You're preaching to the choir buddy, I was advocating for that back in... 2019 when we found ourselves in the exact same bloody situation with mug protection changes. Where Ched ended up in General Discussion with the players instead of the Committee.
Deja f**king vu.
For that reason, before considering a "Committee Refresh", I'd honestly rather the damn thing be renamed. The icon should be re-branded from "Player Committee Member" to "Beta Tester", or something more fitting of it's actual purpose.
Or even better, and I know Committee hopefuls and the current members likely won't be a fan of this... But just scrap the committee altogether. Remove it and all the problems that come with it, from abuse to complaints about who is on it, and who should be on it, and who shouldn't be on it. Just do away with it all, and when you want player guidance and input from the community, do what Ched has done today with mugging & mug protection and just make a damn thread on it in General Discussion.
If none of that is viable, then just leave it as it is with no refresh. Better the devil you know.
tl;dr - Rename Committee to Beta Testers, or delete the Player Committee and just take issues that need player input to General Discussion like with the current thread on Mugging/Mug Protection. If not, leave as is, no refresh.
I think a lot of people would go absolutely insane if they realised just how much of what happens in the forums these days... has literally already happened years ago. We're repeating history and the majority of people that post in the forums these days don't even seem to know it.
The whole point of the system was rank, and the payouts should heavily reflect that. The issue before was rank wasn't something earned, it was something you could game your way into with deals and nonsense.
Kill the deals (like it seemed Ched had, until the data presented here). Make winning important, ie. give the losers very very little. Massively change the payout structures between divisions (to once again make rank matter).
Again, when people are ranked around where they're supposed to be (because Ched "Make Ranks Great Again"), they'll only be fighting the people around them, and it will be fair fights. It was the gaming of the system that had people in ranks they didn't belong in that caused cache farming in the first place. Recent changes have basically killed it though, just needs some ironing out.
If people want to war for pure enjoyment, we did that before with termed warring or the old-old warring system for nothing but prestige...it probably predates you joining though.
This post would be a great advert for Cheds last round of changes, yet we have this entire thread about why this latest change, hasn't helped or fixed the problem. Along with plenty of others that are popping up weekly if not daily now.
So I 100% respect your opinion and stance on this, yet I would ask if your beginning to feel isolated in this approach.
Either way, when people want small improvements they make small changes.... when big improvements are needed, significant changes are required.
For me, this system is in need of larger changes, seems your on the side of smaller changes. As such we could continue this all day and probably be no further forward, given our respective positions. With this in mind (and me also needing to get some work done) I'll leave it, but thanks again for the chat, always good to get other perspectives.
I suppose it needs to be understood what the reward mechanism is applied for. 1. Is it consistent effort throughout the rw? 2. Is it for simply winning? 3. Is it to artificially boost interest in a game mechanic that's currently open to abuse?
In any case, until that's clear, then your next steps on why their is a rw, and how to reward, are not clear. This also impacts how you balance factions against each other...whether it's based on a stats ÷ number of active members per faction or other.
So why RW and what is the reward meant to be targeting?
it's not a about making fair matches, it's ranked warring. The issue here is that when faced with an impossible match factions decide to rig it becasue that benefits both parties economically. As the community can't come together ourselves to prevent this, the only solution is to have factions sign a ranked warring participation agreement promising not to rig wars with harsh consequences for those who breach the agreement.
Ched introduced a package a breath of fresh air (on the whole) - aspiration to rank with scaled rewards. I've been vocally hard on Ched in the past for not foreseeing the ways that players would game mechanics for their own benefit, but RW was too big to bring something that was perfect in every way.
If there is a criticism, it is that the initial form of matchmaking (with stat balancing) diluted his vision of the best at the top slugging it out with an aspiration for a Faction to get there or players to get into HoF factions. Cache farming for profit can't exist in that vision even if that is what 90% of Torn want.
The war the OP made the post about was a great example of how incremental changes work [background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)]1) a change is made [/background] [background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)]2) the players do their thing[/background] [background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)]3) Ched and the Devs study how the change was played [/background]4) Ched and the Devs work on another change 5) Back to 1
Combined with a decay in rewards, in this instance I'd look at throttling the win score decay / accelerating reward decay if nothing is happening.
RW is far from perfect at present but it should be about the Rank and factions should War for it. I don't think Ched could remove rewards but he can sure as hell make it unprofitable to merely attend.
Please do. This was horrible. Even my newbs with no stats and low levels were getting f**k all against the inactives and then their retals from Blaze were +R.
Losers get 0 caches. Increase caches for the winner
Make all ranked war hits with a fair fight multiplier regardless of level and stats of the players in the roster. (Avoid retal farmers with lower levels in roster)
Yeah I'm kind of stunned to find out that rewards decay along with the score target tbh. Mostly I just feel really bad for all the guys running smaller facs and spending days and days to win already fairly meagre rewards.
Sometimes people concede and both sides just agree to let the war time out, also.
But again, it's mostly the smaller facs fighting real wars each week I feel bad for. Small-scale warring is some of the most intense, fun and challenging shit you can do in Torn, and they're getting penalised by virtue of their wars naturally tending to last longer?
If you want to get wild - make all "effective" stats in Ranked Wars equal across all members for both factions. Let it be competitive by removing impossible targets, incentivizing new players with high activity, penalize HoF inactive targets/impossible targets, and in turn fuel cache prices for the true edge they can offer.
Decay the rewards with the points to win, it would incentivize factions to fight more than now.
That's already what we're doing, we can make the effect stronger or weaker, but making it stronger will start negatively affecting legitimate situations.
I'm not gonna lie, I've never read anything you've written that makes me actively want to quit what we're doing here at Seshlehem and head off to join the Diamond terming meta, as much as that.
Do you realise how outlandish it is for a 20~ member faction to fight at Plat level to 5,300 points within 24hrs without asking the opponent's to med out for you? So, if I'm legitimately fighting, and doing so above my weight class, using tactics, comms and planning I'm actively being penalised for that? That's absolutely wild.
i didn't read past the first page, but i think it's safe to asume that whatever system ched&co implement for RWs, factions are going to exploit it for money from now to eternity
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