How would you fix Event Seal Clubbing?

Since you're one of the few that both comment often enough to state your opinion and seem to have the capacity to learn and change your opinion based on new info ... I don't feel like this will be a waste of time.

I agree that the issue is not with dropping one or two levels that's an issue. And, I agree that a 1-2 coin penalty per each ship tier dropped would reduce the incentive sufficiently to stop most of the current Mk6-7s from using Mk2.

But ... what would be the effect of a penalty for not only veteran players but non-maxed players?

If ship upgrades remained optional, the incentive (or best strategy) would be for players to stop upgrading their ships to avoid being penalized in order to maximize event coins per minute.

If the penalty was based on ship tier you have access to (or forced upgrades, in other words), then the incentive (or best strategy) would be to stop training captains and playing infamy matches to reduce xp gained - in order to remain at a lower ship level and maximize coins earned per hour. (*A VIP bonus - reduced training times - becomes less valuable*).

Rather, increasing - or scaled - rewards would increase the player desire to speed their training and upgrade to a higher tier ... and there are player progression/imbalance issues that are also being created by early legendary item access, but I won't go into that here.

 

Yes, scaled rewards would benefit me, but...

1. it should normalize the progression for newer players,
2. it should reduce the collateral damage due to a need to make adjustments for item level differences (like SeaNavy faces),
3. and, competition gets tougher and games get tougher as you rise in ship level - so they should be rewards as such.

The following are randomly selected screenshots from the last event:

1. notice the difficulty level that most mk6-7s face .. why wouldn't you dip down and use a mk2?
2. notice the players on the bottom - they have one or two T4-5 epics - so their overall gear/player score is adjusted to face players with all higher level epic/legendaries
3. notice how most players are getting 7 coins for a win and 0-3 coins for a loss .. Unless you're at my level or higher, you don't have much of a shot of getting 9 or 10 coins because of the relative power of others in the match. Even at my level, 9-10 coin matches are more of an exception than a norm.

*fyi - my setup was purely for grinding weapon achievements*

 

The point is -

At mk6-mk7 levels, the ones without all max items are typically getting 0-2 coins for losses and 6-7 coins for wins .. and getting beat up in the process. These players need event rewards to catch up to the max epic levels of other mk6-mk7s but their coins per match are well below those at earlier ship tiers - which further encourages seal clubbing and GS manipulation.

Also, I've found that the carrot (reward) is a more effective (and fun) means of encouraging behavior rather than the stick (penalty).

 

Without question Battle Bay needs some sort of "equal item" skill event tournament. Not the weekly things, but ongoing ranked tournament brackets where everyone uses the same level boats and items. It doesn't even have to be MK7, can be multiple levels of tournaments... and that would qualify it as an eSport:
MK2: T5 Max Common
MK3: T5 Max Uncommon
MK5: T5 Max Rare
MK6: T5 Max Epic
MK7: T5 Max Legendary

 

I also agree that tiered rewards based on ship level is the best idea. The higher level you go, the more costly it is to upgrade your items, so to avoid progress stalling, higher level players need extra gold/sugar/parts/cells/pieces, and those are not coming from seasons and star boxes. It took me 12 months and 8,000 matches before I got my first Legendary item, and it was a downer. I wonder if I started playing now what my opinion would be since newbies can grind out a legendary item and perks in just a few events and Guild Raffles. Without tiering I get the impression newer players can just skip much of of the Common->Uncommon->Rare progression and just jump to Epics.

I'll be eligible to upgrade to MK7 this month. Will I? Nope... for two reasons. 1) I'm still waiting for a T5 Weapon to use, and it's already tough competing at 3k without them. 2) Events incentivize many players to avoid upgrades else risk tougher matches and thus lower coin rate. I've personally been doing fine using my full loadout because Gear Score has kept my matches reasonably competitive, but I'm also not seeing MK7's in my matches, so EventMatchmaker(tm) seems to use MK levels as an input much more so than ranked Matchmaker(tm). In that, progression has stalled out for me, for the third time in my BB career... the stalling or sloth-like bumps in progression is what needs to be ironed out, and tiered rewards is one step toward that.

 

I think that the recommended scaling of rewards by ship tiers is the best ways to prevent seal clubbing. I also recommend add leagues to the scaling. (Ship tier is 75% and league is 25% of the scaling.) This give the incentives to play the best ship and trying for higher league. The newbies will cry about this but think about it. What game has it where a month old player gets the same rewards as a year old player? When I started, I got about 1k of golds per battle and NM players got 50k. Did I cried about how unfair that was? You either put in the time to progress or use the credit card. Welcome to the real world.

P.S. I think many people on here will ask for the CEO salary on an entry level job. With my best wishes, I hope they get it.

 

I also want to add 1 more variable to my scaling above. Subtract % off of ship too low from highest MK. Lowest ship MK without any penalty is MK5. Doesn’t matter if your highest is MK 6 or 7. If your highest is MK6, then using MK4 will get a 25% reduction of all post battle rewards and additional 25% for each additional level below that until it reaches 100%. The reason for MK5 as the base MK is that it costs ~3mil to get to MK5 ATM. Captain 48+ shouldn’t have much problem getting there.

If such system is implemented, there will almost no more seal clubbing due to the harsh reduction %. Rovio can still keep @The Grim Repair statement of playing any ship with any weapon true while also uphold its fair play rules too. Players can still play any ship with any load out, just with reduce rewards.

 

Players like this are ruining the game for others who play fair. If Rovio doesnt implement a system to deal with this they will lose the majority of their players.
Maybe scaled rewards would work such as locking the leagues right before the event so you are only battling players in the same league. In conjunction with this the higher your league the better your coin rewards. An example of this would be Nml gets 40-50 coins per battle but their neccesary coins for crates is increased by the same percentage. ( standard crate- 175 coins, Leg perk- 4500 coins).
Ace league 30-40 (standard crate- 145 coins, Leg perk- 3600 coins)
And so on scaled down to each league.
This would allow for competitive battles with players of similar skill and equipment. Players would want to use their best equipment or get destroyed by their league counterparts.

 

you met him in battle?
your ship mk and setup?
and your idea would make impossible one of the things that were meant to be done in events-experimenting with weird setups and your other ships

 

Mk5 4,300 gs
My yellows are still pretty low because I just recently switched from my main shooter. Waiting on dupes of my epic shields before they are stronger than my current rare

 

he ruined your game?
tell me how

edit:
and his hp was? he had no shield so it should be kinda low

 

Base health on a mk5 defender is 4730, still more than my mk5 enforcer with a shield. Lack of blue items (2-3 of them depending on what he would use) dropped his gs low enough that he still has a health (and defence) advantage. That plus the fact that he could sink us with 2 shots made it a blow out. He was also captain level 50, 12 higher than anyone on our team. How many damage buffs come from 12 levels of training? Especially if he had it focused on only the weapons he had equipped.

 

I have less gear score, lower captain level and weaker items (overall), yet I am able to win against people like that defender
maybe time to stop blaming them (they're doing bad things and they are stronger but they are still defeatable) and time to adjust your playstyle?
today, I fought against mk6 ships with maxed t4 and t5 epics (I was fleeting with my friend, he has much higher gear score) but I was able to win more than 50% battles (and usually top 3 damage or even top damage)
my enfo:

 

There is no playstyle to counter 2 shot kills, as soon as they see you you're dead. And I never said I always lose to players like this. I can carry my team to victory %50 of the time but they still get crap rewards.
Here' the full after action report for that particular battle.

 

https://replay.battlebay.net/HFYDWPWD#JXSFJGCB
I watched the replay

1. you could improve your enfo moves
2. you lost because you had two fixers and enemy had none, not because enemy had NM player (both teams had 15 guns but you had two fixers, so you rather had 13 guns, one of your shooters was totally useless so...)

that defender is nothing when you compare it to situation of lower mk players-they have to face ace and NM players in low mk ships but with legendary or t5E items

 

Sorry didn't see this bit about experimenting, i posted an idea in a game mode thread that would negate this conflict. It's essentially an experimentation mode where you battle with no rewards. Try that new item you just unlocked here to see if its worth upgraging and using, and no rewards means there would be no point in exploiting the system. This creates more balance battles to get an actual feel for the weapon/Item you're testing. "Testing" an item in an unbalanced battle is pointless if you ridiculously out power your targets.

 

Sure I could've used another strategy had I known I had a useless team. And I know other people have it worse but my point is it' s seen on all levels yet nothing is being done to fix it

 

but you said

low level players can't (probably) say that because they have no chance against seal clubbers, you can beat them in 1v1 (theoretically, you need to choose right strategy), low level players can't
so no, it's not at all levels, seal clubbers are only kinda stronger opponents for us but they're almost invincible when fighting against new players