Thinking out loud here. How about a nonlinear system of bonuses? I don't know what the current formulas are, but let's pretend that your bonus is a function of your ability divided by your opponent's ability. If you changed the formula so that your bonus was a function of the log of your ability divided by your opponent's ability, then you'd get diminishing returns. That would still provide incentive to improve, but it would make it harder to get invincible.

I'm sure they're not going to consider changing formulas, so this is just a thought experiment. For that matter, they're not going to change anything that affects MsPiggy's invincibility. Unless she's cheating and you can prove it, you have to just treat her as a fact of life. Like Florida's hurricane season in August or something.

Anyway, next time someone complains about the random factor, this is why they keep that the way it is. Every once in a while, invincible players lose, just due to the random factor.

No time to argue about this. The so called invincible players deserve to be invincible. It costs alot of money, time and effort to be one like them.

imo a clear statement and vote for an imbalanced protection/combat mechanism. thanx for that answer, no further argument from my side. I'm done with this issue. best wishes to the developers and their game.

One last try to make the voice of 'god' (lol) reach you

If you became near invincible, it's just the rewards for your efforts up till then. I didn't start out strong, in fact, I started out as weakling being beaten easily during my first championships. I got to be where I am by sacrificing power for gains skills at first and by being in an awesome clan that allowed me to get the disadvanced development skill early on. Surely other now powerful powerful players took a similar approach, the only difference is that I aimed for duel gains to start with while other chose hunts.
There's a lot of other strong players around, those who took large bonuses from Zarknod for example, and how about you yourself? You claim that you'll get your 4th champ medal before the championships even start and you think others shouldn't be invincible? I only have 3 medals myself and I got them only due to my efforts to stay in a lower group than some other quite strong players just above me.

As for a log function to abilities, I think it naturally exists due to the cost increase. 1M will only get you around 50 abilities once your abilities reach the 150s, while it can buy you the world earlier on. Any further deterioration would result into skills being far more attractive than abilities. So should something like this be implemented, which I highly doubt, this side-effect would need to be dealt with.

The best way to prevent overpowered characters would be to take away the disadvanced development skill and increase XP gained from duelling according to the gained SE during the battle. But then again, what fun would duelling be if you didn't get any real rewards from it?

Time for my 5 cent.

First a little background:
On w1 I am one of the strongest players in my level bracket, and can be fairly sure to win any duel, I worked hard for it, always making sure I got maximum SE for as little XP as possible. On w2 I'm a hunter/builder, and can only win over other hunter/builders, I enjoy both. On w1 I enjoy winning duels and gaining SE. On w2 I laugh at the duellers when they get 0 SE for attacking me, not that I get attacked much. I don't have a character on w3.

I don't see the overpowered characters as being a problem in itself, all games reward those that find a way to make the most of it, and that is just as it should be, or the game would very quickly become dull.

I do however see a few "problems" with the balance between duelling and hunting. As I see it the ideal would be that the strongest player would be the player that made the most of all his/her resources, not just the duelling points. (No I do NOT suggest the current worlds be "rebalanced")

If you are a dueller, you have action points wasting away while if you are a hunter you gain nothing from using your duel points, other than the occasional quest, and getting your HP to 1, so that you can hunt without fear for being attacked and loosing your SE. (I haven't gotten to the point where I can do adventures so no idea how they influence the game)

For a dueller gaining a levels is a penalty, while for a hunter it has very little influence, only slightly increasing the SE gain from hunts.

So to sum it up I think all in all the game is good as it is, but I see three "problems" balance, resources, and level. Naturally they are connected, but I think addressing them on the already running worlds would be a major mistake. Players that have worked hard for their position would rightly feel cheated if casual players could suddenly beat them due to the system being changed.

If something should be done I think it should be some additional activities be implemented that use the unused resources. For fighters this could be a sort of combat hunt, where you use, say 5 action points, to fight a creature, if you win you'd gain XP and SE at a level comparable to a successful duel, but less SE than from 5 hunts, making it unattractive to hunters. For hunters it could be some sort of "arena" fight where you battle an NPC with high XP gain compared to the possible SE reward, making it unattractive to the duellers.

Idézet: MartinBV - 2010.10.30. 11:37:43

This is a miss for the reason you hinted at. DPs are VERY important for Skill-Heavy Builders, as they would not be able to effectively complete Adventures without doing Challenges.

Idézet: Viridel - 2010.10.30. 18:31:04
However, he is right about APs currently being useless for duelers, whereas DPs are absolutely useful for hunters, because, as you stated correctly, challenges are a very important part of the game for all types of characters. There is some lack of balance there, and I wouldn't mind seeing APs being made useful somehow for duelers by using them in some way for getting soul diamonds instead of wasting precious DPs on them.

i'd actually like to be able to use dp to reset counter and buy ducats.. atm i'm paying 5 ap per day for ducats (that's 10% of my income). duellers can buy ducats and reset timers without losing any income...

Well following the logic that DPs are usefull for hunters (you can always buy crystal potion afterall) it would be balanced if something new would be implemented for duelers but only after lvl 40 (yes, you can start challenging at 30 but there is little point in that when adv only start after lvl40).
On other note than the auction hall question would be drawn up again, duelers pretty much get their ducats for free, while hunters have to spit out 10%-15% of their daily income on ducats (depending on number of daily APs gain, basically are you prem or not).

And duelers do that from the 20th lvl + gains from DG, while hunters (unless they are mixed) are not so certain that they will defeat DG monsters early on ( and again dueler can fight multiple DG monsters in a row w/o concerns while hunters have to either spend APs (again) or invest in chrono to cut down time to use DG w/o AP penalty).

Idézet: Kethios - 2010.10.29. 15:46:47

Or some knowledge in programming to be able to script/automate their attacks... Interesting to note how the top SE gainer is so ridiculously ahead of the rest of the players.

I find it quite amazing how I'm only attacked by some people when I have SE on me. I'll go days or weeks being careful to keep my HP low or not carry SE on me, but on the rare occasion my HP get high enough to get attacked while I'm hunting, BAM! Mysteriously, I'm not attacked when I have little or no SE.

Unfortunately I made the mistake of buying AS to play this game...a mistake that won't be repeated by me or anyone else I know personally. I haven't decided whether I'll quit outright, but I refuse to pay for a game that allows cheating.

P.S. Yes, I know people can watch your stats, questions answered, scry, etc. but it would take an excessive amount of time and effort to monitor enough players to get to where these "invincible" players are, especially since some stats aren't updated real-time.

Idézet: Krahn - 2010.11.04. 15:52:22

Actually, if you are comfortable using Excel, and are a dedicated Spider, it's VERY easy to see when players are Hunting. Sometimes it's simply about being smarter and/or being able to invest the time.

I know how frustrating it is, but i finally decided to do something about it. This piglet got enough SE from me, so right now before i start any hunts i do a suicidal hit on her instead of any other random player. This way i give her free XP (and i know she hate me for it) and i always stop hunting with at least 30 minutes before my HP goes over, spend all the SE and wait to be hit or hit myself if i go over.

Maybe if we all do this the pig and her kind (spiders that annoy us) will go fast up on the rankings and she would have to deal with the top players where they wont have an easy life.

This is my 5 cents.

That is what I generally do.

The thing is, I can't always get back to my computer in time to spend.

She mysteriously somehow knows exactly when I'm out and hits me EVERY time, but ONLY if I have SE.

And with LittleJohn's experiment, it pretty much proves she is cheating. I'm just glad I got all this evidence before I bought any more AS. It pisses me off I paid anything for a game whose dev's allow this sort of thing, but at least I can play out what remaining AS I have and quit leaving piggy to cheat with whomever is left by then...

Moving away from spiders (well not really..) a Question for admin.

In W3, how many duels are you allowed per hour? is it 3 as per W1 and 2?

I posted a q a while ago about this as I got a locket of the tireless in W3 but remain only being able to do three attacks an hour before penalty.

It doesn't appear to me that I am getting any benefit from having the locket.

Could an admin have a look at my account and see if I am getting my just dues??

Cheers

You are probably using acceleration on other worlds? (one of options is to get your max AP from 200/400(PP) to 400/800(PP)+ one more duel w/o penalty)
Onw1/w2 setting is 2 duels as well

Has the additional duel point cost when weary always been in the game? It seems a little unfair. If someone wants to fight a battle at a disadvantage, why would any further negative effects take place? If anything, it should cost less duel points!

there is no such thing as addition duel point loss when fighting in less then 100% state

This duel cost +1 duel point.
As you attacked in the past 60 minutes, you are going to fight wearily. Your Ability Scores will count 10 percent less. Your opponent was resting. This will be a difficult fight!



Maybe it's to do with something else other than being weary, but it definitely cost an extra duel point as you can see. It's happened a few times.

Idézet: Ferociter - 2010.11.13. 16:47:09

your clan has Hall of Peace : "Furthermore you can initiate only one war at a time and if you are victorious in a duel when you attack, you have 10% chance to lose one extra duel point. "

Thanks!

Bloody hall of peace!!!! Didn't know we had one.