The Issue with Infamy

TL;DR: the loss of infamy with NML resets needs to be put back in if there's any hope of newer or mid-level players sticking with the game. How it should be handled and what to do with NML.



I've heard people complaining about infamy but never paid much attention since NMLers don't experience this issue directly. Although, after giving it a bit of a think, I believe it is an issue that affects everyone.





In the simplest of terms, infamy is created by new players matched with bots, while infamy is deleted with league resets, infamy degradation from inactivity and in draws.

The issue is easy enough to understand:
there is more infamy being removed than infamy being created.


Why does this matter?

As NML steals from Ace, Ace from Masters, and so on until there is no one left to steal from. A black hole is formed. With each passing season, it pulls higher and higher level players down in infamy to compensate for the lack of new infamy.

What are the effects of a shrinking infamy pool?

New players are facing tougher competition sooner than they should be so they get discouraged and quit. Similarly, mid-level players that are stagnating or declining in infamy also get discouraged and quit.

Why? Infamy is the most obvious indicator of your game progression. If players do not feel as though they are progressing - despite their best efforts - it will not take long before they leave the game.

What's the solution?

Create more infamy.

Why haven't they solved this issue?

I imagine the problem is that of measurement.

How much infamy to add and how?

It is likely difficult to measure how many new players are sticking around to pass out their newly created infamy. It's also likely difficult to measure how much infamy is stolen and taken by each league. An active player that only plays events has an infamy rating, but their infamy is not in circulation (e.g., infamy stored under the mattress vs infamy used in ranked matches).

If too much infamy is added, the infamy resets will eventually balance out the infamy creation/deletion ratio. NML may not be as exclusive or prestigious, but it's not exactly either of those things now. The solution to that issue would be to raise NML's threshold or to expand NML.

Too much infamy creation is not nearly the issue of too little infamy creation as discouraged players quit, while progessing players are more likely to spend money to expedite their progression (even if that progression is somewhat artificial).

How to create infamy?

The easiest solution:

• Start awarding more infamy for wins than infamy lost in losses, or
• taking less infamy from losing teams than infamy earned in wins, or
• splitting the fraction in half between winning and losing teams.

This will likey be a fraction of a number. For instance, a player would gain 24 1/5 infamy for the average win while losing 24 infamy for the average loss. The match results screen wouldn't show the difference, nor would many players notice that they're gaining an extra infamy point every five wins, but it is infamy being created nonetheless.

How much to add?

My best guess for a starting point would be to ignore the new player infamy creation and focus on how much infamy is deleted through NML reset, then add the fractional infamy point back based on the estimated number of ranked matches played.

• Suppose there are 2000 NMLers losing an average of 500 infamy each season (or 1 million infamy deleted each season). That's the lowest amount that should be added - although I'd suggest adding slightly more.
• If there are 1 million ranked games played in a season, or 5 million match winners, you'd have to set the fraction at 1/5. Thus, each match is putting one point of infamy back in the game.

Infamy Inflation

Obviously, this may lead to some minor infamy inflation, but that's not a bad thing. If players feel like they're getting better (primarily measured by their infamy rating), then players will be happier - and much less likely to quit. Moreover, you can allow new players to face bots for longer to give them a longer buffer period before being thrown to the wolves. This longer introductory period increases their investment in the game and makes it easier to retain them for the long term.

Alternative

Alternatively, you could add +5 (or whatever number) to wins for lower leagues and keep upper leagues untouched. However, this is much, much more complicated and would likely lead to drastic infamy swings for these players - that would trigger anti-tanking penalties.

NML Expansion

Spoiler: Getting into another issue

To keep NML somewhat exclusive, you could add NML I, II, and III with each division having different reset points.

NML III (4000-4499) could reset to 3999; NML II (4500-4999) could reset to 4200; and NML I (5000+) could reset to 4400.

What would you give for season rewards?

1 legendary item piece for the lowest NML league, 3 for the middle, and 5 for the top. Then start awarding a large number of epic item pieces, powercells, and parts for division rankings.

Why does this matter?

These players likely already have one main set of maxed epics, but this would allow them to build the epics that they wouldn't otherwise build while giving developers a better idea of how strong each item is rather than what items players are locked into using due to a lack of powercells and lack of inventory space to save duplicates.

More importantly, this league breakdown and reward structure would give meaning to ranked matches again. If players cared about ranked matches, they would be more willing to spend money to improve their items.

Currently, infamy above 4k is meaningless. There is no point in collecting perks, building new items, or even taking ranked matches seriously .. and that's bad for business long-term.

 

I don't expect many comments .. or for most to read all that .. but that was the longest section of what needs to change in order for BB to have a future, so I posted it separately.

 

As always you think things through well and I am glad you share it with us (again)!

Would my old idea of giving players a score which is build up by team effort and individual effort take part of this problem away? I thought about 50% of the score would be for team effort, so if you win, lose or have a draw as a team and the other 50% for your personal effort.

This way the progression will be made fairer I think. How to calculate the score could be 12 Infamy for winning as a team and the other 12 Infamy for doing for example twice the amount of damage of the number of your Gear score (or healing twice as much as the number of your GS). So, the best players win max 24, but one who reached the number of your gs once, you get 8 points maybe and so on.

So, this way the best players will also be punished less when they lose or in some cases don't lose Infamy. Sometimes you play the best battle of your career, but are let down by the others. Would be fair, not to be punished the full amount. And sometimes you have 4 players who play very well and win, but one of them floated or played very badly.

What are your thoughts, would that help players to see more progression in their Infamy. And who it solve the problem you are pointing out also?

And would it also help to create another league on top of Nightmare?

Regards,
Flint

 

The infamy issue I was referring to was more about the sum of available infamy within the economy, rather than moving up or down in infamy relative to other players. So, your idea wouldn't solve the overall issue of players being pulled down in infamy, although it would likely affect which players are being pulled down.

Otherwise, I like your idea in theory .. and they've implemented that idea in event rewards. A losing player can earn more than members of the winning team based on performance. I often do.

However, the issue with rewarding infamy based on performance (mostly damage) is that you'd see lower quality of matchplay. Players would choose more shooters because of the 5 weapons and they'd prioritize damage over teamwork - exactly like they do in events.

Unfortunately, it's hard to measure a player's true contribution to the ranked win.. For instance, a speeder could do 1/10th of the damage but keep half the enemy team distracted while their teammates get easy kills.

And, I would agree that floaters should get no rewards for wins - but it would make it that much easier for people to drop in infamy. Seal-clubbing will soon become a large issue again because raffle rewards are the only means of progress in the game and it's easier to win matches with 4-5 weak quest weapons at lower infamy rankings.

 

You are right, it is not always about the most damage. I once saw a Speeder who hardly fired one shot, but the chaos he or she caused was so severe, that his or her fellow Shooters took us down in an instant.

Too bad, I don't recall his or her name, but that was the best performance I have seen to date in the Bay.

I would hate to see even more Shooters appear, so maybe my idea is not that good indeed. That was my problem with the events, too much just blind spamming.

I have been thinking for a long time about how we can solve the Infamy problems, but so far, I have not found the golden egg yet.

 

My solution for the infamy issue is to change the +/- for wins below ACE league players. Using the current system, +1 extra for those players in wins. This will pump more infamy at the lower ends. Any excess in infamy will clear out each season reset because infamy flowing upward. Also add another NML and reset at 4800-5k. Rewards for new league will be more parts and cells than the current NM prizes.

 

Yeah, I suggested that as an alternative because I don't have the slightest idea of what the number of matches played by league is ..

I assume that about half the active players in the game are in Ace league or higher, and those players are playing 75% of the ranked matches. But those are complete guesses.

If you add +1 infamy for each win that a Master's league or lower player gets, that's 5 infamy created per game. If there's a million infamy deleted each season, those players would have to play 200,000 ranked matches each season to balance it out.

I'm not sure that's happening with events. Also, you'd have the issue of giving the winning team different amounts of infamy based on their league. People might take issue if a floater gets +25 while they got +24.

 

I really wish Rovio would hire you, as I'm 100% certain you put more thought into the game cause and effects than they do. Zeus continues to state that he is not touching NML at all, whether it be reset or additional league levels.

We have a perfect storm of issues at this point in the game:

• New players are dropping
• Events compressing all infamy to the 1-4000 range
• League (and thus Battle) Rewards still based on pre-event Infamy levels.
• v4.0 increasing the Gold and Sugar requirements for training and leveling up items and ships

I know the devs purposefully made things more expensive without increasing rewards, but I don't believe they took into account the effect of all the above, so the game is lacking balance... features conflicting, and progression stalling out. Either way it won't last... Either progression and rewards will be re-balanced or players will stop playing when they realize how much effort it takes to level up.

In the future I'll post an analysis of progression which has already helped me understand why after playing daily for 19 months I still can't fill out a single boat with T5E items (much less 8). The answer is eye opening.

 

With infamy flowing upward, the lower end players will see a slight increase in infamy but they will stop at some points. The extra infamy can only carry them so far before it starts to flow upward. Adding more infamy from the lower ends will help new players feel that they can progress.

 

Comin

'I really wish Rovio would hire you,' You will have my vote too!

Coming up with events was a good idea, but with so many events and not gaining any Infamy you don't get a feeling you are progressing in skill. But as in every game, you want to work for something. So, if you played 5000 event battles, how do you see you have gotten better? You don't, unless you write all the data down and can see if you have become better. But nobody does that.

People want to win and get better at what they do, at least 99,99% of us do. Now that has been taken away with events, there is nothing to look forward to. Only getting better gear won't do the trick, people want to see progression in their performance in numbers. If Infamy does not matter any more, people will soon lose interest I think. The amount of people who play ranked have declined too much, to keep a healthy pool of players. Hence you can have several battles in a row wtih a lot of the same players.

First events were something on the side, a nice change. But now events seem to have become the main mode and ranked is suffering. So, they should do something about ranked or introduce Infamy in some sort in events too or have a seperate counter of battles won.

 

First: you mean with wtih with? I hope you understand what I mean

Second: wow, mooi geschreven well written

 

Third: it is not written, but typed.

 

That's a very important point. Those that have played significantly prior to v4.0 still think of items and infamy, but new players that come in and see endless events just see endless events and upgrades that don't amount to anything because Events match on Gear Score.

 

I don't like Infamy system , during events i don't even play Infamy battles . problem is sometimes when i give my best everything going good suddenly you see team is gone . sometimes there are some suicide players who just run into Unfriendly and die . so losing infamy when you played well but not your team don't motivate in good way . Infamy system should be similar to coin system , if you played well you get 9-10 coins if not then 5-6 . and even if team lost the battle but player who played well he can also get 5-7 coins so this is something motivate players to do the best to get most reward .