New Plunder Points scoring

@Skye you are a expert in this game, but you are blind to the concerns and requirements of the broader community. Those that play this in their spare time. I joined this game at its world release and have had a PR in the mid 700's. But I don't gem and I don't rumble daily. I am in a sociable guild who play to have fun and chat. We would like to rumble and have the chance to win every now and then, but in recent times are getting smashed, rumble after rumble. We are the guild you cheerily call an easy rumble. Well, no more will this guild be an easy rumble for we have stopped, as others Are doing. So in reality, your easy rumbles will also get less and less because the pool will thin out. This game has become elitist (your comments clearly define this), so you marginalise the middle class. We regularly read in these forums about the breakup of guilds and the departure of longtime players. Well it is happening. You can preach the expert line or you can listen to the broader community. Unfortunately experts (and politicians) never listen to the masses, and are completely ignorant when the ends smacks them in the face.

What is funny is that the few subsidise the masses, but it is this subsidy that will ruin the game as Midoki will focus on that cashflow at the expense of the game base. I put money into the game, but stopped once I saw the direction it was taking. In the meantime Midoki rubs its hands while a few fight over worthless bits of plastic, which as an Aussie, I cant get (unless I use VPN) and pay someone to mail to me. I am lucky I am not bothered by another screen icon.

 

In our next rumble I am going to:
Drop to <101 PR (the biggest reduction), and drop again if it ever gets above this bracket.
Every single fight I will click finish at 2* even if I would have won. I will make sure the entire army has been deployed before then.
I will not use GS troops (even though I already don't).
I won't use any LP (even though I already rarely do).
I will not gem any battles at all.
I will not have any streak bonuses.
I will start at as close to 0 grog as I can get by recruiting and cancelling troops while still retaining one full initial army - yes my distilleries are maxed, but hopefully this offset makes up for that slight difference.
I will not use the army present on my ship to battle, although I may collect it and send it back out to explore. I will not fight any sea monsters that could give grog, and I will not collect grog from the islands that pop it up.
I will not collect quest rewards or ad rewards.

I am still going to get our guild minimum requirement, and probably hit the minimum asked for before the patch in most other competitive guilds.

Yes my troops may be a higher level (which takes them longer to train!), but the final AC upgrades don't do much for most troops besides the HG, and the fact I've handicapped myself in other ways and refuse to use GS should hopefully make up for any criticism about that.

If despite all of these handicaps I still reach a score high enough to be 1/50th of what it would take to win an average rumble for us before the patch, its certainly possible for an unskilled player that's actually playing the game and not doing everything in their power to hold themselves back to put up a score competitive enough to win some of the time.

Hopefully this personal challenge will provide some proof that the new system isn't as bad as you think it is, even if you're not the most skilled player.

 

Just like in real life. There is the 1% and there is the 99%. I would bet the 1% in this game also generate 90% of the revenue(Just like the 1% also have 90% of The wealth). So u can see why midoki wants to make the game geared toward the 1%. Good thing is... The game is still free to play. But if you play for free, then expect to be a 99%er

 

Lol. I would like to know your results. Please post.

 

I will happily. Our next rumble is on Thursday. Reduce my scores to 5/6 of their values to figure out what they would be when the 2* reduction goes back into play - its still going to be high enough.

 

I would disagree in some ways. The elite players in this game usually have second and third accounts that are not as advanced, and perhaps are at lower levels in the game, experiencing what you are. I don't understand how it is hard to farm and upgrade though. I get what you said about farmin, but your rank wont make an exceptional change to guild stats. And it is not permanent. I don't often spend gems on anything but rumbles, and neither am I a 'top' player. If you know you don't have a shot in a rumble in the first place, just drop your rank and farm. As the game progresses, loot will also move up. For now, dropping rank is the solution. Even gemmers use this strategy, since you are almost guaranteed to find easy bases in the lower ranks. However, matchmaking definitely needs improvement! I think you are asking for too much wanting equality between gemmers and casual gamers. Gemmers gem so that they have an upper hand on the game. They are supposed to have it easy, since they invest their money. As for BP, its supposed to be a grind, and it will take a while, unfortunately. You just have to keep battling, and most players aren't those that can just rack up BP at insane speeds. Just takes them less time.

 

The effect on gemmers is that they will need more gems to fight more battles to get the same amount of Plunder Points as they had been getting.

 

We all saw this comin. Just fix the AI so we can play the game as it was meant to played. FOR FUN!

 

Uhhhh dude, most of us if not all of us are not at your level. I really appreciate your posts, your detail and input to this game is incredible and I love reading your posts, you really put in a ton of time, I thank you. However, I read what you say about the AI and such but my troops just don't do that. I'd love to have my bombers go through maxed walls more than 2 deep but they don't. They just don't do it on max walls. Now maybe if they were maxed they would but currently they don't. But that's besides the point here, a lot of us don't have a billion hours to spend on this game learning every single pixel of it. We want to sit down, have an AI that's intuitive (and works), fight some battle, rumble with our guild mates and have fun. Currently I'm just frustrated at most aspects of the game and it sucks when i use to like it and be good at attacking and racking up points and plundering. But currently I can't win crap, the copied angle bases are impossible (and don't mention sky raiders, you need to be magician to get them to work) and most importantly...wheres the GROG in the upper levels!!!

Another aspect of this frustration is the crazy stupid rumble matchups. WTF is going on that our small guild keeps matching up with the big guns, god good its lame. We like to win and can usually put in a good effort but not against the monster guilds, its just not fun because we don't try to even compete and waste the time/money. Hello Midoki....we would be spending more gems if we actually had a close matchup where we would actually have a chance at winning!

I hate to say it , this once great game is loosing touch.

Sorry for the rant --

 

Maxing their attack is important and a key reason as to why they may not be working on maxed walls. That extra attack makes them more likely to destroy it rather than walk around. Compare them to walls of a similar level. If you have PH8 bombers, they should be good at PH8 walls but not PH9 walls, if you have PH9 bombers they should be good at PH9 walls. The upgrades for PH10 make them even more likely to go through PH9 walls.

 

Well said. I feel for you and the 99%. You wrote with passion so parts were a little strong, and that's understandable. I don't usually fully quote in my replies, but I wanted your words to appear again.
If the Rumble matching doesn't give all Guilds with people who are at least active for fun the chance of getting wins or at least placing then the game is broken.
There are too many assumptions in some other posts.

• Most people in casual guilds take part in a rumble. So not true.
• Most people in casual guilds devote a large amount of their time to the game when they are in a rumble. That includes the concept of fighting and then returning to the game when 'the tavern is full'. That's still dedicating your time to being able to return and play then. That also isn't the way it works.
• Midoki only care about revenue from the 1% or just plain about revenue. I think they want as many people playing and enjoying the game. If they fixed it for the 99% they'd have more revenue and more happy gamers. Remember the best outcome is where everyone ends up being successful.
• If you don't play as much you don't deserve to win. There's partial truth here. I'd say that a better statement would be that everyone should have the chance to win and those that play more get better rewards. You want a rumble that you can get something out of, not a certainty of one of the bottom two places even if you do your best.
• Guilds who don't win just don't understand the tactics or have gone about growing their island and troops the wrong way. That's just arrogant, dumb, and insulting. I'm sorry you have to hear those things. The system just doesn't give a chance to the 99%. We are a half way guild, not up with the big boys, but also have some very strong players. We hadn't won a rumble for months until last week! The rumble before we drew PU Main and Dead Sails. We just laughed. We can't compete with them. We just watched them smack it out.

The system is broken as is the mindset of some players.
The system could be fixed, the mindset is irrelevant.
I hope they fix it, for the huge majority out there who are totally turned off.

 

And if Midoki make the game so it's fun for the 99% then they will make even more. They're smart enough to do that. Games are an escape from life, let's not get into those comparisons.

 

Didn't seem like a rant to me. I expect Midoki to take notice as I believe they don't want thing this way.
You make a series of very valid points and I know you represent the vast majority of players.
Midoki have consistently addressed big issues. Some of them are hard to get right, hard to solve, and hard to implement so they've taken a while. Sometimes they've done things thinking they would help and they've made things worse. They've always corrected those things.
Let's help them with positive suggestions on this emotive issue so we're not just arguing amoungst ourselves.

 

I haven't had time to think myself, but I wanted to start this.
How can this be fixed?
Positive, constructive, implementable suggestions would work best.

 

@Keelhauler Jake . Thank you for your input. you sum up the key points from a number of people very clearly. This game benefits from the passion of a lot of people. It has created a community. the problem is if you isolate part of that community, then they will leave. A community without passion and without thriving members is doomed to fail.

 

You're right, being constructive is much more helpful. Thanks for your input.

 

A simple idea is to have two or more rumble pool options with different potential rewards. You pick which you enter. Maybe different gem costs for each. Also maybe each has guild band restrictions so the lower pools are reserved for the lower ranks to make them competitive.

• Multiple pools
• Higher rewards for the higher pools
• Lower pools only accessible to lower guilds (based on member base strength, not rank)
• Higher gem costs for higher pools

That all seems consistent with higher costs for training higher troops or upgrading higher buildings.
It also should be relatively easy to reuse most of the existing rumble code to do this and only the entrances need to be added along with the plumbing to connect it all up.

Would likely make matching harder and matching time longer. That's hard to fix as the suggestion to "pre book" a rumble slot which seems great at first has issues:

• Pre book at a dropped rank and then climb by the start time
• Pre book with guild members leaving first and then rejoining after the booking
• Pre book and then find members leave etc
• Several more ways to manipulate a future event that's based on current measures.

I haven't been able to find solutions to those. Maybe the booking is canceled if the guild changes "too much"?

Thoughts?

 

Should this be, is there already, a separate thread?

 

It would significantly decrease the amount of pp you get per battle if you are only pr 150. I am ph 7 and am pr 450, and I can get over 100 more pp than I used to when attacking ph 8 bases.

 

Do you mean harder in comparison to when they started eons ago? I only ask because I am new ( < 70 days old) and have 0 problems advancing. I'm already a mid ph7 and am not rushed in any way. Are my LPs maxed for my PH? No, but they are close as I did indeed invest in gems for chests for pirate figures, however that doesn't matter as LPs augment your attacks, not make or break them. I also have 0 problems finding grog to fuel my academy.

Sorry, I just find the "it is hard for new players to succeed" argument hard to swallow...