suggestions

This buff needs a massive nerf or removal from the game. 1 person should not be able to influence a clan race this much with low effort. If zach tucks rene oldtime me etc ran this in what use to be a competitive race on 5 bots scattering it would be doing 2mil+ a day. It is far too easy to snipe a clan race vs an unprepared clan with this buff.

Remove this terrible addition to the game.

From the may feedback thread.

Increasing the rate of energy doesn't really change anything, only inflates numbers and the amount of energy/bots one needs to possess to fully utilize. This is contradictive with trying to make scoring more easily accessible. All this progressively increasing rate achieves will be to allow whichever dominant clan to only need to score the last week of the month until a real contender comes along.

It greatly weighs more heavily towards the people with more resources, IE the clans that have been around longer and built up. It is quite literally the opposite of what Ender was trying to do.

As a casual I like the whole “race to the finish” kinda feeling, but I can see the points being made.

The number jump in the past few days is kinda insane, but I’m also not active enough/enough of a competent player to fully speak on it

The race to the finish is definitely exciting, but I do agree that it just causes the big clan(s) to win more often as they can close any gap in the last week, regardless of what the opponent did the rest of the month. This month is a fairly good example.

The multiplier also seems to be messing with the amount of energy someone needs to "own" to do well. You need at least 200 bots generating 20 EPH just to use up a single buff each day in the later stages of the month.

If we read what Pat posted , it's all true. The buff actually doesn't do anything to effect the clan race, just the numbers are inflated. If you took away the buff the standings would still be the same. While I get it makes the start of the month a little less desired as you don't the full easy drains it still doesn't matter, if you scored consistently it wouldn't chance the outcome of those who decided last minute dumping to catch up.

Well, that's not true. It certainly changes the math.

What it doesn't do is affect any imbalance between clans and change anything there. Still, it can be seen as a feels-bad mechanic where it's very possible for someone to think they "earned" a better placement for having actually done more total work. I get that.

But the idea of simply looking at the top spot as the "clan race" is kinda silly anyways. I can't imagine Ender thought it was supposed to address that issue... and if we're considering any impact there then we should try to imagine what the result would be were two evenly-matched clans tried to compete against each other.

If the point was simply to try to increase game activity overall, as Ender seemed to suggest then that's probably what we should look at when trying to judge how successful the change is at that, imo. Or, possibly, argue how any other detrimental effects (of which there are very real arguments) make the change a bad one.

The buff itself heavily favors clans with resources as I predicted but didn’t have time to test at its inception. In a 24 hour period I score about 1 million total this month on 2 slow bots and 1 with 1 hit bots not really min maxing what I was doing like I use to. It was broken into 2 sessions covering I think 12 hours. Last time I did 1 mil in a single day I had to use 5 bots scatterdumping non stop for close to 18 hours and pushed very hard to pull that off.

There was on old strategy in escapism when months were close where people would say wait for rene to show up at the end as a back pocket clincher. Looking back at what he could do then and what could be done now isn’t a comparison at all. Unless it’s a super coordinated clan effort to win a month I’m fairly confident I could completely ignore the clan race and show up for the last week and beat everyone active atm.

I don’t think thats healthy gameplay for a clan wide competition by any means. I felt bad doing it this time and stopped when we took the lead that fast.

While I think that buff does help with scoring for low level bots and new players it’s just compounded the issue of who has the most resources wins. Even worse so as now you have half the wins to dump to maintain those resources. It’s a cool experiment but it’s not a good long term solution it will just inflate those that are already far ahead even more.

Also I’ve been sick with Covid so that further slowed me down and 1 mil still fell pretty easy. Thank you for giving me a distraction from being sick fish it helped a bit

Unless it’s a super coordinated clan effort to win a month I’m fairly confident I could completely ignore the clan race and show up for the last week and beat everyone active atm.

Then... do that?

Sorry, if almost everyone wants to be in a single clan and everyone in general just has a ton of apathy and indifference in regards to the clan race... then... does it even matter what the rules are?

Rather than look at the top spot, isn't it probably more useful to look at spots 2-10 or whatever and see if there is any difference there?

Or is the argument simply that shattering any illusions some may have wanted to have is detrimental?

As long as plat trophies are tied to top clan only then the race will only ever be about first there is very little incentive to get a rank below that and waste resources losing which is honestly a bigger issue that’s ignored.

Well... I've always agreed there are many issues with the trophy system. Absolutely not gonna start arguing against that...

Even if my clan doesn't finish in first doesn't mean I won't get a plat for being in the top 10 individually. It's about time and resources, last month I did 3m on goergethegreat and wasn't really giving it my all I was just focused

Remove this terrible addition to the game

Aka; Take away the means for others to win so I dont have to try

I freaking hate how it always results in any input being offered as some kinda accusation about the poster being "whiny" or whatever and supposedly just trying to make demands for "free stuff" and, ultimately, just being jealous.

There are very reasonable arguments to be made about the issue and... I gotta be honest here: I kinda don't think anyone can honestly say it's perfect.

But what's the point? The playerbase has shown time and time again that they aren't ever interested in having any reasonable debates... or even trying to ever even begin being remotely reasonable at all.

It's all a complete and utter waste and we're all a bunch of complete and utter wastes. Seriously, why? Just... why?

aka take away my way to win without trying dont think peach can read

for me it is good. is it suppose to be random? it should. but most of the time i can only play certain days of month and it helps me because i like to score but no motivation. now i do have motivation because of the crescendo

I think what bazza is trying to say is the game would be less alive without the buff in terms of scoring. Might be true. But the game is what it is. I could care less if there's a buff or not, the buff only inflated the numbers and killed the time required to get over the 1m mark or higher.

i take back the random part...lol

Make the buff active for the last week only? Goes up 10% each day for a max of 79% increase. Just an idea

Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts on the Monthly Crescendo buff. I've been reading all the feedback in this thread and wanted to wait for the August clan competition to finish before chiming in so that I could also ask for a fresh round of feedback reflecting on how the end of the month felt.

I was inspired by Gpof's analysis and did another similar one. This chart shows Lusitania and Mount Wario throughout the August race. For each clan there are 2 lines: 1 for what actually happened with the MC buff and 1 for what would have happened without the MC buff. The result was interesting. The end-of-month outcome didn't change (i.e. Lusitania still wins in this alternate reality), but it's much closer: Lusitania finishes at 5,109,781 and Mount Wario finishes at 5,066,157, i.e. a gap of a mere 43,624 energy.

It's challenging to draw firm conclusions on what would or wouldn't have happened without the buff. A reasonable argument could possibly be made that MC not existing might have meant Lusitania didn't push as hard to catch up in the final week. Or maybe they wouldn't have let them fall behind as much earlier on in the month.

It's also worth restating the goal of the MC buff. Its primary function is to keep the clan competition relevant throughout the month, i.e. reduce the possibility of the race feeling "over" mid-month (it's not a goal for the buff to help "new clans" win, so the "established clans dominate the game" topic is separate). By this measure, you could view the come-from-behind August win as a success. I have read some feedback from some players that enjoyed the "close race" aspect of the final week of August, which aligns with this goal. Then again, the chart I linked above shows that it would have been even closer without the buff. But again, maybe there wouldn't have been as much motivation for a come-from-behind victory without the buff - it's really hard to say with confidence what would or would not have happened.

I also agree with the point about the "feels bad" aspect. Regardless of all the data and what would have / could have happened, if the buff just isn't fun and feels like a drain on the game for a majority of players, then it should be removed. It's not clear to me that this is how the majority of players feel, but forum threads like this help me get a pulse on things. If you have feelings either way about the MC buff (especially if you like it though - since people that don't like the current system are more incentivized to be vocal about it), please do continue sharing.

I don't plan to make any changes for now. I'm very open to changing or even entirely removing the MC buff, but I want to let the change soak for a bit longer before taking any action. In particular, I'd be very curious to see how some of the other clan race changes I talked about in this announcement a few months ago (e.g. all bots gaining energy, better incentives for second, third, etc. place, and so on) shake things up with this buff being in play. I'm behind on my tentative timeline from that thread, so expect to see an announcement / dev update later this month that talks more broadly about my upcoming plans.

Knowing you have the resources to make up any gap a clan creates in the first 3 weeks, by utilizing the MC buff in the last week, is where I take issue with this. And IMO, this is what you got in August, not a "come from behind tough fought battle to win by Lus".

(it's not a goal for the buff to help "new clans" win, so the "established clans dominate the game" topic is separate)

I wasn't aware of this so that lessens my gripe with it. However I think it is more detrimental in regards to the whole barrier of entry/newer player thing when compared to benefits of increased end of month activity, both of which very much affect the real goal of promoting activity in the clan scoring space which is why I will still compare it. I'd also argue the end of month activity increase is likely to be a fleeting trend as everybody but the dominant clan will become discouraged over time and it will go back to looking like the past.

Won't dive deeper though since I've already covered my thoughts in-depth on the feedback thread and still hold them. For now I will enjoy feeling zero compulsion to score until the last week.

Imagine a game where you accumulate some kinda resource (feels rewarding to the players) to try and beat opponents. There's a ladder system with a ton of opponents and you are constantly working your way up, or down, that ladder. Your activity seems to constantly reward you (it's kinda addicting!) Now, as the month goes you are likely to end up "stuck" in such a system. The gaps between opponents sorta "settle" groups and you're very likely just constantly exchanging spots with the same people over-and-over. Now, it all feels less rewarding... unless there's some mechanic that makes things "swingier" as time goes on - and now we're back and as the month goes on it's even MORE rewarding. And even the person/clan at very top can't stop and feel safe, as all their gains have less value than the future gains of people below.

I'm BASICALLY describing the same game we're playing. If I'd never played bots before then I wouldn't feel the least bit surprised to see such a thing existing in this game.

Having said all that, I'm actually very skeptical it's gonna work out positively in the long run. I kinda just don't even think it matters too much.

And... I actually think last month was a really bad omen where top clan has adopted idea of just being able to do even less just to still end up with their TPs. Worst case scenario if point is to increase activity is a world where no one really bothers at all because it never feels rewarding enough - minus bare minimum effort towards very end by one giant clan. But, whatever. Honestly, there's a very real argument that majority of playerbase would kinda prefer not having to ever even go through the motions, probably.

My anology for what is happening vs what was the idea is more likely like a car race.

Ender's expectations was that we're running a 200 lap race, but each lap we get a 1hp boost. The idea is that every car gets the same boost, and the end results wouldn't alter any because the boost was applied unilaterally, the only difference would be the time each lap took.

The real world application of this would also suffer the exact same issues we're currently seeing, because in that instance not all cars are created equally. Of course there are rules and guidelines that people have to stay within, but drivers differ, material types differ, kind of gas differ (IE resources aren't all equal), so it would in turn start to give some people more of an advantage than others. Those people wouldn't need to drive as fast in the begging, because they could calculate their resources and how it affects them and be able to catch up in the last few laps to take the win based on coasting the beginning part.

That is precisely what we have here. The overall buff isn't affecting the simulation of results, because Ender's simulation doesn't account for real world resources that are required to obtain said numbers.

People will generally take the path of least resisitance. Gpof showcased what could be if someone utilized the buff and resources an entire month. That was essentially just his resources (granted he had a few loaners, but ultimately he could have probably aquired those himself had he had more time to prepare). So what are people doing, not wasting their resources throughout the month, maintaining a "healthy" race until the final week, then blitzing) because they now get much more bang per buck for each fight) and taking the lead and the win, and I imagine actually causing less damage on their resources than if they had been using them all month.

Long story short, this buff if used as intended would separate the top and bottom MUCH more than it is, but instead it's being used to do the least amount of work to achieve the same exact goal. Either way, it needs to be removed.

I would agree more with what nos has said. This buff in the right hands makes the race pointless. Even more so than it’s ever been. The only reason it’s still here is no one with proper resources or scoring ability has abused it to its fullest extent. I had 0 of my bots clanned last month and borrowed from fish to do that comeback. Now all of my bots are clanned. There is 0 incentive to score until the last 5 days of the month for me because that timeframe gets the most bang for my buck and my bots will not take much abuse.

Simply put I’m semi paying attention to the game again and declare no one is allowed to get top clan outside Lusitania until the buff is removed. I will see to it myself that if the race is remotely close that it is ruined at the end.

Remove this buff and restore some sense of balance to the game thanks.

The buff has more downsides then upsides from my point of view. I do like it in terms of scoring, you can pull up big numbers easily. However, because it is so easy, peoply with loads and loads of resources can pull up numbers which can not be beaten.

Also, if you target of bullying (Yes, JJ you are a bully!) they can also take a huge chunk of your energy. I lost over 100k energy for only 5 full attacks, near months end.

Therefor, I think the monthly buff does not help in a good way. But it is fun in scoring terms.

And it only gets further exacerbated by the fact that people that want to compete are forced into 2 scenarios. Either make easily beatable bots in masse, or create bots they can "trash" to dump energy.

Generally people opt for option A, where they produce bots in masse at lower levels. It's easier, less time consuming, and requires less work and maintenance than making dumpers. The issue occurs when Clan A starts making bots to drain said easily beat bots made by Clan B. This causes Clan B to either declan them, or fight it out for the scraps. Clan A doesn't suffer either way, because they already have dumpers in the waiting area, regardless of what happens.

Gpof stated the issue with the bonus being on the resources taken vs the resources gained being the modifier and how it would make the gap much larger when this was first announced. I agreed then, and still do, that the energy modifier being altered to allow more energy being gained per bot (thus increasing the amount of energy available to take) in the game while returning the standard limited energy taken per fight would be a much better idea than keeping the finite resource capacity the same and increasing the amount each attack offers.

My anology for what is happening vs what was the idea...

I wasn't really offering an analogy though. Was literally describing why these kinds of games use such a mechanic.

Ender's expectations was that we're running a 200 lap race, but each lap we get a 1hp boost. The idea is that every car gets the same boost, and the end results wouldn't alter any because the boost was applied unilaterally, the only difference would be the time each lap took.

I would most certainly give Ender enough credit to recognize why other, similar, systems have employed such a mechanic and to have adopted it to try and achieve similar results.

His comments on what it was supposed to try and achieve seem to support this. I mean, if such a thing is trying to increase activity... wouldn't you think it most definitely IS supposed to have an impact and the point is to adopt such a thing precisely to achieve an impact towards the clan race. Does it make any sense whatsoever, really, to believe it was/is supposed to effectively be meaningless?

Of course it is supposed to make the later stages have more value than the early stages to try and encourage players to increase the amount they play at the end because the competition is more "open" and results would hopefully not be "settled" throughout most of month.

I wasn't really offering an analogy though. Was literally describing why these kinds of games use such a mechanic.

Congrats. My post wasn't a direct response to you either.

I lost over 100k energy for only 5 full attacks, near months end.

Having minimum con at 150lvl leaves you vulnerable like this, choices have consequences. You can get drained also without the buff.

Congrats. My post wasn't a direct response to you either.

Oh, then after I posted and you said "the idea is more likely like..." then what idea WERE you responding to?

The literal idea of what the thread is arguing about. What Ender wanted vs what Ender got....

Just because a post follows yours, regardless of time frame, doesn't imply (nor should you infer) that the post is directed at you unless explicitly stated (most often though I understand not always, people will do like you did and quote what they're replying to).

Well, that doesn't even make sense.

You claimed your thoughts were more likely than something else.

And... the thread simply begins with a call to get rid of the thing.

So... your analogy is a more likely explanation than "Ender should get rid of it?"

Okay, bud. "Congrats," I tell you what.

Also, if you target of bullying (Yes, JJ you are a bully!) they can also take a huge chunk of your energy. I lost over 100k energy for only 5 full attacks, near months end.

How did he bully you? This should be interesting

How did he bully you? This should be interesting

To quote from your own clan forum:

My goal for the month has been to stop PeeT from 1st

I'd argue that's more of a rivalry than bullying. If he was onlining you and draining your targets, then you might have an argument to be made about bullying, but if he was just attacking you while you were offline, then ...

It isn't really the action, it's the intent - if we're gonna try and have this pedantic argument.

You can playfully do all sorts of things that would tend to often be considered "bullying" to people and it can be "harmless fun" or literally a part of how you may "make love" to them. You can say and do seemingly trivial and "harmless" things in order to bully and demean people.

Really, the action itself probably doesn't even matter very much if we wanna have this pedantic debate on whether or not it was "bullying."

And... well, it seems here the target may very well have felt bullied, whether or not someone was trying to bully them - so... there's that...

Let's try and keep this thread on topic to give Ender feedback about the energy multiplier

Well, I think it actually does touch on a potentially very real issue of possibly manipulating the clan race by attacking scorers themselves at the end. This would be a VERY feels-bad thing, were these tactics used to reward much less effort to erase much more effort.

In a game where TPs exist as another resource to manage, it's potentially a major issue, I think. TPs, of course, being a very major variable when considering this topic anyways...

manipulating the clan race by attacking scorers themselves

Real wars is considered manipulation now? Interesting.

Who exactly believes the intent of attacking each someone in Real Wars was bullying?

As far as I know, literally no one believes that. What are you talking about?

I will say, if the intent was to hurt another player and not even a part of general strategy (with no personal gain in mind at all even)? It... kinda does sound like it was simple "bullying."

Again... motives kinda are everything if we want to continue this debate.

What was the point, ya know?

There's no rule against attacking scorers so don't need to get stuck debating definitions.

Back on track (again), where it is relevant to this thread is as feedback to the energy multiplier which I think is a fair point for Peet to raise. If someone does want to hit your scorers, they can take energy from you much quicker on the last day than you could have earned it earlier in the month. Hypothetically someone could let you score all month and then reverse everything you did in a few days. Would be pretty demotivating for that to happen and make people feel like they wasted their time.

My opinion is still that the buff encourages dominant clans to be more dominant, but with less effort, which is not ideal. It's a lot easier for 2-3 people with lots of infrastructure to turn up 5 days from the end of the month and claim a win even though other clans put more effort in. With the multiplier, there is less "public energy" around than before as it all gets drained much faster at the end of the month, so "private energy"/dumpers become much more important if you do want to sweep a late win.

That being said, I'd be interested to see a month where 2nd-10th places are more rewarding and the focus isn't on first place. Could imagine lots of people trying to compete for a top 10 on their own little solo clans.

That being said, I'd be interested to see a month where 2nd-10th places are more rewarding and the focus isn't on first place. Could imagine lots of people trying to compete for a top 10 on their own little solo clans.

I'm sure most if not all of us have agreed in other threads that some type of better scaling rewards for 2nd-10th place clans would be a good change all around, regardless of what is/isn't done about the crescendo buff. I recall Mal bringing up activity and such among the rest of the top 10 a few times in other threads which was something I actually agreed with, despite me not liking the crescendo buff as a whole. While I think it is unhealthy for the game long-term (or even relatively short term) especially with the battle for 1st, I do think it has had a positive effect on the energy race below that which inherently extends to the top 100 individual monthly as well. Don't misconstrue this though, I still think the negative far outweighs the positive with the buff.

To quote from your own clan forum:

And how is stopping you from being 1st bullying?

You have made a bold statement, stand by it. Explain yourself

Obviously Monthly Crescendo (MC) hasn't been discussed for a while. Below are some of my thoughts on it as an older player that scored a bit last month for the first time in many years.

I've been gaming for most my life but only recently did I learn an interesting term - power creep. I'm sure the majority of you know what it means but if you don't the definition is something along the lines of 'the gradual and systemic increase in power level of newly introduced game content or updates'. Depending on the game it generally makes previous strategies, cards, champions, items etc increasingly obsolete and it makes gameplay mechanics easier. The relative strength of the average current player on said game is more than the average player on that same game years earlier. I assert that bots4 has suffered from a lot of power creep over the years. MC is the most recent example of this.

Now at this point in my post I talked a lot about power creep in bots4. It was far too wordy and tangential, although probably historically interesting for some of you. I decided to delete all of it. A discussion for another time. Suffice to say that over the years everything added around this core bots2 clone has made what we are playing today significantly easier by many metrics. For better or worse.

By far the best conceptual analogy of MC was provided by Nos:

Ender's expectations was that we're running a 200 lap race, but each lap we get a 1hp boost. The idea is that every car gets the same boost, and the end results wouldn't alter any because the boost was applied unilaterally, the only difference would be the time each lap took.

The real world application of this would also suffer the exact same issues we're currently seeing, because in that instance not all cars are created equally.

First off I would like to reiterate what others have already said, it doesn't just inflate numbers. You physically do not need to click as much compared to a month without MC (Read: power creep). To point out the obvious, energy transfer per fight is significantly higher at month end. Imagine a hypothetical situation where no energy is dumped on a bot and no energy is drained within the level range of that bot. There is a theoretical breakpoint later in the month within this ecosystem when there is too much energy to actively drain or dump with the time remaining in the month. The dumper breakpoint is static, the active draining breakpoint is variable. MC pushes both of those breakpoints further back i.e. the game is easier because you can take the same energy in less fights later in the month. To this point Brokenduck stated 'if you scored consistently it wouldn't change the outcome of those who decided last minute dumping to catch up'. Well yes, that is true. Assuming no extra energy gain, a bot can only gain 60 EPH. You're also assuming that you can both dump all the energy. That remains the rate limiting step so if you want to dump energy every day be my guest - to that I would say I'll see you in the second half of the month and I'll do it in half the time at no extra cost. And I'll be using my Jane camped dumpers that are incredibly optimised (weak) that I levelled to 100+ in 10 minutes with my broken ratio bots and I'll be dumping using my accrued HA onto a bot that is stronger because of new equipment and won't be wasting any time on captchas and everything is streamlined with QoL updates. Do you see what I'm getting at with power creep?

All you old school grinders should hate MC. I don't identify with you but the lack of further discussion for over a year is no doubt a reflection of the fact there hasn't been a competitive month since it was added. And without competition there will be no true demonstration of final week MC dumping.

Which is a segue to the next point about not all cars being created equal. You should listen to what I have to say on this because I was somewhat of a come from behind specialist in my day. Execute alluded to the way Escapism used to score - I can say with absolute certainty that in the post neps Eternal vs Escapism years i.e. the Shoegazer 'just stop autoclicking Ville' years, MC would have benefitted me more than any other player. By a large amount. And although I was just leveraging efficiency and execution, I don't think it would have been fair. It would have been the difference maker in July 2013 when I didn't start scoring till the last 5 days. Still regret that, sorry Fish. Fast forward many years and Execute and darkweb have smashed my monthly record. I wasn't around for their records but you don't do numbers like those without leveraging the same things I was, maybe even better than me. There might even be other players in recent years with this same efficiency.

Now you might be thinking, hang on, in an actual competitive month nobody is going to just let energy sit around. This is true and if the energy has already been actively drained, it doesn't matter if somebody else can get energy a bit quicker than you. Actively draining bots daily would actually become very important. The other conclusion to be drawn is that strong dumper clans would also be quite important as untouchable coffers. Those dumpers that are essentially win dumpers would just be another trashed 0.00 ratio bot. Even borderline dumpers could be drained. Maybe Kerrod was on to something when he made some workshop freaked dumpers back in 2012. Lmao. I know that I would target dumpers of known big scorers, at the very least dropping their EPH and energy. Workshop freaked bots at the level of known scorers would also pose a large threat.

Changes to EPH and how finite energy is complicates things and I don't want to talk about it here. Making a change to EPH to allow MC is akin to a prescribing cascade in medicine which is generally not a good thing.

All this being said you might find my recommendation for MC quite surprising - I think Monthly Crescendo should remain for now. I wrote all this negative stuff just to say keep it. The X factor amongst all of this is the impact of MC on human psychology. Big numbers, hits of dopamine. Despite most of you agreeing with me that it isn't balanced, would it be beneficial for the greater good and create more competition? Would it mean more new/casual player retention? Definitely yes. Although not healthy it does create the illusion of balance. Is unhealthy competition better than no competition at all? Humans can be emotional and will hang on to that shred of hope that MC (rightly or wrongly) gives them. Just maybe they will swoop in defeat the villain and grab the girl at the last moment. Ender is fairly altruistic but it exploits the same things that micro transactions do with skins, rec packs and chests. Colours. Fireworks. Same principle but not to the same extent. It is easy for me to say since I wouldn't be scoring but I'd love to sit back and watch the carnage in an all out balanced competitive month with the almost guaranteed scorched earth strategy and Mutually Assured Destruction that would occur. The Doomsday Clock edges closer to midnight. Win or lose the best times I have had in this game were the close clan battles that came down to the wire. Ultimately this X factor is something less tangible for us as players of the game and it is Ender's role to assign some sort of objective value to it.

Anyway those are my thoughts. Perhaps I'll talk more about power creep in another thread.

tl;dr Monthly Crescendo is not balanced but at this point I suggest keeping it for now until a truly competitive month demonstrates this. Whether or not this happens is another question

I love baseball, so will attribute your stance similar in fashion to the "dead ball era" and them making changes to the rules to alter the games so they're more "exciting" (so called live ball era where we see a lot more home runs, similar to American Football where the games used to be a ton of running but role changes created more passing and a sense of excitement).

I agree, as do almost all of the actual players, that MC isn't the game changer in regards to fairness (actually the opposite), but like you stated it does give people the sense of action and the appearance of a more active race when the numbers are inflated more than they would typically be.

I'm an outlier, as I don't really have skin the game regarding clan race. My solo clan placing high in the race is just a happenstance, I don't care what place it takes, and this my overview of MC was from a poorly logical one (and I think I even stated this perceived hypothetical scenario versus real world application like Rene used in his post as well).

At this point, the sad reality is that the perceived assumptions of what MCs intentions are for haven't up to this point been utilized for what they claimed to be for but rather what most of us have started they would be, which is that the people that have the ability to dump/gain energy at a massive rate wait until the time versus effort hits the critical spot and they kick into gear and win the month while the rest of us curb doing at the same rate we were playing at prior to MC, albeit with more inflated energy scores now.

I propose radical changes, we can change the energy system to something clan related, maybe we call it clan score for now.

One per victory, two if you happen to really dislike the opponent clan, maybe we call these like diplomacy or something you know, we can be hostile towards other clans, but if we’re both hostile towards each other, we are at war earning clan score.

We would need some kind of fairness formula though, as straight score might not be the best metric, maybe some kind of index, can’t think of what to call that though, but my buddy jans and I call it jans index for now.

/s