Infamy Tanking Penalty Should Penalize Infamy Tankers Not Everyone

I have been reading on the forums and understand they implemented a system to counter infamy "tanking". I've been playing between 1700-2500 Infamy (usually around 2200). Somehow, over two weeks ago just before the season ended, I got all the way up to 3295. I got really lucky in a lot of battles and went from 2400 all the way up to almost 3300. Soon after, over the next few days I came back down to 2400 because started receiving reduced rewards. I was frustrated and figured I could get back up and at least keep it there, but I'm still facing a ton of harder ships and have a hard time playing. Now I'm all the way down to 1700 infamy. because I'm still facing the same tougher players/ships. Technically I'm back to my normal range of 1700-2500, but I can't get better rewards until I get back ABOVE my normal range. I used to fight a mk6 boat once in a while, now it's every battle could have a couple. Maybe I don't understand how that part of matchmaking works, but how would anyone "seal club" if their MM doesn't put them back in the lower bracket anyway? In that case, why do we also need the battle rewards penalty. I got "lucky" and went up by about 1000 and now I can not get rid of the penalty unless I play ABOVE the infamy range I have been playing. That makes no sense.

I understand that the system was placed to prevent infamy tanking. Based on forum posts, it seems like a lot of legitimate players experience this to some extent. But there's NO reason why legitimate players should EVER be penalized because of people exploiting their flawed system. Anyone's infamy can go up or down by 500 or more easily in a few days. I don't honestly know your numbers and statistics about the infamy tanking, but I feel that more legitimate players experience the penalty from the infamy swings probably than you are "stopping" from infamy tanking.

It needs to change it to "average top infamy" over the past few seasons or figure out something else that works. You should never penalize your entire player base because of the actions of a few. If you could handle the "guild jumping" exploiters and find each and every one of them and penalize them, you can figure out a way to fix this problem. Would love to hear from a Dev about what solutions they are coming up with.

I really enjoy this game and I'm fine with digging myself out of this stupid infamy hole, but it's takes away the enjoyment when you get 1/3 the rewards and can't even earn any stars. I know a lot of other players along with me have never intentionally lost or tried to lose a match and we should not be penalized as such.

 

I agree, infamy goes up and down like waves and sometimes you may end up higher than you should be. I never experienced this problem myself but definitely they need to find a solution to stop this from happening to any legitimate players.

 

Aw, that's the reason why I am scared to pass 3.3k infamy.

 

The only problem is... how do they tell the difference between a tanker and a regular player?
Yes, I do think changing it to average top infamy over seasons may be viable, but imagine this scenario:
The first season you do fairly well, and manage to get a top score of 2000 infamy.
The second season you get 2100 infamy.
The third, you get 2000 infamy again.
The fourth, you get 1000 infamy, falling drastically. You still receive penalties due to your average infamy from the past seasons being about 2033 infamy.
But here is the problem.
Now, due to your low infamy of 1000, your average infamy is 1775! Meaning you can now go lower without being penalized
Then you get 100 infamy, bringing you to a 1440 average.
The next season, the player gets high up in infamy!
The season after that, the player is allowed to tank infamy due to the average infamy being much lower than the current infamy, leading to almost no punishment at all.

I think Rovio cant do much except tweak the system to achieve the best results. And remember, no solution is perfect- always somebody with suffer unjust cosequences.


.... not that I don't like your idea
Or that I don't understand your pain

 

I think the best filter for this problem is to take I to account your average game ranking. For instance I suffer losing streaks and habe experienced the rewards reduction but am consistently the top or top 2 ranked players at the end of battle. Clearly I am not tanking, just a victim of bad luck. It seems that the simplest solution is to factor in battle performance.

 

There are quite a few threads about this. You're stuck between a rock and a hard place. There's no way out except to go up in infamy or wait it out. When it happened to me, I waited it out. It took like 3 weeks to a month for my infamy cap to reset and receive full rewards again. Just do your daily quests and cash out. I've learned my lesson. Now if I start getting too high in infamy, I'll throw on some crappy weapons and tank away. The game mechanics force you to do this if you want to keep collecting full rewards. It's not something I want to do, it's something the game mechanics pressure you to do.

 

This is their system working as intended, happens to too many people for it to be otherwise. Clearly they are trying to see if this little situation will successfully pressure you into spending money to try to buy your way out of it.

 

I mean, its mad annoying to see an mk6 at 500 infamy. Maybe there should be a better reporting system for infamy tankers, one where rovio actually sees it and does something about it

 

the ladder system is just a trap. the correct way to play ladder games is to stay at the infamy you feel comfortable, and building up ship and gear first before move on. if anyone telling you bullsht like dropping is illegal, just ignore these nobs because you not dollar warrior. the dev rules just want you to spend money, u have the right to play it free the way you want.

 

forgot to ask do you regret moving up on ladder? stop qqing, the only way out now is building up gear, and don't do the same mistake again. play smart, it is just a game that going hardcore means money not skill.

 

Here's a thought. Maybe the problem is in the size of the window. Down at my lowly infamy levels 800 is a comfortable margin. I've made sure my infamy max kept that so. My max is about 1250. There is zero chance that i couldn't dominate battles at 450. Last night I had a long, long run of the worst teams I've ever seen... both in matchmaking and player skills (tons of tankers and buckaroo banzais). Even so, my infamy only dropped from about 825 to 625.

I'm gathering, however, that for you higher mark players much larger waves occur. I also think the difference in power is a lot less. At the bottom end of my infamy curve I'm fighting M1's in an M4. The same is not true for you. So what if the they just had a substantially larger window at higher marks? At your mark, apparently, the window needed to be at least 1200 or so.

Here's a thought for Rovio. You put in this system to discourage tanking but it's presence was one of the single largest reasons I tanked (and would do so again if I thought my infamy was getting out of control). I was acutely aware that bubbles happen and the system can punish you for them. I resolved to ensure that I would always be dominant at the lower end of my infamy curve to counter that. I don't have an easy fix but I suspect that's an unintended consequence.

 

My suggestion was just a suggestion, and probably not the solution. But it's still possibly BETTER than the current system that is in place. I understand your scenario, but if that is a legitimate player, then they should not get penalized anyway. If they are a tanker, then that's a lot of work over a few weeks to go seal clubbing. Either way Rovio can monitor statistics of players and identify tankers (based on behavior they believe is used to infamy tank). As mentioned before, they figured out behaviors of guild jumping exploiters, they can figure this one out.

Rovio identified Infamy Tanking as the problem. They came up with a poorly thought out solution that fixes it and penalize legitimate players too. If it is that big enough problem, then they can spend more time on a solution.

I understand that there are "unjust consequences", but if you look at it, this solution has the potential affect every legitimate player out there. A solution should be penalizing MOSTLY tankers (Or all if they can) and if it happens, just the occasional "unjust consequence".

 

I don't think so. I spent several weeks almost non-stop tanking simply because the moment I tried to win my infamy would go way too high. I detest that sort of thing however so simply floating wasn't really something I could do. Over time I realized I really didn't need to do much at all. Simply being scared of winning changed my game play in subtle ways. Emotionally, the best possible outcome was when I "got to play hard but lost anyway". I'd be a bit more aggressive than I ought to. I'd care less about my aiming. In general I'd just say, "WTF" more. In fact, now that I'm back to winning again those changes are still hampering my game play. It'll probably be a week or two before I shake them out of my system. If I went and reviewed a random sample of my own game plays from that time I doubt I could tell which were tanks and which I intended to win with any accuracy and I was the player in question. Often times I had no clear idea at the time and when I did, the match would start one way and end up another. How would anyone detect that sort of behavior?

Honestly, until they fix the incentive system there's nothing they can do to fix tanking. Players are strongly encouraged to stay at low infamies. That is the core of the problem. It seems like most of the game pushes in that direction... the infamy system, match making system, the guild quests and the anti-tanking measures work to make low-infamy highly desirable. The fact that the rewards for higher infamy aren't published just adds fuel to the fire. In general, when you give humans rules that say one thing and incentives that say another, the incentives win.

 

A good infamy system should have more stability than this, not allow a 400 point drop in a single gaming session.

I propose that Rovio implements it as a 30 day moving average to infamy for matchmaking, which would add a lot of stability and remove the instant gratification that tankers get from blowing matches down one day and then reaping extra rewards the next. If it takes the better part of a month to move your infamy down, the immediate gratification gets removed, and the problem would be greatly reduced.

 

I was at that situation and dropped from 2800 to 700 somehow... it took me 2 weeks with no rewards and when i dropped to lower league it took me 4 to 5 days to go to 2200.
Im a fixer so its maybe easier for me to go through that shit...

I think that to fix this... it is easy...

When we upgrade our ships wee dont have an ability to go back.. same with crew training...
So it should be fair to set MiNiMuM infamy floor...

Lets say i reached 3000 in my best days... so put a damn floor on 2300 so i couldnt get lower... i cand disturb 1500 players with my experience and maxed items..

And no one will get NO REWARDS period.

Tell me ... why do you ROVIO need anyone to drop from 4000 to 0000 ?????? Its pointles...

 

The floor is a good idea. Use a moving average and a moving floor 800 blow your max, and the tanking issue is no longer, as well as pointless wild swings in infamy.

 

I agree that smoothing out the infamy system is a really good idea. I don't really think that the floor resolves any issues though even if it was working perfectly. What stops me from just keeping my infamy at 1000 forever? Why would I bother to go higher?

 

I would argue rewards should be proportional to infamy.

 

I completely agree. That's exactly the problem.

Are there any rewards? Who knows? I sure don't. In this game, when I advance in league what I get is a nebulous, "+xx% battle rewards" which sounds like more gold and sugar that I don't need. Other than bragging rights I'm not aware of any particular reason to want a higher infamy but I can name at least 4 reasons why I don't. Therein lies the problem. Now... if they were offering up blue parts and better chance at purple stuff -- enough to compensate for the loss in guild raffle tickets -- then yeah... I'd want that.