan of proofreading non university stuff, besides that I finished that already a year ago. Sorry =)

Thanks for your thoughts, Sera. And I appreciate that it's free of the bickering/whiny tone that occasionally creeps into these types of posts, so others should look at this as an example on how to be objective!

It was good to read about how people are actually playing with this new system. As a bots2 player, I have plenty of insight on most other parts of the game, but this new clan system is obviously new territory for everyone and I've not really tried it out myself.

The idea of people regularly beating on the crappy bots as they regen energy rather than going after the other top players sounds okay to me. The way I see it (and as you say), you can get this easy energy, but you're going to have to beyond that if you want to be at the top. And I don't think we've yet seen the full potential of this new system for two reasons:

1. There aren't as many bots in clans as there will be later.
2. There's not as much motivation to compete as there will be later.

When the game is officially live and people really get into it, I think we're going to be seeing a lot more action. People will be willing to go further to win and hopefully that will mean top clans targeting one another and players trying to take energy from each other.

As for how to make things more interesting, I have a few ideas in mind:

1. Allow for more differentiation between bots.
2. Bring clan diplomacy into play.
3. Slower regen for bad bots.

For point 1, there's a lot of ways to do this. Whether it's some way of obtaining extra stat points, better equipment, or some other means, there needs to be a way to set your bot ahead of others for those that really want to. Currently anyone with a reasonable amount of experience can make a perfect (or at least above average) level x bot for a modest time investment. I think this there needs to be more to building your bot than currently exists. I don't know what exactly this will entail, but as an example WoW does this with things like rare items, enchants, reputation, PvP ranks, etc.

For point 2, I don't mean diplomacy in the same sense as in bots2, but rather just the general idea of having to talk to and negotiate with other players in order to get further in the game. Just something besides clicking a link over and over.

For point 3, I mentioned something along these lines above already. I think I will at least give this a trial run soon to see how it goes. The idea I'm currently playing around with is that there will be different rates of energy regen which depend on your current energy level. Low energy = low regen. This will make it harder to just keep hitting the easy targets and also act as a way of withdrawing from the clan bloodshed for those who wish to use clans for social means.

I think these three points combined will make for a much more interesting game with more replay value. I'm curious to hear what others think.

>>>>For point 2, I don't mean diplomacy in the same sense as in bots2, but rather just the general idea of having to talk to and negotiate with other players in order to get further in the game. Just something besides clicking a link over and over.

I remember you telling me diplomacy was gone. :(

Or maybe it was bonus xp from diplomacy?

I meant that in a sense I want bonus xp back, it was always so little but it always seemed to cheer me on.

I like to see 200k + 15k instead of 215k. Seems more huzzuh!

I don't mean diplomacy as in the sense of bots2 diplomacy. I meant diplomacy as in its dictionary definition:

"Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states."

It will be another angle to the game besides outright battling/es'ing.

I'm really in favour of point 1. I think there's great potential for the current battle system to be revamped, whether that be buffing dex/balance bots, adding rare items or whatever. I agree that there needs to be more difficulty to making a 'perfect' bot, and whatever changes that entails is likelly to make the game a lot more fun. Above all, newer features = more excitement = more players. Even if it doesn't specifically help out newer players I think it's a step in the right direction.

Point 3 would definitely help out newer players, but it could make things a bit tedious for other players if there aren't any changes to the battle system, you know, because a lot of players don't like fighting other perfect bots. I'm not sure what point 2 is all about but it sounds like a way to make the game a bit more complex, so it seems interesting.

Thanks Ender, I am glad you don't see my post as an old player whining about how this whole new system sucks and want the old system back. I indeed intended not to do such, but to show what I think is happening/know is happening from how I play it.

Yes I know this game doesn't yet have the best playerbase for a full evaluation, however it is gonna be in the end something like Darwin's survival of the fittest, over time. So if this system prevails without your addition, every player beyond say max 2 month will have a perfect bot or have quit imo. So basically the best bots will survive playing and the weakest bots die.

But in a way I wanted to hear- or also let the community hear what you got planned. This will draw more people out and let them think how it could be improved. Imo too many people are at this moment trying too hard to get HoF in anything/something rather than actually testing/finding new ways of improving the game even if they say they are testing (and thats all good and fine after all you can do what you want and ... I mean no disrespect or anything but it helps to have more critical suggestions even if they suck).

Also this post by Ender should wake up everyone that he means to move forward the game. That means that if you guys don't have any suggestion he will implement only what he thinks is best. Make no mistake if Ender continues you might see a whole different game and if you like how it is now, you best put forward good arguments or other solutions on how you like it to be, because if anything this post says its gonna change, whether you like it or not and if you don't better voice it now in OPEN BETA.

Anyway I have drawn one part of this discussion towards:

http://bots4.net/forum/4/773

Because this is a clan/energy improvement discussion a way, even if a bit derailed :D