What is this I don't even

[Kilkenne]

I'm sick of hearing that kills have been skill-less and without merit. The idea behind killing someone has in the past been one that has far reaching ramifications, especially in rounds where people are using the market as a storehouse. They, if easier, would have been a stopgap that would have gotten rid of the idea that people could just sock away all of their resources until the end of a round. When we had 5-6 people organized, that's how we used the mostly, to destroy stored materials when people weren't bright enough to mount a token defense.

Your dislike of Sevah is closing your eyes (everyone's eyes) to a fact that making kills more difficult, and the tiny attack limit in turbo not reg so much is all part of what has led to the state of land flow ridiculousness that we have today. We have a system that is set up for slow playing that we've rigged up to fast play by encouraging immense amounts of land flow, creating a system where no one cares at all about the land that they have.

Shadow already knows where I stand on this, and we talk about it a lot. To be clear; Unclanned leader play is grossly overpowered, if you work in groups of unclanned leaders, you should literally never lose; Land flow is too high to make the game fun (defense is nigh impossible), and this is a result of people not being afraid of losing land, because they can just get it all back by scraping. - These are my two main issues with the game that I've been attempting to address.

[Shadow]

Your dislike of Sevah is closing your eyes (everyone's eyes) to a fact that making kills more difficult, and the tiny attack limit in turbo not reg so much is all part of what has led to the state of land flow ridiculousness that we have today. We have a system that is set up for slow playing that we've rigged up to fast play by encouraging immense amounts of land flow, creating a system where no one cares at all about the land that they have.

I'm not sure I understand this. You say that the tiny attack limit is the problem but that land flow is also the problem. Could you explain? That seems contradictory. Unless you are suggesting a higher attack limit and better defense/incentive to defend, in which case I agree. But raising the attack limit without addressing defense first is counterproductive. Yes? Also it may be that I only slept for 2 hours last night, but I am not clear on what your stance on harder kills is from this paragraph.

With regards to Sevah, I promise that I am taking his ideas just as seriously as everyone else's ideas, as long as he gives reasons for his suggestions. These are usually in short supply, though this thread is better than usual.

[windhound]

wat kilk

Market storage is now less of a thing in Turbo, the changes haven't been propagated to reg yet.
Fact remains, kills are still very doable - they just take more effort than the vanilla qmt code.  A Good Thing.
There's multiple ways to stop people hording.  Threatening to destroy it all at a whim is one way, sure.  Modifying the market to encourage selling rather than hording was another. 
The latter was chosen and I think the game is better for it.  The former generally leads to discouragement and bad feelings.

Making the hitlimit higher changes nothing.  It would have in olden times, where people attacked 4-6x ea, sure.  But you sure as heck know that if the attack limit is 33x people are going to attack 33x.  Thus it doesn't remotely solve the "everyone is maxed" problem at all.
Unmaxing faster is worth a try, I swear I've been saying that for a couple years now...
Another option is individual hit limits.

Unclanned leader play is op.  This is fairly undisputed. 
However, the game is built around high land flow.  FAF did various things to solve land flow and while very effective they basically killed the game.

[Shadow]

However, the game is built around high land flow.  FAF did various things to solve land flow and while very effective they basically killed the game.

Echoing here: what they did at FaF was reduce land taken per attack by a factor of 10. Land flow pretty much stopped, though the net result was that everyone joined a clan and attacked 100x instead of 30x to make up for it. Then people got sick of it because it didn't actually change gameplay except to make everything happen slower, and by the time they reverted the code about half the player base had left.

That being said, the scraping culture is a bit silly, and was never intended. So while we would like to address it, we have to be very, very careful in doing it. It's very easy to make defense too easy, especially with leaders in their current form.

For the market, I am very, very pleased with how things are turning out. It's not done yet since there are tweaks to be made, but I think it will be quite nice when finalized.

[Wolf Snare]

Look at turbo right now. 3 of the top 4 players are clanned under the banner Hrunting. The top two players have intentionally refrained from running for the last 3 - 4 days to ensure they can't be taken out. No one can touch these players, as killing is not an option. How is that fair?

[Shadow]

They are easy to take down - I just did it on Briar.

Again, what aspect of them being up there do you find unfair? That leader defense is too powerful? Agreed. That they are in a clan and you can't keep up solo? In what strange world should a solo player be able to keep up with a clan in a balanced game?

Now, do you actually have a suggestion to make?

[Wolf Snare]

I find it cheap that they are sitting on 3k & 7k land and 7 - 9mil leaders and are not running purposely while being fed massive amounts of troops. It seems to me like you are insistent on making this "pass up" strat the only prominent strategy in the game.

Clearly you don't know how much harder it is to solo net and mass resources since the indy sack has been overpowered, I think you should probably stay active when implementing changes instead of making fixes on a hunch and sitting passive like you did last round; there is now a plateau for solo leader players, you can't possibly mass more than 500b cash or 20b food without it all being knocked back down by the next time you run. This is ridiculous as the clanned players skyrocket with untouchable troop net with ease, all the while feeding their runs off of the solo leaderers who are actually busting their balls to get anywhere.

We're leaning too strongly towards favouring clanned indies, there has to be a way to meet in the middle to get the best of both worlds, bc as of right now, since storing is out of the question, clanned indies are far more powerful (net wise) than a team of any number of solo leaderers.

I think sack needs to be capped after a certain point, taking 4b cash and 100m food per sack can essentially fuel a few runs for an indy, it's unbalanced. An indy can come out of protection and sustain themselves off a few attacks, it's not fair Kyle. Sack definitely needs to be capped off or toned down, look at the scoreboards and consider the fact that it would take literally 5+ skilled leaderers to take down your clan atm, only to find them back up in the same position in a day and a half. Meanwhile I'm plateaued at the same spot, fueling the enemy on a daily basis after actually working my tail off producing at premium rates.

edit: noticed your edit; "Now, do you actually have a suggestion to make?"

Don't even try to belittle me. You think you're something else don't you? Don't let the little admin tittle inflate your head, you need to be level headed and rational with the power you have, don't go around thinking you have the ability to emasculate Sevz or I just b/c we've been the sole competition to you both ingame, and have been the only ones brave enough to oppose the "fixes" you've made for the "good of the game".

[Shadow]

Leader defense is and always has been governed by a silly formula. That has been true since leaders were invented and has very little to do with the changes being made. The "pass-up" strategy has always been the winner. Recent changes (taking down indy stats and aid credits) have nerfed it. It's still strong, but that is not a consequence of what has been done lately.

Please stop saying that I am making changes on hunches or not thinking this through. I am active, and I am well aware of the consequences of what is being done, which you would know if you had bothered to read any of the dev threads I linked you to. These things are not done overnight. I spent the first half of this round being sacked more than 100 times every run - I am well aware of exactly how strong it is.

I am aware of the solo leader net cap - it is current much higher than the solo indy net cap. Currently, being maxxed with sack by an indy player takes 9.5% of your resources. If you are at a point where you have banked up enough that you are only increasing your stockpile by 10% each run, you can afford to buy a defense to keep people off your back.

Again, if you would read the threads I linked you to ages ago, you would see plans for defense, as well.

An indy can come out of protection and sustain themselves off a few attacks, it's not fair Kyle.

Again, this would not be true if you invested some money in actually playing this midgame instead of storing quietly for the long haul.

Takedowns on clanned leaders are easy. Takedowns on unclanned ones are very hard, again because of the silly way leaders work. If we nerf sack, we give solo leaders a free pass to the top, quietly netting and not interacting with the rest of the game in any meaningful way.

Putting a hard cap on pretty much anything in this game is a very bad idea. There will always be a situation where that cap is too low, eventually. We could perhaps work diminishing returns for large differences in net between the sacker and the defender, but that's about it.

These changes are part of a bigger picture. Please go read some dev threads. You are someone who could actually be helping out and you are wasting time complaining after the fact, despite repeated requests and invitations to actually help with things.

[Sharptooh]

Look at turbo right now. 3 of the top 4 players are clanned under the banner Hrunting. The top two players have intentionally refrained from running for the last 3 - 4 days to ensure they can't be taken out. No one can touch these players, as killing is not an option. How is that fair?

How would killing be an option on these players anyway? They're stocked with massive amounts of troops?

No seriously I'm asking, what has making kills harder got to do with anyone in the top three who all have amazing troop defences, I'm finding it difficult to understand.

Besides which you're making a big fuss about these players, but in reality all you need are 3-4 clanned players to destroy a large part of that networth, clan play is incredibly useful to it's aid bonuses yes, but also gives you the advantage of having unlimited attacks against these players.

Que something I'm sure you're very familiar with called leader suicides and I'm sure you don't need me to explain how those players are anything but immune from a takedown.

And I really don't know what all of this rubbish you spew about solo leaders having a hard time is Wolf Snare; it is widely regarded that solo leader players have it easy, yes sacking may become a little annoying sometimes but I think you're grossly exaggerating the problem.

I think you're also being rather disrespectful to Shadow, I think he's being pretty reasonable considering you're attitude.

[Wolf Snare]

sharptooth, you mass half as much as I have this round and you'd understand. I'm going to pretend you didnt even post, shoo.


Shadow:
What don't you understand? Solo leaders can no longer compete. A team of 5 of the best solo leaders cannot compete. The series of changes you've made has created a domino effect and quite literally crippled solo play. I have 4 very competent team mates, all of which are utilizing the code to the best possible extent to produce at premium rates 2 - 3x the next warlord. This takes a vast amount of patience, skill, and flexibility to sustain. What do you have? 3 leaders running 1 turn every 3 days to prevent takedowns, and a bunch of indies running the same mindless strat to fuel the higher-uppers? It's honestly repulsing me that your indies can reap the benifits of our hard work to the extent that we are litterally at a standstill, having hundreds of millions of food networth and hundreds of billions of dollars taken from us on a day to day basis to fuel your simple cut & dry strategy of passing troops up.

You think it's easy to whittle someone down & open them up when they are on 3k land? It's not, let me assure you. Besides the fact that it will take at LEAST one full set of turns and a very competent and patient leaderer, we all know that you will have rebuilt your networth with ease via stealing our resources, massing and passing. I say screw the mass & pass strat, if you think that you "toned down" indy enough, think again. What you don't seem to realize is yes, any one of these fixes alone would have been acceptable to even the playing field, but all of them combined is honestly too much. Taking away storing, upping sack for indies, lowering merc availability & forcing public market interactions (which once again fuel the enemy in my situation) are all together too much. You've killed solo leadering. Congrats.

I apologize if I offended you by assuming you hastily put these changes in place / did it to further your own cause; it's just, at a glance, it seems like either they were not very well calculated, or you had a personal agenda. I've obviously ruled these both out, I know you have ethics and the best intentions for the game, but you have to see reason here-- it's gone from one end of the spectrum to the other.

Now, back to the drawing board.

Play with the defensive aspect of the game so that solo indies have a fighting chance. I see lizard to have alot of potential if our OP/DP ratios weren't so ridiculously unbalanced. There is no such thing as a solo indy right now, which is why I don't understand the approach you've taken nor the reasoning for the order you've implemented changes; right now you've just suped up clan passing strategies while ruining solo leaderers.

until you have implemented your defense fix;

lower indy production considerably; if you intend for pass & mass to be the main strategy (as you claim it's always been, though I disagree) then atleast make it a challenge. Why in the heck would I waste all of my teams turns (5 sets of turns) that could go towards producing, to take out your top mules (that's all they are, and tbh I don't see the difference between your mules, and the market being a storehouse, it's the exact same concept) when I would literally see them in the same position in a day and a half b/c of overpowered indies that are fueled by our supplies. Can I ask an honest question? What have you been doing with your turns within your clan this round, as a leaderer? B/c I know I've been sustaining your indies' resources.

Bring back market storing to an extent: at least 50% of everything storable. This will further progress your dream of an active market, but it will also give leaderers a chance to keep /some/ of the resources they've created-- afterall, don't they deserve to profit at least a portion of what they've created? I know I personally have made over a hundred billion food and atleast 2 trillion dollars, and I am steady sitting on 600b cash and 20b food-- the rest goes to supplying your indies on a regular.
Now, for that to work, the sellprice for food needs to go up to $9. $7 is too low, plain and simply, for as we cannot remove food anymore, the only viable option is to at least sell it at a decent price. Given Enrich abilities, it would equal out to about $9 cut and dry to at least break even from feasting over cashing. Leaderers need to at least have the option to make a decent buck from their stored products. Before you go on a rant saying that this is essentially storing food until we want to cash out-- yes, it is, but with the way sacking is overpowered, I think the underdog needs at least one trick up his sleeve; the element of surprise.

Mercs must refil at a heavier rate. I would suggest (completely unbiased and professional opinion) that we return the refill rate to normal & doll out as many skiffs as rats. Your defense to this suggestion in another thread was silly-- something along the lines of: This change was made to prevent leader locks... Um, look around Kyle, you know [darn] well any competent clan using mass&pass can break any leaderer buying up mercs. At least give back the ability to buy up to the common leader player.

If you insist on keeping it the way it is, for balancing issues or whatever you may come up with ::) I suggest you up the refill rate to 1.5+x it's original rate, as it should NOT take days and days to spend 500b cash, especially with the way mass&pass has the ridiculous ability to jump in networth over short periods of time, again, it's just not fair.

Go ahead and tear apart my ideas, but I know you have a head on your shoulders and despite our differences throughout our RWL careers I know you at least subconsciously see the points I've made to be valid. If nothing else, know I'm trying to be fair as possible, even though you obviously have much different ideas in mind for RWL's future... Just realize it must be more even, it has to be at least somewhat fair. At this rate we might aswell bring the original pressgang back; I'm seeing similar trends in NW fluctuation.

[Shadow]

I am working on a compilation of dev ideas for you, that should address most of what is here and give you a better idea of why things are happening in the order they are.

I will address one of the points here - nerfing indy production. I don't think this is really the problem, so much as the ability to aid it away and produce free of cost. A potential solution to this would be to introduce a time delay on aid during which time the sender must continue to pay upkeep on troops sent. This could raise costs for clanned indy to be the same as solo indy, so that it would not actually be much cheaper to pay for an indy to make troops instead of buying them directly. To allow for emping and such, we could give the recipient the option to accept early, but for general uncoordinated clan play such as was there this round, the upkeep costs would still be high.

The rest of the post will be addressed in the compilation, which will probably take me a while.

I wish you wouldn't be so dramatic though. RWL careers, professional opinions. We play internet rats ^_^.

[windhound]

Snare, I feel like you're putting a lot of blame on Shadow for issues he didn't create - and continue to yell at him for not going far enough in some cases.

"I would suggest (completely unbiased and professional opinion) that we return the refill rate to normal & doll out as many skiffs as rats."
How does this make even the smallest amount of sense?
If you were designing the black market from scratch, would you honestly start with the assumption that the weakest, cheapest and the strongest, most expensive troop types should be available in equal amounts?  No other game does so.  You might as well recommend an infinite market where you can buy whatever you have cash for.
The reason it was done the way it was was for coding simplicity.  The reason you want to go back to it is because you were used to it, not because it makes any objective sense.

Low on time atm, but I can come back to the other points.
Thanks for taking the time to type that out, rant-like or not constructive feedback is nice.  Goes for the rest of yall as well.

[Firetooth]

Snare, I'm honestly getting tired of your constant aggression and complete lack of tact, please tone down the righteous rage.

(sorry for posting with quotes Kilk)

What don't you understand? Solo leaders can no longer compete. A team of 5 of the best solo leaders cannot compete. The series of changes you've made has created a domino effect and quite literally crippled solo play. I have 4 very competent team mates, all of which are utilizing the code to the best possible extent to produce at premium rates 2 - 3x the next warlord. This takes a vast amount of patience, skill, and flexibility to sustain. What do you have? 3 leaders running 1 turn every 3 days to prevent takedowns, and a bunch of indies running the same mindless strat to fuel the higher-uppers? It's honestly repulsing me that your indies can reap the benifits of our hard work to the extent that we are litterally at a standstill, having hundreds of millions of food networth and hundreds of billions of dollars taken from us on a day to day basis to fuel your simple cut & dry strategy of passing troops up.

This makes absolutely no sense to me. All you need is two leaders co-ordinating runs unclanned and you're set to make a killing. A team of 5? Sacking isn't an issue. Run after each other and max each other out and keep the net on the maxed player and actually buy some defenses. How on earth is that difficult? Me and Sevz did the same thing on a small scale recently, when a lot of these changes (sacking, for one) were implemented. As for clan play being overpowered, how is a team indy strat any less "mindless" than a solo-leader strat? Takedowns on clan warlords are also hardly difficult, just need the numbers. 5 solo players should have no difficulty.

Finally, I pose the question, why not just clan up if there are 5 of you? Clans are there for a reason, and I'd argue solo players working in a team actually goes against the aim of the clan system as you get lots of the benefits with few of the drawbacks.

You think it's easy to whittle someone down & open them up when they are on 3k land? It's not, let me assure you. Besides the fact that it will take at LEAST one full set of turns and a very competent and patient leaderer, we all know that you will have rebuilt your networth with ease via stealing our resources, massing and passing. I say screw the mass & pass strat, if you think that you "toned down" indy enough, think again. What you don't seem to realize is yes, any one of these fixes alone would have been acceptable to even the playing field, but all of them combined is honestly too much. Taking away storing, upping sack for indies, lowering merc availability & forcing public market interactions (which once again fuel the enemy in my situation) are all together too much. You've killed solo leadering. Congrats.

Sacking is a pain for a leader, but it encourages actual use of troops. What would you rather have, a leaderer on 500bil cash with no troops but 15mil leaders so is untouchable as they are unclanned? Sacking gives indies power to punish these players and encourages more defensive play. It is a complete joke for the game to work in such a way that you are encouraged to not defend your land and resources, and whilst the land thing is a separate issue, I say leaders being forced to defend their resources fits in well with the theme. Moreover, sacking is not as damaging as you make it out to be. Unless you managing your resources very poorly, each run should make more then you lose per day. (I assume you're running early to scrape then casting whilst maxed?)

Storing is still possible (unless you mean market, which should have gone a long while ago), sack was upped for indies as they have no other means of doing damage and lowering merc availability actual made the market a market and not a storehouse.  As for your last two sentences, that is no way to give C & C, and really comes off a bit...ridiculous? No need to point figures and get so accusatory.

Play with the defensive aspect of the game so that solo indies have a fighting chance. I see lizard to have alot of potential if our OP/DP ratios weren't so ridiculously unbalanced. There is no such thing as a solo indy right now, which is why I don't understand the approach you've taken nor the reasoning for the order you've implemented changes; right now you've just suped up clan passing strategies while ruining solo leaderers.

Solo indies can't currently exist, Snare, because of the way the race works and the way leader works. This isn't anything new, and you are looking through rose-tinted glasses if you think so. The only to make solo indy viable would be to seriously change leader missions and attacking, which I doubt you would like going from your previous posts.

lower indy production considerably; if you intend for pass & mass to be the main strategy (as you claim it's always been, though I disagree) then atleast make it a challenge. Why in the heck would I waste all of my teams turns (5 sets of turns) that could go towards producing, to take out your top mules (that's all they are, and tbh I don't see the difference between your mules, and the market being a storehouse, it's the exact same concept) when I would literally see them in the same position in a day and a half b/c of overpowered indies that are fueled by our supplies. Can I ask an honest question? What have you been doing with your turns within your clan this round, as a leaderer? B/c I know I've been sustaining your indies' resources.

I actually -kind of- agree indy production should be lowered, but not considerably. As for "mules," show a little bit of respect to your peers and fellow players. I'm not currently playing turbo, but in reg I only send a small fraction of my resources to indies in my clan. At one point half our net was my food, and I'm regularly buying troops to supplement our own net.

Bring back market storing to an extent: at least 50% of everything storable. This will further progress your dream of an active market, but it will also give leaderers a chance to keep /some/ of the resources they've created-- afterall, don't they deserve to profit at least a portion of what they've created? I know I personally have made over a hundred billion food and atleast 2 trillion dollars, and I am steady sitting on 600b cash and 20b food-- the rest goes to supplying your indies on a regular.
Now, for that to work, the sellprice for food needs to go up to $9. $7 is too low, plain and simply, for as we cannot remove food anymore, the only viable option is to at least sell it at a decent price. Given Enrich abilities, it would equal out to about $9 cut and dry to at least break even from feasting over cashing. Leaderers need to at least have the option to make a decent buck from their stored products. Before you go on a rant saying that this is essentially storing food until we want to cash out-- yes, it is, but with the way sacking is overpowered, I think the underdog needs at least one trick up his sleeve; the element of surprise.

No way. Leaders can profit just fine without the market. With the storehouse market you propose, food becomes the ultimate commodity. Your proposed changes would put Wolf back to top dog (no pun intended) and to be honest would just work as a way to sell food with no threat of it being damaged in the meantime-you yourself admit it is more or less storing, which is completely against the point of the market. This would also go against the Market's goal of increased player interaction. Sacking is also a completely different issue, and the fact you think solo leaders are underdogs seems a bit skewed. As for "element of surprise," we had this with the current system, and it was not surprising at all. A Wolf on 100mil net would jump to 1.4bil on troops from sold food they'd marketed all round long. The net would be untouchable and had been untouchable all round. Granted, the problem wouldn't be as bad with your system, but it would still exist.

Windy covered the next bit.

The only changes I really see needing atm (by that I mean doable changes, not completely overhauling indy so it is viable solo) is perhaps slightly reducing team indy output and faster unmaxing.

[cloud]

Didn't read the dozens of "walls of test" (read a few), but here are my current issues:

Market: Seeing who is selling what. This severely limits what I am going to purchase. I feel there's not much point to purchase from my allies and I'm not going to fund my enemies so basically I'm only going to purchase from those who I find neutral or not a threat.
Not being able to store troops. This is only really a problem due to low Merc numbers. Being able to store a large number of troops, drop net, run, and then recoop a decent number of troops should be a viable strat, but with merc numbers so low and not being able to recover a decent number of troops this strat is severely hurt.

Mercs: Way too few. Shouldn't penalize low NW as much. It's very hard to buy enough mercs to break most people even if you have more than sufficient cash.

Sacks: Don't really hurt solo leader players. Sacks shouldn't be different for indies/leaders there needs to be a better way to balance the two without nerfing leader vs leader attacks. Maybe there should be a sack penalty for attacking a player without leaders, but not against players just because they have leaders. High ranked leader players rarely attack eachother because there's no profit in it.

[Shadow]

Market: Seeing who is selling what.

I've always disliked this too. But a fair number of people do like it, so it has stayed. If that opinion has changed, I would be happy to push an anonymous market.

Not being able to store troops. This is only really a problem due to low Merc numbers. Being able to store a large number of troops, drop net, run, and then recoop a decent number of troops should be a viable strat, but with merc numbers so low and not being able to recover a decent number of troops this strat is severely hurt.

This is true, but allowing market storing is not an option - it allows for too many other abusive strategies. If we implemented this it would need to be a more targeted approach. Did you have anything in mind? FaF had a temporary troop storehouse - I didn't like it because it was basically like market storing. But if we made something like that that leaked out over time so that you couldn't actually keep stuff in there for more than a few hours it could work.

Mercs: Way too few. Shouldn't penalize low NW as much. It's very hard to buy enough mercs to break most people even if you have more than sufficient cash.

We will be increasing the max amounts and refill rates during the next round of tweaks.

Sacks: Don't really hurt solo leader players.

That's a new one! (Tell it to snare and sevs ^_^)

Sacks shouldn't be different for indies/leaders there needs to be a better way to balance the two without nerfing leader vs leader attacks. Maybe there should be a sack penalty for attacking a player without leaders, but not against players just because they have leaders. High ranked leader players rarely attack eachother because there's no profit in it.

Actually the way it works is that the sack gains are inversely proportional to the attacker's ratio. It would be possible to instead make it proportional to the defender's ratio, which would achieve what you are saying. I will keep that in mind for later tweaks.