The Great Mojo Experiment (with results)

[ZackMacKenzie]

This will be a long post.  Headings will be provided for efficient skimming.

Abstract:  Free player tries to see if it's possible for a competent free player to WIN a weekly Tower of Fame competition.  Mojo was selected as the easiest to control in the short term, after having tried and abandoned winning Stat Upgrades. .

Backstory:  Failed at wining Stat Upgrades.  Aftermath led to trying the same with Mojo.

As a free player I have to work very hard to find ways to get kobans in order to get satisfactory results in collecting girls.  I decided that a reasonable way to snag a large number of kobans for free would be to forego buying Stat Upgrades for a long, long time.  After 30-something levels I saw that I still wasn't remotely close to winning.  That wasn't even long enough to make the top 100 category.

At the same time, I unexpectedly found myself in position to finish 1st to 4th in League play.  So, I did the math.  The difference between 5th-15th and either of the top two tiers was more than the difference between the default weekly Stat Upgrades reward and the top 100.  So, it was time to give up on that dream and go for it in the Leagues.

Buying 30+ levels of Stat Upgrades for all 3 stats temporarily got me into the top 100, but more importantly it was such a massive boost to Ego, Attack and Defense that I finished in the top 50 for Mojo that week!  That spurred me to try it with Mojo instead of Stat Upgrades even though it doesn't pay out in kobans.  It was still worthwhile as an experiment.

Preparation:  To maximize the chance of gaining Mojo fast, I went about LOSING Mojo as much as possible.

To that point I had been all about maximizing my XP and girl XP/Affection in the Arena, and completely ignored Mojo.  As such, I never declined any match-up no matter how risky or rewarding it was.  That kept my career Mojo fairly low compared to most of my peers.  That's why a large and sudden boost to my stats made such a big difference without even trying.

If I was really going to try to beat out every other player in the weekly Mojo race, including the whales, it only made sense to try and stack the deck a little.  Since Arena opponents are drawn from the pool of players with similar level and similar Mojo I figured that I should reverse the effects of that previous week by LOSING as much Mojo as I had won, and if possible, even more.

So, for that week I fought all my Arena battles with 3 off-class L1 girls.  This turned out to not be enough to ensure losing every match, and soon those L1 girls were L2.  At this point, I switched out my equipment from my best set to my best set for my 3rd class (for Know-How that means Hardcore) so I was running with a bunch of harmony and no endurance.  I soon learned that when fighting against Hardcore players it was better to switch to my Charm set to minimize my defense and avoid triggering the KH healing power with all that harmony.  I still played things normally for 16 wins a day to not lose out on the daily Arena challenge rewards.

In the end, I was able to roll back the 4k or so that I had won the week before and another 1k-2k more.  I manage a final tally of -5500 to -6000 mojo for the week, less than double the next closest competitor for the toilet bowl.  FWIW, that got me a position beyond 87,000th.

The Challenge:  Avoid sleep, avoid skipping fights, avoid losing fights and GAIN MOJO!

If I was serious about beating the whales I was going to have to be DEDICATED.  Each time I leveled I used books to instantly max-up my main combat girls.  I wasn't taking any chances there.  I even sped up my plans to upgrade Fabienne and used items to get her to 4 stars.  (Wow was that expensive!)  I had an alarm set to go off every hour overnight to try to avoid losing ANY opportunities to win Mojo.  I made sure that I had the game with me when I went out for the same reason.  (I work from home, so that wasn't all that often.)  In spite of this insanity, I still manage to miss a lot of opportunities, but far fewer than any normal (sane?) person would.  (Not?) Surprisingly, beyond a certain fatigue level an alarm stops waking you, or at least it does for me.  A series of 50-minute naps simply doesn't compare to a proper night's sleep, no matter how long it is.

Over the course of the week I only skipped 7 fights, and nearly all were high risk low reward fights.  I only outright lost 4 battles, again, 3/4 of which were high reward, low risk - I just thought the risk was acceptable and was proven wrong.  Every other battle I saw I fought and won.  The last update before the ToF glitch had me significantly behind 1st place but significantly ahead of 3rd place.  I don't think it was mathematically possible for me to overtake 1st place without the leading player taking significant steps backwards, which he could have easily avoided by not fighting at all.

The Result & Analysis:   No, winning is not for free players, it never was, so don't bother.

In one way, the war was lost a couple of days earlier when one player managed to surge by about 2000 mojo in 4 to 8 hours.  That's 2000 vs me if I had been standing still, which of course I wasn't.  I can't explain that kind of a surge without spending kobans, or ToF reporting issues.  So, in that respect, the answer to the question does seem to be, NO, a free player cannot win against the whales, at the very least in the Mojo competition.

In another way, the war was lost all week long.  With the minimum award for winning 3 matches being +3 (3x +1) and the maximum being +96 (3x +32) one would expect that a typical Arena session would be worth +49.5 Mojo.  If you go by the +16 definition of an opponent with nearly equivalent Mojo, that would come out to +48.  Having deflated my Mojo going into the competition, one might argue that I should have faced more opponents with MORE mojo than I had than less, so the expectation would be even higher.  But that was far from my experience.

The longest streak of Arena sessions that produced average or better matches was THREE.  The longest streak of subpar sessions was NINE, and there were lots of others of EIGHT and SEVEN.  There were about 10 sessions that were worth only +3 or +4 with a sweep and dozens more that were larger single-digit values.  I had only 4 sessions worth more than +80 with a sweep, and none above +92.  (The opposite of +3/+4 would be +96/+95.)  So, all told, over the course of the week the offered Arena sessions didn't average 50+, 49.5, or even 48.  In fact, it ended just a smidgen above +38 (e.g. +13, +13, +12, or +32, +1, +5, or +16, +16, +6).  Over the course of the week that cost me between 2000 and 3000 Mojo.  That was FAR less than the margin of victory for the eventual winner (500-700 was the last reported gap).  So, by this analysis it is technically POSSIBLE for a free player to win a ToF 1st place reward!  Of course, had I scored +8000 instead of roughly +5,750 that's a completely different space-time continuum!  Would the winner have simply upped the ante to beat me regardless of the insane number I racked up?  I'll never know because it didn't happen, and because I'll never try again.  It wasn't worth the effort.  I don't even think it would have been even if it had been a koban-rewarded metric instead of a ymen-rewarded metric.

The Future:  The new booster values change the game completely.

With the new boosters in play, I seriously doubt that I'd have been able to get as far as I did, yet another reason for me not to try it again.  Also, when I joked about not being allowed nice things, and my efforts therefore being 'responsible' (in a Murphy's Law kind of way) for the Tower of Fame rewards glitch, this is what I was talking about.  Insane effort, zero reward, because all too often no good deed, or effort, goes unpunished.

 

[Lhans]

That's too much effort for casual me for mojo anyways. Anyways, I have the monthly card and I splurge on those 800% koban type deals so I'm not really a free player. And damn, you have so much free time to write all of these.

[snowman22]

Hey @ZackMacKenzie, interesting story.

Back in my free player days (monthly card now) I tried to place as high as possible in all the koban categories.

For 2 months I spent as little as possible, I saved all gifts, I bought zero stats. Boring. As. Hell. Then in one week I used all the gifts, ran amok in GP and brought all the stats I could. Net result: 2 top 100 finishes, one top 1000 finish (stats). 168 + 168 + 18 = 354 kobans more than if I had just ignored TOF. Then it took another month to correct all the imbalances the whole exercise had created. (I had 14 affection stars waiting on money.)

Just not worth the bother.

[Zteev]

Thanks for posting this, I like to see tests of strategies.

I'm still a free player, and I've managed to hit top 100 a couple times in money spent, stat upgrades bought. That was in the same week. I've got a couple more opportunities to aim for a top 100 spot, but I've found that if I try and work on hitting top 1000 once a month in those, it could work okay. There are some synergies, depending on what you are prioritizing.

 

[Hotless]

Cool story bro!

btw you use the word whale to much, not all paying players are whales and just because someone have paid a few kobans here and there it doesn't mean that he is a whale.

[Chthugha]

In fact, some ( 1 or 2 ) big name players almost never buy kobans. They have been min-maxing since the start, put everything towards PvP and got the benefits when they could get paid for that.

The reason mojo is hard to win for the average player is that there are small arena bubbles with just a couple of players that can only face eachother. They all have comparable mojo, so they will get ~16 mojo per battle. Usually these bubbles are very active and fly through the rankings. It is near impossible to win against these groups. And then there is the random player using arena refills for additional xp, but those are rare.

[snowman22]

Actually I think mojo is tough to manage. I completely ignore it. A couple of months ago 2 guys showed up in my bubble. They where both much, much weaker than me. I was beating them with my "collect max affection" team with ease. And they where both giving 31 mojo. So I started checking my ranking. For about 3 days I was getting 120 mojo/hr. I think I made 34th on the tof that week.

Within 5 days they had dropped to providing 1 mojo.

The next week, same team, same amount of play, same take every battle strategy, etc I made my usual 200th - 500th.

[_shal_]

1 hour ago, snowman22 said:

Actually I think mojo is tough to manage. I completely ignore it. A couple of months ago 2 guys showed up in my bubble. They where both much, much weaker than me. I was beating them with my "collect max affection" team with ease. And they where both giving 31 mojo. So I started checking my ranking. For about 3 days I was getting 120 mojo/hr. I think I made 34th on the tof that week.

Within 5 days they had dropped to providing 1 mojo.

These were probably inactive accounts.

[dummyhunter]

hey, a level 40 noob here. Great to see there are fellow free player who's striving to win against paying players. I've been having the same idea of saving for stat upgrade and buying them all in one week's time, since that's one of the only areas where paying players don't have an edge over - maximum amount of stat upgrade is determined solely by level.

I've looked up the total stat upgrade leaderboard, and I noted that the top all time stat upgrade max is capped at around 23k, while the top weekly stat upgrade is around half of that. So I'll just have to save and save and save until I reach level 300ish, and spend it all in one go! The long term koban payout probably isn't worth it (considering a better stat would allow easier fights in leagues), but why not? I'll show them what a determined free to play player is capable of! 

I'll update you when I reach level 300ish, which could well be years or centuries later haha

[Lhans]

1 hour ago, dummyhunter said:

I'll update you when I reach level 300ish, which could well be years or centuries later haha

I'll bet you can't do it or you'll forget by that point.

[dummyhunter]

2 minutes ago, Lhans said:

I'll bet you can't do it or you'll forget by that point.

or more like I’d have dropped the game by then haha. We’ll see xd

[blaa]

Wow, must have been an exhausting week. Would never choose mojo to compete for number 1 spot (5 M is way too much for such struggle). In my experience it's possible to get a number one place (relativley) easy as a free player, you just need a lot of patience and observing- but at the end you have to ask yourself if it's really worth it.

I got a first place in stat upgrades; waited like 4 months for a good week (i.e. top 1 player had not more than (then?) 8500 points) and did upgrade my stats before the last reset with around 9400 points (it was really annoying clicking 2 hours the mouse buttion). When I remember correctly it was still before the leagues were introduced so I only lost some rewards in Arena-PvP-fights and the kobans were totally worth it. But realisticly you only have one try and with the leagues implemented it's probably not a good strategy. But who cares if you want to be just one time at a number one spot, right?

I also could have been on a number one place in affection but i figured it wouldnt been worth it. After collecting for months affection items (around 450 000 points) I decided at 120M y to go for a 2-4 place (yeah, i know, really late insight) because in a good week you can get a 2-4 places with around 200k points, but a first place almost never under 450k (and for this I would have needed much more money to spend). Right now i am collecting money for a second 2-4 place in affection. I am not sure if it was/is worth it, but well as free player you need every koban you can get. 😃

I also got three 2-4 finishes in mojo; obviously one after upgrading the stats, one after unterstanding the power of mono stat items and hardcore spec (at least at this time) and one, well, just a lucky week, i guess.

Before the legendary books were introduced you could also try to make a first place in harem - in a good week you could make it with 5-7k points, but I think for 5M it's way to much effort. If you are a free player your harem levels are better invested in contests. If you choose the right contest you could make a 1, 2-4 place with upgarding just one or two girls (around 200-500 lvls). With some patience and luck you have two or three contest at the same time and also get a place in the top 100 (500k) or 100-1000 (100k). Probably I earned this way a few hundred kobans and also around 5M for the same amount I would have invested in a first place.

[dummyhunter]

4 hours ago, blaa said:

Wow, must have been an exhausting week. Would never choose mojo to compete for number 1 spot (5 M is way too much for such struggle). In my experience it's possible to get a number one place (relativley) easy as a free player, you just need a lot of patience and observing- but at the end you have to ask yourself if it's really worth it.

I got a first place in stat upgrades; waited like 4 months for a good week (i.e. top 1 player had not more than (then?) 8500 points) and did upgrade my stats before the last reset with around 9400 points (it was really annoying clicking 2 hours the mouse buttion). When I remember correctly it was still before the leagues were introduced so I only lost some rewards in Arena-PvP-fights and the kobans were totally worth it. But realisticly you only have one try and with the leagues implemented it's probably not a good strategy. But who cares if you want to be just one time at a number one spot, right?

I also could have been on a number one place in affection but i figured it wouldnt been worth it. After collecting for months affection items (around 450 000 points) I decided at 120M y to go for a 2-4 place (yeah, i know, really late insight) because in a good week you can get a 2-4 places with around 200k points, but a first place almost never under 450k (and for this I would have needed much more money to spend). Right now i am collecting money for a second 2-4 place in affection. I am not sure if it was/is worth it, but well as free player you need every koban you can get. 😃

I also got three 2-4 finishes in mojo; obviously one after upgrading the stats, one after unterstanding the power of mono stat items and hardcore spec (at least at this time) and one, well, just a lucky week, i guess.

Before the legendary books were introduced you could also try to make a first place in harem - in a good week you could make it with 5-7k points, but I think for 5M it's way to much effort. If you are a free player your harem levels are better invested in contests. If you choose the right contest you could make a 1, 2-4 place with upgarding just one or two girls (around 200-500 lvls). With some patience and luck you have two or three contest at the same time and also get a place in the top 100 (500k) or 100-1000 (100k). Probably I earned this way a few hundred kobans and also around 5M for the same amount I would have invested in a first place.

that’s.. inspiring, to say the least. I’d work hard to do the same!

Did you spend a lot of time on arena for those 3 moji 2-4 finishes?

I’ve been thinking about affection item as well, but the ability to raise up the affection levels of the girls and have a better income seems to outweight the benefit of collecting affection items..

[DHarry]

I guess you would jave to spend a lot of weeks with a bogus team losing every fight to get yiur mojo low enough to go for a full week of many +31 fights to get even close. Still will require refills to claim no1 and the luck nobody elsevisbdoing the same with more success or resources that week. 

 

Anyways, nice try. 

[blaa]

4 hours ago, dummyhunter said:

that’s.. inspiring, to say the least. I’d work hard to do the same!

Did you spend a lot of time on arena for those 3 moji 2-4 finishes?

I’ve been thinking about affection item as well, but the ability to raise up the affection levels of the girls and have a better income seems to outweight the benefit of collecting affection items..

I did around 72 fights per day, so just a normal work day - but obviously there were many 31/32 fights. First place never was close ..

The additional income is for sure worth a consideration but for me the kobans (175 is a lot for a free player) are more important. You can ask yourself: How many Ymens do you have to spend to get 175 kobans? Or what do you get with 175 kobans and can you get the same with the Ymens you gain by raising the affection of the girls constantly?

[dummyhunter]

22 hours ago, blaa said:

I did around 72 fights per day, so just a normal work day - but obviously there were many 31/32 fights. First place never was close ..

The additional income is for sure worth a consideration but for me the kobans (175 is a lot for a free player) are more important. You can ask yourself: How many Ymens do you have to spend to get 175 kobans? Or what do you get with 175 kobans and can you get the same with the Ymens you gain by raising the affection of the girls constantly?

Agreed, the rate limiting factor for a f2p player's is always koban. My only concern is, doing this too early, then you'd be losing money that can help you get better equipment/stats, which translates into a higher league ranking and koban. Obviously, this would not be a concern when you have enough girls in your harem generating a big enough income. 

So, the question is, when to consider forgoing the girls income and switch to getting koban from ToF. At which level did you start doing that?

Edited April 5, 2019 by dummyhunter

[blaa]

14 hours ago, dummyhunter said:

Agreed, the rate limiting factor for a f2p player's is always koban. My only concern is, doing this too early, then you'd be losing money that can help you get better equipment/stats, which translates into a higher league ranking and koban. Obviously, this would not be a concern when you have enough girls in your harem generating a big enough income. 

So, the question is, when to consider forgoing the girls income and switch to getting koban from ToF. At which level did you start doing that?

Sure, your situation is different to mine, i haven't had leagues for koban income and i also could easily get some money from roko because of the old haremette-system (3-4 days roko (most of the time no drop, then event girl until drop, etc.), but I still feel the money you get from daily missions, bosses etc. is enough to buy good enough equipment on a regular basis

I stoped upgrading affection around 120k income (80 girls, lvl 150?), after the first 2-4 affection finish (around lvl 240) i nearly doubled the income (220k)

By the way, with the user script you can get a good overview how much affection/mastery points you have, how much money you have to pay for upgrading, etc. good tool to plan your first number one spot as a f2p 

Edited April 5, 2019 by blaa

[dummyhunter]

Yes indeed. Thanks so much for your advice! 😎

I heard you can not do anything until the last update before ToF resets, then pump all the resources in after the last snapshot, do you think that's the best timing to do so.

[blaa]

That's the way I prefer - you never know if it works for sure but the risk is definitley lower and you dont have to spend a lot of ressources in the middle of the week just for realising one day later that there is someone who drops like 600k affection points onto you

yesterday I learned that the girls counter is buggy, so I had probably just 60 girls (and of course not everyone was updated)

[Guest dummyhunter]

it would be funny if two ftp players with the same idea did the same thing together. I'd probably cry myself to death

[Pelinor]

This topic looks like the place to ask without getting lambasted.

I was in an arena fight where the award was +1 Mojo and where it looked like I had a 50/50 shot of winning. I lost and got hit with a -31 in Mojo! How is this possible? How do I determine the potential consequences of losing when nothing in the arena boxes show this possible outcome to the fight?

[John 1039]

@Pelinor

The Mojo loss for an Arena loss is: Mojo reward (for win) subtracted by 32.
Therefore, in your case: +1 - 32 = -31

An exceptional case is when the potential reward for Arena win is +32, then loss results in -1 Mojo.

Edited October 15, 2019 by John 1039

[Pelinor]

2 minutes ago, John 1039 said:

@Pelinor

The Mojo loss for an Arena loss is: Mojo reward (for win) subtracted by 32.
Therefore, in your case: +1 - 32 = -31

An exceptional case is when the potential reward for Arena win is +32, then loss results in -1 Mojo.

Thank you, I would have never taken the chance had I known about the minus 32 in the event of a loss (my stats were less than 50 points on both offense and defense), so I figured, hey losing would only cost me 1 or 2 mojo points, not 31! I still have a lot to learn about this game.

[Hotless]

Yeah John1039 is correct, when you see an opponent in the arena that will give you +1 mojo then you only fight him when you are 100% sure that you will win otherwise just ignore him.

[Chthugha]

1 hour ago, Pelinor said:

Thank you, I would have never taken the chance had I known about the minus 32 in the event of a loss (my stats were less than 50 points on both offense and defense), so I figured, hey losing would only cost me 1 or 2 mojo points, not 31! I still have a lot to learn about this game.

Mojo is an absolutely useless number. Fight all your opponents at all times. You will only lose unimportant mojo, but still gain XP (albeit less than for a win).