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More money from baseball.


Jangles
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Baseball's just kinda there for the average player. It's profitability lies in people who sit there and spam click a hundred matches in 1 hour or botters. Make baseball a once a day home game and once a day away game feature that earns you a few extra hundred K a day if you got it maxed.

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2 hours ago, Jangles said:

Baseball's just kinda there for the average player. It's profitability lies in people who sit there and spam click a hundred matches in 1 hour or botters. Make baseball a once a day home game and once a day away game feature that earns you a few extra hundred K a day if you got it maxed.

How about instead limit it to 1 home and 1 away game each turn, and apply a captcha to every game? This will reward more active players (which seems to be the argument for the cookie clicker style baseball we have currently), and captchas on all games should prevent players setting up scripts to undermine the fairness of the system. After this we just need to argue what the actual payouts on games should be.

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On 9/13/2020 at 1:52 PM, Zephyr said:

How about instead limit it to 1 home and 1 away game each turn, and apply a captcha to every game? This will reward more active players (which seems to be the argument for the cookie clicker style baseball we have currently), and captchas on all games should prevent players setting up scripts to undermine the fairness of the system. After this we just need to argue what the actual payouts on games should be.

I will definitely play every turn if I could if the rewards are much higher and worth investing into. It would also be pretty cool if the revenue scales with the nation's total infra. so that high infra nations, which tend to sign in once a day, will have an incentive to play baseball, hence come online more often to maximise revenue

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On 9/12/2020 at 9:22 PM, Zephyr said:

How about instead limit it to 1 home and 1 away game each turn, and apply a captcha to every game? This will reward more active players (which seems to be the argument for the cookie clicker style baseball we have currently), and captchas on all games should prevent players setting up scripts to undermine the fairness of the system. After this we just need to argue what the actual payouts on games should be.

It use to be that you had a captcha every game, of course then you could win 50K for playing a home game and another 50K for winning the game. If I could win 100Kper game again I would gladly deal with a captcha every game.  lol

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  • 2 weeks later...

It just went downhill after bball was changed.

people are forced to bot because the investment is too expensive to begin with (also, the game is text-based. I wouldn't bother clicking stuff if the game i was playing wasn't limited to my imagination). It's so physically demanding that it could actually damage your hand with all that ora-ora clicking.

one home/away games each turn would be nice.

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On 11/18/2020 at 11:00 AM, Levi-Sama said:

It just went downhill after bball was changed.

people are forced to bot because the investment is too expensive to begin with (also, the game is text-based. I wouldn't bother clicking stuff if the game i was playing wasn't limited to my imagination). It's so physically demanding that it could actually damage your hand with all that ora-ora clicking.

one home/away games each turn would be nice.

What would be the point of have baseball at all if you limit it to one home/away game per term. Just give everyone an extra bonus every turn and be done with it.

Baseball has a very real role to play during wars.

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18 hours ago, Who Me said:

What would be the point of have baseball at all if you limit it to one home/away game per term. Just give everyone an extra bonus every turn and be done with it.

Baseball has a very real role to play during wars.

It rewards activity and "commitment". Nobody is going to log in every 2 hours to play baseball as they have to sleep at some point, but they can be rewarded for remembering and having the dedication to be online for as many turns as possible. Therefore the most active and "committed" players achieve a greater bonus. This is significantly different to your suggestion which is simply that everyone gets a bonus without effort.

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2 hours ago, Zephyr said:

It rewards activity and "commitment". Nobody is going to log in every 2 hours to play baseball as they have to sleep at some point, but they can be rewarded for remembering and having the dedication to be online for as many turns as possible. Therefore the most active and "committed" players achieve a greater bonus. This is significantly different to your suggestion which is simply that everyone gets a bonus without effort.

People won't log in every turn just to play 1 home/away game. They might play the game if they were already logged in for some other reason but they wouldn't log in just for that.

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9 hours ago, Who Me said:

People won't log in every turn just to play 1 home/away game. They might play the game if they were already logged in for some other reason but they wouldn't log in just for that.

A healthy adult should sleep at least 7 hours each day, so with clever timing and nothing better to do, nobody should be participating in more than 10 home/away games each day. Is that 'people' as in anyone, or as in the majority? I mean we haven't delved into what the baseball game payouts should be under such a system, so I think it's hard to say exactly how enticing it would be without seeing some figures. I also don't think we should be shooting for a system where it's typical for a majority of players to actually clean up the maximum achievable reward, there should be a balance so that the system most rewards the most active and committed players.

Some more ideas to consider...

  • Increase consecutive turn baseball game payouts to reward more consistent streaks of participation. Maybe reset daily to keep it sensible. Emphasises consistency and further rewards activity and commitment (honouring qualities of the current system).
  • Factor city count into payouts to ensure payouts remain appealing and useful at different nation sizes. Stadium levels would still affect the payout achievable at one's city level so there's still benefit to upgrading stadiums. This can be rationalised as larger nations being more populous and drawing more interest and crowds, therefore higher competition rewards and more demand for seating in the limited stadium space. As payouts grow with nation size, they can still be useful as a means for funding warfare in a pinch.

@Alex Would appreciate your thoughts on this thread, and more specifically some of my suggestions.

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One concern is how this would be easier to abuse, so I would echo for a captcha on each game (similar to how it is before declaring war).

In my opinion, baseball serves best as a way for blockaded nations to make money for military buys (mostly), so I believe changing it from a tedious spam-clicker to a collectible bonus would be more beneficial to the game.

Edited by Hime-sama
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1 hour ago, Hime-sama said:

In my opinion, baseball serves best as a way for blockaded nations to make money for military buys (mostly), so I believe changing it from a tedious spam-clicker to a collectible bonus would be more beneficial to the game.

I disagree for this same reason. A once a turn game isn't as useful as deciding when and how much to play for.

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5 minutes ago, Adrienne said:

I disagree for this same reason. A once a turn game isn't as useful as deciding when and how much to play for.

I didn't actually advocate one system over the other, but that is a good point, so perhaps a bonus to be collected daily suits it better, then you could even do a "double buy" with it.

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33 minutes ago, Hime-sama said:

I didn't actually advocate one system over the other, but that is a good point, so perhaps a bonus to be collected daily suits it better, then you could even do a "double buy" with it.

I think the way it is now is best though, to be honest. You have to work at it, but why on earth is that a bad thing?

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1 hour ago, Adrienne said:

I think the way it is now is best though, to be honest. You have to work at it, but why on earth is that a bad thing?

The way it is now locks out a majority of the casual playerbase and is more prone to be abused via autoclickers. With the proposed change, it promotes activity and permits more players to benefit from an otherwise niche mechanic. It's not much work to click the same button again and again for hours at a time, it's just a large time commitment that the average player can not afford to dedicate to some browser game, so for those players, this is currently a useless mechanic.

Edited by Hime-sama

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46 minutes ago, Hime-sama said:

The way it is now locks out a majority of the casual playerbase and is more prone to be abused via autoclickers. With the proposed change, it promotes activity and permits more players to benefit from an otherwise niche mechanic. It's not much work to click the same button again and again for hours at a time, it's just a large time commitment that the average player can not afford to dedicate to some browser game, so for those players, this is currently a useless mechanic.

The captchas and the daily limits afaik have dealt with any issue of autoclickers, which if I recall correctly, was only really done by a handful of people anyways. As for promoting activity, I'm not convinced it'll actually accomplish that so much as act as a bonus for the people already active. No one's going to log in more than they do already just for baseball. I also don't feel like people are entitled to benefit from baseball really and it's not all that much of a time commitment if you find people to play with. It doesn't take hours, that's an overstatement. Turning it into essentially a second daily login bonus seems redundant but also kinda ruins this "niche mechanic".

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2 hours ago, Adrienne said:

The captchas and the daily limits afaik have dealt with any issue of autoclickers, which if I recall correctly, was only really done by a handful of people anyways. As for promoting activity, I'm not convinced it'll actually accomplish that so much as act as a bonus for the people already active. No one's going to log in more than they do already just for baseball. I also don't feel like people are entitled to benefit from baseball really and it's not all that much of a time commitment if you find people to play with. It doesn't take hours, that's an overstatement. Turning it into essentially a second daily login bonus seems redundant but also kinda ruins this "niche mechanic".

It's not hard to have two browsers open, one running an autoclicker for baseball, the other with Youtube or something, and you just complete the captcha whenever it shows up. It will act as a bonus for people already active, that's a given, however it will also serve to benefit those who are blockaded without cash to do anything, but not active enough to spend hours on baseball (which is not an exaggeration, I used to play baseball consistently in the past and it can take an hour or two to make a few million). The ability to rebuild military under blockade should be reasonably accessible to all, blocking that off behind large time commitments conflicts with the whole premise of allowing nations to rebuild, similar arguments made for beige, and the like. It's also not a second daily login bonus, since it's granted as soon as you log in, rather than whenever you choose (i.e. at times when you might actually need/want to have it). There's also nothing inherently wrong with changing a niche mechanic to be accessible to the broader playerbase.

Edited by Hime-sama

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47 minutes ago, Hime-sama said:

It's not hard to have two browsers open, one running an autoclicker for baseball, the other with Youtube or something, and you just complete the captcha whenever it shows up. It will act as a bonus for people already active, that's a given, however it will also serve to benefit those who are blockaded without cash to do anything, but not active enough to spend hours on baseball (which is not an exaggeration, I used to play baseball consistently in the past and it can take an hour or two to make a few million). The ability to rebuild military under blockade should be reasonably accessible to all, blocking that off behind large time commitments conflicts with the whole premise of allowing nations to rebuild, similar arguments made for beige, and the like. It's also not a second daily login bonus, since it's granted as soon as you log in, rather than whenever you choose (i.e. at times when you might actually need/want to have it). There's also nothing inherently wrong with changing a niche mechanic to be accessible to the broader playerbase.

I've been playing baseball consistently all this war and, if you have a partner there to play with you and you're both maxed or close to it, it takes less than an hour to get enough money for 1 nuke, 2 missiles, 4 spies, and run 2 ops, which, for me, is roughly 2.5m. So yes, it is an exaggeration even if not an intentional one.

And it is like a second log in bonus, even if you can choose when, because I highly doubt under either suggested system (once a day or once a turn), it's going to do anything much that's effective. No one's going to give you the amount you can earn if you work for it for what's basically free. Say you get 250k a turn for playing - sure, maybe that's great in peace but most people don't play baseball much during peace, they play it during war when they're stuck and blockaded and they need it. I know I made this number up but I would be shocked if it went above this really and 250k isn't even enough to get me out of bill lock, let alone allow me to do what I described above. One game per day or per turn isn't going to accomplish that.

There's nothing wrong leaving a "niche" mechanic/method of earning money either. No one complains about people flipping resources but somehow baseball is always a massive issue. While I don't disagree with the basic premise that there's nothing wrong with making something more accessible, if making it "more accessible" means voiding it of its usefulness, I'll pass.

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1 hour ago, Hime-sama said:

It's not hard to have two browsers open, one running an autoclicker for baseball, the other with Youtube or something, and you just complete the captcha whenever it shows up. It will act as a bonus for people already active, that's a given, however it will also serve to benefit those who are blockaded without cash to do anything, but not active enough to spend hours on baseball (which is not an exaggeration, I used to play baseball consistently in the past and it can take an hour or two to make a few million). The ability to rebuild military under blockade should be reasonably accessible to all, blocking that off behind large time commitments conflicts with the whole premise of allowing nations to rebuild, similar arguments made for beige, and the like. It's also not a second daily login bonus, since it's granted as soon as you log in, rather than whenever you choose (i.e. at times when you might actually need/want to have it). There's also nothing inherently wrong with changing a niche mechanic to be accessible to the broader playerbase.

You are assuming that a lot of people are using illegal scripts to play baseball. Besides not being the case they are blindingly easy to spot if you only try.

You are also assuming that people will log in every turn for a monetary bonus. While people do log in every day for the log in bonus, they have 24 hours in which to do so thus making it very easy to do so. Getting them to log in every 2 hours is much more wishful thinking.

All this is is an attempt to punish the few power players in baseball. No one seems to care about the power traders that make so much more money with much less effort.

In the end, if you don't want to play baseball, don't. Just don't hate on the people that do.

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2 hours ago, Adrienne said:

I've been playing baseball consistently all this war and, if you have a partner there to play with you and you're both maxed or close to it, it takes less than an hour to get enough money for 1 nuke, 2 missiles, 4 spies, and run 2 ops, which, for me, is roughly 2.5m. So yes, it is an exaggeration even if not an intentional one.

And it is like a second log in bonus, even if you can choose when, because I highly doubt under either suggested system (once a day or once a turn), it's going to do anything much that's effective. No one's going to give you the amount you can earn if you work for it for what's basically free. Say you get 250k a turn for playing - sure, maybe that's great in peace but most people don't play baseball much during peace, they play it during war when they're stuck and blockaded and they need it. I know I made this number up but I would be shocked if it went above this really and 250k isn't even enough to get me out of bill lock, let alone allow me to do what I described above. One game per day or per turn isn't going to accomplish that.

There's nothing wrong leaving a "niche" mechanic/method of earning money either. No one complains about people flipping resources but somehow baseball is always a massive issue. While I don't disagree with the basic premise that there's nothing wrong with making something more accessible, if making it "more accessible" means voiding it of its usefulness, I'll pass.

I'll take your word for it, but even 30 minutes a day is still a bit of a time commitment for the average player, I think.

But depending on if the number is as low as 250k, I will agree with your stance. However, I believe there was a proposition to make it scale with city count so that it would keep it effectiveness as a rebuild mechanic, we would have to see actual numbers first. Although, seeing as the current daily bonus caps out at 500k, I think you are probably correct with that assumption.

People have made this argument in the past, but the difference between baseball and trading, raiding, etc, is that the former has only winners, the latter has winners and losers, baseball basically just acts as a money printer, which only because it serves an important purpose am I begrudging to not advocate its complete removal.

1 hour ago, Who Me said:

You are assuming that a lot of people are using illegal scripts to play baseball. Besides not being the case they are blindingly easy to spot if you only try.

You are also assuming that people will log in every turn for a monetary bonus. While people do log in every day for the log in bonus, they have 24 hours in which to do so thus making it very easy to do so. Getting them to log in every 2 hours is much more wishful thinking.

All this is is an attempt to punish the few power players in baseball. No one seems to care about the power traders that make so much more money with much less effort.

In the end, if you don't want to play baseball, don't. Just don't hate on the people that do.

There have been a lot of them, suspected or convicted, and I'm sure there were plenty across NPO/GOONS/GPWC (some of which were caught), nor is it hard to pull off as I described above thus, it's not inconceivable that there's more than just a handful of people who abuse it.

You are assuming I advocate for the turnly bonus when just a few posts ago I said a daily collectible bonus "suits it better."

The intention was never to punish anyone, quite the opposite, you would see my intent if you actually read my posts. Re traders: see above. To add on though, no, trading is not less effort than mindlessly clicking the same button again and again.

You assume I don't want to play baseball, when the whole reason I support this suggestion is so that it could become more accessible to players like me.

Edited by Hime-sama

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Alex stated his original intent with baseball was simply to provide a side game to keep bored players preoccupied; I find it absurd its existence is now justified by being an important means of funding warfare. If the game mechanics suck, they should be addressed instead of hobbling along on a makeshift baseball crutch. My real preference would be keeping baseball money separate to nation money, but I don't think this idea is actually popular enough to be realistic so I've offered a few alternatives I think would be less bad.

The other point worth making is that catching baseball cheaters isn't actually easy. As I understand it, Alex's defence is basically limited to throwing CAPTCHAs at people and occasionally scrutinising how realistic it is that a human mashed a button so efficiently. I can't recall much about the cheaters Alex had caught, but baseball had been going for what, a year before he stepped in? How long had these players been automating their baseball while more honest players actually wasted their time clicking buttons? The problem with baseball is that any games between CAPTCHAs can be automated. Firefox and Chrome (and therefore likely other compatible Chrome based web browsers) have browser extensions available that allow users to easily setup and automate actions on websites. For more advanced users they can use scripts. I believe both of these methods even allow random wait times between executing actions (just in case Alex starts monitoring page load time consistency as a telltale for automation). I think it's a bit disingenuous to argue that because Alex is unable to easily identify baseball cheaters, that it isn't a real concern.

I'd also like to address the incredulity that anyone would bother to log into the game for a minute each turn to play baseball while it's perfectly accepted that players sit around for an hour or more clicking buttons. I think a minute every 2 hours seems less arduous and more appealing than an hour or more of mindless button mashing.

Edited by Zephyr
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10 hours ago, Hime-sama said:

People have made this argument in the past, but the difference between baseball and trading, raiding, etc, is that the former has only winners, the latter has winners and losers, baseball basically just acts as a money printer, which only because it serves an important purpose am I begrudging to not advocate its complete removal.

It is, but it's also a sink, which everyone always seems to gloss over. You have to play enough and consistently to really turn it into a "printer", net earnings wise. And many don't. If you think about it that way, there are "losers".

8 hours ago, Zephyr said:

Alex stated his original intent with baseball was simply to provide a side game to keep bored players preoccupied; I find it absurd its existence is now justified by being an important means of funding warfare. If the game mechanics suck, they should be addressed instead of hobbling along on a makeshift baseball crutch.

Are we wrong though? Realistically speaking for the vast majority of people who play it, this is its role. Dismissing it by saying "well, just fix the mechanics then" is a bit absurd imo. Additionally, it being used in war doesn't negate its original intent, it simply provides an alternative reason for playing. Your suggestion though does negate the original intent. 

8 hours ago, Zephyr said:

I'd also like to address the incredulity that anyone would bother to log into the game for a minute each turn to play baseball while it's perfectly accepted that players sit around for an hour or more clicking buttons. I think a minute every 2 hours seems less arduous and more appealing than an hour or more of mindless button mashing.

I'm not saying people wouldn't log into it for that, I'm saying that it's not going to increase activity. If people already don't log in once a day for a daily bonus they have to do literally nothing to earn, they're not going to log in for baseball. The people who will do it are the already daily active players.

Edited by Adrienne

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1 hour ago, Adrienne said:

Are we wrong though? Original intent matters little when, realistically speaking for the vast majority of people who play it, this is its role. Dismissing it by saying "well, just fix the mechanics then" is a bit absurd imo.

I don't think original intent is irrelevant, it speaks to what features were intended to influence the way the actual game is played and what Alex's considerations encompass when thinking about future changes.

It's also just silly to think that a nation's military sits idly in an active battle field awaiting its national baseball team to make hundreds of international flights for games before returning to deliver cash to its military so it can keep fighting. This isn't an argument for realism, it'd just be nice that it was less absurd and make more sense.

On top of all this we should wonder how a baseball team is running cash past blockades and if that's a fair mechanic, or how an ambitious baseball team is earning enough money to literally fund a war.

1 hour ago, Adrienne said:

I'm not saying people wouldn't log into it for that, I'm saying that it's not going to increase activity. If people already don't log in once a day for a daily bonus they have to do literally nothing to earn, they're not going to log in for baseball. The people who will do it are the already daily active players.

I'm not sure I argued that it would encourage players that don't already log in for daily login bonuses to start logging in for baseball, nor do I think a suggested change is burdened with necessarily increasing participation in order to be a sensible change for consideration. Though I would expect some increased engagement due to making baseball less tedious, my main argument is that it would benefit the most active and committed players.

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2 minutes ago, Zephyr said:

I don't think original intent is irrelevant, it speaks to what features were intended to influence the way the actual game is played and what Alex's considerations encompass when thinking about future changes.

It's also just silly to think that a nation's military sits idly in an active battle field awaiting its national baseball team to make hundreds of international flights for games before returning to deliver cash to its military so it can keep fighting. This isn't an argument for realism, it'd just be nice that it was less absurd and make more sense.

On top of all this we should wonder how a baseball team is running cash past blockades and if that's a fair mechanic, or how an ambitious baseball team is earning enough money to literally fund a war.

Sorry, I happened to add on to mine as you posted. I don't think your points are invalid but I'm saying, it is important to consider its actual usage when talking about changing it.

2 minutes ago, Zephyr said:

I'm not sure I argued that it would encourage players that don't already log in for daily login bonuses to start logging in for baseball, nor do I think a suggested change is burdened with necessarily increasing participation in order to be a sensible change for consideration. Though I would expect some increased engagement due to making baseball less tedious, my main argument is that it would benefit the most active and committed players.

You may not have, but others did, so I was clarifying that my opinions on this were in response to those assertions.

Edited by Adrienne

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@Zephyr @Hime-sama As an alternative, I would think there would be more engagement with baseball and it would not negate the original intent or the alternative reason people have for playing it (as well as limiting the potential desire for autoclickers) if, instead of limiting it to 1 home game and 1 away game per turn, we increased the amount earned per game while proportionally decreasing the number of games that can be played before income drops off. The potential amount earned then would roughly be the same but it would take less games to get there.

Edited by Adrienne
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9 minutes ago, Adrienne said:

@Zephyr @Hime-sama As an alternative, I would think there would be more engagement with baseball and it would not negate the original intent or the alternative reason people have for playing it (as well as limiting the potential desire for autoclickers) if, instead of limiting it to 1 home game and 1 away game per turn, we increased the amount earned per game while proportionally decreasing the number of games that can be played before income drops off. The potential amount earned then would roughly be the same but it would take less games to get there.

To address my concerns about players automating baseball I'd suggest CAPTCHAs on every second or third game as I think this frequency would frustrate cheaters enough it wouldn't be worthwhile using scripts. If the earnings are increased enough and the game limit lowered, I think the frustration of more CAPTCHAs could be offset while ensuring fairness in the system.

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