I think it would be great if the battles you were offered were based on resources available compared to current pirate rank(e.g. 200-500k resources available for rating 350-500). It's so easy to sandbag your rating to get higher loot with less risk right now that there are few good opportunities at the mid-range for ranking (400-500). If there was a natural incentive of being offered better plunder targets for higher ranking then there would be more of an imperative to reach as high as possible, making the game much more competitive. Yarrr!
so to clarify what I think you are suggesting. You think lower rank pirates should be able to loot a greater % of loot from higher ranking pirates? Like right now we can loot say 20%. But you think if a 100 rank pirate attacks a 200 rank pirate he should be able to loot say 25-30%? I just need some clarification
I can't say that this would be fair considering how easy it is to drop rank. You'd have 100 ranked players with PH7 troops attacking for mass amounts of resources. It would spiral out of control in a day.
I think I wasn't clear - trying not to be attackable right now . For low ranks, they would get battles that had a low maximum plunder (100-200 rating would get battles with a total plunder of <100k, 200-300 would get a total plunder available of 100-150k, you wouldn't get plunder of 1M available until rank 600 or so). That way the stronger players would want to raise their ranking as much as possible to be able to plunder as much as possible. Right now the strongest players have no incentive to raise above a rating of 250 because there's loot of 1M available at that level. Does that make more sense?
It does, but the battle ranking doesn't exactly denote strength, only battles won. By basing the available loot on percentage of total possible loot, everyone is on the same level. The only way I could think of to improve upon it is to set limits based on gaps in PH levels. That way if a PH7 drops rank and attacks a PH3, the available loot percentage is dropped substantially.
I'm not saying % of loot opponent has, but rather selecting potential opponents based on loot plunderable. Everyone would still have a chance at the same loot from the same opponents, but instead of basing opponent selection on rating it would be based on resources held
I'm confused, are you saying then that matchmaking would work by matching players with similar ranking or similar available loot in this scenario?
In this scenario, matchmaking would be based on attacker's rating, but defender's loot available. So higher rating == juicier targets, but probably also more developed and better protected. I am basing this off of spending the weekend at the mid-450s where loot was scarce and well-defended. After dropping down to mid-200--300s loot is much more plentiful and much easier to get. That seems counterintuitive and counterproductive to me
I get what you are saying now. I think that this would discourage rankings just as much as it would encourage them. Think about it. You are getting close to maxing out your PH level and you are struggling for resources (because anything less than 100k per attack is struggling) you are stuck with "I need to rank up to get more loot from people I attack." and "But if I rank up my loot becomes more vulnerable and I can lose more of it." I'm not entirely sure this would help.
I think I'm still not being clear . I wish I had the excuse that English was my second language... :/ In my scenario, dropping rank doesn't help protect resources because as the defender your opponents will be based on their rating, not yours. To gain more loot you would need a higher rating, but when you get more loot you get tougher attackers trying to hit you.
I'm going to try one last post to see if I can be more clear in what I'm suggesting and why I think it encourages strong players to hold a high ranking (which seems beneficial to me for a number of reasons): Right now battle options appear to be based on comparing attacker's Pirate Rank (pr) to defender's and offering battles within some difference. Since there is no practical incentive to having a high pr, this encourages strong players to artificially drop their pr to where the loot is good and the defense is easy. This in turn depletes the number of opponents at higher pr, further encouraging players to drop their own. I think that there might be an easy way to change this and encourage more players to raise their pr. If the possible opponents you see when attacking is based on comparing your pr to the defender's resources available (sum of grog and gold), then to gain as much loot as possible you would want your own pr to be high. This rewards players for achieving and maintaining a higher pr. It also means that you can't artificially drop your pr to protect your resources, because the people chosen to have a chance at attacking you will be based on their own pr and not yours (right now choosing to drop your pr to basically nothing by starting and losing fights repeatedly means that your opponents will tend to be the ones with lower overall strength). So in this new system you would be rewarded for having a high pr and have no incentive to artificially drop it as is the case right now. Sorry if this feels like beating a dead horse, but I think I haven't yet fully conveyed the concept and would like to discuss the merits of such a change. If this makes more sense and seems worth discussing I would probably like to either start a different thread or edit/delete the earlier ones to reduce confusion.
I understand I just don't agree. In this scenario I believe that attacks would be less frequent. Even if loots were higher at higher ranks, you would have a tougher time upgrading your defenses if you couldn't drop down to protect your resources while you save up to upgrade. Imagine if every time you got close to the required gold/grog and you would lose to someone strong enough to take it. Either that or you would never be matched up with someone that you could easily overtake and thus screw up the cost:risk ratio.
Right now the system of picking battles is co dependent. On your pirate rank and a pool of pirates that are +-50 from you. If a match is not found then the pool is widened to +-100 and so on. If the problem of people dropping rank were as bad as you think it is, then the high ranking pirates with a lack of battles will simply be matched with all of those that dropped rank anyways. If your rank is 700 and there are no matches withing +-50 or +-100 you will eventually get down to where other available pirates are. So you will get plenty of people to attack, and finding Good loot is simply a matter of skipping enough battles. Eventually you will hit a high loot high level pirate that has dropped rank. The problem you think exists doesn't really exist. If the problem is really simply people not having enough motivation to be high ranked, then the solution is going to be in rewarding them somehow.. Clash of Clans has leagues that provide loot bonuses for winning battles. This gives a good motivation to raise rank, but plenty of people still drop rank and farm. Loads of them. PP doesn't necessarily need a league system, but changing the way matches are determined and potentially penalizing others is not the answer.
