More money from baseball.

[Adrienne]

12 minutes ago, Zephyr said:

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.

I don't think most who play would mind increasing the captchas but it may be hard to set it up with this frequency exactly and that may also increase captchas throughout the rest of the game as well. If there were instead a captcha you have to click before hitting "play", would that also work? I don't know enough about autoclickers and captchas to know what would or wouldn't.

[Guest Zephyr]

1 minute ago, Adrienne said:

I don't think most who play would mind increasing the captchas but it may be hard to set it up with this frequency exactly and that may also increase captchas throughout the rest of the game as well. If there were instead a captcha you have to click before hitting "play", would that also work? I don't know enough about autoclickers and captchas to know what would or wouldn't.

Yeah, I guess that'd be viable. I've seen some websites even automate the click of the next logical button on the page that the user would click if they completed the CAPTCHA, so in baseball this would mean completing the CAPTCHA would automatically click the play game button too.

[SleepingNinja]

9 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. 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.

Actually think that might work. Alex could just add a baseball bank with a set limit depending on stadium level which we could just click the collect baseball income from and it would add to our nation rather than just sticking it on our nation. This could help for a few reasons and may be hard to abuse, as during a war if you were to let too much gather up before collecting it could/would get stolen, but not enough and you'll find yourself pinging friends to help play more games with you so by adding this in it would save the trouble. Additionally it would help tipping in baseball culture as it would be less work calculating how much to send to the nation that played the away games.

..Of course none of that will solve the problem of the clicking slog but as a former baseball player sitting around clicking 1000 games in an hour actually wasn't hard before Alex stepped in and limited daily games.

[Who Me]

13 hours ago, Zephyr said:

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.

Isn't it just as silly that nations that don't share borders much less continents can engage in land battles or that land locked nations can suffer naval attacks on their nations?

13 hours ago, Zephyr said:

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.

Isn't that the way it should be? The people that put in the work reap the rewards of their work?

[Guest Zephyr]

9 hours ago, Who Me said:

Isn't it just as silly that nations that don't share borders much less continents can engage in land battles or that land locked nations can suffer naval attacks on their nations?

This doesn't seem like a fair argument; you're basically reframing the crux of the argument as being about realism, and fallaciously implying that if you can point to other unrealistic elements of the game then my own complaint can be dismissed. However I don't subscribe to the notion that a game needs to be realistic, just that it needs to have some kind of internal logical consistency, be balanced, and thematically appealing. You could say it needs to be believable within the context of the game space, but I wouldn't say it needs to be as detailed and realistic as its real world parallels which seems to be the trap you're trying to set.

So yes, within the context of the game, I think it's silly that a baseball team can pop out for hundreds of international games so that they can personally bank roll a war the same day. It's inconsistent with existing game features such as blockades, or the fact a sports team's income rivals that of an entire nation. It's essentially a money printer rewarding mindless clicking, whereas the main game primarily revolves around strategic decisions in economics, foreign affairs, and war.

If we wanted to entertain your line of argument on realism, we could look at some real world numbers... A quick search suggests the US's most successful baseball team of 2019 was the New York Yankees, with a revenue of $683 million for the year. That's revenue, and I can't quickly find profit so we'll be generous and assume they can spare everything to fund their favourite war. I know nothing about baseball, but apparently a baseball season is about 6 months with teams each playing 162 games (thanks Wikipedia). P&W apparently limits optimum baseball revenue to 250 games before dropping off significantly, so we could say a P&W baseball season is about 1.54 times more active, or about 9 months long. Therefore our P&W Yankees equivalent are raising a revenue of about $1.051 billion over 9 months. The Iraq War apparently cost about $1.7 trillion from 2003 to 2013 (thanks again Wikipedia). Running with that as a sample for war time costs with a little rounding down and averaging we'll say about $127.5 billion every 9 months in war expenses, which is one P&W baseball season. So our baseball dream team is capable of raising about 0.82% of the funds needed to fund a single war. If we assume you'll be fighting at least 3 opponents at a given time as a loser being dogpiled, then really our baseball team is pitching in for about 0.27% of the war costs. Yes I made a buttload of assumptions about what variables to use and how, but despite this I think it illustrates that it's not anywhere near realistic that a baseball team single-handedly funds a war let alone multiple. I do hope you're not an advocate of the current baseball system as your own appeal to realism as a counter point invalidates its position in the game.

9 hours ago, Who Me said:

Isn't that the way it should be? The people that put in the work reap the rewards of their work?

I don't understand the problem here, you seem to be agreeing with my own sentiment that you just quoted.

Edited November 24, 2020 by Zephyr

[Who Me]

So you are saying that within the context of the game it is silly to be able to play hundreds of baseball games each day but it is ok to be able to build thousands of tanks, hundreds of planes and recruit and train tens of thousands of soldiers each day, everyday? Why is one totally unrealistic event ok but not the other?

[Guest Zephyr]

4 minutes ago, Who Me said:

So you are saying that within the context of the game it is silly to be able to play hundreds of baseball games each day...

...to bank roll a nation's wars. I saw you deliberately omitted important context so I fixed it for you.

57 minutes ago, Who Me said:

...but it is ok to be able to build thousands of tanks, hundreds of planes and recruit and train tens of thousands of soldiers each day, everyday?

I'm not sure I've ever posted my thoughts on unit recruitment so I'm not sure where this is coming from unless you're just being oddly presumptuous. It's also fallacious to imply that your ability to point at other arguable faults in the game invalidates my concerns.

1 hour ago, Who Me said:

Why is one totally unrealistic event ok but not the other?

Once again you reframe the issue around realism, however I clearly indicated that I don't value this line of reasoning for a game. Given that you already know this, I don't understand how this direct response to me is useful if it isn't attempting to persuade me to value realism the way you apparently do.

[Arawra]

On 11/23/2020 at 10:17 AM, 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.

Seems like a terrific solution~

Edited November 24, 2020 by Hime-sama

[add1ctedtogames]

plus we need baseball sbmm so that my 2 rated team doesn't get squashed by a 100 rated one