Balancing Needs Rework

I haven't been playing long but I've been playing long enough to engage in combat MK4 & MK5 ships. It's obvious these guys have been playing hell'a longer. Can't even unlock MK4 till you reach a high enough level. Why are MK1 and MK2 forced to fight these guys? Why not instead balance by level and infamy to insure that no player will ever have to fight anything they can't handle. This day starts my first ever rivalry, I came to these forums to find out the ends and outs but all that I read was disheartening and made me want to uninstall. I read about unbalance issues... I had plans to spend money on pearls and vip but to hell with that. If the balancing issues aren't gonna be fixed I'll uninstall instead. Please fix, I actually like your game; and that's saying something cause I typically uninstall games after 2-3 days. I want to play this one.

 

Hang in there my friend... this has been a long standing concern within the BB community... i'm confident the devs are working on a solution to address this issue... hope to see you around the bay the lower levels is absolute grind these days unless you spend ridiculous amounts of cash

 

If you balance by level then infamy is meaningless. Which one do you want?

 

agreed... i think with the situation right now, it's worth a try to use gear score instead of infamy for matchmaking... that's just my opinion... the debate here if we use gear score only, it will totally ignore player skill (which infamy somehow represents to a degree) and just base matches on gear strength. but with gear score, we will probably see less ridiculous mismatches of mk1/2s going against mk4s/5s.

 

Using gear score for matchmaking is equivalent to giving everyone the same equipment. Without some component of skill in the climb, the incentive to continue playing the game diminishes.

 

what i meant was we use gear score for matchmaking but your progress is base on infamy... does that make sense? your progression through the leagues would still be based on infamy... does that sound feasible? in my mind it does, so i'm not sure... but yeah, i see now possible issues with just using gear score... scrap that thought...

 

Doing matchmaking by one number and judging progress by another doesn't work though. If infamy is meaningful matches have to be done by infamy... and little else.

 

You could just save sugar by not upgrading weapons so you can upgrade yer crew but that just makes your weapons worthless

 

Maybe this strategy will work then? There're 5 tiers in Battle Bay, Challenger, Warrior, Master, Ace and Nightmare; each with 3 ranks 3, 2 and 1. To insure low level players won't ever have to worry about facing high level players kickin' both their butt cheeks; and to insure higher level players won't ever have to worry about lower level players draggin' 'em down, setting things up like this could work. Challenger should be exclusively for Mk 1 and 2. Challenger rank 3 Mk 1 only, rank 2 at high infamy Mk 1 and 2 and rank 1 Mk 1 and 2 (low infamy, low level). Until the player buys at least two Mk 2 ships and reach infamy worthy of Warrior tier, keep them in Challenger tier. Warrior rank will be for Mk 2 and 3. Master for Mk 3 and 4. Ace for Mk 4 and 5 and Nightmare for Mk 5 and beyond. Going up in the tiers will require players to own at least 2 of the next level ships and have infamy to match taking care of level and infamy. On the other hand lets say the player is at Mk 5, Ace tier but wants to use his Mk 1 Fixer for a guild quest. The player is permitted, however the penalty for match loss will be considerably greater for using a lower than standard ship in their current tier; if they win the amount of infamy gained will be the same as normal. The allied players however will gain/lose the normal amount. To avoid the penalty players will either have to upgrade their ships to the correct Mk level or utilize allies who specialize in playing the recommended ship for guild quest. What do you guys think? 'Cuase this is what I was thinking when I said level and infamy.

 

Nice one.I like this +1

 

There's lot of potential solutions but honestly I'm pretty convinced that there are two root causes.

• The infamy reset: Every two weeks a whole ton of infamy is whacked out of the pool as nightmare players are all put back at ?4000? Then they climb back up. Guess who they're getting that infamy from.
• The economy: This, I suspect is the biggest one. I'm up in Ace league now. I just took a look at my seasonal rewards ... 80k and an epic piece. The 80k is a laughable joke. The epic piece is handy but nothing to inspire

On the other hand, if I was still moderating my own infamy I'd be rolling through matches making 80k every 15 minutes just grinding through matches and I'd be getting a ton of epic gear not pieces from the raffle boards. I, and everyone else who fights at higher infamies, pay a huge price to do so. That explains why you see mark 6 boats at 300 infamy. It also explains why they really don't care about the seal clubbing penalty. Nothing will get fixed until that is fixed. There is no possible set of rules that the players won't find ways around when the incentives are so strong to do so.

Rovio's made a start with adjustment to rewards and they tried to help out with the guild quests but they didn't understand the problem. On the bright side, things become much more sane once you're past 1500 infamy so anyone who likes the game can do as I did and just moderate your infamy carefully and grind your way through the hell zone.

 

I forgot about the resets... And the incentives for that matter... I'm gonna have to think on this a while and get make at this. Hopefully though the devs at least consider so far what I've suggested.

 

Think on this too. If we took away all the economic incentives then there's be far fewer high level captains fighting the noobs. There'd be no point for them to do that. Imagine a mark 6 captain enjoying his rain of COMMON parts and gear because he's fighting sub 1000 infamy enemies. Sure, he wins. But he got nothing useful for his efforts. That's going to motivate people to play harder. The ones who left are either genuinely bad which isn't a problem or else they are serious griefers who do it for fun. At least with the last category we've made it harder for them to hide.

Even better, this helps the noobs too. For starters, it encourages them to gear up properly rather than getting a shiny epic from the raffle and investing in it only to find out it's useless. In addition, the noobs will be able to fight other noobs.

In other words, I think 95% of the problem goes away overnight if you took the incentives away.

 

I know it's been a while since I've posted here, haven't forgotten but been busy. I've thought a lot about your comments but this is what keeps coming back to me. Just like I said earlier about keeping the players in their own tiers, I still believe this to be the best way to go about things. However when it comes to incentives, most of them come from doing guild quest, not beating up on noobs. In this case, when the infamy resets they need to KEEP THE PLAYERS IN THEIR TIERS if they haven't gained the means to advance. They should be allowed start off with 0 infamy in Nightmare tier etc, and improve their infamy from there. Still fighting the other Mk 5/6/7 ships of course. As far as the incentives go, cause them to be as good as the players tier and rank. Obviously if a player's in Challenger tier rank 3, then they don't need rare, epic or legendary weapons/parts. They need common an uncommon weapons/parts. On the other hand if a player's in Ace tier, give them what they would need for that tier. Basically the way it would work would be, Challenger tier ranks 3 and 2 would give rewards that will help build the up where they are while Challenger 1 would will give away better weapons/parts to prepare the player for Warrior 3. Guild boards should cater to this type of system as well, this way if the guild is on board 1 they should be getting common/uncommon with the chance at epic/legendary bonus rounds. The higher the board the better the rewards with the idea that players in such and such tier should be able to make it to such and such board therefore the items will cater to their current need. Even if infamy resets it'll work out because noobs can reach board 4 and on. Sides that, no matter what type of weapon you have you're always going to need common parts to upgrade it so it still works out for everyone. I assume what would happen, would be that noobs would have to link up with noobs when forming guilds while the higher level players would want to stick with their piers for better the rewards.

 

You are so right. It should not be that hard to make a system where mk1 battles mk1, I am at mk4 now and battle mk6 with weapons 4 times as strong as mine. One shot and I am dead, even with 2100 hp! Totally unfair, of course at Rovio they know that. And so many people complaint and even more people have run from this game because of it, but still nothing changes.

Only graphics change a bit and we get a Battle Bay song. A lot of people in the in-game forums were angry about it and said 'why not fix the game instead of making music'. Quite right!

I have been posting the problems here for months and have written the Rovio's support team for 6 months. And the people aknowlegde the problem, but apparently money wins over a fair game. It is just same as a slot machine, only with boats. It is gambling plain and simple. The European Union are working on new laws to tackle this. But until these laws are there, the companies will go on with these games, just to collect as much as they can. Sadly, they don't see they scare off their own customers. Like you said, you wanted to spend money, but you didn't because of the matchmaking. I have heard so many people say the same. Even in the in-game forums long term players advice not to spend money in the game, because it is of no use.

After tonight, I am also tired. Had so many unbalanced battles, that I just gave up for now. Got shot down with a Rail gun which did 2000 damage. Stood no chance whatsoever against this, as did my team mates. He slaughtered us all. He could have played on his own and still won. His Rail Gun did 4 times more damage then my strongest weapon.

I think your idea is good, but so far I have not seen any of the ideas brought in by the players about matchmaking which have been implemented in the game. They change only small things, like graphics etc. But avoid the biggest problem.

After they came up with Gear score, I thought things are going to change. Was I wrong! I battle people with twice the Gear score. Yes, they might have the same Infamy, but much stronger weapons and boats. My health is 2100 Healt points and get Defenders which have 11000!

I understand your concern completely and so do many others, but so far it seems we have been talking to a wall about the matchmaking.

Regards,
Flint

 

And I don't get why everyone can progress to bigger boats in the game. That is why there are so many people with mk4, mk5 and even mk6 between the mk1s. And the whole Infamy is wrong, it say nothing how good or how bad you are. I did a test with two identical accounts, same mks boat, same weapons and other gear. With one of the I could not exceed 450 Infamy, the other went to a 1000. It is just pure luck which people you have on your team and who you have in the other. And it is pure luck to find the right weapons.

The whole system is wrong, but I don't think it is going to change. Sad really, because the game itself is great.

 

Infamy should be recognized differently per ship not per player, so everyone can play/try different ships without worry to bring down the infamy.