Patch 43a - 03/01/16 - Fair and Balanced

[Jack]

At this point Town Invasion rewards have seen a lot of changes. Every change has been an effort toward making the rewards fair and balanced. Town Invasions are supposed to be very rewarding, because they draw players together for an hour or two each day to work toward a common goal.

My goal has never been to make the rewards of town invasions stingy or hard to get, but to balance them over all the players attending and make sure everyone gets a nice reward from it. Some of the changes have missed the mark, some were just overall too rewarding.

Our first iteration of the town invasion reward system worked like so:

• Players who did enough damage to the boss got 10 platinum.
  
• Mobs had twice as high of a chance to drop a single platinum.
  

Obviously this reward system wasn't very good, because it just encouraged people to turn up to kill the boss. Worse still, sometimes people who spent the entire invasion helping out, didn't get a reward from the boss, because they were too late to find it, or did too little damage.

So the next iteration worked like so:

• Damage was tallied over the whole invasion to determine who got between 4-12 platinum after the boss died.
  
• Mobs had a flat chance to give a player platinum when killed (multiple players could get platinum from the same mob).
  

This system was the most popular so far, because nearly everyone who participated would get the platinum at the end. However it was highly exploitable, and there was a good reason why. The more people who participated in the invasion, the less total damage was required from each player to earn the final reward. We started to see the number of players on the final damage list go up and up, with 30+ different characters participating. However this wasn't totally accurate. Players were "entering" more characters into the town invasion, because they realised they could double, triple, quadruple... well, earn 12 plat for every character that could deal a lot of damage in a short time, really. The real story was that some people were earning close to (or even above) 100 of platinum per invasion. This caused the value of platinum to quickly sink to a low of 3k per. So the system was scrapped due to the exploitable nature.

Prior to this patch, our system now works like this. Each mob has a minimum chance of 0.5% to give platinum, or 1.5x the chance that they normally give. Multiple players can earn their 2 plat from the same mob. The idea being that players are rewarded for staying at the invasion from beginning to end.

However, I can agree this is the worst system so far. For one, it requires a lot on luck whether you get platinum or not. Secondly, it favors platinum being given out in the early levels while in the later levels where there are much less mobs, it's harder to get platinum, despite the increased rate of drop. Thirdly, some invasions give out far more platinum than others simply due to the base chance of the mob dropping plat. I've seen some entire invasions drop less than 20 plat, while others dropped nearly 200.

So to rectify this, we'll be moving to a new system, and one I hope that will work to keep things fair and balanced in the invasions. Onto the differences:

• Platinum drops are now guaranteed. Each level of an invasion will give out a set amount of platinum (not counting normal "corpse" platinum drops).
  • Level 1: 20 drops of 1 platinum.
    
  • Level 2: 25 drops of 1 platinum.
    
  • Level 3: 20 drops of 2 platinum.
    
  • Level 4: 25 drops of 2 platinum.
    
• If there are 250 mobs in the first level, and first mob in the level has a 20/250 chance of dropping platinum, the second will have either a 19/249 or 20/249 chance, depending on whether platinum dropped off the first mob. The less platinum which is dropped, the higher the chance the next mob will drop it, and vice versa. This guarantees at the end of a level that the invasion level has given out exactly the amount of plat that was intended.
  
• When an invasion is scaled up to have more mobs, the amount of platinum given out will too.
  
• Since the amount is now flat, players are almost guaranteed that the more work they do at the invasion, the more platinum they'll get.
  
• The highest damager of a mob will receive the chance for the platinum drop, instead of everyone who attacked it.
  
• Highest damage uses "scaled" damage, so if multiple people attacked a mob, the person who is more likely to get the platinum is the one who did the most total damage after bard/tamer/direct scaling. This means simply running around "tagging" every mob at an invasion won't be as effective as someone else is doing the majority of actual killing.
  
• The calculation for eligibility for the rare drop at the end of the invasion is unchanged.
  
• Bosses will now explode and leave gold piles again instead of gems/plat.
  

I hope this system will turn out to be the most "fair and balanced" one we've had and discourage multi accounting practices or "cheesing" of invasions to get more plat.

As always, I keep logs of how platinum is distributed and will adjust as necessary.

This patch is now live.

[Boss]

This worked great! +1 for nice last TI even though I died, hand out of plat was even!

[Blyth]

Has the jewel drop at the end been replaced by fish steaks yet?

[Varak]

I didn’t mind the jewels once I got used to them. I’ve made 30K+ (about twice what I would make on the gold piles) just from jewels in one TI. Implying the players weren't being rewarded (fish steaks) only applies to the people who don't want to stand around to let scavenger pick the jewels up. Those same players let scavenger pick up gold piles, so the only "real" difference was having to hit a couple gem shops afterward to convert them into gold. The bit of extra work was slightly annoying, but manageable. I just removed the low quality gems from scavenger and picked up the good ones. It was fine.

The TI’s were getting understaffed by players and needed a change. Now that we are back to gold piles, I’m sure we’ll still see people gating in alts again at the end. I don’t care though. As long as people show up, I’m fine. I don’t have anything to spend gold on anyway now that most of my characters are done training magery.

I honestly love the chaos. About the only time I ever get close to death is during the TI’s. Give everyone a plat per kill for all I care. 

The only thing that scares me with the “Most damage” gets the prize is on the final Boss Mob. I can see someone pulling in 60 dragons at the end to get the rare drop if there is one. As long as the “most damage” gets the boss platinum (and only the platinum) and the rare is still luck of the draw, it should be fine.

[Jack]

The only thing that scares me with the “Most damage” gets the prize is on the final Boss Mob. I can see someone pulling in 60 dragons at the end to get the rare drop if there is one. As long as the “most damage” gets the boss platinum (and only the platinum) and the rare is still luck of the draw, it should be fine.

Damage on the boss does not determine who gets the rare, damage over the entire invasion does. It is a random person in the top 3 of the leader list that pops up at the end.

[Varak]

That works for me. It gives additional incentive the be at the TI the whole time which is a good thing. Personally, I need some motivation to show up for the first wave, heh heh. The rare should be more than enough incentive.

[Boss]

56 plat during the whole invasion, and 2 plat drop when the boss died. Can you confirm that the boss drops 2 plat at the end?

[Veranis]

When an invasion is scaled up to have more mobs, the amount of platinum given out will too.
Since the amount is now flat, players are almost guaranteed that the more work they do at the invasion, the more platinum they'll get.

Just wondering about this. These two statements seem to contradict one another.

[Alcsaar]

The only thing that scares me with the “Most damage” gets the prize is on the final Boss Mob. I can see someone pulling in 60 dragons at the end to get the rare drop if there is one. As long as the “most damage” gets the boss platinum (and only the platinum) and the rare is still luck of the draw, it should be fine.

Damage on the boss does not determine who gets the rare, damage over the entire invasion does. It is a random person in the top 3 of the leader list that pops up at the end.

Technically this is incorrect, since you can do piddly squat damage and still easily top 3.  Its based on score, not damage dealt.

[Jack]

When an invasion is scaled up to have more mobs, the amount of platinum given out will too.
Since the amount is now flat, players are almost guaranteed that the more work they do at the invasion, the more platinum they'll get.

Just wondering about this. These two statements seem to contradict one another.

The amount is determined at the start of the invasion - it's possible for staff to scale up or down the amount of mobs the invasion will have before the invasion starts. If the invasion starts with a non standard amount of mobs (eg: 2.5x), there will be 2.5x as much platinum given out.

However this very rarely happens.