Possible solutions to the dwindling community? (in General)

Just thought I might try to spark some conversation on the topic. While I know that this is a very specialized game for a very small fan base there is no reason we should be dying off like we are. I know I come and go every couple months due to RL as well, but I still do enjoy the game mechanics. I was thinking things to help out with a lack of characters to battle ( mainly in the "dead zone"). Maybe we should lift the ban on multiple accounts as long as they are formally announced and no trading occurs between the two. That way the formal announcement would help prevent USD abuse and it could be monitored.

Anyone else have anything that NS and the other admins might be able to easily implement?

Problem with multiple accounts is the NUB bonus. They would have to be completely isolated from trading with other people. An easier and better solution has already been proposed, an infinite long tourney. This would prevent people from using any forms of USD or trading to assist the character.

Solutions like these are really only band-aid patches. What the really needs to be revived is a leader who has a vision and is constantly updating the game to reach their vision. Sadly, their vision either died or RL took over, maybe both? But in either case this game no long has that person and so it is dieing.

Why not advertise for a big tourny here in a few weeks and email blast all supporters?

not sure if this has ever been said - but what about releasing an APP version of CB?

A phone version of CB would be pretty huge. Wouldn't be too hard to at least make a stripped down version that let you battle or forge. Right now it's a bear trying to battle on a phone, which is frustrating since often I'm away from the computer and would like to burn some BA.

Yes an app for iPhone/droid would probably help a lot. What kind of phone do you have? While sometimes annoying my iPhone is pretty simple for CB. Other than training and managing inventory haha

Yeah it's not to hard on mine to click fight repeatedly, although on a touch screen smartphone it should be. If you're on some kind of older non touch screen I could see it being a pain.

A smartphone version of this game would be awesome! It's so hard clicking the buttons from a browser on my small iphone :P

Someone (NS?) started a mobile page, but it never made it out of alpha build. I continue to use it about twice a week, since it's still better than the regular site on phones, but I'd love it if someone would finish it out.

But that's more of a retention issue rather than a growth one. For the latter, an email blast would be better. However, the tourney idea that was mentioned above would have to be both inviting and enticing to really pull people back.

Well you have to have full fledged applicable targets as well. All we have right now is crappy abandoned chars and the hardcore fan base left over. If we had a tourney on the scale of what I am thinking that is being proposed then this would hurt the hardcore player base. All the while being nothing but moderate fun for those that skip actual playing of the game to sections of the year when it is convenient. I know I keep pushing it but we need more targets folks and since we don't have actual players then monitored automated ones need to be set up. Besides who's gonna take a major tourney serious if they have crappy targets to start?

beyond a mobile page, an iOS and android APP would get a whole new market. I don't believe that there is much competition in the text based grinding genre of games. Maybe I'll be able to work on some code for it this summer. - I code in .lua with coronasdk so it would be easy to pile it for both OS

Maybe NUB and NCB should just go away. :) Let people have unlimited characters. Characters not active in X months (weeks?) don't show as available targets.

Zenai I actually really like your idea of automated characters. They could be designed as most basic strats (ie. ToA tank, RoS team, SFBM) and they could be left in the dead zones. I'm sure there is some way to code them so they wouldn't advance much keeping them for their intended purpose. We'd have to have NS chime in on this further although I'm sure he has I haven't looked into it at all.

The app would help a lot though I know tons of people who play text based iPhone/droid games just because its convenient. Why it wouldn't give us a larger hardcore fan base it would at least help with the dwindling community and lack of targets.

Okay well hell I'll throw it out there.

"How much money will it take to pay someone to get this game up to date?" and "How long would it reasonably take in hours for example?"

Thank You,

BH

Oh and could an admin add "BH" to the spell checker cause I am not going anywhere.

Thank You,

BH

I'd happily help design strats for dummy targets.

As far as the app is concerned, it's a really good idea. There is definitely a market for this type of game on the go. Trouble comes coding it cross platform to hit the largest possible target audience, I don't know how easy it would be to port to all the platforms. (Android, iOS, Windows... yes I have a windows phone)

I need to learn how to code.

Well automated Clans/characters that is monitored by whoever is chosen/elected. Whoever would be responsible for the chars/clans would be the ones to regulate how the chars train or untrain to keep them at the spot they are at. Any number of things can be done to help streamline it to make it better

. I agree with a phone app being finished and made open to everyone. Also of note I would like to bring back up again as well is a visual representation of the fights here at CB. We had a player, Salketer if I remember right, that was developing an application that used the source HTML code of the Play by Play for 8 to 16 Bit graphics. Now the characters basically looked like final fantasy type chibi characters but I am sure they could be changed out for just about anything you can think of and draw multiple figures of. I think this would be totally awesome and get the interest of many ppl again.

I would also volunteer to assist Xeno in target characters strategy and maintenance.

Well, I've got a Galaxy, and for me CB is really difficult to work with. Either I resize the window every fight (since it resets each time), or if I go into landscape view I can just barely hit the link. There are just so many things you can click, all small links, it ends up being really difficult (on my phone/browser at least) to do much.

Porn.

Dathron: Might be something in your settings, possibly a calibration or sensitivity issue. More than likely it is browser preferences but let's not leave any stone unturned so to speak.

Gun: No No No *smacks with a rolled up news paper* Not in the Forums bad Gun Bad!

I would just suggest they be tagged as xp bots that are preset at different levels while setting a limit on how many you can have in your target list.

At cash dump all xp bots dump all gained xp keeping them at a set amount.

Their positions might change because more real characters pass them.

But they could be laddered so you can continued to grow.

You could even make a couple of demigod types for the very high to shoot for.

Dunno how hard it would be to implement in the way you are suggesting Thug. All I am doing is attempting to use them in a similar manner as they are used right now by regular players. As far as the Demigod types I can agree but only to a point. The reason for this is because of how the N*B and Clan System are set up. They are dependent on the MPR of the Top Player/Players of the game. Artificially boosting the system could have negative effects both in the low and high end of the game.

OK, maybe overstepping the mark, if so I'll edit this post away, and spoiling any sort of 'surprise'(!!) factor, but hey, open discussion is better than hiding behind closed doors, especially now.

I have, for a while, been trying to push 'NPC' teams. I'd also love the 'achivement' system CB has to be updated to tie into these NPC, for all teams.

Beat 'noobhammer' and get a reward. That sort of stuff.

NS set up the Tourney Prizes account to be able to run multiple concurrent Teams, as they would require slight maintenance, and a while ago I made a post to try to tease out some iconic builds to base the NPC teams around.

These NPCs would have to be nominally maintained, which hopefully the Admin team (if I miss out time) would be able to cover.

I'm just currently waiting on the password to the TP account in order to log into it to try to arrange a few teams to start the ball rolling.

I'm more than open to suggestions for builds/names/loadouts and even donations of specific equipment (if needed!) to get this going.

All donations to TP please! ;)

The futures bright, the futures carnage!

Who knows, if we get an uber hard NPC team, maybe I'll personally offer a reward for the first player to beat them (single fight, no double taps!).

:P

That's what I'm talking about! Thanks for the update!

The force is strong with this one!

Yes, it's a niche game. Yes, it doesn't need to die out.
But without some serious changes, it will keep on sliding slowly into oblivion. And when I say serious changes, I mean GAMEPLAY changes, not mere beautifications.
You can't save this game by making it pretty visually, it's just not that type of game, and there's countless pretty games available for users to play with.
If the game needs anything at all, it's in the OPPOSITE direction, make it more mobile-device-friendly, with a radical streamlining of the interface.

You'd need to change the way people look for targets first and foremost.
The current methodology is cumbersome and time-consuming, with very little payoff. The initial quick growth (and constantly quicker growth) during the NUB period makes this a pain in the posterior, and guess what each new player has to face ?
Either cleaning up long-inactive accounts from quick target selection AND providing some NPC targets -OR- revamping the score system so that scores much better reflect team fighting power would be one of the first things to do.

Also, how about something trivial that does not punish older users and users who didn't start off perfectly, and removes the inherent promotion of throw-away teams ?
I don't want to say "rolling bonus" because it's been talked to death, but how about something along the lines of a "NRB" (as in "new restart bonus") that triggers for a limited time with extra restrictions at a fraction of the value of the difference between your MPR and 95% of top MPR ?

What about removing the inventory limit ? It's annoying for the sake of annoyance at this point. Or at the very least, allow us to purchase inventory extensions.
Or how about removing rental fees and changing it to a percentage of earnings (also, with a minimum rental fee based on NW, comparable in value to the temp transfer fee) ?
Maybe even removing inactive people from the
Or, hey, how about reworking the score system from the ground up to make it more transparent AND more realistic ?

How about a new tradeable "premium" currency ?
It would be used for all site-related payments (supportership, namings, back special items, etc) but would be auctionable and transferable between players at will.
Temporary or even permanent inventory extensions, temporary power boosts (more tactical rather than raw power), temporary XP bonuses, temporary CB$ bonuses, and a lot of temporary other things could be some of the places people could also spend this new premium currency for. Heck, "transfer NW from any item to any other item" or "disenchant at higher return rate", and, why not, even straight CB$ purchases from the system could also be included.

CB is almost a fossil. It needs to evolve or slowly but surely go extinct. I've made my peace with the near certainty of the latter. Your choice if the former ever actually gets to happen. But I would not hold my breath.

P.S. The only real-life cash transactions allowed would be those involving that new "premium" currency.
Want to cash out of CB, you'd better sell your stuff for that currency first, only then sell that new currency for real-life cash.

I agree with everything Sickone said. I would add the general idea of having something visual, or quickly understood, to give you a basic idea of what the heck you're doing. Every time I try to start a new player off, the question is always "what am I doing?" And even after explaining and looking through the wiki and so on, there is this feeling that you're just sort of guessing your way through things, and hoping you're right and not going to have to make annoying changes later on. Just have a quick gauge somewhere so you can quickly, easily see a basic idea of the different attributes to your setup. Not just battle numbers or biggest blow, but like basic estimations of how strong your strategy is for DD magic, or melee, or defense, or unarmed combat. Just so you can say "Okay I want to focus on melee, how am I doing?" and you can quickly see.

Maybe that's just me, it didn't seem to go over well in the other thread haha.

I have to say I like all of these ideas and agree with the sentiment of the overall statement. The only issue I see on an overall is this......our Dev has a RL job and all of the work done by anyone who can work with the code in the system does so on a voluntary basis. Maybe if we had a cash for the Dev Fund Raiser we could actually entice more work or at least a faster return on things from him. just a thought.

PS: The currency type change I Like not just a little but a LOT it's the most versatile suggestion on currency by far.

Sickone, you don't state how the currency is created, is it bought from NS?

Most games are using some form of in game purchasable currency. I just wouldn't want to see cb dependent on it like some games. I'd be willing to donate some cash to this cause and I'm sure most of hardcore fan base would to whether it be 5$ or 100$

All existing places where you use your paypal // credit card to pay for something get converted into "pay with <whatever> premium coins" only.
All new for-pay features will only accept that currency.

The <whatever> premium coins get purchased via a new separate page (multiple package options, the more you buy at a time, the cheaper), which will be the only place where you will ever enter your paypal // credit card info on the site.

You can also obtain the <whatever> premium coins through the auction house from other players, or through a direct transfer from another player, or some other ways from another player.

OPTIONALLY, you could possibly also earn small amounts of system-generated premium coin prizes for various contests, achievements, referrals, with certain stipulations.
Like, for instance, you only earn some token premium coins for referrals when the referee has reached a certain amount of fights and/or logged in days and/or other conditions (to somewhat discourage shotgun referrals, but not necessarily completely eliminate them). On the other hand, you could earn a noticeably higher amount if the person you referred purchases some premium coins for cash himself (say, even earn a certain fixed percentage of how much they buy, given out to you as free bonus by the system).

The key difference here would be that the currency is freely tradeable between players, which is a very important feature, in my opinion.

Assuming no extra features are added and we only convert existing payment methods to this, absolutely nothing changes gameplay-wise, but everything becomes more convenient.

People would be completely able to do anything they used to do before AND MORE without ever spending a dime of real-life cash with less hassle, which is a plus.
Also, people willing to spend cash will find it more convenient, due to the fact they can do it all in a single transaction as opposed to many small ones.
And last but not least, the game management gets more of the money the customers spend due to overall lower average payment processing fees (not to speak of a certain amount up-front while the premium currency accumulates on various accounts and is not yet completely spent).

It also opens up the option of lower-cost smaller-impact for-pay features which would have been completely impractical before due to the payment processing fees, which is an additional bonus point.
WHAT EXACTLY new for-pay options or features are added, IF ANY AT ALL, that's a different story.

So you're more or less proposing ( correct me if I'm wrong) that all cash transactions now be done through this new currency system. Whether it be purchasing cbd, items, or whatever. My only worry with this is if it did include CBD purchases wouldn't that flood the economy with money possibly further diminishing the real value of our dollar?

Not really this would support the Devs more, give us more goals to shoot for, less CBD in the System would mean higher value, new currency type in the system would also mean a higher cash sink probability and just because it can be sold directly from the system does not mean it cannot be limited to "X" amount per account per day/week/month/year. At least this is what I get from this proposal on an overall....correct me if I am wrong.

I'm not sure if a limit of USD spending would go over well. I know many of you in the higher ranks are large USD spenders to keep those teams running strong. I mean yes it'd be a lot more fair seeing as currently the only way into the too 5 seems to be USD, but I'm just not sure it'd go over well.

Well in all honesty we do have the Encumbrance Limit as is and this is ALSO a USD Limit. So meh having a limit in a different way ahead of time just gives another minor obstacle to overcome. Besides it's not like that would deter regular CBD purchases for upgrades anyway.

Well, that would be a possible later addition to the things you could purchase from the system with this currency, so not an issue at first.

Also, if we have it so that the system-purchased currency is always a bit more expensive than the recent average inter-player transaction rate for CB$ (which, since the option would be a later addition, it would be fairly easy to accomplish), we ensure that the only purchasers are those who are in a big hurry, while most of the transaction keep on happening just between players.

In other words, minimal negative impact.

I thought you were saying completely do away with inner player cash transfers and the system handling it all. Thus creating a semi profitable ( depending on player base) system for the admins who monitor and code all these changes.

The key is a gentle, pleasant grip on the consumer, not an iron fist to the face.

Think about it...

Somebody still has to purchase that currency (well, the bulk of it anyway) in the first place, which means cash for the game.

A more convenient cash transaction method also means more purchases, which also means cash for the game.

People could no longer cash-out directly into cash, but into this currency instead, and only then into cash, effectively meaning you don't actually cash out, but you cash-tag-out (while somebody cash-tags-in), which obviously means cash for the game.

Also, when people are aware they can access any and all premium game options JUST with ingame effort (and a bit of trading), that's a pretty good morale boost, making more people want to stick around a while longer.

And last but not least, if all those options that we MIGHT introduce later on MAYBE make more people stick around even longer (or old people come back), well, you get the idea.

Why are you not running the show Sickone haha

Eh, it's not important why not :)

Anyway, one other nice thing that could be added would be to also support bitcoin payments (at a lower exchange rate than whatever the recent moving average was, but still).

Here is the Golden Nugget

Since it is easier to add on to something that is already there.
How about in the Fight Edit section.

Add characters with Scores around (?????????)
Add characters with MPR around (?????????)
Add characters with PR Around (?????????)

Maybe even have it filter for Characters with a certain number of minions.

What tat they are using.

Or look for a certain skill.

This would really make supporter-ship more valuable, and to get the bribe. Win Win.

Thug bows
Thanks the Cheering masses and say "Just though Money" I need it.

and there were some other great ideas here.

Adding teams with certain tats or minion amounts would probably be the biggest help there. Supporters can already sort by score/pr if I remember correctly.

A simple but I bet an all around annoying thing that I am sure others will agree with is the naming feature. It's great to have but it would be awesome if we could trade the naming to another item when we upgrade/insta say via the forge for a nominal CBD Fee.

It thoroughly sucks when you have to name two items or lose the name you have paid for because either you don't want to name two items or you don't have the money and can't pay for it. It's my naming I paid for it why should I have to lose it? Just saying that little things like this pile up and turn into a big turn off for the game in general >.<'

This is already present.

Show me a mockup (using CB css/html) and I'll put it in.

The ?????? are so you can enter real numbers instead of close to my score nub and ncb's are constantly trying to grow so fighting upward as much possible.

All that I have found is a choice of close to my score
close to my mpr

This suggestion was just to make it easier to filter thought retired characters with out changing a whole lot like the high score or any other pages like number of minion or skills

Those pages would still be great for showing you where you are at in the game. The strats the retired characters used and you could still fight from there like I was saying just trying to make it easier for all vet and nub alike.

ccs.html
I know what the html is

Ok, then show me a mockup of what you are thinking, in html and using the CB css.

What would be really awesome is you implemented a filter to remove retired characters from character attributes and character standing pages.

For instance, have the different realms only show characters that are not retired and create a new realm that is simply "All" which includes everyone.

CB3

EOD - I did that already, didn't I?

It is unfinished though NS.

There is no need for CB3 as CB2 came about from CB1 platform being limited. The foundation of CB2 is flexible.

Not that I know of NS, unless I am looking in the wrong location. I just went to high scores, gondor, and clicked on a random person and he was retired.

Oh and to make a point here, not to take away from the present convo, there is a cornucopia of very good ideas in this thread......What about them? Any thoughts NS?