Estoc Edge: New EE bonus format proposal

Dear kawlleagues,

I suggest that the current EE format lacks inflection and hence discourages participation in wars.

To recap: the EE bonus levels currently are: L1=25%; L2=35%; L3=42%; L4=47%; L5=50%. Clearly, there is a diminishing return. And since losing a war lowers your EE edge, once you have L1, you stand to lose more than you can gain by joining a war. This seems silly and counterproductive for the vast majority of players.

At present, you receive +1 EE for winning a war, -1 EE for a loss (however, your timer resets with a loss). The timer is for 14 days, if you do not war within 14 days you lose your entire EE, no matter what level. Many players presently war every two weeks to "renew" their EE.

My proposal is as follows:

(1) Replace the current 5 level EE with a 10 level EE (analogous to the change recently made on buildings).

(2) Make the EE bonus linear, so for each level there is a +5% bonus (L1=5%; L2=10%; L3=15%; ... L10=50%).

(3) Winning a war increases EE by 1 level. Losing a war does not lower EE level but resets the EE clock.

(4) The EE clock is shortened to ~5-7 days. When the EE clock expires, you lose 1 level of EE only and the EE clock is reset to ~5-7 days (i.e. your EE decays over time).

This format would allow players to build up their EE over time and so encourage more frequent and consistent participation in EE wars. Moreover, I submit that it just makes more sense:

* Why should L5 be only insignificantly better than L4?

* Why should players lose a level of EE that they previously earned by losing a subsequent war, esp. when iWars are essentially a crap shoot?

* Why should players lose their entire EE if they cannot be active for two weeks due to RL?.

In sum, the format proposed above rewards success and also encourages participation ... you must win wars to improve your EE and the more EE wars you participate in the more chances you have to increase your EE bonus. Both individuals (iWars) and clans (esp. Primal wars) will have a greater incentive to go to war at Kingdoms at War.

Additional Features:

This proposal could work well in conjunction with the proposal (by HTLFreak and others) for skirmishes. For example, winning a skirmish would increase EE by +1 while winning a war would increase EE by +2.

Potential concerns:

I appreciate that there are trade-offs associated with my proposed format. Two come to mind:

(1) It could be criticized by the handful of highly successful EE clans, who presently have a near monopoly on top level EE ... I admit, this proposal is more for the benefit of the masses, for the benefit of the many, than for the top war clans. Yes, a war clan that wins some and loses some but is very active could, from the perspective of the EE bonus, be as successful as a clan that mostly wins but is less frequently active. I don't see a problem with that (rewarding both skill and activity); after all, a clan that consistently loses fares no better under my proposal than under the current system.

(2) It also raises the specter of players just signing-up for EE wars without really participating, since they do not have an EE level at stake to lose. To this concern I would reply, first, this already happens all the time when people with no EE sign-up for wars (i.e. no EE to lose), and second the broken sword spell could be tweaked to impact anyone who has less than a certain number of attempted (not successful) actions (i.e. lack of effort) and the broken sword spell could also include a loss of 1 level of EE.

Thank you for your kind consideration of the foregoing and I look forward to your thoughtful, insightful and constructive comments.

Respectfully submitted,

-Ked

 

Thank you Frog for your comment.

I respectfully disagree with your suggestion. One of the central points of my proposal was to give people a chance to build up their EE over time and to not deprive people of all the EE that they have build up just because they happen to have an inactive spell, hence my idea that EE would slowly decay.

Moreover, if you ascribe to my proposed linear 10 level EE scheme, I would fear that not many players would be able to achieve EE L10 (10 wins) within the course of a single calendar month. And if they do, why should it go "poof" just because the name of the month of the year has changed? I would rather see it as a long-term project, to grow and maintain the EE bonus.

 

Thank you Kezzer, you raise a good point.

Well, as for iWars, this happens all the time already, that EB builds sign-up and hope that the other side has more leaks and their clan wins and they get the EE bonus, so not much would change here, maybe more EB builds would try this trick under my proposal. But its random in iWars, so everyone is in the same boat.

As for clan wars, each clan will select its roster to maximize its chances of winning, which is the same as happens now, so EB builds will tend to not be selected for the roster, so nothing changes here. If a clan fields a roster of EB builds, they won't win and won't obtain the EE bonus.

Yes, conceivably an EB build could sign-up for a bunch of iWars and get to a high EE level, which I see as the crux of your concern. Is that such a bad thing? At least it gets them out there to war. And anyone who WCs iWars knows that part of what they must do to prevail and achieve a win is to minimize their own leaks and to take maximum advantage of the leaks on the opposite side, I see that as part of the game, as part of the challenge.

 

Yes, Kael, war is fun.

But its also more of a challenge than tap tapping EBs and I feel it deserves an appropriate in-game reward.

Moreover, there is a significant opportunity cost associated with EE wars, both in terms of the build's impact on plunder and in terms of leaving/missing EBs to war. I think it only fair that this be compensated.

And all who like to war will benefit if more players are incentivized to participate in wars (more wars, better match-ups, more variety, and I think better player retention).

Finally, since this is a war game, I say that warriors should be rewarded (which doesn't prevent folks like you from warring for the pure fun of it and simply ignoring the rewards that may happen to fall into your lap).

 

To Toxic & Chaos, sure, the EE bonus can be higher or "amplified," no objection to that whatsoever, easy to do with my proposal, just change the % increase per level from 5 to a higher number of your choice.

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To toxic:

(1) I wish you could have elaborated on why this is an idea that you would not enjoy. But that would have necessitated your actually reading the text of the proposal, and as your comment about your trip to Chicago demonstrates, you couldn't be bothered to do that, since your characterization of the impact of my proposal is diametrically opposite of what the proposal actually says. Let me throw this back at you: "I went to Mandalay for 15 days and was not on KAW during that time. Are you gonna tell me that I should have to start all over for ee because of RL?" The current system that you defend says yes, start from 0; my proposal very clearly says something different.

(2) It is rather quaint of you to write about how much you love it when people who don't war post about how to make wars better. If that comment was aimed at me, please note that I took the liberty of writing this from my PC account, which admittedly is not a war build; however, it does have a better keyboard than my phone for writing lengthly texts.

 

Godssolja, why do you say "case closed" based on Kezzer's comment that you quote? Please explain why my response to Kezzer's comment, supra, is inaccurate on unconvincing. Thank you.

Your subsequent post on RL, dumb excuses, etc., is not worthy of a response.