Proposal: Change Essence Reward

[CelesaAkitaka]

lililira

I do kind of wonder why this has been thought of in the first place. If you work harder for a victory, you should get more essence. That's just common sense. The way this might work out is that if you win due to rushing the portals in a quick game, you might get more to essence than if you really fight hard in a long game. If it works out like this it might also totally wreck the HoC economy. You can do many quick portal rush games in the time it would take to fight a long battle.

More essence in the system due to the above = Higher pack prices + Nerfed Essence to gold ratio = Harder for newbies to get a good start = Less people play the game = It gets dropped just like zOMG.

It's about finding a way to give fair essence without exploits. As it is now, people can corner others and kill one by one getting extra essence. There's working hard, and then there's just boosting too.

I like an idea like "Beat 5 enemies + 50 essence," "Win in 15 turns + 75 essence," "Win by obtaining 6 portals + 200 essence" but also to put in the forfeit after x turns to still be able to limit the boosting. Downside to it is how to calculate for the losing side. Maybe even a level differential..

[Tempest Soul 343]

After reading some of the comments on the proposal, I decided to play around with the formula and see how it worked. I'll list a few examples of cases below, then state what I realized.

Formula: [Total mana spent on units by both players] * [80% scaling factor] * [# portals player found / sum(# portals found by each player)] = base essence points

Player 1 (P1) summons units worth 18 mana -- basically, one unit -- and finds 1 portal. Player 2 (P2) summons 180 mana of units, and finds all 6 portals (curbstomp). P2 receives 135.8 points, and P1 receives 22.6. Sounds pretty fair, for a blatantly skewed scenario, but that's testing.

P1 summon 18 mana again, but somehow finds 6 portals. P2 summons 180 again, but only finds 1 portal. P1 receives 135.8 points, and P2 receives 22.6 points... wait, I've seen those numbers before! It doesn't matter how many units you have, only the number of portals!

P1 summons 18 mana, finds 2 portals. P2 summons 180 and finds 3 (and kills P1). P1 receives 63.4 points, and P2 receives 95 points. Low numbers, but fairly even, despite P1 losing all his units.

I could go on, but I think that shows the important parts. As people are complaining, the proposed system is all about portals -- it doesn't matter how big your army was, that just determines the base essence granted to each player. The number of portals acts as a multiplier, so straight-out killing your opponent (final battle) or building massive armies isn't really that rewarding to the victor. The formula needs a way to reward players for building an army, *without* encouraging "I need more essence, so I'll wait and grab that last portal once my army is bigger."

I'd like to say I have a solution, but I don't yet. I think the big flaw is the fact that the essence system is merely scaling the same number based on how many portals they found -- there is no consideration for how many units the player put in themselves, or whether they won.

[sabrina100]

I like the idea of actually being able to get essence when the other person forfeits, I don't know how many times that I've been cheated that way in PvP.

I'm not so much for the portal thing, because really if you stumble across portals right at the begining of the game then you avoid any and all confrontations, which isn't the tiles moving meant to have actual battle between opponents? I believe obliterating the enemy is a good way to get essence because you are actually tactically going after the diffrent units rather than sneaking around finding portals so that the game ends quickly. if the portals give more essence then everyone will just be avoiding conflict and rushing the game to get portals rather than actually developing stratagies.

But if they go with the portal idea, I agree with some of the people in here and there should be extra essence granted when you capture more than one portal. Also if the portal idea goes through I might suggest that the tiles don't move so quickly, so it is trickier to get portals since you would actually have to serch or them rather than the portals quickly converging on them because the land collapses in on itself.

Now with armagedon aka the final battle, I really don't believe extra points should go to the winner if the winner only wins because they have 20 monsters compaired to the other person's 3 because they were pinned down unable to summon anything but lower level monsters. It simply isn't right because the person is pinned and unable to do anything till the final battle and is unable to defend themselves cause they are obliterated by high powered units.

[gataka]

Question: would the winner still get bonus essence for winning, like current?

lililira

What about if you win by wiping out all the enemy units? Or by winning the "final battle"?

I'm asking because this is how I normally win. Sometimes I end up having less portals than my opponent, and I personally would feel cheated if my opponent got more essence than me even though I was the winner.

I do like the idea of essence = summoned units, but not how it would be split up.

Just throwing this out there: whatever the system, they could simply make it so the winner always gets the bigger stash.

[CelesaAkitaka]

My only thing is the whole based off of portals issue. It makes the game shift more towards a rush. There are some maps like the one that's like an H with a thick left side where you both tend to not use the left side and its possibly a 2-3 portal each scenario. The third scenario you listed does sound good, but then I guess what if one of the players has a bad hand and can't summon much. Because they didn't spend much, that forces the winner to not get as much, which in that sense, the strategy of the better deck doesn't pan out.

This is a good way of thinking though. I don't want to say it, but even putting a cap through to limit boosting and really, this would be messy when it comes to calculations, have an if for the win as we don't want to promote running around for portals being a factor nor just fighting.

My one big thing with the portals is before the new cards where some people have like 50 of each rare now and my army would do damage to the other units, I would be able to defend my two portals long enough where the other person didn't have enough units to keep coming at me. I could win without going for all the portals as I used tactics to limit who could attack.

Tempest Soul 343

After reading some of the comments on the proposal, I decided to play around with the formula and see how it worked. I'll list a few examples of cases below, then state what I realized.

Formula: [Total mana spent on units by both players] * [80% scaling factor] * [# portals player found / sum(# portals found by each player)] = base essence points

Player 1 (P1) summons units worth 18 mana -- basically, one unit -- and finds 1 portal. Player 2 (P2) summons 180 mana of units, and finds all 6 portals (curbstomp). P2 receives 135.8 points, and P1 receives 22.6. Sounds pretty fair, for a blatantly skewed scenario, but that's testing.

P1 summon 18 mana again, but somehow finds 6 portals. P2 summons 180 again, but only finds 1 portal. P1 receives 135.8 points, and P2 receives 22.6 points... wait, I've seen those numbers before! It doesn't matter how many units you have, only the number of portals!

P1 summons 18 mana, finds 2 portals. P2 summons 180 and finds 3 (and kills P1). P1 receives 63.4 points, and P2 receives 95 points. Low numbers, but fairly even, despite P1 losing all his units.

I could go on, but I think that shows the important parts. As people are complaining, the proposed system is all about portals -- it doesn't matter how big your army was, that just determines the base essence granted to each player. The number of portals acts as a multiplier, so straight-out killing your opponent (final battle) or building massive armies isn't really that rewarding to the victor. The formula needs a way to reward players for building an army, *without* encouraging "I need more essence, so I'll wait and grab that last portal once my army is bigger."

I'd like to say I have a solution, but I don't yet. I think the big flaw is the fact that the essence system is merely scaling the same number based on how many portals they found -- there is no consideration for how many units the player put in themselves, or whether they won.

[CaptainPhantom]

I think Killed units should still give essence. I like killing the enemy units, I play for the battles, I don't really want someone to just run around me so i never get to see my cool knights fight in epic glorious battles, that would be lame...

[gataka]

Just a thought/idea, incomplete: to support multiple strategies, have multiple scoring systems.

That is have players individually pick and state how they'll attempt to win and then score accordingly.
So a player's performance is rated more independently.

Can of worms that walk, run, or even sprint, so I'll skip on the details, just throwing it out there xD

Red Kutai touchs on something different but related in here ( the quests in the later part of the post).

[Ungoliath]

If you make the winner add to his total the amount won by the enemy, then it's perfect.

[CelesaAkitaka]

gataka

Just a thought/idea, incomplete: to support multiple strategies, have multiple scoring systems.

That is have players individually pick and state how they'll attempt to win and then score accordingly.
So a player's performance is rated more independently.

Can of worms that walk, run, or even sprint, so I'll skip on the details, just throwing it out there xD

Red Kutai touchs on something different but related in here.

A campaign would be mighty hard to have for this being a card/board game. The closest to that would feel like playing the Star Wars TCG where you could choose to play a card that you had to complete a scenario. The game is awesome, but it was difficult for newcomers to learn or want to play.

[HedLeeman]

My opinion:

-An amount based on your summoned (or perhaps surviving) units, and your kills.

-A bonus for quick victory.

-A bonus for portals.

-Something more than just tiny little essence for winning.

Otherwise you end up with:

-No reason to win with portals.

-You want to win by waiting as long as possible and then just letting both players go all out during apocalypse to get the most essence each.

-You want to just throw guys at your opponent to get kills regardless of survival because the victory bonus is irrelevant compared to kill essence.

[berry-sweet-promise]

I think it sounds fine. But how about trying it for a month see how users like or dont like it and if most do not like it resort back to the old system.

[Silence314]

I agree with a lot of people who are displeased at the thought of not benefiting from charging in for a fight. I also prefer flat out duking it with the enemy so this system would not benefit me a lot.

Though I do agree with berry, this is beta so why not try implementing one method for a month and then implementing a different method for another month. Then keep a forum up that asks for opinions throughout the month. It is hard to judge without trying something after all~

[Tempest Soul 343]

Silence314

I agree with a lot of people who are displeased at the thought of not benefiting from charging in for a fight. I also prefer flat out duking it with the enemy so this system would not benefit me a lot.

Though I do agree with berry, this is beta so why not try implementing one method for a month and then implementing a different method for another month. Then keep a forum up that asks for opinions throughout the month. It is hard to judge without trying something after all~

Good point. On a side note, there's some maps where I find it difficult to even find all the portals before I'm forced to wipe out my opponent (at least with the computer) - for instance, the H-map where both sides start off only a few spaces away, and then the cataclysms come and make you neighbors...

[immortal-sensei]

Perhaps the number of assessments can be determined by the method of the kill.

Like you would use two different calculations one if you won by getting all the portals and the other by the slaughter of the other army.

The question at that point though would be how to balance the two so one way is not favored by farmers.

[Only Gray]

Huh.

Well, I'd say that if you based essence off of summoned units, you should get different amounts for different mana costs. It wouldn't be fair if someone just ended up summoning 4 of every low mana cost unit.

Overall, I'd have to say that I prefer the current essence reward.