laa (league addicts anonymous) How you doing in the "League"

[Cantrix]

Doing grwat in Sexpert I, going up to Sexpert III simply wasnt worth it...

[Observer_X]

Ended 36th in my last Sexpert III, so my prevision was confirmed. Quite strangely, in my new Sexpert III the average difficulty level seems to have tightened again, seemingly because of quite a number of tanking players (hell, if I hate that tactic). As far as I have seen up to now, I am unable to make another prevision about my possible ending position.

[DHarry]

You hate the mechanics. Its not tankers fault that winning s2 is more lucrative than finishing 16th in D1.

Not even talking about 1 league below. Also, if you dont “tank“, you end up with the whales. Unless you enjoy losing, thats not an option. 

[Observer_X]

On 2/2/2019 at 4:50 AM, DHarry said:

You hate the mechanics. Its not tankers fault that winning s2 is more lucrative than finishing 16th in D1.

Not even talking about 1 league below. Also, if you dont “tank“, you end up with the whales. Unless you enjoy losing, thats not an option. 

But, to use your expression, it is their fault that they decided knowingly to try to circumvent the system as it was defined, making that so their presence in a tier that they would normally not belong will hinder the result of the players who rightfully belong to that tier, because by tanking they became the equivalent of whales in the lower tiers. In other words, my personal opinion is: you play fair, then you do your best in every league you are in, accepting winnings and beatings. If the method established by the devs is that one player need to reach the highest possible tier and then pass one week before getting demoted, and so on in a circle until your stats change, then so be it. In my opinion tanking is not playing fair because it hinders other players results. If one tanks, it is his choice, and for sure I can't force him to do otherwise, but for sure that player would not get my maximum respect for the way he plays the game, and losing other players respect is never a good thing.

[snowman22]

2 hours ago, Observer_X said:

But, to use your expression, it is their fault that they decided knowingly to try to circumvent the system as it was defined, making that so their presence in a tier that they would normally not belong will hinder the result of the players who rightfully belong to that tier, because by tanking they became the equivalent of whales in the lower tiers. In other words, my personal opinion is: you play fair, then you do your best in every league you are in, accepting winnings and beatings. If the method established by the devs is that one player need to reach the highest possible tier and then pass one week before getting demoted, and so on in a circle until your stats change, then so be it. In my opinion tanking is not playing fair because it hinders other players results. If one tanks, it is his choice, and for sure I can't force him to do otherwise, but for sure that player would not get my maximum respect for the way he plays the game, and losing other players respect is never a good thing.

Some players play the game before them.

Some players play the game with extra rules they made up.

Just about everybody adds rules that only apply in their head or ignores rules. For instance I have decided to play: without buying kobans beyond the monthly card, to have some PvP focus, and to take full advantage of my time zone. I do not consider it "unfair" that other players have decided to add their own arbitrary rules. (Although I do feel a little guilty about the time zone advantage.)

How do you know Kinkoid did not specifically design the game to allow/encourage tanking? What would be more interesting?

Choice A) Rewards are structured to not reward tanking. Everybody tries as hard as possible. Every league has a narrow range of player strengths. You can predict where you will end up within +/- 2 places on day 1. If you are 8th best you have almost no shot at 1-4.

Choice B) Tanking makes sense. Some people try, some tank, some coast. Every league has a wide range of player strengths. Even knowing a player's strength does not tell you if they will use it. You can only predict where you will up within +/- 10 places on day 1. Even it you are 8th best you could well have a shot at 1-4.

When I won my S1 it was because all 3 players with stronger teams than me decided to tank.

I like the more complex situation but I respect your decision to go full bore all the time.

[DHarry]

5 hours ago, Observer_X said:

But, to use your expression, it is their fault that they decided knowingly to try to circumvent the system as it was defined, making that so their presence in a tier that they would normally not belong will hinder the result of the players who rightfully belong to that tier, because by tanking they became the equivalent of whales in the lower tiers. In other words, my personal opinion is: you play fair, then you do your best in every league you are in, accepting winnings and beatings. If the method established by the devs is that one player need to reach the highest possible tier and then pass one week before getting demoted, and so on in a circle until your stats change, then so be it. In my opinion tanking is not playing fair because it hinders other players results. If one tanks, it is his choice, and for sure I can't force him to do otherwise, but for sure that player would not get my maximum respect for the way he plays the game, and losing other players respect is never a good thing.

So who decides what league I “belong“ in? You? Kinkoid? So if I would be the 99th strongest in the world I belong in the top league where Ill lose 98x3 fights and win 3? 

Im sorry, you seem to have a misconception of fair in your head where you feel it unfair because of your perspective. Namely, you cant win a league you are in atm. But the game is not set up to try and win every fight and promote as fast as possible. 

See, from my point of view, I do play my best. The way that is best for me results wise. Any other way would hurt me. Why would I do that?I dont think this is a choice, this is playing leagues they were meant to play. Strategy is part of that. If you fail to understand this, you'll end up losing. If the devs really preferred your way, it would be set up differently. 

 

[Daniele]

On 2/5/2019 at 11:28 PM, Observer_X said:

But, to use your expression, it is their fault that they decided knowingly to try to circumvent the system as it was defined, making that so their presence in a tier that they would normally not belong will hinder the result of the players who rightfully belong to that tier, because by tanking they became the equivalent of whales in the lower tiers. In other words, my personal opinion is: you play fair, then you do your best in every league you are in, accepting winnings and beatings. If the method established by the devs is that one player need to reach the highest possible tier and then pass one week before getting demoted, and so on in a circle until your stats change, then so be it. In my opinion tanking is not playing fair because it hinders other players results. If one tanks, it is his choice, and for sure I can't force him to do otherwise, but for sure that player would not get my maximum respect for the way he plays the game, and losing other players respect is never a good thing.

You can't blame players for the devs' incompetence. I hate tanking too, but there are only two reasons to play leagues (at least for me): kobans and xp. Without tanking you'll get a lot less of both, plain and simple.

Edited February 6, 2019 by Daniele

[jelom]

I finished 66th in this first iteration of D2. I am a bit dissapointed because I expected a better place when improved my gear mid league, but I had too many unexpected losses the first days.

[TheSonicSly]

So I purposely tanked and got 20th place, with My main goal being to stay in the top 16 - 30th. Nothing higher, nothing lower. I could've easily placed top 15 but hells to the no! It feels good to be a powerhouse who's in control for a change. 😎

[casey]

Made a calculated move with about 20 minutes left in the season just ended and bought a partial refill for 112 kobans 

With the extra fighting credits I was able to push into 29th place and therefore won an extra 350 kobans in my D2 league

[DHarry]

I finished 20th. Without needing to tank because I lost some cp everyday due to sleeping in. Which is what holdiays are for. 😎

I could have finished higher if I refilled because there were 109 players, so enough fights in the game, but that would have been stupid.

Looking at the new league I can do very well, potentially fight for 1-4, but my second fight i had an unexplainable RNG loss already, so im preparring to save my boost items this week and go for another 16-30 finish. There is always next week. 😁

[snowman22]

S3 L280 (90th) E191

Finished 16th with a fairly heavy tank. I am in an awkward spot. Around 10th is my natural position. Dropping 40 pts to stay 16th is a pain, but I see no way to find an extra 50 pts to get to 4th any time soon. In my current league there are 7 teams that are impossible or iffy even if I boost. I would need 4 of them to tank or get unlucky.

My gut feeling is that all the leagues are getting easier but the top 10 players do not drop as much as the median player does. There are 8 140-149K ego players in my current S3. It looks like each league is accumulating a cap of players waiting for a chance at 1-4.

So the plan is, as usual, go hard until Sunday then evaluate.

[casey]

In this seasons D2 league there are 195 players, I'm not good enough for a top 4 finish so I'm just going to mine XP points

without using any boosters

[jelom]

@casey I am not so optimistic as you (talking about not able to reach 4th place with all whale and ego monsters in D2). My objective initially will be placing better than 60th without refills.

[Daniele]

Finished 20th in D1. Heavy tanking this time, 25 tokens (up to 75 league points ). But top 4 was out of my reach and i was afraid that this D2 league would have been a nightmare with 195 players, and it seems i was right.

I don't know what to do in the current league... I can't finish 2-4th, let alone 1st (charm player here 😅), but staying out of top 15 will cost me a lot of fights...

If only we had decent devs

[casey]

1 hour ago, jelom said:

@casey I am not so optimistic as you (talking about not able to reach 4th place with all whale and ego monsters in D2). My objective initially will be placing better than 60th without refills.

Jelom i think you misunderstood my previous post, i meant that i did not have a strong enough team to finish in the top 4 places so i was only going to play to win the most

XP points without buying any refills or using any boosters  I think that by doing this i will be finishing somewhere behind you, good luck in your efforts

Since reaching S2 generally i do not try most seasons unless i feel that i can finish in the top 4 places otherwise what is the point in the NBA, NHL, and MLB teams 

that finish in the middle of the standings are called treadmill teams, i do not want to be a treadmill team in Hentai Heroes

[Observer_X]

On 2/6/2019 at 3:15 AM, snowman22 said:

Some players play the game before them.

Some players play the game with extra rules they made up.

Just about everybody adds rules that only apply in their head or ignores rules. For instance I have decided to play: without buying kobans beyond the monthly card, to have some PvP focus, and to take full advantage of my time zone. I do not consider it "unfair" that other players have decided to add their own arbitrary rules. (Although I do feel a little guilty about the time zone advantage.)

How do you know Kinkoid did not specifically design the game to allow/encourage tanking? What would be more interesting?

Choice A) Rewards are structured to not reward tanking. Everybody tries as hard as possible. Every league has a narrow range of player strengths. You can predict where you will end up within +/- 2 places on day 1. If you are 8th best you have almost no shot at 1-4.

Choice B) Tanking makes sense. Some people try, some tank, some coast. Every league has a wide range of player strengths. Even knowing a player's strength does not tell you if they will use it. You can only predict where you will up within +/- 10 places on day 1. Even it you are 8th best you could well have a shot at 1-4.

When I won my S1 it was because all 3 players with stronger teams than me decided to tank.

I like the more complex situation but I respect your decision to go full bore all the time.

 

On 2/6/2019 at 5:20 AM, DHarry said:

So who decides what league I “belong“ in? You? Kinkoid? So if I would be the 99th strongest in the world I belong in the top league where Ill lose 98x3 fights and win 3? 

Im sorry, you seem to have a misconception of fair in your head where you feel it unfair because of your perspective. Namely, you cant win a league you are in atm. But the game is not set up to try and win every fight and promote as fast as possible. 

See, from my point of view, I do play my best. The way that is best for me results wise. Any other way would hurt me. Why would I do that?I dont think this is a choice, this is playing leagues they were meant to play. Strategy is part of that. If you fail to understand this, you'll end up losing. If the devs really preferred your way, it would be set up differently. 

Every player has the right to play as he see fit: I will never put this in discussion. Your account, your decisions, my account, my decisions. The concept of "fair" is subjective, not objective, so I feel natural to state the concept by my perspective. In my opinion, the leagues are like tournaments, and when you compete in a tournament, you are expected to do your best to attain the highest position you are able, plain and simple, and basically this is the reason why I think that tanking should not be allowed. Apart the fact that...

On 2/6/2019 at 9:06 PM, Daniele said:

You can't blame players for the devs' incompetence. I hate tanking too, but there are only two reasons to play leagues (at least for me): kobans and xp. Without tanking you'll get a lot less of both, plain and simple.

... I don't think that in this case it is purely devs incompetence. It may be called incompetence if it is proved that they created the leagues without even thinking of the possibility of tankers. But it is important also to note that after many leagues weeks they did nothing to modifiy the state of things about the matter, meaning either that they do not consider this a problem, or although they had not foreseen it, even without having declared it openly, they find that the presence of tankers is useful in some way (and, as usually their actions are more aimed at widening the gap between free and paying players, personally I am a fan of this last alternative).

Moreover, I am in no position to blame anyone. To blame someone, you must know him well first, and chatting in a porn game forum is not the way to get to know well each other. Anyways, this doesn't mean that I should feel compelled to not be unhappy about the way other players play. There is a difference between saying "I don't like how he plays" and saying "He is an asshole because he plays this way"

On a side note, I play the leagues essentially for the XP, not for the kobans, as since the start of the leagues, overall I got anyways much more kobans by daily mission bonus and event missions. And the fact that get me bored is that there are players that are bound to tank or pass a week losing in his league and then get demoted to get better rewards, not the league rewards in itself, because I never play the leagues with the hope to get more resources than the ones I get elsewhere. Apart the XP from combats, everything I get from the leagues for me is that "something more" that almost makes no difference from before, almost like the weekly Tower of Fame rewards. Obviously, I talk always basing on my game experience. If anyone of you had the luck or the skill to get more than me, I'm happy for you.

[Observer_X]

On the matter of my league situation, I ended 35th in my last Sexpert III, despite my fear of an increasing difficulty and some tokens lost due to an almost full Sunday offline engaged in other matters. My new Sexpert III, to the opposite, seems easier than the last week one, so I hope to not be denied again.

[_shal_]

Haven't written here in two weeks, so catching up...

On 1/25/2019 at 7:48 PM, _shal_ said:

So, with that done it's now on to S3 after six weeks in S2. Obviously I'm back at the weaker end of the bracket again, and way down to 3rd-lowest by level once more. Still, looks like I'll definitely manage to finish in the top 75, and top 60 may be possible at a push. Taria will get her 5th star on Monday and take over as alpha, which should put a few more opponents into beatable territory.

In my S3 debut I had to scratch and claw for wins all week long, with tons of booster usage and switching around alphas and betas for maximum effect, but yay:
 

I hadn't managed to crack the top 60 in my S1 and S2 debuts before, so this was a very welcome result.

101 players in the week after that, so for a change it was possible to do all available battles again, though I was still 6th-lowest by level. After that 59th place finish I was relatively sure I'd be able to improve into the top 45, but I expected things to be similarly close around the cut line again. Things went quite a bit better though:
 

45th place was somewhere around 670-680 points, so I exceeded that target by a surprisingly large margin.

And now, in present time - my 3rd time in S3 somehow doesn't look that much different from last week, which means the opponent draw was probably less kind to me. Fewer really high-powered opponents at 190k+ ego, of course, as lots of those got promoted, but in turn there's what feels like a larger crowd of players who seem to be juuust out of my striking range around 175k to 185k, so it's possible I won't manage to improve much on that 35th place this time. Top 30 is the aim, of course. Not much movement in the level distribution, I'm still the 7th-lowest.

[Gambit126]

3 hours ago, _shal_ said:

Haven't written here in two weeks, so catching up...

In my S3 debut I had to scratch and claw for wins all week long, with tons of booster usage and switching around alphas and betas for maximum effect, but yay:
 

I hadn't managed to crack the top 60 in my S1 and S2 debuts before, so this was a very welcome result.

101 players in the week after that, so for a change it was possible to do all available battles again, though I was still 6th-lowest by level. After that 59th place finish I was relatively sure I'd be able to improve into the top 45, but I expected things to be similarly close around the cut line again. Things went quite a bit better though:
 

45th place was somewhere around 670-680 points, so I exceeded that target by a surprisingly large margin.

And now, in present time - my 3rd time in S3 somehow doesn't look that much different from last week, which means the opponent draw was probably less kind to me. Fewer really high-powered opponents at 190k+ ego, of course, as lots of those got promoted, but in turn there's what feels like a larger crowd of players who seem to be juuust out of my striking range around 175k to 185k, so it's possible I won't manage to improve much on that 35th place this time. Top 30 is the aim, of course. Not much movement in the level distribution, I'm still the 7th-lowest.

Since we've been in the same s3 league two weeks in a row now and I'm running just a bit behind you level wise, I'd have to say I'm doing OK.

I slacked off my first week for an 80th place finish.  I improved that to 49th last week.  Hopefully I'll be able to improve on that a bit this time, but who knows.  I've already lost some challenges I thought I would win.  Likewise last week I won some I thought I would surely lose.  RNG can be so strange.

[jelom]

On 2/7/2019 at 6:39 PM, jelom said:

My objective initially will be placing better than 60th without refills.

After 5 and 1/2 days winning all battles in Dicktator 2 and I am in 68th position ...
I will have to do some refills on wednesday to get a decent position. So now the question is: How many to get a net gain of kobans? Right now position 60th is 17 points ahead of me, place 45th is 70 points ahead of me (but surely some people will sprint there too), and position 30th is 384 points. Not even thinking in 15th place: 784 points of difference, it doubles my score.

Edited February 12, 2019 by jelom

[fenronin]

what do you mean by "tank" in his game anyway ? (I know what this mean in general but I don't see how you can do a tanking tactic here with how the battle and stat system is)

[snowman22]

2 hours ago, fenronin said:

what do you mean by "tank" in his game anyway ? (I know what this mean in general but I don't see how you can do a tanking tactic here with how the battle and stat system is)

Good question. Lose points on purpose so you finish:

• Def 1) worse than 15th from the bottom so you get relegated.
• Def 2) 16-30th so you do NOT promote.

[DHarry]

6 hours ago, jelom said:

After 5 and 1/2 days winning all battles in Dicktator 2 and I am in 68th position ...
I will have to do some refills on wednesday to get a decent position. So now the question is: How many to get a net gain of kobans? Right now position 60th is 17 points ahead of me, place 45th is 70 points ahead of me (but surely some people will sprint there too), and position 30th is 384 points. Not even thinking in 15th place: 784 points of difference, it doubles my score.

Well, thats what you get with 195 people. Even to finish in the lowest koban range you may have to refill a bit if you are lower level. Only + is that you dontvhave to scrape losses with thise refills. But imagine being not so strong and finishing 125th or something. You get zilch, but will mot regulate either. Maybe another no reward week coming up after that. I am so happy I didnt promote that I am doing it again. Missed only a few fights but that has put me in the 20th place area. I will stay there. 😄

[ZackMacKenzie]

Leagues provided a new personal best and personal worst this month.  In general, feeling more frustrated than ever.  This post will double as my 3-month status report.

At the end of my 2nd month I felt that I was leveling way too fast.  I come to e-gaming via tabletop gaming, particularly RPGs, where leveling is painstakingly slow, so that might account for that perception.  The only place that seemed logical to sacrifice or scale back was league play.  Historically, 95% of the rewards had been XP, vs. 5% in mostly kobans (and throwaway amounts of ymen and gear).  So, I tentatively scaled back to playing only 1 out of every 2 League competitions.  I was leaning towards scaling it further to 1 out of 3 weeks, which would not have made a difference in which Leagues I'd play since there was an enormous amount of 'padding' to keep me from demoting 2 weeks in a row.  Either way it was a yo-yo between W3 & S1.  For those that haven't seen my posts about 'tanking' this meant compromising my principles since I'm dead against it.

As a result, I was going to finish 2nd-4th for the 2nd time. Fine.  It's just W3, so no big deal.

I was in 1st place with less than 6h left to play.  That's a new best-cum-worst.  I had looked at the #2 and #3 players to see if I should even consider spending kobans to stay ahead of them.  I decided not to (see below*) because they were sufficiently behind me that they would have had to spend more kobans than they would gain by moving into 1st.  Besides, they were both listed as likely Europeans and would have had to be up at a crazy hour to maximize their score (St.-Pierre-et-Miquelon aside).

So, imagine my surprise when someone who wasn't even on my radar jumped into 1st place (by 1 point ) a whole 15 minutes later.  Given that #2 &#3 would have had to overspend to overtake me, it is guaranteed that someone who was sitting farther back would have had to seriously overspend to accomplish the same feat.

Given that at the end of the league run this person was the highest level active player, 3rd highest level player overall, 2.15x the average level and more than 2.5x the median level, I shouldn't be surprised that they won, but the HOW is beyond mind-boggling.  So much for Nash's Equilibrium.

If whales are so rich beyond belief that currencies have no meaning (only status does), then why bother playing for scraps?  It's their game and we're just cannon fodder.  No amount of luck and strategy is going to keep anyone competitive.

If some people are so addicted to being 1st that they will accept a loss to avoid finishing in any other position what hope do the rest of the players have?  (i.e. the "there's the gold medal winner and a bunch of losers" mindset, a la Trump.)

I know I don't suck at this game, particularly since I seem to do fantastically in contests (1st/1st/1st in the last cycle, 1st/2nd/nowhere this time, nowhere=revival event effect for newbs), but in spite of that there doesn't seem to be much of a reward otherwise.  I'm halfway proud of the fact that I've managed to get my kobans up to 5500 after leaving myself with just ten in the wake of January's Epic Days.  It should be ~5900 within 10h or so.

I haven't seen a legendary piece of equipment in the Market for over 50 levels, not even a useless Endurance or limited value Rainbow. If anything, the rate at which SSLs have shown up for me in pachinko has dropped from bad to OMG.  I still don't see anywhere worth spending kobans, which diminishes the joy of amassing so many so quickly (without a monthly card) so much!  A day into the Attraction era and I don't see much in the way of improvement for event or villain girls.

The fact that the Attraction implementation has been used as yet another way to claw back access to ymen is another reason to be less than enthused with the state of the game today.  It's getting too hard to engineer fun out of the system as it stands.  (I wonder if the devs feel the same way about their part in the process.)  I'm having to seriously consider whether it's worth continuing at all, only worth restarting and playing just the earliest levels where the whale density is lower, or walking away entirely for more entertaining expenditures of time.

So, if I go long term quiet on the forums, you'll know why.  They're so much less fun when Brassy's on hiatus, anyway.

* I did make a couple of decisions to hold onto 1st for as long as I did.  I noted that the koban reward for finishing top-100 in Tower of Fame categories was less than the difference between 1st and 2nd in W3 and beyond, so I abandoned my 'saving' of stat upgrades that I'd held back for 30+ levels — the stats are more valuable day-to-day in contests and leagues.  Since I wasn't going through with that plan, I didn't 'need' to have almost 40M ymens in the bank and spent 30M on GPx10 to little effect.  So, while I may not have pointlessly 'wasted' kobans I didn't get off scot-free in the process either.

ZiM

Edited February 14, 2019 by ZackMacKenzie
removed obsolete reference to Event Pachinko