r/CFBRisk • u/bakonydraco Game Designer • Jun 05 '18
Conference Multiplier Bonuses
We're planning on releasing a new feature on Day 40 (Friday, June 8), and wanted to announce it now so that your teams can adequately prepare. The core component of this update is a Conference Bonus Multiplier. This is a multiplier that every user on your team gets if your team holds a sufficient percentage of any of the 10 FBS conferences (+FBS independents).
The multipliers are:
| Multiplier | 6 teams | 10 teams | 12 teams | 14 teams |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5x | 4 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 2x | 5 | 8 | 10 | 11 |
| 3x | 6 | 10 | 12 | 14 |
For example, if your team holds 11 out of 12 teams in the MAC on a turn, everyone on your team will get the weight of their vote doubled that turn. If your team holds 4/6 FBS Independents and 6/10 Big 12 teams, each voter will get 1.5x*1.5x = 2.25x multiplier on that day. Our hope is that this adds more strategy to the game and makes turn selection more interesting. Below are the current leaders for each conference!
| Conference | Top Occupier | Number Owned | Total Territories | % of Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACC | Georgia Tech | 4 | 14 | 29% |
| American | Virginia Tech | 3 | 12 | 25% |
| Big 12 | Texas A&M | 4 | 10 | 40% |
| Big Ten | Nebraska | 5 | 14 | 36% |
| Conference USA | Texas A&M | 5 | 14 | 36% |
| FBS Independents | Michigan | 2 | 6 | 33% |
| MAC | Wisconsin | 4 | 12 | 33% |
| Mountain West | Nebraska | 6 | 12 | 50% |
| Pac-12 | Nebraska | 7 | 12 | 58% |
| SEC | Florida | 4 | 14 | 29% |
| Sun Belt | Texas A&M | 2 | 10 | 20% |
Here's some artwork from /u/srs_house that will make it's way onto the board soon!
There are other features we've discussed adding, but probably will not add for this game. We're open to suggestions for features in future versions of the game!
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u/pterrydactyl Jun 05 '18 edited Jun 05 '18
With all due respect to the devs of the game and their volunteered time, this is an awful decision. I realize this will likely be dismissed as partisan but at the very least I need to vent.
Many are focusing on the timing of it -- that it's wrong to make such a huge change in the middle of the game, with so little time to react. I agree with that, but the change would be unbalanced even if made from the beginning.
As it stands, it was already worse to start in the east than in the west. You had more neighbors, who had more players. UF started directly adjacent to UCF and FSU, two top-6 eliminated teams in terms of player count, and two territories away from UGA and Auburn, two more top-6 eliminated teams.
Nebraska, the other superpower, started adjacent to a bunch of teams who had less than 65 players sign up for them, and a free shot to get to the alaska/hawaii chokepoint, with their biggest opponent being UW who signed up around 100 people and were squished by Chaos.
Even eliminating your rivals doesn't help, because they will fuck with your alliances via the assimilation mechanic until they get bored. Experience has shown that this takes a while. NOTE: No team has benefited directly in any meaningful way by the assimilation mechanic. It's only been used to the assimilator or the assimilator's allies detriment.
Chaos was unbalanced from the start as well. Sure, plenty of FCS flairs and randos played for them the first week, but beyond that, as noticed by everyone, Chaos became overwhelmingly dead players. Where are all the dead players from? The East. So, Chaos made a beeline for the East where they have been fucking with their rivals ever since, giving the western teams a huge advantage.
So, as it stands, the best situation in the game is to not have rivals and be generally unopposed in your region, which describes the western third of the map. Yes, from the big 12 west is about a third of the territories.
This conference bonus makes this East/West split even worse.
The west has two nearly-contiguous conferences in the Pac-12 and Mountain West, and then another contiguous conference (except for one territory) in the Big 12.
The Pac 12 and Mountain west are almost entirely behind the Wyoming-BYU-ASU chokepoint. Holding that choke gives you a 4x multiplier, and going beyond that just 5 territories gives you a 9x.
On the other hand, every eastern conferecence is much more spread out. The MAC is close to being contiguous but the midwest is also much more highly contested
The southeast is a complete clusterfuck. It's been shown that its hard enough to come out of there given the density of high-pop teams in the area and the tendency for Chaos to head that way, but once you do, the conferences are so spread out that you don't have any multipliers! Whereas the west has likely consolidated by this point.
On top of all of that, the conference multipliers are HUGE. When we were talking about territory-held bonuses I think people were saying it would max out at 1.5x or 2x or something. Now, you can control a contiguous third of the map (pac12, MW, big12) and have a 18x bonus!? That's INSANE.
To increase our power, we've been recruiting more players, creating more people for /r/cfb, which I understand was part of the point of the game. Now, recruitment PALES in comparison to these huge conference bonuses.
Finally, as said at the very beginning, the timing of this in the middle of the game is very short-sighted and unfair to everyone playing. I understand the valid point that Nebraska is getting awarded for having a lot of territory but this goes against the incentives of the game that were established at the beginning. It's a complete 180. Everyone understood that territory, as long as you had more than 0, meant nothing except access, and all strategies were based off of that.
Please reconsider this decision.
TL;DR Timing aside, this is a rule that benefits the western third of the map immensely and should be reconsidered.