How can I climb back up out of an infamy low?

I've been thinking that too. Of course I also thought it at M4 and at M5.... and I'm glad I did. As a rule of thumb, I don't upgrade my mark until I have gear that is mid-range for the new mark. I determine "mid-range" based upon what I see in matches. I want to make sure my brand new mark whatever is a competitive one to avoid this problem.

Is this where I plug, again, that their "gear score" which relies solely on mark is worse than having none at all? Either they should count up all the items in the slots or abandon weighing gear (including boats) entirely.

 

Having been in the "penalty box", I sympathize with the OP. It is very depressing to be penalized like a cheater when, in truth, you had a string of bad luck. I really think the system needs to be reworked. Recently, I've seen a lot of players with low infamy (1k-2k) with mk5s n mk6s. Surely, there are plenty enough of them to be matched against each other without having to battle players 1k+ above their infamy. They may have to wait a little longer for matchmaking, but these poor guys stand no chance of consistently beating stronger players enough to get back to their highest infamy. Best advice I can give is take a break when you lose too many battles in a row. Hopefully, when you come back your luck will have changed.

It only happened to me once, but the fear of it happening again creates unnecessary stress for a game that's supposed to be fun. At my infamy (3800+), I'm always battling the titans of the game. I'm completely at the mercy of the mm.

I don't think it's the goal of the devs to make players quit the game. But this is happening everyday... There has to be a better way to deal with the seal clubbers (which I rarely see anyone complain about anymore). Truth is the problem players will just find a way around this anyway.

 

Spot on, I'm at 3600 and that fear constantly lingers on me. I try to explain to my guild members, we shouldn't focus infamy so hard, but rather enjoy the commradery. This was easy to say for the past 7 months, I always held the 2500 infamy range. Two weeks ago I had a win streak that took me over 3k for the first time, which is always exciting, but then the wins just kept coming... so yeah, I definately fear the drop and now understand better why infamy means so much to some of my guys. They have better gear, 10k+ games and plenty of skill. I've tried fleeting with them, to help them break the 3k mark. One in particular, has been one win away from 3k, a record breaking amount of times... before he's hit with 400-600 infamy drops... I really believe mk6 is the only reason he can't progress... and now... I lose another member

 

It is my unproven belief that the game is geared to cause people a certain level of frustration (ie a sudden loss of infamy) so to prod them into spending money on the game, as a means of regaining infamy with new and higher level items.

 

Actually, seeing the occasional player like yourself only adds to that frustration. It’s all part of the plan, man. #TinfoilhatsRus

 

There is. There's a perfect way which completely handles seal clubbers. In addition, it handles "bad luck" gracefully and adapts to players in stronger boats who just happen to have less skill.

All they need to do is make it less profitable to farm at lowbie levels and then the entire problem goes away. They also need to rethink the guild quests which encourage poor weapon & boat selection.

• Seal Clubbers: This group would nearly cease to exist simply because the motivations are gone. What would remain would be the hardcore griefers and Rovio would still need some policy for that.
• String of bad luck? No worries. If you go from 3800 to 1800 infamy you'll be battling other 1800 infamy players and so you ought to win. You won't be penalized for losing that infamy... at least not penalized any more than the reduced rewards of the lower infamy demand. In theory the row of bad luck will clear up and your natural skill will quickly reassert itself. You'll only have clubbed a few seals on your way back up. That's fair enough since a few seals clubbed you on your way down.
• Less skilled players? Also not a problem. They will simply play at the infamy level their gear and skill dictate... just like everyone else. In theory, if I'm in my M4 facing an M5, I can assume that he is less skilled because otherwise he'd be at a higher infamy. What I wouldn't see is perfectly competent M5 captains at 500 infamy. Nor would I see perfectly competent M6 captains at 1200 infamy.

I'm convinced the only real issue is that they've made it hugely profitable to farm noobies. They just need to fix the incentive structure. Then they can get rid of that artificial 800 infamy penalty zone.

 

I had a thread called I'm Not A Seal Clubber where I ran into this kind of problem, and something like this is basically what I was asking for (aside from me simply complaining) lol. I did manage to climb out, but I kept thinking to myself "it shouldn't be this hard to climb out when falling unintentionally" and insisted that even if my rewards were cut even more severely, it wouldn't matter because this solution you're proposing would make it much easier to climb back to my respective infamy anyway. At my current infamy, I get about 30k gold per battle. When I was in the penalty box, it was less than 10k. If I were to fall again somehow, I wouldn't mind getting less than 5k per battle if it meant getting back up was easier. Shoot, I wouldn't mind getting absolutely no rewards at all if it made it that easy to get back up! Save me the time of continuously grinding on luck! The gold can easily wait!