CDV12: Clan Battle changes, part 2

[Tim]

Clan Battle changes, part 2:
A big problem with the way clan battles are currently set up is that they discourage clans involved in the battle from actually being in the battle area. If you log out in the battle city, you're gonna get turned into a pin cushion by the other side and not gain that much for your clan. That needs to change. If you are in a clan battle in a city, you should be rewarded for participating. So now you will be. Points will be rewarded to each side each hour based on the Participation of each of the main clan's members.

Clan battle participation:
Every 15 minutes during battle, the code determines the location of each member of the main clans in the battle. If the member is in the target city and has not moved for 15 minutes, that member is counted as participating in the battle for that hour. If they are in one of the 4 surrounding wilderness areas, they are counted as half paricipating. If the member is a subleader of the clan, they count double. Triple for the leader.

Two factors go into whether the clan earns points: their Participation % and their Participation level.
Participation % = (participation count)/(number of members)
Participation level = average level of all clan members counted as participating (regardless of where they are)

Participation points:

• + 150 points each hour if clan had 20% or more paricipation and the average level of participating member is more than ((average level of clans members) - 5)
• + 50 points each hour if clan has a higher participation % than their opponents (no points for tie)
• + 500 points if clan has earned more participation points than their opponents (awarded at end of the clan battle; no points for tie)

So let's say a clan has 15 members. 2 members stay in the city and 2 members are in the wilderness area and they all hold still for at least 15 minutes. So their participation count is 3 (1 each from the members in the city and .5 each from the 2 in the wilderness). That's 20% of their total membership, so as long as those 4 members average level are within 5 or more of whole clan's level, the clan will get 150 points added to their score at the next hour change. If the other clan only had a 15% participation, then your clan also gets 50 more points that hour.

My hope is htat this will be enough points from participation that clans will make an effort to get the participation points if they want to win the battle. This doesn't necessarily fix the problem of clans skipping battles entirely. For that, you'll have to wait for part 3.

[wyeth]

At first glance, I have one issue with this addition, and that is the "hold still". In the last age during clan battles, I would move from wilderness area in the battle to town to another wilderness area still within the clan battle arena. I'm participating but not holding still. This participation factor seems to only be concerned with those who are AFK (or at least are limiting themselves to one area). I'm not sure I like this.

Here is one case of how I see this addition doesn't really help. (Sorry, please shoot me down if I'm wrong.)

Say clan A has 10 members, four of which are sitting in the arena (wilderness or town). This is more than enough to garner the +150 at the end of the hour. Now, if these four have been afk, or are sitting in the wilderness area (meaning they can't repair or heal) they get pin-cushioned by Clan B, who has any number of people doing the good-ol hit and run. So lets say each member of clan B is getting 8 points a fight on these four. That means every 5, 10, minutes (whatever the duel cooldown is). Lets say 10 minutes (even if this is grossly larger than the real thing, that only adds to my point) a member from clan B smacks all four clan A members, and garners 9 pts a person. Thats 32 points every 10 minutes. Which translates to 192 pts and hour. One clan B member wailing on at least 4 members like this already exceeds the 150 pt bonus an hour. Now if this trend continued for the full 24-hr period (Highly unlikely I know) One clan B member would net twice the 500 point bonus at the end. This problem is further exasperated by the half participation of those who are sitting in the wilderness which is already a weak position as you don't have the town bonuses nor the ability to heal/repair.

Now I know this is a bit of a contrived situation, so you can poke holes in it. One tactic would be to start dropping these AFK members from the clan (unless clans are locked). One effect of this would be to change the % of clan involved which could make it easier to achieve the 20% (which honestly shouldn't be that big a problem to begin with, if the clan is active.)

I guess my solution to this problem would be to amend the holding still to staying within the clan battle arena. I imagine this could be harder to code than a sitting still check. Maybe if you have some record of character movements over the past hour you can run a scan and see if they visited any place other than the town and its surrounding wilderness zones. One registered visit to a non-arena area would trigger a flag taking them out of the participation calculations. But this fix would allow those who are actively participating help bring in participation points while being able to maintain character/armor integrity.

Anyways those are my thoughts. Please feel free to tear them apart. Also I just reread the last line, maybe you have something planned in part 3 that makes this irrelevant.

[Tim]

First, I'll say that you're right about the 'hold still for 15 minutes thing' being about making the code easier for me. I'll admit to that. Tracking where the player has traveled can get quite difficult, especially if their clan is involved in multiple clan battle at the same time. Not impossible, but I admittedly did take the easy way out here.

The only flaw I see in your example is that if one player hit 4 other players every 10 minutes for 24 hours, they'd have used 576 turns in that 24 hour period. That said, if you just spread those turns out over 3 donors who had been saving up some turns and you have the same effect. If your clan leaves 4 members parked in the battle area while they are offline, they are still likely to get beat up on and that will likely more than make up for points earned for participation. Short of making the points from participation outrageously high, I'm not sure there's a way go prevent that. My hope is to offer enough points from participation to make it worth it for clans to try for it, but not so many points that you win simply by parking all your chars in the battle area.

However, if the characters who were "on participation duty" weren't offline and were good duelists, that would help cut into that point gain if they were able to win some of the duels. I'll fully admit that towards the end of the last age, it didn't matter where some characters (*cough* Rasina) were parked during the the Clan Battle. I knew better than to even try to duel them. If the characters who are in the battle area are actively healing and repairing, the losses should be kept to a minimum.

In your example where a clan has 10 members, the clan could reach the 20% participation just by having one of their subleaders park in the city for 15 minutes every hour then move out for the other 3/4 of the time. If that's the case, a single player from the other clan may only get 2-3 battles off on one player per hour, netting only 24 points from duels for that hour compared to the 150 the other clan earned from participation.

We'll see how this plays out. I admit, I'm unsure if this addition is going to work or not. But we won't know til we try.

[Felic]

im fully on board with this and cant wait to test it out. the brain gears are turning!

[King Richard]

I'm excited to try it for sure.

[Seitaarin]

I do like how you've derailed setting up leads/subleads below level for viable duelling before it even arose

Question though ...

Participation level = average level of all clan members counted as participating (regardless of where they are)

is this referring to one side of the clan battle, the clan of the individual that is being calculated, or all clans currently listed in the clan battle with active participants?

I'm seeing some pretty ill possibilities either way ... For example, let's just say oh I throw in "Easing the Badger" into a clan battle ... and all 3 members are only level 30'something, whereas the clans participating are all level 60'something ... Am I going to get points while giving away squat because my clan is too low for duelling points? ... Or, looking at that same scenario differently ... If it was arranged so that only a few main level characters participated, and my 3 Badgers, could those potentially lower the battleground average level enough to allow a main clan to put a leader out at sub duel level?

I haven't yet finished my first coffee, so it's all a big vague still, hope that made sense

The other point ... the whole tracking moving around thingo ... might have some issues there with people sitting in wilderness areas for 14 minutes, then into the city for 1 min to double their participation points, then back out to wherever for 45 mins ... seems like alot of work to me, but considering how little could potentially be given away for how much gain, may create imbalance scenarios. The whole not moving part of the calculation could perhaps only apply to "in the city itself" perhaps? If noted as moving, even though they may remain in the bg, maybe the wilderness bonus only can apply, to avoid exploitative timings? dunno ...

Which brings me to point #3 ... I had one, I swear ... lost it while typing #2 ... something to do with cb's in overlapping wilderness area ... ahh well, have to head to the gym anyways, I'll try and recall where my head was at when I'm at work.

As for duels, for the highest exp shadow player, I don't think my defense log got filled during LB, I think I could count on 1 hand the number of people that tried Rasina was beatable, moreso out in the field of battle ... if you want unbeatable, you should have tried duelling Kev or KR while they sat behind their shiny silver town walls ... Don't think I had very many successes at all once they sprayed a billion gold into town defenses