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

My predication for the energy changes as ender has stated will shift the game back to its old self years ago. The newer meta of spamming out hundreds of crap dumpers will fade as people will declan them to deny energy to clans. Dumper meta and people that know how to abuse them will likely reign supreme again as the energy is relatively secured from others through a month. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Cya on the 20th ish and ill see just how dumb the meta is then

Yay easy end of month top 10s for Apex.

On a serious note I don't really care as I don't play anymore but I like everything apart from the inflation or at least the scale of it, maybe 5%(or even less) would be better as I don't think people would bother playing much in the early part of the month which isn't a good thing, even at 5% you would be getting over double energy for the last 10 days which is huge.

I suggested lowering the contributing members cap probably 10 years ago and have always thought it should be lowered so agree with that, keeping total energy is also a nice change I see no problem with although maybe it should be seperate from clan energy so you can still see what you scored for your current clan.

I don't think people would bother playing much in the early part of the month...

They will. That's the easy part. Exciting and new and everyone wants to "stake their claim" and all. And strategically, the race is a lot about momentum.

Granted, the few clans just barely trying to get a top 10 spot and not really trying to score at all might just push at very end always instead of sometimes trying to do bare minimum earlier... but that's basically whatever and, honestly, even sorta gives small benefit of slight competition down the ladder...

And... obviously... I'm just overall a big fan here.

This is a good day.

Also, notice how your impression is that people don't even need to bother at beginning and will just wait til end?

Well... if that is your impression then... doesn't that kinda mean that you think people will be much more motivated to score later despite it looking like what would currently be considered "decided" and now everything feeling completely undecided until the end?

If that's how you feel... well, then that actually should tell Ender it would potentially be achieving the desired effect...

Well... if that is your impression then... doesn't that kinda mean that you think people will be much more motivated to score later despite it looking like what would currently be considered "decided" and now everything feeling completely undecided until the end?

Well yeah, obviously people will be motivated to score later, at the huge cost of people being motivated to score early in the month, which currently there isn't and its rewarding to play whenever you want to play. Currently it's rewarding to score at the beginning and sometimes the end of the month let's not pretend there hasn't been really close months where activity has shot up in the last few days.

Ofcourse you like this change as it helps you but not necessarily the games activity.

The 10 player cap is a really good idea for sparking more potential competition for the game. The scaling energy change though is going to royally fuck up scoring in general. Yes people are going to still score all month but that motivation is going to die real fast when someone scatter dumps at the end of the month. I’ve scattered over a million in a day with the current system. How motivated do you think a clan will be when someone pops in and scatters 4million in a day during a close clan race? There’s not even a competition left to this either there’s only a couple of people that have rss to do this and most of them don’t play anymore. Now the 10 player cap does limit the ability to do this as having 5 bots set aside to be scattered on is 50% of your clans space but if you really want to win easily I’m sure you could find 5 people with blasters that play to do this with anyways.

The other downside to this is the negative impact to levelers as their effectively cutoff from clan trophies at the end of the month as myriad for example already had to do a bit of effort just making top 20 getting into top 10 is basically impossible their just isn’t enough energy for that to go around.

TBH as I suggested long ago give trainers energy from training would help fix this but at this point I don’t think ender will ever help them out to give them a better way to help a clan race.

Another side note to this is it now effectively makes dumpers 4x cheaper to maintain ratios as well as further stretches their lifetime buff supply as you can wait and only do it at max value further making dumpers the meta forever

Neps... totally hit on my chief concerns.

Definitely support some changes and, let's be honest, there are always scenarios we can create for things... but they don't tend to actually even rival current state's "brokenness."

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, imo.

How does it help me here? I literally don't even know what I'm gonna be trying to do next month or anything... would love for you to enlighten me to these plans.

Probably because you try to win with your only friend on here in Zal then cry like a couple of spoilt girls when you can't, atleast you two have more of a chance now with the member cap and scoring hard late although I would probably clan all my tourneys and drain you at the end of the month if it's close for fun.

Meanwhile... you're talking about the game's activity in regards to clan competition? With all due respect, that is the stupidest take imaginable.

There is a direct link between clan competition and the games activity, whether it's Apex/Lusitania, Strung Out/Escapism etc these periods were insanely active compared to the period Apex didn't have any competition it affects demand for bots in the marketplace, forum activity not to mention people playing longer than they normally would or trying to get afk players to help and so on. To say thats stupid to suggest is well, pretty stupid.

The 10 player clan is good. But that scaling change if you thought zal was mad at dumpers before good lord he might actually implode now

Loving this idea Ender... Lets give the little battlers like us a go... change it back if its not cool

So far as scaling energy is concerned?

Well... my first thoughts were immediately how that could become an issue people have later and how it might not feel good, potentially.

I'm still wrapping my head around it.

It does, however, make a lot of sense. These kinda reverse-snowball mechanics are normally one-sided... but the concept is still fundamentally pretty sound and very accepted.

And... it's actually trying to address an issue. That, for me, is the main thing. It's... something. It's an actual step towards a positive direction.

So... awesome. Just... awesome.

If we're that concerned about dumpers then I'd sooner be suggesting that attacking bots don't lose energy to defending bots or something than just be trying to stand in place and shrug our collective shoulders, rather than... taking an actual step in a positive direction.

Also... activity has seemed to not increase very much at all in the beginning of month lately. Like... at all.

I kinda assume Ender noticed that. If so, we really should expect him to want to make some kinda change to increase activity overall and... well, the beginning of the month ceases being valuable to game as a time of increased activity if... there isn't really even any increased activity there anymore.

If you want a qol change that effects all bots make speed 1 the default fight speed

My initial reaction:

Seems a bit overkill to solve the activity problem. I think it'll have the opposite effect you want combined with the reducing 20 to 10 members since that just means that 20 bots will determine clan races between 1st and 2nd and also increase the likelihood that bots with massive trophy points will be used even more than before and new bots will be essentially useless. I think that increasing battle speed would've been good enough for most players regardless of energy changes. I imagine with these changes that bots will achieve something upwards of 10-20 million easily and not actually increase competition. Things like making rewards for 2nd-10th place etc. and increasing trophy points for top 10s etc. would've been a better idea probably along with speed increase. I've said before that clans should be kept at a member maximum to prevent giant clans, which would also increase competition. If every clan had a hard member limit of 20, then you'd have 100 or so tournament clans vs. everyone in one clan at one time for example. You'd also never have the problem of Apex/Lusitania etc. where too many people take up too many spots and change out bots. I'm sure that some super clan of 20 great scorers would still crop up so it's not perfect either.

Total energy is great though.

See how it goes though I guess since it's a trial anyway. I think it's going to be hilarious and likely won't change much since it'll just reward people who play the game too much already and have too many bots vs. get regular people to play more.

The 10 player clan is good. But that scaling change if you thought zal was mad at dumpers before good lord he might actually implode now

Probably because you try to win with your only friend on here in Zal then cry like a couple of spoilt girls when you can't,

Thanks for the concern ;) Thanks for being my cheerleaders \o/ shakes pompoms, jumps and screams GO TEAM! ^_^

As for dumpers, people haven't used them in so long now that I forgot they existed. I thought most of the people who had them quit the game and got replaced by Esv's idea of WH0RE SUPREMACY! =D But you guys can use whatever you want, I imagine next month having so little energy available for it wh0re wise and even dumper wise that there won't be anything left by the 20th never mind the 30th or so. Which brings up another problem...

If scoring will go up 10% per day, will energy too? Because I can see say, if nobody attacks the level 50 range for example, there might be some bots with 5-10k energy at the end of the month, but I also think that every single wh0re bot will be attacked near the end of the month too so but if you can get 4x the base rate (16x4 for wh0re bots or so, so 64 energy per hit, then 250% buff would be 160 energy or so or a stagering 160,000 per 1,000 fight 250% energy buff), it'd take 8 hours at 20 energy to replenish that energy, which would likely mean that a few bots or even one bot could log on every 24 hours and get all of the energy replenished by 333 bots in 3 fights each. THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THREE. Which means that every bot would need 333 wh0res per bot just to keep up with ONE buff (same problem with dumpers but they can horde energy more). You can see the problem with not increasing energy along with the scoring increase right?

I could see people making random top 10 clans just to drain all the wh0res near the end of month and then either freak or delete the clan to prevent the other clans from getting the energy lol. I can also see tournament bots being used to r@pe the crap out of the 1st place clan (unless they're the ones with the most amount of tournament bots) then deleting their clan etc. too.

Make buffs free with the catch that you can only use 1 except for weekends, then they stack with the weekend buff.

Ender, nicely done, hope to see more changes and new things to the game. Tbh, Ender should not think about high levelers, why would he? You chose that path, continue the path you chose, you had a chance to collect as many plats and points as you liked, but some didnt. You mentioned Myriad, he has plenty of tps to train as much as he likes. If he wants top10, he can always as well make high lvl dumpers, takes time but everything does anyways. You just cant have everything,or you can, just takes a lot of effort.

Thumbs up for Ender! Finally something interesting to test in the future.

Removing buffs makes the game pretty much equal for everyone, that's a positive.. can make some new system where you can buy some "cosmetic" stuffs with your TPs instead. Like a rainbow coloured name.. would suite a lot of you guys (just saying) :)

Good work Ender. Some changes and something new to trial. Let's just see how it goes and appreciate a new experience. Nothing is perfect, nor is it meant to be.

Random thought to make it more interesting since it's a trial month anyway: add Fishwick's "every bot produces energy" idea to it so there's unlimited energy for everyone to use without people having to make more clans. Would be the perfect time to try it.

Hey everyone, thanks for all this fast and detailed feedback - the number of replies this thread quickly received was a strong indicator that people care a lot about the clan race, so I think this is a good area to be spending dev time on and am looking forward to tweaking and experimenting with it to improve the game for everyone. I appreciate everyone's feedback, both positive and negative.

First, an administrative note: A few posts containing personal attacks were removed. Please remember to keep discussion focused on the topic at hand and stay respectful towards one another, even when you disagree strongly.

Now, onto the main points raised:

10% DAILY ENERGY EXCHANGE INCREASE

This has understandably generated the most discussion:

• The goal: Just to reiterate, the primary goal here is to address feedback about clan races feeling "decided" early on in the month, making the second half of the month feel meaningless.
• Early month value: Tuning this is a balancing act for early month effort. The intention isn't to make that part pointless. As shown in the spreadsheet, with this linear scaling through the month, the first half of the month still contributes significantly to the overall month progress (around 1/3), so sustained effort through the month is definitely still valuable.
• Dark Energy buff interaction: To answer Gpof's question, the energy modifier on these buffs will stack multiplicatively with the day-of-month modifier.
• Target/energy availability: This is something I'll keep an eye on as the month progresses. Creating more reliance on dumpers would work against the goal of lowering the barrier for entry for competing, so if it turns out to be an issue in the May trial, I will look into making modifications (e.g. increased EPH range, EPH for all bots, other means of acquiring energy, etc.) for the June race.
• Total energy inflation: These changes unfortunately do mean month-to-month comparisons of energy are no longer apples-to-apples. I think this is a necessary tradeoff though to be able to experiment with different systems. In the long run, we may need to revisit the meaning of total energy based on how these changes evolve.
• It's tunable: Remember, 4x is the starting point for the experiment. If May's results show it's too extreme or has other negative consequences, it can be adjusted in future months.

RANKING MEMBER CAP DECREASED FROM 20 TO 10

• The goal: This change was aimed directly at lowering the barrier to compete, and thus increase the number of clans that can realistically compete for the top spot, addressing long-term competitive stagnation concerns.
• Trade-off: I recognize this impacts clans with deep benches where ranks 11-20 will no longer receive end-of-month clan-based trophies. This reduction in trophy slots was necessary to achieve the goal of opening competition up more broadly.

Some other thoughts:

• Total energy kept when leaving clans: Not too much to say on this one, but this sounds more accepted. I won't have it ready in time for the start of May because of the backfill work, so stay tuned for a separate announcement on that when it's ready.
• Future ideas and next steps: I really appreciate the additional ideas that have surfaced in this thread (PvE energy from trainers, battle speed changes, better rewards for lower-ranked clans, etc.). While the focus for May is on testing the changes specifically listed in this thread, I'm definitely noting these down and plan to start a separate thread around mid-May to solicit more ideas and discuss potential iterations for June and beyond.
• Experiment and feedback: Thanks again for all the predictions and detailed thoughts. This is exactly why this is an experiment for May. The theories are helpful, but the real test begins in 2 days. Please continue to share your feedback, especially constructive thoughts based on your actual gameplay experience as the month progresses. Your input will be crucial for evaluating whether these changes are effectively accomplishing their goals and deciding on what to do next.

Hoping for an exciting and competitive May clan race for everyone!

I don't have much time to write this post, so overall I like all these changes.

I particularly like that not knowing who's the winner until the end of the month makes clan competition much more interesting. For a race, either it be cycling, running or anything else, people stay interested until they know who is going to win :)

Forgot to wish all to have fun this month!

Ender you meanie! I have to fill my clan treasuries now again even though I did it on last week. I like to see changes but not changes that force me to fill treasuries!

The energy inflation was just a front to distract us from the treasury tax inflation

Question on the 10 roster cap, is that only experimental for this month for the time being? I assume with how the post is prefaced that it is, but I'd like to be sure.

Re: Clan tax - That change has been reverted, see this post for details.

Re: 20 -> 10 being permanent or experimental - I think it's fair to classify that as a trial too. In future months, it could go up or down from where it is now. In general, I'm willing to tweak various parameters on the system to make the clan race (and more generally, the game) as fun/interesting/compelling as possible for as broad a group as possible.

Ender, whats the timespan on the keeping your total energy? You said soon and its been a week. I hope you could have it done in this month :)

I'll see if I can get that done this week. It kept getting pushed further down in my list because I was getting distracted by other stuff, but I just brought it back up to the top. Thanks for the nudge/reminder.

Any updates Ender?

Scoring 75+ energy a click is wild

Any updates Ender?

Still in progress. The historical backfill is straightforward and essentially done, but the overall change is turning out to be a bit more involved than originally anticipated. Still completely doable, but it'll just take some time to work through the details. Stay tuned.

I am tuned! Is it coming soon or is this moved to the long term planning?

I was in apex for several months on different bots peet, and get more in a single month than half apex members. You want to move on go for it man. I think having energy stay with you after leaving a clan just makes it harder for new players to break the top 100 total as those bots will continue to gain energy and continue to have your total energy after leaving a clan just adds to that but enders game and you guys want it I think it's terrible for the game over all

Lol, you play 1 month and then you go afk for months and then play for a few weeks. And claim you have been in a clan for months. Yea, sure.

Besides that, it is a total, summed up number of energy gained over years. Why would a newcomer think he would be in the top there within a few weeks of play? The monthly clan race is something else and should be encouraged for newcomers :)

Still in progress. I appreciate your enthusiasm for this change. :) It's still at the top of my list and I don't forsee that changing - my available development time for the game has been a bit more limited than I'd hoped the past couple of weeks. Once ready, this change will get its own dedicated announcement post, so you'll see a clear announcement from me as soon as it's live.

(Administrivia: Removed several off-topic personal jabs to keep the thread focused on the main discussion.)

George has a point.

There IS a negative aspect in making the game less accommodating to newcomers in games that reward longevity and the established playerbase tends to not value that and instead want to even increase such punishing mechanics to others. That's completely accurate.

However, I don't think it's quite as simple here and... there's also a punishing mechanic to players feeling trapped and less able to move freely... and, well, the "punishment" to all players (established or not).

And, mostly, if we follow that logic through then newer players would be less likely to gain in historical rankings over older players simply because... players aren't "being forced" to completely reset? That doesn't seem like the best way to improve the rankings for anyone, imo.

Darn I didn't get to see Peet's reply before removed. Either way I stand by my statement

(Administrivia: I added back a couple of the removed posts that were less "jabby" and more substantive in terms of discussing gameplay mechanics. It's fine for there to be disagreement, but just please make your points without attacking each other on a personal level or posts will be removed.)

While this is off topic really, I think that Total Energy across all clans the bot has been in would be better without any HoF standing for it or achievements etc. But I could see it crashing into the current energy HoF too for that reason. I think the best idea would be just Total Energy Bot Gained For Current Clan and Total Energy Bot Gained for All Clans or two separate HoFs for them. Not sure if adding a new HoF would look very good on the HoF page though as it's constrained as is to the edge of the page. Adding a new category where some bots probably have 100 million+ energy gained would make it look horrible lol. That's why I thought it as a profile page only thing that we don't have a HoF metric for. Kinda like a Bot History.

Adding a new category where some bots probably have 100 million+ energy gained would make it look horrible lol.

No bot would have 100 million energy.

Aldins bot is the closest, god forbid he scored on that bot it would have 100m energy by now in sure