Woodruff wrote:Then they must not be very popular among experienced players. That is sort of the problem in playing those sorts of games. It doesn't make sense to me to foist unpopular game-types onto people, which seems to be what you're advocating.
I think this is one of the biggest problems that any player who has never been a high ranker fails to see and is the reason higher ranked players will never join a majority of public games.
Assassin: On most maps/settings it is a crap-shoot (especially the ones i was referring to earlier on doodle/lux)
Terminator: Players will target higher ranked players for their points so why join if you are actually going to be at a disadvantage.
Standard: There are too many noobs who will try for a bonus or go for a kill to early. This increases the luck factor where a player will win 80 or lose 40 in a 8 person game.
1 vs 1: Win 10 lose 40, you cant win enough on most settings/maps to have a good chance of winning.
For all of these settings a player above 3000 points or so can never gain or even maintain points on the average map/setting combo. This is why they are unpopular against "good competition" because the good competition can't possibly stay in the "good competition" category playing these style of games.
This right here is why you see good players playing complicated map and setting combos, because it increases luck that is required to beat skill.
The games that will suffer are those that the middle competition enjoys and the large player farming games. I think the more important is that the middle competition will lose their fun. These are the people that hover around the 1400-2000 point range playing the off settings that fill with noobs but dont require enough skill to accumulate points. I would argue that this is the most vital group to the success of conquer club. There are not enough of the so called elite players, give or take 300-400 at any time, and the lower ranked players also have a low premium percentage.
Now I understand that you think this will reduce and hopefully eliminate farming while also improving the enjoyment of new players but I would strongly disagree. If you really wanted to help new players you would restrict types of games they see on the join a game page. Give them really simple maps/settings that are extremely luck based so that they can win a few games early on. Then after they have met a certain criteria (games completed/games won) have them advance and see more settings.
If I were the owner of the site, I would have a group of mods dedicated to enhancing the experience of new players and have them host speed and casual games on a certain group of easy to learn settings. They would then teach the new players the basics of the game and provide a friendly contact as the first person the player plays. We have seen no shortage of players willing to help CC over the years so I highly doubt that this would be hard to accomplish. From this these new players can learn that attacking with a 3 has lower odds or that attacking a neutral for no gain is a bad idea or many other possible things. For their services this group of mods receives free premium/contribution medals/a seat at the table in the mod forms etc. Society of the cooks is fine and dandy but players have to actively seek it out when most new users dont ever browse the forums. Here every new player will have this as their first contact and only be able to join other games through game finder (in case they are coming on the recommendation of a friend).
On the other side of the coin we have the reduction of farming. I would think in some respects it makes farming easier and in some harder. If your goal is to farm on team games (quads/triples) or 6/7/8 man games then you are shit out of luck, you will have a difficult time ever getting enough games started to farm. That said if you are playing dubs or 1 vs 1 on a farming map I think it makes it easier in a sense. Back in my earlier years I farmed my way to get to the conqueror spot. All things said and done it took me a few months to get to ~5000 points. Now the major issue here was not winning games, that was easy at about 95% on the farming map of choice, the hard thing was getting games to start. I would set up 50 and wait days for people to join, eventually they would get up in the pages an players would join and from there we all know what happens. However as it stands now if I am playing 1 vs 1 games I can create 5 wait for them to fill or drop down the pages. If they drop down the pages I can drop the game and repeat the process as necessary until I am at my my desired number of active games. Instead of giving an established team 1-2 weeks to join the game I have instant access to the first page where noobs will join.
In short you have done nothing to eliminate the true farmer, the person pushing for conqueror or someone willing to do whatever it takes to get to a higher rank. They will find a way to play vs inexperienced players on a map/setting combo that requires a lot of play skill. And with that in mind, all we have done is harm those players who truly enjoy playing the off settings and are not doing it to farm.
I would also like to point out that most of what we call farming is not true farming. Someone earlier referenced
Klobber and yet for all the players he foed while playing his circus maximus games and all the noobs he played against he never maintained much more than the rank of major. Now don't get me wrong I was more than happy to see him go, but if you cant win enough games to make it past major it means the "noobs" are winning relatively often. Now if someone who put such a high amount of effort in couldnt keep a higher rank that major how many people do you really think are truly farming to the point where newer players think they are unable to win and give up trying?