Proposed changes for Season 16

ormond lad

What does everyone think of the changes proposed for next season?

For Everyone
ME Scoring Tweaks
changes to the Match Engine to reduce the average scores in general. Currently, the average number of points in a sample of more than 1000 evenly matched fixtures is 26.09 points per team. This will be reduced to 21.00 points. All attack types and related aspects of the ME will remain balanced as they are now.

With Next Week In Mind
Currently, WNWIM is imbalanced with an large penalty applied to the performance of any club that uses it when compared to the bonuses given by playing Like There's No Tomorrow (LTNT). This is a remnant of a season 9 change made in an attempt to reduce the use of WNWIM. We've since learnt that this sort of change fails to have any effect on the use of WNWIM. Managers are happy to throw certain matches to save energy if needs be, and instead what we're seeing are blown out score lines produced by boring matches when one side uses WNWIM. Therefore, we're restoring the normal balance between each intensity type. Energy losses will remain unchanged however.

For Premium Managers
Affiliate Clubs
managers will be allowed to run multiple clubs in an official and legal way.
When this feature is released, premium users will be able to create more than one club under one username and switch between them without having to sign out of BR.
There are two requirements, one is that each extra club must have a premium subscription as well as the main club. These secondary subscriptions are half the normal price of premium for the main club. The second requirement is that all affiliate clubs must reside in separate countries.
new package deals will be added to the store which can make affiliate clubs even cheaper.

seanand

so wnwnm is stronger yes?

theres some reading in the affiliated club thing, i think they kinda messed up with it tho. if makes financial sense for people to link up there accounts and get premium half price of coarse youd have to trust the person

FewFew

ME scoring tweak looks grand, might just make a bonus point win a rarer occurrence.

WNWIM tweak is probably going to be a positive too. Will prevent crazy mishaps.

Maybe I'm being cynical here, but the affiliate club is just a way to make more money. I read it as "we've turned a blind eye before now, but in the future you'll have to pay for your extra teams, because we're clamping down."

Makes some amount of sense.

mar-z

Fewcifur wrote: »

ME scoring tweak looks grand, might just make a bonus point win a rarer occurrence.

As long as scoring tweaks don't end in the same fuss that other 'tweaks' like fotg caused it will be ok.

WNWIM tweak is probably going to be a positive too. Will prevent crazy mishaps.

Makes big upsets even less likely though

Maybe I'm being cynical here, but the affiliate club is just a way to make more money. I read it as "we've turned a blind eye before now, but in the future you'll have to pay for your extra teams, because we're clamping down."

Yep, definite way to make more money, although it will be interesting to see if they bother clamping down on duplicate accounts too.

I will probably do this as I won one of the premium for life prizes last year, and was debating wasting money on player name changes to keep contibuting to the game.

Makes some amount of sense.

Agree

FewFew

Ah I think FOTG affects one team per match, this is more likely to affect both teams, so shouldn't be the absolute disaster.

seanand

its going to be hard to turn over wnwnm by a smaller team tho easily with average scoring down if you asked me. i would of preferred if defense was just vamped up abit and bring penalties more into the game

Zagato

It might encourage bigger teams to WNWM more often though. I don't find that they do have been doing it that often against me

daheff

With WNWIM being made stronger, I think we'll see more teams playing it in future.

Not sure about the duplicate teams. I'd say that more people will now be tempted to stick a second team in without making it premium. also where you have a number of people who have moved countries, it will be more likely that if they have a second team that it will be a farm team in their original country

daheff

also a little bit miffed....i've just bought a subscription for next year...& new premium packages including second teams arent available yet

Zagato

daheff wrote: »

also a little bit miffed....i've just bought a subscription for next year...& new premium packages including second teams arent available yet

Looks like you should be ok, there is another update there today

crisco10

Up to now, wnwim for a match you wanted to win was a big risk. With this tweak, it will become less risky. I can imagine a lot more wnwim happening at earlier stages of the season. The upside is it could make it easier to have a cup run without sacrificing the league a bit.

As a team who relies heavily in bps, il have to rethink with the lower scores....

Zagato

Yeah, I think it makes more sense for WNWIM to have more of an input into the likelihood of you getting a BP, rather than losing a match you shouldn't -which indirectly it looks like it will

mar-z

Update on new stuff

For Everyone

Removing Lineup Replacement Restrictions
You will be able to set both replacements for any given position as players in the starting lineup. This is as opposed to now where at least one replacement must be on the bench. In the event of an injury, the ME will then do it's best to shuffle players around based on your settings.

For Premium Managers

Affiliate Clubs (Update)
To add to the full announcement (see the previous news item), any managers currently running duplicate teams who wish to make use of affiliates will need to either already have at least 3 months premium on both accounts, or will be required to purchase at least 3 months premium or a ticket to move country as a gesture of goodwill that they will be making use of the official affiliates feature when made available.

This feature is technically available as of now, it's only the convenient interfaces that will need to wait. The documented rules have also been updated as of now.

The rule which has now been removed was simply there to minimise cheating, i.e. illegally transferring money between clubs. Now that we have tools in place to prevent this happening between clubs at the same location, a rule like this is less necessary.

The core value behind our rules and actions is to keep the game fair for all. This is why in the past we have not actively sought out duplicate clubs, we have only investigated clubs when reported for possible cheating. If the clubs were there only to get more enjoyment from Blackout Rugby without making the game unfair for others; there was/is no reason to waste valuable Game Master time investigating and suspending those accounts.

Does this mean that they aren't/won't be looking for duplicate clubs that aren't using this system?

mar-z

Looks like my question is being answered

http://br-ireland.forumakers.com/t3098-reported-for-abuse

Appears that they are reporting teams that are in the same country anyway to get them to do the club affinity thing (with one of the clubs moving country)

Anyone on boards with a second team affected/reported yet?

Zagato

Will it cost you then to move the club abroad?

mar-z

No clue.

No mention in the thread on the offsite.

The first news post on br says:

Managers who will be taking advantage of this feature, who already have sides in the same nation as the main club should think about moving countries at the end of season 16. If you wait, you will have to wait until season 17 to move your club. We will allow affiliate clubs to be in the same nation as the main club for the time between release of this feature and the end of season 16.

Any users who do not do this and continue to run multiple accounts can carry on doing so, but they risk losing the extra club(s) if they get caught. A word of warning here; we have new tools which give us quite accurate insights into whether or not multiple accounts from one location are being run by one person.

This to me seems too say you have to pay to move but it can possibly wait till S17. But if you try to sneak through the gap and don't move the 2nd team is viewed against the rules (as it tecnically is now even though it is generally unforced rule) and can/may be closed.

FewFew

daheff wrote: »

With WNWIM being made stronger, I think we'll see more teams playing it in future.

I think you're right, so it's really a double-edged sword for teams struggling to avoid relegation.

Sounds like they've a new system in place to log and compare IPs more effectively, probably with a certain amount of logic built in to make sure it's not a genuine two-account IP address. Of course, that's what would make sense, maybe they're just using existing methods but aren't accepting any "It's my sister's account" line.

Either way, while it may make them money in the short term, I can see it having a negative effect on the game as a whole, with more bot leagues cropping up when managers forsake their new minnows side. Though, at the same time you could argue that it'll keep new players against new players.

Gelio

Can't see many people dishing out for a second club that will disappear as soon as you stop paying for it. Everyone goes through a one clicker phase. maybe a start up fee would make more sense. I hope they aren't getting greedy

FewFew

ajeffares wrote: »

Can't see many people dishing out for a second club that will disappear as soon as you stop paying for it. Everyone goes through a one clicker phase. maybe a start up fee would make more sense. I hope they aren't getting greedy

I think it's gone past that phase. If it was all about BR, ME2 would be a priority. Instead it's apps and so on, some of which will expand BR's reach, others are just different projects. Can't blame them for wanting to do other things to make more money, that's how a business works... but BR could be huge if they really drove it, I mean, how many other sports games have national communities set up around them?