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Eddie_the_Kid
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Subject: Observations from Feb CPR

Sorry to upset, but I never gave up on this, just decided to hold off till the end of the Feb CPR in order to have a better data set and because it was a conclusion that was reached with some players back at the start of the month.

So what was seen this month? The most apparent observation is in the scores. For the majority of the top 10 clans this month in CPR the points they earned from sinking made up a laughable 10% or less of their total score, myself included. So my one prediction came true. The month of Feb became a fishing contest and not a boating contest as originally intended with the richest clans pulling the biggest scores by burning sapphires and reset tokens. How much work/time/money you have put into your various rigs means very little and skill means even less.

Another observation is that contrary to the predictions of those in favour of the CFR system, seafare activity actually seems to have decreased this month. In Jan, many people where always on the water because of trying to get their clans points from sinking, or working on their boats themselves. While this still happened to a very small degree in Feb, most of what was witnessed was people get on to do their reset fishing, then get off again right away. In the mean time, one or two members would go out with merchant flags to rack up additional points by resetting casts.

While the decrease in activity is of itself a major flaw in this system, it also directly mitigates sinking... which leads to more inactivity. With fewer people staying on the water and the ones that do constantly using merchant flags, the sinkings are slim pickings. As a result pretty much anyone that hits the water gets sunk and many (especially new players) don't come back or only go to fish as quick as possible and gone again. So, sinking has now become so marginalized that those that do try to continue sinking further decrease activity as there are fewer choices of who to hit when.

So, after a month of CFR, we have seen a sapphire war, marginalization of sinking, and a decrease in activity. However there is a mitigating factor here. It would appear that much like the CBR, the CPR will double the points earned from sinking at the end of the month. This would only mean that for the average top 10 clan that their sinking points may have reached 20% of their total score or close to it. This is still laughable, but with the new information that sinking does have a slightly more important role then believed at the beginning of the month, the March CPR may see a lot of these issues lessen to some degree as people may once again start working on their boats and focus on sinking a little bit more without a points change, but that remains to be seen (yes this means I am no longer advocating an immediate change as would like to see how the comp plays out with this tidbit of info).

A strong example of how this doubling may effect the month of March can be seen with Fort Knox. They busted their asses sinking everything that moved and are the only clan that had a sinking score similar to their fishing score. The hard work paid off for them when points where doubled and they jumped from 10th place to 5th place. Congrates guys on a job well done

It should be noted that this doubling of points perhaps doesn't solve the issue of equal waiting. Yes more weighting is given to the points you can earn by the score being doubled, but it does not address the issue of losses. As things stand currently, there is next to no way to decrease opposing clans' scores, resulting in more of a race then a competition. Adjusting the point values as previously suggested and doing away with the points doubling at end of month would solve this while doubling the points alone does not.

General observations aside, there are only two more things I would like to bring up in this post. The first I have already mentioned. Unlike my previous posts I am not trying for immediate change, but rather more recording observations of how the point system is playing out and hopefully generating discussion about said observations.

The second is considerably less noble of a point to make

There where a number of players at the beginning of the month that insinuated that I only wanted to see a point change as the new system negatively effected me and did so by pointing out that any system where a one-man clan can easily take third must be flawed. Well, I never denied the flaw... but with the Feb comp over and a third place win again, and a much easier/less time consuming victory I might add, can/will you stick to the same theory?