announcements

With the May clan race just around the corner, I wanted to announce some experimental changes we'll be trying out for the month. The primary goal behind these adjustments is to increase competition, lower the barrier for more clans to meaningfully participate, and address some of the feedback regarding long-term clan race stagnation.

Here are the changes:

• 10% daily energy exchange increase (effective May 1): To keep the competition relevant throughout the month (i.e. reduce the possibility of the race feeling "over" mid-month), energy exchanged during battles will now scale upwards as the month progresses. It will start at the normal rate on day 1 and increase by 10% per day (approximately - energy gets rounded), meaning battles near the end of the month will have significantly more impact (reaching 4x the base rate on the final day). This should still reward sustained effort all month long (the first 1/2 of the month still counts for 1/3 of the effort) while making end-of-month comebacks more feasible. See this spreadsheet for the exact math and how the total weight will change for each day of the month.


• Ranking member cap decreased from 20 to 10 (effective May 1): To lower the barrier for a clan to effectively compete and make the top spots more attainable for smaller, focused teams, a clan's monthly rank will now be determined by the sum of the monthly energy of its top 10 members (down from 20). Correspondingly, end-of-month clan trophies will be awarded to top 10 members instead of 20. Individual energy trophies are unaffected and awarded based on individual performance as usual.


• Total energy kept when leaving clans (coming soon^TM): As a (mostly) quality-of-life change, your total energy will no longer be reset when you leave a clan. This is mostly a vanity stat, but it does affect some monthly trophies. The intention of this is to reduce the "pain" of leaving a clan, thus encouraging more competition. I will make a separate announcement post when this is live - I want to do some work to backfill historical total energy (as much as is possible - using end-of-month stats), which is taking some time. So while this change is related to encouraging competition, this change will launch separately once the historical data work is complete. Stay tuned.

Finally, keep in mind that this is an experiment! I want to be clear that these changes (the energy scaling and 10 member changes specifically) are being introduced in May on a trial basis. I'll be monitoring how these changes affect race dynamics, participation, and competitiveness. All of this is subject to change.

Your feedback is crucial for evaluating this experiment. Initial thoughts are of course welcome, but what will be most helpful is constructive feedback based on your actual gameplay experience throughout May. How does the scaling feel in practice? Does the 10 member change make the race feel more fresh and possible to get your foot in the door? I'm particularly interested in hearing your thoughts later in May or early June, once everyone has had a chance to see how these changes play out over the course of a full month.

My hope is that these adjustments lead to a more exciting and engaging monthly clan race. Thanks for your understanding, participation, and feedback!

Not a big fan of these changes tbh. It would feel pointless to score at the beginning of the month if it just ramps up towards the end. I think the meta would favour scoring in the final week of the month and perhaps using lots of freaked bots draining scorers at the end of the month.

Also reducing the number of scorers who get an end of month trophy will exacerbate the already pre-existing issues with trophy points for scorers.

I don't really have any qualms about keeping energy on quitting a clan, however in order for this to be fair, there would need to be fairly accurate retrieval of lost energy for bots that have already quit clans previously. Which would be a fairly significant undertaking I'd imagine.

It will start at the normal rate on day 1 and increase by 10% per day

Poor darkweb, setting a new ridiculous record just for us to be hit with energy inflation the following month. This will be about 2.5-2.6 times as much energy on average for the duration of a month, pretty nuts.

My initial thoughts are that this will probably have some bad long-term effects. Total energy inflation and the like for starters, but that isn't really impactful as far as playing goes. Half way through the month effectively means permanent DE3 buff that only increases from then on, targets are going to be drained very quickly. There's going to become an even heavier reliance on dumpers, and this is abrasive to the intention of the roster change to lower a barrier of entry.

The roster change itself I don't hate, especially since it's being brought up with the total energy upon leaving a clan. Obviously the idea is to encourage more clan start ups. It feels like a kick in the balls after being accustomed to 20 for a decade and a half, but objectively I don't really fault it.

Total energy being kept on leaving a clan I believe I mentioned before in suggestions that I think it would be best kept as a record, not necessarily impact the HoF. But if the change happens and it does apply to the HoF, I'm probably one of the people who benefit the most from it anyway so I guess I'm fine with that too lmao.

Guess we will see how it goes. I think some of the issues I speculate won't necessarily be observable with just 1 month, but it will be interesting if nothing else. Also for clarification Ed, how exactly will Dark Energy buffs interact with the energy exchange increase? Is the daily scaling treated as a modifier that is additive with DE, or is the base exchange rate itself changed thus making it multiplicative? I need to mentally prepare for this.

The more I think of it, the more ridiculous I think some of these changes are. Increasing energy ramp up would be like changing the rules of football to where goals scored in the second half are suddenly now worth 2 goals instead of one. Or in the middle of a swimming race you get to put on a pair of flippers half way through your swim. It's short sighted and silly, and will only result in some poor newbie getting drained to the high heavens in the last week of the month and lose all their energy they accrued throughout the month.

I feel some of these changes are drastic, and there should have been more discussion or at least forewarning that this would occur, rather than 3 days before the roll out.

Keeping total energy when leaving a clan sounds good, though maybe biased as someone that will benefit quite a bit from it. Should also kick some of those Rapture and Silence is Golden bots from the top 100 energy spot they didn't earn. Should definitely let people move and start more clans more often so that's good.

Not sure on taking 4x energy at the end of the month, I'd certainly have no intention of trying to make a lead that someone can close in 30% of the time it took me to get it. So would the meta just be that every clan sits around and does nothing for 20 days of the month, and then starts fighting? Does that achieve anything different to the current version of "see which clan takes the lead in the first 10 days, then they'll probably coast to a win", other than being unfair and unpredictable (in a bad way)?

Seems like it will make comebacks more common, but probably at the expense of smaller teams that spent the month gaining a lead just to get caught and like Myriad said, drained by tourney bots in the last week. Never going to be a fan of anything that encourages tourney bots being part of the clan race as it kinda sucks for both sides. Would be really disheartening for a new clan to have the carrot of a month win dangled in front of them for 25 days, just for 5 heavy hitters in the dominant clan login and close the gap in no time.

All of this is multiplied with the fact that we already have these multipliers to an extent. Day 1 of a month is notoriously bad for scoring, trying to get 100 energy from each bot and wait for them to generate more, whereas towards the end of the month, every energy target is sitting on 10k+ energy and you can use your energy buff up in an hour rather than it taking 3. One saving grace is that at least people will complain about buffs less I guess, you don't need as many trophy points if you only score/play 10 days a month.

All of that said, the games stale enough that I'm all for trying any shake up if its just a trial, but I can already see the negative community reactions when someone thinks they've earned a win and they just get drained by the big-bad enemies.

I like the coming change, anything that shakes up the "meta" is good for any game, new "tactics" will emerge.. time will tell what they are. People who play the most will still surely be the top.

Listen boys its just a trial month like Ender says so let's give it a go its not a permanent change yet