The first pass of the final documentation of the new Tenacity system is now complete. There are three statements in that document that summarize my issues with the current system, two of which also applied to the old system.
1. At this time, the management of Planets.nu believes that Tenacity is not related to when, or even if, a player makes their turn, and no information on playing individual turns is included in the Tenacity score.
This is JUST WRONG. To me, a tenacious player would never miss a turn, yet the new system removes the Missed Turn Penalty. With the normalization to 100%, a 2 point penalty for missing a turn, and possibly 1 point for use of Holiday mode and for having looked at a turn but not selecting Done, would be easy to implement, and would cause the Tenacity score to more accurately reflect a player's tenacity (dictionary definition). I believe that the Early Turn Bonus was needed to balance the Missed Turn Penalty, but with the normalization to 100%, we should be able to get by without it.
2. Nothing that an original player does will have a positive effect on their Tenacity score.
With the exception of the highly disputed (and now defunct) Early Turn Bonus, this was also true of the old system. This too is JUST WRONG. IMHO, any original player who is tenacious enough to stay to the end of a game should get a small bonus to their Tenacity.
3. Nothing that a replacement player does will have a negative effect on their Tenacity score.
With the exception of the Missed Turn Penalty (also now defunct), this was also true in the old system. This is the worst of the lot. This means that a person could come in as a replacement player, screw up the entire game, or rebalance the game towards a friend, and walk away, all without any penalty.
In both items 2 and 3 above, there should be a positive to balance the negative. When you take a chance, there should be the opportunity for both gain and loss.
Finally, it should be considered that when a player is dropped for missing three consecutive turns, they're demonstrating even less tenacity than a player who resigns, while creating a larger hole in the game. The penalty for being dropped should be higher than the penalty for resigning, and there should be NO EXCEPTIONS (at least remove the exception for replacement players).
My other issues with the new system are:
A. The normalization should not be done every day. It should be done on days when a player's completed turn is run (a day with no run, or a day when the turn isn't completed would result in no normalization). This would normally cause penalties and bonuses to last longer.
B. The change to the Rescue Bonus that requires advancement of position is more skill than tenacity. This should be returned to maintaining position.
C. I feel that the rate of normalization is a bit too fast. Is there any way that it could be either slowed overall (0.1 point per day), or drastically slowed within a window (0.05 points per day in the 80-110% window)?
Finally, I'm sure that a lot of thought went into this design. If some of that information were to be made available to us, it might help those of us who have issues with the new system to understand the logic behind the changes. This would probably reduce the level of disagreement. |
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