you lied, that was not short

lol, You know you should focus less on the rhetoric and more on the topic. I have to agree though, it definitely turned into something I wasn't expecting when I was typing. But to be fair, I did have so much more I could have said regarding the problems of convoy/plunder.

Let do plunders only to top25 that aren't top10 and give to top10 a coupons reward for supporting and many things would be solved, imho.

our server only have 1 person doing 2SS for 10 ingots once a month so they don't really get much ingots from us lol, they should've just make all convoy to be SS, and make plunderers pay 10 ingots to get a 4th & 5th plunder attempt. then that's business

I'm still an advocate of Plunders keep their ninjas damage or defeated when they are facing the support if the support fails. Or better yet, plunderers can't take rewards from convoys, there must be a balance with this system and there is none. Convoys are almost not worth doing anymore. And if you plunder and you have your red name sitting around somewhere, How about you lose ingots or coupons of the same amount that you earn from from your SS plunders. There is no risk with plunders yet there is a huge risk to convoys.

I like this idea too.

the risk with doing plunder is that if u lose u get nothing at all, convoy at least gets 17 coupons for losing. there are people on s2 who lose plunders because the person doing convoy has a stronger support, so its not like there is 0 risk, the more balanced your servers groups are the higher the risk. try being the person who looks for plunders for 2hours only to get nothing out of it because each person you attacked had a support stronger than you and you watch 3 people get 35 coupons while u get nothing. i've had that happen to people in my group and enemy groups.

That isn't a risk, lose out on 1 attempt you still have 2. At minimum you'll get 50 coupons while the convoy at minimum has 17. I seen people who are around lvl 77 on my server with 28k power try to plunder and fail all the time cause they are not the smartest. Out of the 4 groups from my server merge, 3 of the groups plunder, my group only started to do plunders because they didn't have a choice. Now there is too many plunders on my server.

no at minimum u get 0, as ive said people in my group and other groups have gotten 0 for a day because of bad luck against supports, it doesnt mean they aren't the smartest but when a 77k power tries to plunder someone with my support they will fail, its just bad luck that i supported that person and they tried to plunder it.

and thank you bringing up too many plunderers, some people in the top 10 power on s2 don't plunder because it takes too long and isnt worth it to plunder 3 people in 2 hours just for a chance at 150 coupons. and then they get screwed and end up with 0 coupons.

there is a risk, whether or not u wish to accept the fact doesn't negate that its true.

when you start doing plunders and the people you are plundering have supports above your power then lets see if you think there is a risk, 50 people can plunder that means for the bottom 10 there are 40 people stronger than them to give supports, 3 supports a day means 120 ss convoys can't be plundered by 20% of plunderers on the server. on some servers that actually means that some people who have the ability to plunder have 0% chance of winning if they try to plunder cause some of the servers have such low populations that every ss convoy will have a support who is stronger than themselves.

At minimum you gain 50, you cannot gain 0 as gaining is increase. That is why at minimum you gain 50.

If the supports are too strong in your server, go to convoy. But that is a different story. I also play on S2, I'm lvl 29 at 4k power and all I do is SS convoys and S Convoys, I can't be plundered cause I'm too low of a level. However, Plunders still have too much of an advantage. I seen servers with too low of a population that it is just better to run Convoys cause only 1 group is active, and I seen servers that are over populated which means plunders everywhere. The current system benefits Plunderers a lot more.

I am pretty sure he was just using rhetoric to say that it's not like those 50 coupons are guaranteed. You could plunder 3 people and get 0 coupons, so he was also technically correct in saying the minimum you can gain from plundering is 0. You can argue semantics all you like, but the truth is some days will be a bust for people. Especially on active servers that allow the top 50 to plunder. With so many hunters their simply isn't enough prey to go around. But I bet it would be similar to dead servers too..just not having enough prey. Most days I don't even feel like messing with plunder because $3 worth of coupons isn't worth 2 hours of my life. I mean some days I get lucky and knock them all out in 20 minutes, but that still only equates to a $9/hr job. Its hardly worth the effort. I commend those who accompli* every day, I'm sure its quite worth it over time. But for me...meh...

I could flip burgers at mcdonalds and make a better time investment because I'm pretty sure even minimum wage would cover more than $3 in 20 minutes. Not that I would ever do that job. (I'm not speaking down to those who work in fast food, sorry if that comes across rude but its just not for me.)

While there is some risk for the plunderer, the fight mechanics lean in their favor and makes those doing the convoy completely dependent on support (that's if there is even a group mate with high enough BP and remaining support attempts on at the time an individual is doing convoy to make a difference). IE I started a second character on one of the new servers. I take an SS convoy, apply for support and wait for it to be accepted, set off with support, get attacked. My support and the plunderer are only separated by a couple hundred BP. Nine rounds later the plunderer gets through support having lost 1 ninja while the other 3 are at 1/3 hp or less. Now my main squad enters, facing an enemy with 2x my bp, and not only does the fallen ninja come back, but everyone is at full hp. This makes no sense RP wise, did my squad just stand by and let them perform medical jutsu in-between bouts? It should play out like a mini survival run, where the plunderer will face the convoy team and possible support with any damage and lost ninja carrying over from one fight to the next. Had that been the case, even my team at a huge BP disadvantage would have had a fighting chance to beat the plunderer. As it stands now, if your support fails, you might as well just concede by retreating. Actual new players running into similar situations are most likely going to rage at a seemingly "dumb" mechanic and be discouraged.

edit: My god the censorship, haha

The main issue is that your average server is not shadowblaze s2. Also in a server like mine even if once happens that you get 0 coupons the two following days you get both 150 and so the average is still 100.

Fact of the matter is that single day performance is meaningless. While there is risk, like in all things, the long term result would be stable.

And if a player is intelligent, they would make the choice of plunder vs convoy based on the long term average.

Fact of the matter is, if the average *s for a certain player, they would probably switch to convoy.

So as it stands, anyone who STILL plunders probably does have a significant higher income than those who convoy. At the same time, the stronger a player is, relative to their server, the bigger the gains. And in every server, there would be a few who gets vastly more than others.

This is the state of equilibrium. Not all those who can plunder does, only those who can get extra reward do.

The thing is, there are two factors that affect where the equilibrium lies, strength and number.

The strength is related to how stronger the plunderer is compared to the target. Those who are weak and rarely win would give up and convoy instead.

The number relates to plunder opportunity, that is to say the number of plunder vs conveyor. As prospects diminish, plunderer give up waiting for them and thus shift to convoy.

I believe the strength factor is what the game intended, as the mods have stated before that the feature meant to reward the strong. On the other hand, the number factor is a result of the imbalance between plunder and convoy.

Fact of the matter is, maximal plunder reward is more than 4 times that of convoy. This means that you would be profitable if you win just 25% of your fights if you can get all 3 chances. At the same time, even if you only gets to plunder 50% of your max chance (1.5 per day on average, so 1 or 2 per day in practice), you still only need to win only half your attempts. That makes plunder pay off relatively safe and easy.

Shifting reward would help shift the equilibrium state toward one that is based more on power. If the reward is 2:1, for example, then if you are not getting maximal attempts, then you have to win a much larger portion of your fight, a difficult thing for many. So people might quit plundering and switch to convoy until a new equilibrium that is based more on power is reached.

Of course, this won't work so well in practice as it does in theory. For one, some people are greedy and/or overly optimistic, so they might try to plunder even thou their return might be bad, affecting the overall plunder:convoy ratio. At the same time, moving from plunder to convoy is like a game of chicken. Even if, for example, at average of 2 plunder per day and 66% win rate it is no longer profitable, if you hold out and the other 2/day 67% player quits first due to lack of profit, you might start getting 2.2 plunder a day and it might become profitable at the same win rate and so on. So as it were, there is a chance that those that remains aren't the strongest, just those who held out the longest, forcing other out with the worse plunder:convoy ratio. And if many player tries this, then the ratio might not budge and everyone suffers. But that's enough game theory, the fact of the matter is, even if there is adjustment, things might not end up for the better anyway.

TL ;DR: in the future we should be getting a system like china where I believe they get to do both convoy and plunder but there's like less coupons or some restrictions or something. I don't really remember the details but either way you can expect that once you play longer your server will die and nearly no one will plunder on top of the fact they wont change the system regardless of whatever good or bad suggestions you recommend.

I think just allowing the top 20 ranked to plunder would help with the numbers a lot. Because top 50 is just too many. I would imagine especially on dead servers.

Quite frankly, 10 is too many for most servers, as that would require 30 active player who do convoy for a total of 40 active player who participate in the event, something most servers don't meet. I'd say probably only servers that opened in the first month or so have that many.

At the same time, 20 might be too few for S1/S2. No fixed number is a good number. Ideally, it should self adjust to some number below the maximal, which is sort of how it works now, but the adjustment result is less than ideal due to excessive reward gap.

I think narrowing the number down is a good idea.

50 is way too many plunderers, and honestly, I don't blame them for trying, 150 coupons is a lot, but more than half the time they don't win anyway with proper support.

You'd need another 150 people for everyone to get 3 SS convoys a day.

Most servers don't even have 100 active people nowadays.

plunder always been unfair. been talked about for the last 2-3years. they simple dont care or want to improve it. solve it.. plunder can only plunder 1 SS convoy. or convoy can do 3 SS. but realy.. convoy/plunder should just outright be delete and give everyone 150cp a day XD