Why would a software company not fix a flaw in their software?

Skilled Player: Plunder Points / Games Won is a fair indicator of skill level. 800 is a good number in my opinion. Some folks get good rumble points this way.

Dedicated Player: The equalizer for people without the skill is to just win more at lower levels to compensate. If a guy does four times the battles at 250 points he beats the skilled player that doesn't want to spend a lot.

Until there is some limit to battle count the skill level will not be so relevant as those that just gem a lot more battles. This is the "money wins rumbles" thing everyone says all the time.

When I am streaking for plunder points during a rumble I try to keep my reload cost to around 9 gems a battle, which means I am probably battling targets less than 800 point wins mostly. There are usually some looting losses to gain grog or gold as needed. I manage a few over 1000 points here and there.

With just slow cooked troops and having other things to do I can get 25-30 battles in a day sometimes, with an average over 500 per win, so 15,000 points with some level of dedication.

In the end we are all (and each of us individually) a mix of skill and dedication as we are matched with others of similar means. When grossly mismatched the incentive to compete leaves many of us and we just ride our two shields for the whole rumble.

I think we are all just ready for something new for our little robot pirates to do under our guiding omnipotence to have more fun with less frustration.

 

It's not the deeper pockets wins rumbles comments that grates on people, it's the being a skill player vs a gemmer being mutually exclusive that does.

In my guild the ability to consistently 3* bases, often at a high rank, is valued highly and you only need to see all the replays to see how good our players (who mostly gem at least some of the time) are - and that's usually against the tough base designs as we push ourselves to crack them not just take all the easy wins.

On the skill v dedication again the two can go together. In the super rumble I was in Banging Skulls and woke up (European time zone) to I think being a couple hundred thousand pp down. The effort from everyone to chase that down was huge. Then even when BS built up a lead Elite never let it go and continued to push all the way to the end. Underdogs as well continued to fight the whole way even though they had fewer members and when the other two guilds moved away.

On your scoring comment in BS three of the top five scorers averaged well over 900pp per fight which again shows it's not simply how many gems (which for a 100k score for me I think equates in real money to around £5-£10, so as a one off super rumble and the fun and entertainment it was that's hardly more than the cost of renting a movie) but the attacking ability of the players.

 

I don't think it was implied gemmers lack skill, think it was same request as always, for a competition that is skill dependent and not gem dependent. I will throw my two bits into the gemmer vs skilled player debate. I would be willing to bet if you were to compare the skill level of gemmers and non-gemmers among active players, you would find the gemmers as a whole are far more skilled. Those who gem tend to be highly competitive, and that competitive nature carries over into being able to 3 star bases. Not to mention, my alt has been floating around many of the top guilds over the past year, both gemming and non-gemming guilds (I prefer non-gemming guilds). I can honestly say from what I've seen the skill level is much higher in the gemming guilds. In many non-gemming guilds, you might have what I consider 1 or 2 highly skilled players, in the gemming guilds you usually have 5-6 highly skilled players (DUI might have a few more than the average). I would be willing to bet, if a non-gemming skilled competition is introduced, you will see the same top 5 gemming guilds winning most of the time.

 

Spongee, welcome back to the poop deck after being stuck in that hurricane shelter for so long! I'll have Intimidator mix up a fresh batch of daiquiris, Time to unload some old stale gems to make room for the new ones available on Black Friday

 

I'm a semi-gemmer- that means I gem during thunderstruck or during tough rumbles. For me, I believe gemmers are the ones paying for the cashrolls of the devs. BUT, I think the botched rumble matchup where a 23-person guild scoring less than 50k pp on average can be matched up with RFF.