Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-11165765-20130810130524/@comment-11490363-20130828164659

Godofcyanide wrote:

Take two equally-powered decks that have the same damage potential range. ... The second deck did nothing but bottom-feed and got lucky.

When you ally with someone in game, the expectation is that you assist each other in meeting your goals, not use them to look for opportunities to advance yourself at their expense. This goes double or more for "teammates" as we have here in the chat.

Since I had a dominating deck this episode, I responded to allies who stole my MVPs by stealing theirs. I will say that, after spending Saturday and Sunday routinely screwing these jerks out of their close MVPs, they were all expending extra cubes to keep myself (and others) at bay.

My issue is that, when I have a high DP/rank, my allies WANT me to seed them with the biggest bosses possible. However, to make it profitable for me (getting the MVP) and profitable for them (giving them a chance to get in there, and ensuring the boss drops), it's not as simple as "just do 50% or more loser"... If I three-cubed a DS8 or DE8 last episode, either I killed it outright or left so little damage that only one or two allies would be able to have the time to attack it at all. However, my two-cube would occasionally come up short (especially on the DE8s) by a few million. Throwing a third cube at that point is really just a waste of a cube, since there is a reasonable expectation that 45%+ damage done retains MVP. However, the value added by the return of a cube via snipe makes the exchange patently inequitable and biased towards the sniper, not the seeder.

When I top tier, I am helping my allies by seeding the big bosses more than I am helping myself. To have your allies feast on your seeds then stab you in the back for your generosity makes me never want to seed a big boss again, with any number of cubes.

The two rules I play by when dealing with (respectful) allies:

1. If it's clear that the seeder invested more than one cube yet came up short, I do whatever I can to ensure the seeder retains his MVP bid, even if that means NOT tagging a boss I could easily kill. On bigger bosses, especially, it is patently OBVIOUS when someone has invested more than one cube in a boss without knowing a thing about his deck construction. (If >200M damage was dealt, you better believe it was not one-cubed!)

2. If I can kill a boss on snipe for a little bit more than what my ally has done for MVP, I sit and wait until his MVP is secure before moving in for the kill. If that means I lose out, so be it. I'm here to help myself, but I'm also here to assist my allies in meeting their goals, and I try not to lose sight of that.

However, if you don't respect my investment of time and money, I will not show you that  respect at all, and I will take great pleasure in robbing you of your MVPs at every opportunity.

If you wash my back, I'll wash yours, and smile doing so. If you stab me in the back, vengeance will be mine. End of story. ;) You are assigning roles to things that have no roles. Mobage set up the game so that the last person to hit the boss gets a cube, right or wrong that is the way it is. We are all smart players and have learned that you can maximize your resources by trying to snipe. That does not make it wrong or douchy, it is just smart play. And since everyone knows that and tries to snipe, we are on a fairly level playing field (pay to win aside of course).

By taking MVP from the 'previous' owner, I am not STEALING it, it was not THEIRS. I am taking what is rightfully mine to take. I am playing within the rules of the game. The fact that some people assign roles to the 'ally' list is fine, you can do whatever you want, but I am not a douche for just playing the game within the rules of the game, even if that violates some imaginary rules you have constructed for people in your ally list. If anything you have proven my point. if Mobage wanted people with 30% or 45% damage to retain MVP, they would not incentivize snipers with a free cube.

As I said before, MOST people you seed to are NOT your allies, so even if your allies were 100% compliant with what you believe they should do, more than half the time you could lose MVP because your non allies are NOT following your rules, and there is no way to force them to nor is there a way to only seed to allies, so it only makes sense to assume that the MVP WILL be 'stolen', and if you REALLY want it, ensure it is yours with that extra cube. You have to decide what is more important to you, seeding to your allies so they can ride your coattails or securing your MVP. If you choose the former, don't complain when you lose the MVP.

If that third cube would kill the boss outright, why wouldn't you always do it? That makes no sense. if 2 cubing is 1 cube short of defeating a boss, you should always 3 cube it then since you get the sniper bonus and it still only costs you 2 cubes.

If your deck is 'too powerful' to help your allies, then swap in some crappy character so that you can secure MVP and still seed to people.

I find it funny that people are trying to turn a competitive game into a cooperative one. That just sounds like collusion and I would fight that at every turn. It makes it unfair for people that don't yet have allies. It is just like pay to win, anyone that is allied with the top players stays on top, like a big boys club. You play by the rules and we can mutually exclude other people, not the kind of thing I want to be a part of. At this point all the top players have full lists, how are new players supposed to take advantage of this great (and I say that sarcastically) mechanism?