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Post by Galactic King on Nov 18, 2024 0:41:31 GMT -5
This has been suggested a few times, but figured I'd put it in a public setting to garner feedback from members. The biggest obstacle to increasing battle gains is that they are already, by a factor unseen in any other aspect of the site, so much more than any other roleplay type. This is because they carry an inherent sense of risk. I've seen it said by many, that if some people battle, they will get jumped by several other members for old grudges or other reasons. You can die, lose your planet, have a precious item stolen from you, etc.
This causes battles to usually be friendly in nature, which are just spars, which are ironically never done anymore despite also offering very high rewards compared to their word count. Yet despite this being a natural consequence of the current site climate, we admonish those who do this, calling out abuse despite everyone following what is allowed on the site.
So battle gains have always been in a strange place. Traditionally they have always been 5k for a win but recently it was changed to be a % of the top 25, and in our haste as a staff team, despite speaking of caps, I don't believe we ever implemented them. So there is this push and pull of battle gains being high and low depending on who does the top 25. For example, I do not include inactive people. Also, as activity wanes, so too do gains. So it isn't a great system.
We are talking about ways to change battle gains. In the past by other staff, it was suggested that battles that are more entertaining are given higher gains. I don't believe this is a good idea, because who is defining "entertaining". The best battles I've ever had have been shit on by refs for being boring, but battles aren't being written to please the refs. They're being written to drive character progression and storytelling. The most a ref should be involved in judging writing is the RP award.
There is good news: you can do this objectively.
1. If the battle is a duel, and thus someone must die, the battle is full risk and thus deserves 100% rewards.
2. If the battle is a sneak where the item is stolen, or where the item is successfully defended and the sneaker is killed, these deserve 75% rewards.
3. If the battle begins normally, but ends with a death, these deserve 50% rewards.
4. If the battle begins normally, but is disrupted with a jump at some point after the first round and results in an item being stolen at the end of the battle, it gets 25% gains.
5. If the battle begins and ends normally, and it is a friendly battle where nobody is killed, it gets 3% gains.
Staff will not have to become involved in battles again, barring extreme intentional abuse, which will become visible. For example, if someone wants to battle their friends, that is fine. If someone sneaks and then steals 1 Zeni, that is displaying the intention of having a friendly battle while trying to get more gains, which can then be voided out and given the correct gains. The battle itself will dictate how serious or risky it was by its conclusion.
Full gains can be as high as 50,000 PL. This is much higher than normal for the battles that are high stakes and serious, and way lesser than normal for battles that are essentially spars. You take the highest applicable gains. So if someone jumps and steals an item, and someone else dies, that gets 50% not 25%. This can be the end of the conversation forever, and you can just adjust that number as it becomes relevant, though at 50,000 PL I do not imagine it needs to be increased more than that.
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Bramble
Story Teller
Posts: 1,179 
Organization: Planet Trade Organization
Race: Alien
Status: Contact Me
Soul: Major Second
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Post by Bramble on Nov 18, 2024 4:31:24 GMT -5
There is good news: you can do this objectively. 1. If the battle is a duel, and thus someone must die, the battle is full risk and thus deserves 100% rewards. 2. If the battle is a sneak where the item is stolen, or where the item is successfully defended and the sneaker is killed, these deserve 75% rewards. 3. If the battle begins normally, but ends with a death, these deserve 50% rewards. 4. If the battle begins normally, but is disrupted with a jump at some point after the first round and results in an item being stolen at the end of the battle, it gets 25% gains. 5. If the battle begins and ends normally, and it is a friendly battle where nobody is killed, it gets 3% gains. I'm sure these numbers can be argued and suggested, but I do have gripes with said numbers. Jumps should not inherently make gains lesser; old grudges should not punish the two that initially began a fight. For example, Broly and I start a battle. We may intend a death of one of us, and say I get near death. Some random player that has nothing to do with (I'll just use Bramble for the example) jumps in and saves Bramble from near death! Then Broly one shots that jumper, but Bramble is given a second chance to beat Broly. Should I have asked a duel in your system then? Maybe through the course of the RP of the battle they change their mind in killing each other. Should that then force us to get 3% gains because in the end because they don't end up killing the other? That seems pretty unfair that on a site for roleplay, we are both punished for coming to an in-character choice. Not only that, but if it forces a 25% gain anyway, as you can have people maliciously jumping battles to lower the gains of everyone. They could even do so with a second or tri soul, and still get decent gains if a death happens. Even if they get killed, depending on who was fighting, they may still get great gains for their power level, while the other two are punished by the jumper. That is unfair, objectively. The system can be objective, but with the proposed numbers, it can still be abused through no fault of the initial players. Your system also doesn't account for a few other scenarios: sneaked victim's win against a sneaker, and a jumper not yoinking and item/zeni/losing the battle with the guy they jumped for. Was your intent to give them closer to 75%? You also didn't account for a match that ends in 1 kill, and one survivor. Say the jumper killed. Is that 3% for the "friendly" fighters and 25% for the jumper? I'm not trying to poke holes, but if it is objective, all scenarios should be addressed so that we get the full scope of the proposed changes imo. I have some counter ideas, but I think I'll refine them before posting. This is also my initial reaction. I still think the numbers need some tinkering, however. We don't have enough battles as it is. |
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Post by Bra on Nov 18, 2024 5:31:45 GMT -5
I feel like this focuses way too heavily on dying which already means basically nothing unless you have a planet like you mentioned. Lose a rare item? You can fight them to get it back. Anything else is pretty irrelevant?
Also punishes good characters for not killing an opponent?
Duels giving the best gains just seems easily exploitable to me as well. They're the only type that can't effectively be policed by other players through interventions so 3/4 people could just rotate through duels endlessly for massive gains that no one can prevent outside of staff getting involved? (I guess you could actually do this right now but at least the gains aren't any higher than a normal battle)
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Post by Lilim on Nov 18, 2024 5:52:12 GMT -5
Also, would like to point out, this proposed system doesn't actually stop anything; it wouldn't be that hard or difficult to have two friends just duel one another, one dies, but they just resume their RP in pre-writes or in the ND, basically ignoring the fight taking place to begin with or retcon it later (either by just pretending it didn't happen or use some plot device to erase that part of their shared history). Duels prevent jumping, Don't have to steal, get full rewards anyway. If the point is to avoid abuse by people just fighting one another for gains instead of being competitive, this system doesn't achieve that.
Additionally, the more you discourage casual battles, the less people will feel inclined to engage with them. Sure, people can go around and start ToMs or Planet Destructions, but its not like its difficult to replace that planet and its features in the long run. Additionally, a lot of items you can sneak attack someone for are largely replaceable (zeni, rares, etc) or are unstealable anyway (Epic Quest Items, Soul Binding). There are some unique items that are worth fighting competitively for, but they are few and far between, and anything meaningful you do lose can usually be replaced (with some high expenses) at the Gavarian Forge. Custom items arguably do more for enabling new and interesting concepts and mechanics than rares ever did. Additionally, being out a month as you recover in the ND is more of a vacation for some than any kind of damper to the grind. If anything, the gains from a 100% rewards duel will outweigh any training benefits they miss out on from spending four weeks in the ND.
The consequences aren't there to really make serious battles feel impactful. In most cases, the consequences are non-existent. If this is purely about stat gains being too high for little investment/little risk/etc, Lilim gains 3.5k Power Level per week for basically just doing regular training. In some instances, she can gain close to 10k with a moderate level of investment. It goes up from there if I'm claiming an RP, and I think I've battled maybe ten times with that character over the last fifteen-ish years. Even then, there are holes in any and every system; whatever you make the ideal effort-to-benefit ratio, people will laser-focus on it.
Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is, the system you propose probably won't achieve what you're trying to make it achieve. I'm not entirely certain how to achieve your particular goal without rewriting a lot of aspects about the site to support it, though.
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Yua
Story Teller
Posts: 1,282
Organization: Avalon Protectorate
Race: Android
Status: Contact Me
Soul: Main
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Post by Yua on Nov 18, 2024 9:27:12 GMT -5
The basic idea is fine, got what it is. You can't fight the same person twice in a row. But that doesn't mean the same 4 people can't just be doing duels back to back. Nor is a trip to the ND all that bad. There are items, weapons, armor, and techniques that can only be gotten there.
The biggest issue is that the system proposed isn't objective. It's just a point game. Battles being dangerous shouldn't mean that death should just bring the best result. Honestly, it just feels like the %s are based rather subjectively, specifically pointed towards killing your opponent. People that are Paladins should want to bring their opponent into jail, for example, not kill them. Killing them affects their alignment negatively, pun intended. But that shouldn't penalize the player. Going for a knock out is harder than trying to kill.
In other words, this system seems designed to give more power to evil aligned, and punishing good aligned for in character and out of character choices.
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Post by Broly on Nov 18, 2024 10:13:17 GMT -5
I dislike this suggestion wholly.
1) This is putting all the emphasis on dying supposedly to encourage 'high risk' and 'good storytelling' but really all it's going to do is encourage people to fight to the death. And when you're dead they're less likely to rp with each other because they're stuck in time out for a month. Dying is beneficial, yes, but after a small handful of deaths you're literally just wasting your time.
2) Giving 100% gains to duels is not going to encourage fair and entertaining fights. It's going to encourage fights that you KNOW you can win (against second souls, noobs, etc.) because, again, death sucks ass for most veterans of the site who've already done everything in the ND.
3) If you really want to encourage good storytelling, then you should be encouraging MORE toxic gameplay. Gains should be higher for all parties if the fight is jumped, or if someone is sneaked, etc. Why? Because there's more effort, more consequences, and the battles are going to be longer. The last 5-10 'friendly battles' that I've read have all gone the same way. Pew pew a few times, grapple, oh hey it's been 6-9 posts might as well call it quits. I used to get shamed for this kind of thing and yet I have no issue finding these exact same kinds of threads, recently even.
4) Setting caps on gains has 'I got mine' vibes which only benefits veterans. Say you cap the gains to 50k, but when everyone's rocking 10mil power level, a new player is going to get greatly diminished returns. Obviously that's unfair and you will invariably increase the cap anyways.
5) IMO friendly battles shouldn't even be a thing. I've always had an issue with them because it's easy as fuck stats for the effort required. Many of us have written literal novel length stories for this site to get like, what, a few battles worth of gains? Something is broken with how people gain power. You got people nearing 5mil PL while people start off with like sub 100k, with no way to catch up besides battle whoring for YEARS. You have people like me who have so much disposable income that I could buy my way to #1 and I wouldn't even notice the change in my bank balance. You have people grinding to stupid high power levels and then doubling it with ToM. There's something broken with the power scaling which leads me to...
6) You're probably not going to be able to fix the system in a satisfactory way. My career was in quality engineering. We tackled the root cause of problems instead of trying to put bandaids on symptoms. I'm not going to pretend like I know what's going on behind the scenes or have been here long enough to know who's in charge of the decisions that have led us to this point, but I know that *waves hand and the proposed solution* this ain't it.
Bonus) I only just learned a few days ago that the recommended word count for battles is 500. Ya'll should really be writing that shit down somewhere bc, as written, there's no reason to assume that writing 200 wc isn't doing enough.
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Post by Yan Cass on Nov 18, 2024 10:52:44 GMT -5
Please note this is a suggestion that no one on the Mod Team agrees with except for Revan. We are currently discussing returning gains back to at least 15k PL (which they were for like 5+ years before the change a few years back to be a percentage of the top 25) with stipulations for lower gains for effort. Low effort will be defined by giving spar quality writing, no story or character building, conceding without ever truly trying to win, and decided by Shell who is in charge of battle stuff. We were also discussing more concrete definitions of effort to avoid dissatisfaction. This system is the same as it was 4 or so years ago so while a new system might be better, we know this one works and battle gains will no longer scale from 800 all to 3000 all.
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Post by Goku on Nov 18, 2024 14:29:50 GMT -5
There are just a few factual corrections I have for the initial post. Battle gains have increased over the years as follows: 07/05/2021 - Battle gains now give a % of PL based on the average PL of all fighters in the top 25. 01/27/2021 - The cap on battle gains has been removed. Battle gains will be 3% of the 25th player on the top 25. 06/05/2016 - Increased battle PL gain cap from 12,000 to 15,000 and Saiyan cap from 15,000 to 20,000. 05/09/2015 - Slightly increased power level cap from battle gains to +12,000 PL (+15,000 PL for Saiyans) from +10,000 and +12,000 respectively. 02/11/2013 - Capped battle gains at +10,000 PL (+12,000 for Saiyans). This is just to point out that 5k battle gains haven't been a thing for years and years - I've seen that number thrown out before and it's just incorrect. Battle gains were 15k until the 01/27/2021 patch, which I was a mod at the time and supported that change. At that time, it was roughly an additional 3k bonus and expected to slowly rise as the general power level of the site did. In hindsight, I can see that was not a great change for some obvious reasons, but I digress. I was not part of the 07/05/2021 change. This is just to point out, the proposed battle changes are to put things roughly back on track with the previous increase in gains. (I will list the proposed gains below fyi) Second, there may have been talk previously about adjusting gains for an entertaining battle, but that has not been brought up this time around in discussions. Instead, we're looking to add an effort adjustment. Effort is an easily way to appropriately reward or punish battle gains, but an important thing to note is this is NOT determined by solely by writing quality. We're all at different levels of writing ability and that's great and should not be punished.
For anybody wondering, the current proposals for adjusting battle gains is as follows (This is not yet finalized):
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Post by Broly on Nov 18, 2024 15:14:51 GMT -5
How do you quantify "entertaining"
Idk if you've done rp in a system where mods gave rewards based on how much they liked it, but it's generally shit. You either write how they want you to, or have a plot they're attached to... or you suffer. And don't get me started on the dick riding to get on the grader's good side.
It sounds good on paper but graders are human and biased even if they try not to be. It's even worse that we're on adbz which is ripe with grudges.
With regards to the gains themselves, I'm kind of sad to see that there's no effort to let weaker characters catch up.
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Frieza
Super Member 
Posts: 273
Race: Changeling
Status: Contact Me
Soul: Major Second
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Post by Frieza on Nov 18, 2024 15:18:38 GMT -5
Personally, I'm not sure why this is really being brought up. Other than recent events of individuals returning who have been apparently known to try and abuse the system, I don't really see anyone trying to abuse the system for gains. And when the whole site is pretty much set up for battling, then battles having the best gains makes sense to me. I also find it slightly amusing that battling often for stats is frowned upon, but donating thousands of dollars to do the same is fine lol. But let's put that to one side for now.
If you look at the recent changes that Goku has set out for battling in comparison to the top players, then gains as they are now are actually some of the lowest they've been in the last 10 years.
In 2013, the amount you could gain from a battle was 1.8% of what the top player's PL was.
In 2015, that then went down to 1.4%
In 2016, it was 1.1%
In 2021, the first change saw a huge reduction (largely because No.1 was so far above everyone else) down to 0.03%, before going back up to 1.3% when the average was introduced (and the top player no longer had over 4m PL)
As it is now, the percentage increase in comparison to first place is 0.6%, with what Goku is proposing as a battle with effort rewarding just 0.49%.
Obviously part of this is how gains and power levels have inflated over the last 10 years, but I still don't think it's as big of a problem as it appears it's being made out to be.
That being said, part of the discussion here seems to be risk vs reward. It's positioned as battles having increased rewards, because there are more risks involved. Except, as has been alluded to already, there aren't really any risks involved. A stay in the ND can be very rewarding, or a nice break for some. Having something stolen is not necessarily the be all and end all, and outside of potential stress involved, it's all fun and games.
So, my recommendation would be to add battles with actual consequences. By all means, if you want to reduce gains of battles, then do so, especially if they're seen as friendly battles (even if said battles result in death. But I would use this opportunity to introduce perma-death.
Perma-death might seem like a scary introduction, but I think it's warranted if you want to increase the risk vs reward debate. Battles with slightly lower gains could be done as they are now, however, battles with higher consequence (let's call them grudge battles for now) could be used for higher gains. Two players could agree to a grudge battle, with the losing player dying permanently. If it's a duel, then the gains are less than if it's open, because a 1v1 inherently carries less risk than being jumped by others. However, if anyone does jump, they are also at risk of permanently dying.
Now, this is a DBZ site after all, so perma-death might not be permanent after all. We have Dragonballs. Over the course of the last 20-25 years, have the DBs every actually been used to bring someone back to life? I'd genuinely like to know, because I've never seen it happen. It would give them a legitimate function outside of wishing for selfish gain.
If you don't have any friends who will wish you back, well...that's on you, you could already start again with a new character. But that was the risk of battling for higher gains.
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Post by Broly on Nov 18, 2024 15:28:15 GMT -5
I don't think perma death is gonna catch on because it takes so damn long to build up a character, not to mention all the sub items and other limited time nonsense that you'd lose out on.
That being said, I would not be opposed to a hardcore game mode. You'd start all over, no purchasable stats, no donator anything, can only interact with other hardcore characters, and have permadeath enabled.
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Post by Broly on Nov 18, 2024 15:38:17 GMT -5
is frowned upon, but donating thousands of dollars to do the same is fine lol. I got a LOT of flack for doing it, and people got so salty that Alex capped donator gains for a few months lol. I'll probably get the same treatment next time too |
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Frieza
Super Member
Posts: 273
Race: Changeling
Status: Contact Me
Soul: Major Second
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Post by Frieza on Nov 18, 2024 15:58:43 GMT -5
I don't think perma death is gonna catch on because it takes so damn long to build up a character, not to mention all the sub items and other limited time nonsense that you'd lose out on. That being said, I would not be opposed to a hardcore game mode. You'd start all over, no purchasable stats, no donator anything, can only interact with other hardcore characters, and have permadeath enabled. But it's not really perma-death though (unless you opt to start a new character fresh), you'd just be in the ND indefinitely until someone wishes you back. Besides, as I said, that's what the consequence would be for the high battle gain in that particular scenario. Personally, I could absolutely see Frieza doing that, and then having an underling/officer chase around for DBs in the hopes of getting my character back. But I'm more inclined to think RP wise than what makes sense for the meta. |
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Post by Goku on Nov 18, 2024 16:03:06 GMT -5
How do you quantify "entertaining" Idk if you've done rp in a system where mods gave rewards based on how much they liked it, but it's generally shit. You either write how they want you to, or have a plot they're attached to... or you suffer. And don't get me started on the dick riding to get on the grader's good side. It sounds good on paper but graders are human and biased even if they try not to be. It's even worse that we're on adbz which is ripe with grudges. With regards to the gains themselves, I'm kind of sad to see that there's no effort to let weaker characters catch up. An 'entertaining' modifier is not being considered because it's has glaring issues. I brought it up solely because it was mentioned in Revan's initial post and I just wanted to make it very clear that regardless of past discussions, something like that is not on the table. Personally, I'm not sure why this is really being brought up. Other than recent events of individuals returning who have been apparently known to try and abuse the system, I don't really see anyone trying to abuse the system for gains. And when the whole site is pretty much set up for battling, then battles having the best gains makes sense to me. I also find it slightly amusing that battling often for stats is frowned upon, but donating thousands of dollars to do the same is fine lol. But let's put that to one side for now. If you look at the recent changes that Goku has set out for battling in comparison to the top players, then gains as they are now are actually some of the lowest they've been in the last 10 years. In 2013, the amount you could gain from a battle was 1.8% of what the top player's PL was. In 2015, that then went down to 1.4% In 2016, it was 1.1% In 2021, the first change saw a huge reduction (largely because No.1 was so far above everyone else) down to 0.03%, before going back up to 1.3% when the average was introduced (and the top player no longer had over 4m PL) As it is now, the percentage increase in comparison to first place is 0.6%, with what Goku is proposing as a battle with effort rewarding just 0.49%. Obviously part of this is how gains and power levels have inflated over the last 10 years, but I still don't think it's as big of a problem as it appears it's being made out to be. That being said, part of the discussion here seems to be risk vs reward. It's positioned as battles having increased rewards, because there are more risks involved. Except, as has been alluded to already, there aren't really any risks involved. A stay in the ND can be very rewarding, or a nice break for some. Having something stolen is not necessarily the be all and end all, and outside of potential stress involved, it's all fun and games. So, my recommendation would be to add battles with actual consequences. By all means, if you want to reduce gains of battles, then do so, especially if they're seen as friendly battles (even if said battles result in death. But I would use this opportunity to introduce perma-death. Perma-death might seem like a scary introduction, but I think it's warranted if you want to increase the risk vs reward debate. Battles with slightly lower gains could be done as they are now, however, battles with higher consequence (let's call them grudge battles for now) could be used for higher gains. Two players could agree to a grudge battle, with the losing player dying permanently. If it's a duel, then the gains are less than if it's open, because a 1v1 inherently carries less risk than being jumped by others. However, if anyone does jump, they are also at risk of permanently dying. Now, this is a DBZ site after all, so perma-death might not be permanent after all. We have Dragonballs. Over the course of the last 20-25 years, have the DBs every actually been used to bring someone back to life? I'd genuinely like to know, because I've never seen it happen. It would give them a legitimate function outside of wishing for selfish gain. If you don't have any friends who will wish you back, well...that's on you, you could already start again with a new character. But that was the risk of battling for higher gains. To be fair, I don't know why this is being brought up either. We were on track to just switch battle gains back to the standard flat rate, with a modifier for effort. This is supposed to be a quick change that fixes the issues with a scaling rewards, not to reassess battle rewards as a whole or make any additional big changes.
Personally, I don't see the issue with friendly battles and don't see the need to penalize them. There are legit reasons to have battles that do not involve huge amounts of risk, and I don't mind those getting rewarded appropriately for the effort put into them.
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Post by Galactic King on Nov 18, 2024 16:16:04 GMT -5
There is good news: you can do this objectively. 1. If the battle is a duel, and thus someone must die, the battle is full risk and thus deserves 100% rewards. 2. If the battle is a sneak where the item is stolen, or where the item is successfully defended and the sneaker is killed, these deserve 75% rewards. 3. If the battle begins normally, but ends with a death, these deserve 50% rewards. 4. If the battle begins normally, but is disrupted with a jump at some point after the first round and results in an item being stolen at the end of the battle, it gets 25% gains. 5. If the battle begins and ends normally, and it is a friendly battle where nobody is killed, it gets 3% gains. I'm sure these numbers can be argued and suggested, but I do have gripes with said numbers. Jumps should not inherently make gains lesser; old grudges should not punish the two that initially began a fight. For example, Broly and I start a battle. We may intend a death of one of us, and say I get near death. Some random player that has nothing to do with (I'll just use Bramble for the example) jumps in and saves Bramble from near death! Then Broly one shots that jumper, but Bramble is given a second chance to beat Broly. Should I have asked a duel in your system then? Maybe through the course of the RP of the battle they change their mind in killing each other. Should that then force us to get 3% gains because in the end because they don't end up killing the other? That seems pretty unfair that on a site for roleplay, we are both punished for coming to an in-character choice. Not only that, but if it forces a 25% gain anyway, as you can have people maliciously jumping battles to lower the gains of everyone. They could even do so with a second or tri soul, and still get decent gains if a death happens. Even if they get killed, depending on who was fighting, they may still get great gains for their power level, while the other two are punished by the jumper. That is unfair, objectively. The system can be objective, but with the proposed numbers, it can still be abused through no fault of the initial players. Your system also doesn't account for a few other scenarios: sneaked victim's win against a sneaker, and a jumper not yoinking and item/zeni/losing the battle with the guy they jumped for. Was your intent to give them closer to 75%? You also didn't account for a match that ends in 1 kill, and one survivor. Say the jumper killed. Is that 3% for the "friendly" fighters and 25% for the jumper? I'm not trying to poke holes, but if it is objective, all scenarios should be addressed so that we get the full scope of the proposed changes imo. I have some counter ideas, but I think I'll refine them before posting. This is also my initial reaction. I still think the numbers need some tinkering, however. We don't have enough battles as it is. Jumps would not make gains lesser. You misunderstood tbh. As I said in the original post, you take the highest applicable gains. A friendly No stakes battle would give 3k PL. If someone jumps it would shoot up to 12.5k. If anyone dies in the battle, it shoots up to 25k. So if someone jumps they are actually increasing the gains by a factor of 5. If someone then dies they are increasing your gains by a factor of 8. So someone jumping would only give you greater gains, denoting the serious nature of a jumped battle. |
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