Good stuff. It's nice to see reviews happening based on member feedback. It's a continuous thing, as members will always find a way to "farm" or "grind" it.

I think the proposed change is fitting. Thanks for keeping us all in the know, and keep up the hard work Stu and co. Cheers.

That being said we want to hear your thoughts on this so please do leave a comment below about it.

Let me first start off by saying across the board caps are probably a good idea in our current system, that brings things more in line with traditional pvp which is restricted to 12 matches per day with the same person/group. I also don’t see an issue with Star Wars games getting a reasonable preference so long as they are also capped. That being said I think there is a larger issue at work here with how the Brotherhood does gaming.

With the decline of traditional PVP, gaming in the Brotherhood is by and large a cluster race. Success in the GMRG and in Brotherhood gaming is defined by who games the most not who is necessarily the best at it. That is the system that we have created, that is how we define success. Gamers are a competitive lot so when someone, or a group of someones, goes out and actually tries to put in the time to win the rankings our collective reaction isn’t to praise them but instead seems to be to almost deride them for it. It’s not “good job for putting that much activity” it’s “you’re gaming the system” and “we need to nerf this!” Granted there are times when people do take it too far and break the rules, I’ve been there and I recieved the LoR for my trouble. But when someone’s only crime is gaming too much is it really good for us collectively to go “congratulations, you’re making other people look bad so now we’re going to limit your activity venues?”

After a productive discussion in Telegram, in which Mav and Sarin weighed in, regarding whether gaming was perceived an “inferior activity venue” I gave this situation some thought. I initially framed the issue incorrectly, the anxiety many gamers are feeling now doesn’t come from gaming being an inferior platform insofar as awards and promotions are concerned it comes from how we, as a club, treat success in gaming. We define success in gaming as gaming more than anyone else then react negatively when people go about trying to achieve success in that system. Through “balancing” efforts we are in effect saying, “go out and game, but don’t game too much or we’ll clamp things down and imply you’re somehow gaming the system.” Read Stu’s statement again in that light:

This will stop the humongous amount of CFs that we see coming in from this, but at the same time allow members to earn a decent amount for each game they do play.

So the problem, succinctly stated, is that gaming in the Brotherhood is dominated by quantity rather than quality. How do we fix that? I propose we examine how we measure/reward gaming in the Brotherhood. Right now everything is about getting the most clusters but what if we re-did the GMRG system to be more wholistic like the Fiction society? We would do that by shifting away from Cluster counts to a point-based system that factors in things like placing in gaming competitions, getting Pendants of Blood, winning PVP matches, as well as putting up the most clusters. The math would be rather complicated and require some balancing, but I believe if we weighted the system more toward winning competitions and actual matches we could bring gaming to a point where success in it was more “respectable” for lack of a better term. Shifting to such a point system would have a secondary effect of also balancing platforms as mobile gamers and those who don’t play the latest supported DB platforms could also compete because the GMRG points you get for winning non-cluster race competitions would, in theory, close the gap. This would require competition organizers to be a little more creative than the traditional cluster race or PVP score comps but the Fist approves all gaming comps and could remand comps that were spammy in nature. Hopefully we’d see more tournaments, speedruns, skill comps and other types of gaming contests. You can also make gaming comps for non-supported games, like I did recently with Guild Wars 2. The sky's the limit. Basically the goal of such a change would be to inject skill back into the equation of gaming success in the Brotherhood. This way we’d hopefully be less concerned over balancing cluster payouts.

I like Turel's idea here. It'd be interesting to see how it all played out, and would of course take time and effort to get moving. He is on to something big. Kudos Turel! May your suggestion be the beginning of something new and great!

Just wanted to chime in that I love Turel's idea for adjusting how we perceive and award skill in gaming. It's an issue that has needed addressing for a long time. Hopefully the FIST staff and the DC take it under consideration. :)

I agree it would be nice to see a change like that in gaming. I think it would bring a fresh perspective and feel more rewarding than just a simple "well time to grind again in order to stay on top." Having competitions with different gaming platforms also brings in some new ideas and I think would be a lot fun.

"Palace of Hate"? That was renamed to "Temple of Sacrifice" before 3.0 went live. Where did that name get dug up from?

The Dark Sage -- Warfare degree uses a points-based system in which 1 CE = 1 point and PoBs, novae, and crescents are given a much greater weight.

Great changes! :D

The changes seem fine to me, it does seem to cheapen the CF a bit when you can get 100 or 200 in a day, then again the CF is already kinda worthless, we have 30 members who have between 2000 and 8000.

As for rewarding quality, in the past you only got CFs for winning and as I recall that was changed to the way we do things now because it meant that the people who'd mostly lose at gaming just didn't bother with it because they got nothing out of it.

Malik has definitely been around longer than me, but when I had a different dossier in the past (04-07 off and on) I remember getting CFs from losing JA. I almost always lost JA, because of dialup and getting a 999 ping consistently :P

Malik would be talking about when the Cluster of Fire was first introduced. At that time it was meant only for wins, which was then changed to also include X amount of losses. And there has been talk about re-working the CF system in general for years and years to bring it back to something closer to its original intent. It's not something new, but there's never been appetite to ever try to implement something like that as it'd mean a complete overhaul/re-balancing. The CF is so bloated at the moment that it's basically lost all meaning anyway? If the leadership finally wants to tackle that monster, go nuts.

Once upon a time the GMRG meant that you were one of the best in gaming. However it required you to face off against one of the acknowledged best in the club to be deemed worthy of the slot, and the positions were always up for competition. While I like the thought of having to compete for top honors, perhaps not in the once a month or so fashion of the olden days.

I agree that a pure cluster race seems a bit underwelming for something as grand as "Top Gamers" which is what the Rank 12 and 11's are. Personally I would like to see a mixture of the traditional cluster race as we currently have mixed in with a higher PvP score to make the GMRG revolve more around PvP once again. In the case of CF whoring during FFA events one could simply put a per person penalty on FFA rounds. Where the more rounds a person plays they suffer a lesser multiplier.

Lastly, this was a question I posed in TG to Stu, but since he is like me and TG retarded probably didnt get it. With the inclusion of titles for the top ACCer per Quarter with ELO and the "Avatar of Strife" title, when can GMRG Rank 12 members potentially see something of the like for themselves? I know titles should not be handed out like candy, but if your the top dog in sometihng I firmly believe you should get the top dog title. :P

I don't agree with penalizing people for playing a game. FFAs have picked up popularity, but that's because it's a fun way to earn a high number of clusters. There's already a limit of 12 matches unless teams members are added/subtracted. A proposal is being worked on by Mako and Drac that would change things quite a bit on how GMRG ranks are decided. I like their plan so far.