34 replies to this topic

[mimesis]

On July the 11^th, the new film trophies were announced.

On the same day I published my post commenting on them and highlighting how they would skew the game. I have since published several posts and open tickets to get a correction to the situation.

On September the 22^nd Lizbeth of GAO (on NU1) announced to control all the 3 trophies.

On October the 10th the first 4 films in the BBA, 5 out of the first ten films and 9 out of the first 20 are from GAO.

 

It was easy to predict the results of such an action. I am not a smart person, I think I have intuitions. But I know that when you give an advantage to someone and you don’t build appropriate balances, this will generate…unbalances. My husband explains to me that it is a rule of the economy.

What I say is that the game is simply unbalanced. The logic of the trophies generates these unbalances. Having them, and this is true especially for the film ones, provides a long-term advantage in that while you have them you can accumulate skill points that will remain with you and will make your position every day stronger.

As a matter of fact, today it is impossible for players not belonging to the top studios to win the BBA (which is somehow the core of the game) and of course to dispute the position of the top studios.

What is then the logic? Are the developers fostering this mechanic? Is this what they want to achieve? To create a limited number of super studios and get rid of the “players in excess?”

Because after a while you really wonder why you are playing this game!

And sincerely, I have closed my eyes for a while, ignoring this situation, living the game just as an erotic chat. But then I asked myself: “why I am behaving in a way that is just idiotic? Why do I allow these guys, the developers, to think that I am a useful paying idiot?”

I say NO.

I am not an idiot and if there are idiots here around they are sitting in the control tower.

If you are a player with a soul…do something about it!!!

 

XOXO!

your mim

[Lizbeth]

I responded in private, but I feel a little compelled to respond in public.

 

As I explained, we didn't "control all the 3 trophies" because all suggests, well, that we held all of them, when there are 5 total. Three isn't all of five. Additionally, we only held 3 for a few days. The penalties were too staggering to hold them, since our trophy penalty was up to 80%.

 

That said, if you look at the top 20 players right now in the BBA, the members are from us (GAO), Spiderbabes, Dirty Wife Club, and several from Fun Blonde Good times, who I seem to recall having 2 film trophies at one point last week, prior to this week's BBA entries. They couldn't hold them, and they wound up at Spiderbabes and DWC.

 

I don't disagree with the assertion, which has certainly proved correct, that their introduction has irreparably skewed the mechanic of the BBA to favor players from studios who have (or briefly have) film trophies.

 

I'd also agree with the suggestion that only the first 21 films (3 films x 7) be counted towards the mechanic.

 

I only take issue with my studio being singled out as though it's just us.

 

I'd also point out that, despite them, and despite having played the game for 22 months now, I have YET to ever win it myself.

 

(I am still at 0/3 for success #751)

 

Edit: Just to add. Increasing their penalty wouldn't address the problem, because even if you only had 1 film trophy in five studios, the players in those specific 5 studios would still derive benefit over players in studios without one

Edited by Lizbeth, 08 October 2017 - 05:57 PM.

[mimesis]

Thanks for the reply Lizbeth.

 

My purpose was not to fingerpoint GAO or you but the mechanics that have been introduced.

 

Furthermore I noticed the name of the other studios but...I am too lazy and focused on my pussy to make a proper statistics.

 

But you got the point I wanted, once more, to make: the trophy mechanics sucks (and not in a good way) and it skews the game. Will developers do something about it?

 

I already made a proposal about trophies. Transform them in a point system awarding something (e.g. an item) for holding them long time.

The item should be exclusive and, as for all items, it would anyway give a meaningful but temporary advantage as the players grow and the old items become osolete.

 

Just do something about it!!!! Can you hear? Yes you up there in the control tower!!!

[Kitekat]

i think the maximum penalty is 50% this  makes it crazy hard to steal trophies even from  the studios with 5 and some films

and crashs the system extreme

 

BBA is anyways totally shity  i still dont believe that there is any balance in it

 

if i see  in the first hours after a weekly reset there are fast several top films with more  then 1 point i every time ask me how  crazy bad must be this programcode ?

 

maybe a mix out of the old system and the new can bring more balance

vote for every produced 3 star movie but make the rank only for the producer

[mimesis]

One further remark.

 

The advantage is not only related to the fact that it is no longer possible to compete for the BBA. The biggest advantage ist that you can do one film more than the others. And for each film you get can get more skill points (as Lizbeth well knows!).

 

On penalties: I agree with Lizbeth. Penalties are not the solution. The solution is to avoid that trophies interfere with other mechanics providing reinforced advantages (I have the trophy, I do more films, I get more skill points, I can better defend the trophies,...). These distorted mechanics only damage competition and as such are a limit for the game.

 

If we want more players we have to reinforce the competition and mot limit it with this distortive effects! People like to compete!! Allow them to do it!!

[Helena]

At this moment on the first 20 position of the BBa there iss 12 people from the GAO!

 

I don't belive is correct!

 

sloution 1: the developper of the game change the trophy system and cancell the film making tropy

 

Solution 2: Return to the previus system, you have to wait 8h from the end of one moove and the beguinning of the next one

 

Solution 3: When you vote for the movie, add the information of the studio not only the "from your studio" over the cover

Edited by Helena, 09 October 2017 - 12:10 AM.

[Lizbeth]

i think the maximum penalty is 50% this  makes it crazy hard to steal trophies even from  the studios with 5 and some films

and crashs the system extreme

 

 

 

Just to clarify, and this isn't meant to be combative or anything, the maximum penalty is actually 100%. The 50% maximum was back in the days when all trophies had the same flat 10% penalty each. When we had 3 film trophies for 2 or 3 days, we also had 2 energy trophies, so our penalty was a staggering 80%. Film trophies carry a 20% penalty each, so 3 of those + 2 energy trophies equaled 80%.

With a 30% trophy penalty ring, you can get that down to 56% (30% of 80% is 24%, and so 80 - 24 = 56) which was somewhat more doable. Of course, the lower our current penalty, the lower a player's penalty is after a trophy reduction ring is factored in anyway. In theory, if one could somehow do it, it would be possible to get 5 film trophies and have a 100% skill point trophy penalty. If you had no porn star refinement ring equipped, your character would show up for battle with 1 skill point each.

 

That's why we couldn't hold it, because 80% was just too much. DWC wound up beating us a couple days later easily, even through they only had maybe 25 or 26 people, AND they didn't even need all their members to defeat us. They won with several members unused, and I had all doubles, cakes enabled, rings on, etc. I wanted to repel them but it was just a no contest blowout.

 

I will also confess that as smug as I am where my own past strategic prowess was concerned, that we wound up with 3 film trophies was pure accident. I had scheduled an attack against HoosierDaddy when they had no trophies, we had 4, and our penalty was at 60%. I was trying to hit someone I thought I could beat with such a massive penalty, and not capture a 5th at that time.

 

Well, lo and behold, they had already scheduled an attack against another studio prior to my scheduling our attack against them, which I had no idea, and their fight was processed first as it was scheduled first. So due to the processing order, they won their fight, took a film trophy from an opponent, and then we won our attack against them seconds later, and took it off them. It was sheer serendipity. It just fell into our lap. Had they captured a courage or energy trophy from the studio they attacked, we would have captured that instead, or none at all if they had acquired none.

 

I should also point out that my inability to win is in great part due to a self fulfilling prophecy, in that despite repeated efforts in the past to make a very nice cover, I just couldn't ever win. So I gave up and often don't create a single nice cover during the week. You could say you can't win if you don't try! I also told our members many times in the past that if they ever found themselves having to choose between two studio members, and mine was one of the choices, to vote for the other member instead of me. This is going to sound unintentionally arrogant, but when it comes to skill points I regard myself as a "have", and I do not need to have more. I would always rather another studio member beat me in the BBA if it means they can gain more skill points than they otherwise would.

[Lizbeth]

At this moment on the first 20 position of the BBa there iss 12 people from the GAO!

 

I don't belive is correct!

 

sloution 1: the developper of the game change the trophy system and cancell the film making tropy

 

Solution 2: Return to the previus system, you have to wait 8h from the end of one moove and the beguinning of the next one

 

Solution 3: When you vote for the movie, add the information of the studio not only the "from your studio" over the cover

 

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Liz here.. just saying that because I'm trying to differentiate who is saying what, hence the dashes above.

 

And we're only 5 of the top 10. Really, there were plenty of weeks where others sat on 2 film trophies while we sat on 1, and we didn't do nearly this well while their members did, so why are we being singled out now? Especially when we aren't the only ones with two at the moment. DWC sat on two of them for awhile, and others have recently found themselves fortunate enough to have 2 recently as well.

 

Anyway...

 

Solution #1 - If I had my choice, yeah, I'd probably go with this one, but seeing as how energy trophies created an advantage/disadvantage system within the player base 1.5 years ago, and was never removed, I doubt this will happen. Film trophies, and the extra time necessary to make extra movies, are probably going to be one of those straws for me down the line, so you won't see me protesting their removal.

 

Solution #2 is impractical, since you'd be going to back to a system where effectively all primarily free players would then be limited to just 2 films a day, unless you want to schedule your entire day and life around an 8 hour timer. The only ones, and I mean ONLY players who could then make 3, 4, or 5 trophies would be those of us who buy diamonds who could then spend diamonds to eliminate the timer between films. That would make this just that much MORE of a pay to win game. If one's suggestion to this problem would then be to eliminate the ability to spend diamonds to eliminate the timer between films, then solution #2 winds up being an even more drastic version of solution #1, wherein no one would ever be able to make more than 3. Which in turn makes film trophies effectively pointless, as if they had been removed, AND makes it harder for all of us to make even just 3.

 

Solution #3 just  add needless political and strategic elements to what was, at least in spirit, intended to be a simple mechanic whereby people voted for the film cover they liked the most. Are you're suggesting that if a studio cannot vote for a film produced by a fellow studio member, they can know which studio made what film, so people can vote for OR (as is more likely to happen) AGAINST a studio they don't like?

 

Yeah, that's just what a porn empire building game needs, the introduction of the American political voting dynamic.

 

"Hey Unintended, I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine, Consequences".

 

IMO, the simplest solution to this dilemma is to change the mechanic whereby the more 3-star films you create, the better the chances your film will get exposure and show up for a vote. Just eliminate that whole preferential mechanic, and figure out another more balanced way to code or randomize things so that whether you make 10 films, 20 films, or 30 films, your one singular "This is my entry for consideration this week" film has an equal, if random, chance at exposure.

Edited by Lizbeth, 09 October 2017 - 05:10 AM.

[atmkemf]

Hahahahaha sorry haha. This game was always about big getting bigger first only with energy trophies which true in time if players in studio were active added some advantages and now movie trophies are doing this much faster not to mention ofc temple events which also give lots of stats top studios.

 

I have to say is they added stuff brilliantly to award more active and serious players. You know you had to use 100 energy daily more or play 2 hours more before or now you have to make 5 movies or play even more time to do them. So is not all rainbows and unicors!

 

And -20% penalty is huge so in perfect environment trophies would actually move around. What we have now is cause server is so small that is all in top2 3 studios with lately 2 big studios collapsing even more!

 

I was naked for 23hours totally naked wrote to bosses of 15 studio that i am naked and only 30players defeated me only 30 that tells all!

[Lizbeth]

There is another aspect to the BBA system, if one puts aside our competitive nature and remembers that this game is supposed to be for fun. LOL

(Difficult to imagine, I know, because let's face it, many of us left are the diehards and we're competitive)

A loooooong time ago, in a land far far away, I used to care about the BBA awards and tried to make nice film covers to do well and hopefully win. So every few days, I would see how I was doing, scrolling through the list of films to find my entry.

I started noticing these movie titles each week that were witty and funny parodies of movie titles, tv series, expressions, or just clever word play, which is something of a soft spot for me. Eventually I contacted this player to tell them how much I appreciated their entries, and thank them for the laughs. After only a couple of exchanges, I knew immediately that I wanted this person in our studio, desperately.

Not because they were a high level or particularly strong, quite the contrary, they were one of the lowest level players I have ever recruited. Sure, I hoped that they would level over time, and I believed them to be active, but they were the kind of person I recruited just because I wanted them in our studio and in my life in some way. That they would turn out to be one of our strongest, most dedicated members was really just icing on the cake.

This is someone that, were I scouting potential players based purely upon metrics, I would have passed over, and that would have been my loss. Our studio's loss. It's also someone that, interestingly, had their entries been consistently in the top 20, I may have missed them. This is because my entries seldom charted well, and it was only while scrolling deeper into the list of entries to find my own, that I often came across theirs.

That person is a regular on this forum. Rosycheekz.

Friendships people, they give so much more than skill points

[Kitekat]

18 people with already 2 votes  just 500 votes  on  a server  with more then 3000 players how can this be  ?

 

not half of the server have had a chance to get the first point and several have 2 ?

[RosyCheekz]

Film trophies causing problems? Let's add more! Way to go, guys! Now that's using the old noodle... instead of the brain.

[mimesis]

O M G

[Xerto]

You just have to look on BBA like on the Oscars. The Oscar for the best Movie goes to the star which has shooten the most movies.

 

Sounds totally right to me...

Edited by Xerto, 10 October 2017 - 12:36 PM.

[Xerto]

And now we have a total ruined temple week.

 

For every film trophy you can make 33% more temple points. 

Edited by Xerto, 12 October 2017 - 08:46 PM.

[Lizbeth]

And now we have a total ruined temple week.

 

For every film trophy you can make 33% more temple points. 

 

Adding more film trophies does nothing to address the root issue that was brought up, and making this a film temple is poor irony, but I sometimes find myself baffled by the math I read online, here or anywhere.

 

33%? How do you figure? The amount of additional temple points one could attain would be entirely dependent on the length of any additional film, and what percentage each additional film would add to a player's temple points would be determined both by the length of each additional film AND the length of all prior films combined, which is dynamic, not static.

 

In non-math english, that means, it's ENTIRELY RANDOM from one player to the next, from one day to the next, from one film to the next.

 

Even if we tried to apply a constant variable to this, and assumed a player made only 3 hour films (not possibly unless you spend a lot of diamonds) this 33% math would STILL be off. I can prove this by assigning a static number to represent a 3 hour film. Let's say 3000 temple points. That's NOT the ACTUAL amount of temple points one actually earns from a 3 hour film, it's an arbitrary number I'm using for the sake of a math lesson.

 

3 films @ 3000 points = 9000 points.

 

So, you do a fourth film for an extra 3000 points, increasing your total to 12,000. Okay, for that FIRST additional film, you're looking at an extra 33%.

 

Now let's say you do a fifth film for another 3000 points, increasing your total to 15,000, up from the previous total of 12,000.

 

3000% wasn't 33% of 12,000. It was 25%. That second additional film would have actually increased your temple points by 25%.

 

 

So now let's go hog wild and do a 6th film, for another 3000 points, increasing one's total to 18,000 points, up from the previous total of 15,000.

 

Again, 3000 extra points wouldn't represent an additional 33% temple points, or even 25%, because 3000 points would represent an increase of 20% compared to the previous total of 15,000.

 

See, when you're doing a percentage of a percentage, it changes every time you change either number in the equation, and since your temple points attained changes with each film you make, you're always changing a number in the equation.

Edited by Lizbeth, 13 October 2017 - 12:05 AM.

[CaptC]

The temple still requires you to select long movies, and get them done, all 30 of your studio members. But you will find that it matters more for temple, that you have a movie running all the time. More trophies generally get you more movie rewards, from skills to equipment - but only for a relative few will it increase the amount of film points you can generate in a day.

 

Barring diamond use, the amount of real world clocktime you can spend running movies is the determining factor. Not the number of movies you can run - that only effects the number of movie rewards you can get.

[Xerto]

@lizbeth: Your calculation is wrong. Most of the studio have no film trophie, so they can make 3 movies. If your studio has a film trophy you can do 4 movies, which is 33% more then 3. If your studio has 2 trophies you can make 5 movies, which is 66% more then 3.  The bonus in percentage is less when you compare a studio with one trophie vs a studio with two trophies.

 

@Captc

Sure you must have the time or diamonds to finish the extra movies to use the advantage of the trophy. But that advantage is hugh if you can.

 

We could say the same about the energy trophy, but there is a huge gap between getting 20 Energy on top of the 300 (6,66%) and getting a 4th movie on top of 3 (33%).

 

If you ask me it's simply totally unbalanced.

[mimesis]

Being totally pissed off i played yesterday only 15 minutes.
Xerto convinced me to do the films.
I did 3 films in 15 minutes.
One 2,5, one 0,5, one 1,5.
I rerolled to get skill points.
I got 12 skill points in 15 minutes plus all the rest ( temple points...).
If i had the posdibility to do 6 films i would do 6 in 30 minutes...
Congratulations.
This is really a nice game.
You know what pisses me off? That i cannot do 6.
But in any case you all understand that the game is dead.

[Kitekat]

to make the advantage of diamonds bigger and bigger kills the game

 

pretty sure most of the top player use diamonds but if the non diamond players go away  all goes dead esspecially in games with guilds or studios like this

 

its not a good  way  we are on

Edited by Kitekat, 13 October 2017 - 08:22 PM.