[LCN] Raids vs leveling partners

I like to be surprised when I get an achievement and often am ,and I also do not focus on them,I just play the game

 

I used to focus achievements, but some of them are so hard (practically impossible) to get, I don't worry too much about them anymore.

 

You know, I am amazed by the thinking (or lack of thinking anyways) I see in these forums. This game is set up to fight but then protects lower levels from being attacked by higher levels and on platforms like Kong LCN makes a fight list almost non-existent especially if you want to try and have a full 2000 mob. The game is designed to need to level to reach new cities for bosses and jobs with job drops. Skill points come mostly by levels and most achievements are accomplished by levels. So in order to level you can kill bosses which have about 1/3 or so the exp per stamina than a pvp fight or you can do your 30 job assists and challenge helps until you get the 1 exp. You have the option to do World Boss every 4 hours. But that is not going to get you to Moon in less than 4 or 5 years unless you are doing every boss you can find and spending a lot on stamina refills to do it.

So an option is finding leveling partners and exchanging attacks. Not always the easiest thing to maintain as you have to stay just beatable by a leveling partner so they can get the best experience and you have to stay strong enough to beat your leveling partner to give you the best experience. It takes a "team" effort to build your mobster beneficial to both of you. Then there is scheduling. Trying to be online at the same time every day for that many hours can be difficult as well as frustrating. Then if you want to add multiple leveling partners, it becomes even a bigger hassle trying to build a mobster that is able to keep your leveling partners for a long period of time without someone going in a slightly different direction and not able to level together anymore.

Is it a loophole? Not any more of a loophole than spending $500 a month on items to bypass needing levels or job drops or bosses anymore to be a level 3500 stronger than anyone who is past level 10,000. The game is designed for 5000 attacks per day on one person. Do you really think anyone gets that many attacks in on any ONE player without the other person allowing it by purposely healing? Kano knew it was going to happen and designed for it when they designed the game otherwise that number of attacks would have been much lower. Even when my arch enemy on FB LCN used to chain me non-stop when I tried to level or even just play the game, they only got a maximum of 1500 attacks in once. Most often it was maybe 500 attacks a day. And that was as a player who healed all the time - with all the hiders on Kong LCN, I imagine most players only get to chain their enemy a few hundred times at most. So I would only call it a "loophole" if it was something Kano had tried to prevent and players figured out how to circumvent their intentions. And every win is a real win. I won and they lost. It is as simple as that. And that is not an opinion but a basic fact. And if you want to get really technical about it..... would you say the wins count less if it a weaker player taunting a stronger player and keeps healing and posting comments in chat things like "I am healed. Is that all you got? Did you run out of stamina?" Maybe we should not count those wins either because the other player keeps healing and is clearly weaker. Or maybe we should reconsider war mode wins as well. Just to get 3 wps a weaker player will attack a rival syndicate member they know they can't beat five times for those precious points giving the stronger player 5 wins on his stats.

I just cannot get over the fact the entire game is designed for leveling.... achievements for leveling, achievements for skill allocation which require leveling, improved job drops from leveling, new cities and bosses from leveling, 1 fp awarded each level, and to a certain point in the game there is an increase in the number of mob until the max 2000 is reached. Leveling is the point of the game which is supposed to provide opportunities to get stronger. Without items available that are purchased with fps, the strongest players in the game would be the higher levels without any opposition. It is only due to the items people can buy using fps purchased with real money and without any real restrictions that allow players to avoid leveling and stay competitive with those players who do.

I know there are players who call themselves "free players" and claim they do not spend a dime on the game. But for those players who are 100% "free players", there is no possible way that they could ever imagine that they can beat me. And for the players who can beat me on Kong LCN, many have admitted to me that they spend anywhere from $300 to $500 per month on this game regularly. And others who have not admitted to anything regarding their spending limits, by their items lists and the calculations of others who have been interested in having at least some idea of what has been spent, it has been determined some of these other players who are some of the strongest players in the game have spent over $100k since starting.

So bottom line: PVP fights are part of the natural design of the game even when that is PVP as leveling partners. The real loophole is the ability to bypass the need for leveling and all of the opportunities that levels bring by spending real money. I imagine a level 500 could avoid any need to level further simply by purchasing 6000 Limited Quantity Items for Attack (weapon, armor, and vehicle) and 6000 Limited Quantity Items for Defense (weapon, armor, and vehicle) and never need to level again as no job drops or boss drops would ever be beneficial. And stamina and energy can just be refilled with the credit card as well. With the credit card a player can make everything Kano has designed insignificant as they can be the most powerful player in the game without needing anything Kano can offer within the scope of actually playing and earning it.

 

And that is the downfall of many games like this. If leveling is the point, then the only way for Kano to earn money is to make leveling easier. So you end up with a small number of super spenders who end up in no mans land. They outrun the new content and split the game into groups, who each get frustrated due to this balkanization.

IMO, games like these can only survive long term if they find a way to make players focus and/or spend on non-leveling things. Like getting first in BA & SW. Although they missed a beat by not implementing a total/yearly ranking for these game modes, that people like you could fight over.

Yet I'm not convinced that my gaming experience is worse than yours. I mean, there is nothing much for you to achieve now.

You can beat me theoretically, but no one at your level can attack me unless I attack them first. A high level sometimes takes revenge on me after I kill them on the hitlist, but this doesn't last. You don't defeat me/us in SW and you can only get 1st in BA by virtue of spending. So your high level isn't enough to win there.

 

You don't defeat me/us in SW and you can only get 1st in BA by virtue of spending. So your high level isn't enough to win there.[/QUOTE]
The changes to BA have geared that towards spending for refills, so the person that spends the most will most likely be the winner. As i have said many many times, Kano is greedy and have geared all of their games towards the spenders having the best chances of "success". Since there is no "winning the game" on LCN, success is however you choose to define it, whether it is highest level, biggest punch, most wins/fewest losses, most attack, or whatever. Everyone plays their game the way they want, and their own personal successes are what drives them. Some need to spend a ton to reach their goals, and some set goals that can be reached without spending. Kano frowns upon them, and rewards them with nothing (maybe a lump of coal at christmas).
SW is not too much different, the syndicate that spends for their token refills will usually do better than the ones that do not. At least success in SW is more of a team effort.

 

If it was up to me (which of course it isn't) the game would be free and no opportunities to spend for an advantage. I would like to see strategy and "time" invested make the big differences. One of the biggest reasons why I am slowly quitting (for example I have not leveled with a leveling partner in like over 3 weeks and I keep failing to sign in to even collect boosts) is because I don't want to spend another dime on this game and I cannot even try to compete with those who are spending a ton.

Like I suggested in my post, do you somehow think it would work better if levels didn't exist or we all stopped at level 2500? All games need some sort of "ranking" and achievements that players are trying to accomplish. There always has to be a way to compare players to other players. Otherwise what would be the point? A new player can start be exactly equal to a player who has been playing 5 years? Both have the same bosses, jobs, skills, and opportunities? Maybe we should all just reset at the end of each week and start over.

I have suggested several things over the past year or two that would remove the need to level and make the game more balanced - at least in some ways. One of those examples was a new BA either replacing the current one or a new event altogether. In this idea it was that all would enter EQUAL and for every kill would take the the strength, power, and health of the person killed. Much like the "Highlander" movie. The more you kill, the stronger you become. Eventually "There can be only one". This would allow a level 11,000 to fight a level 1000 equally at least once a month. Of course, it would probably end up requiring stamina which would favor the player of a higher level and the player who added most to stamina when buying refills. Of course, that could be remedied simply by making attacks based on a "stamina count" in the new event much like health. Just as health in BA is not connected to game health, make everyone with the same "stamina" in the new event and refills either cost the same OR regenerate at a high speed and equal for everyone. Anyways..... I am all for new events and ideas that do not require spending or levels. Maybe Kano should try having a contest for something like that instead of who can come up with a new weapon or picture of a new background.

Did I ever say your gaming experience is worse than mine? Did I ever say "my wife is prettier than yours?" That is about how relevant your statement is. I made no mention, implication, or reference to my game being better than anyone else's. However, that doesn't change the fact you attack me in the game and you are not a spender, YOU LOSE. There is no if ands or buts about it. And I attack you, I win.

As far as Syndicate Wars, I can guarantee you if all the top levels got together and fought the rest of you lower levels, you would lose. The only reason a lot of the higher levels are not winning in SW is because first off most have quit and are not even playing anymore. Second, Syndicates like TEF have like only 11 players and no matter how stronger of players you have if you are missing 14 players worth of tokens, it is hard to compete in SW no matter how strong you might be. And then you have another of the top levels in a syndicate of 3 people. Syndicate Wars is really not any sort of contest on Kong LCN - at least not for most of the higher levels who are not even around much or are playing in syndicates that are half empty and with players who are not buying refills. There is not a syndicate in Kong LCN today that could beat the syndicates of the past like SMEG and NTMF and that was when we had high levels playing in active syndicates.

As far as BA, you couldn't beat me in the old BA when I didn't have to spend. I only lost to a couple of people back then and one was Funlover. I routinely came in 3rd following Funlover and Vili. And even if you decided in the BA tomorrow to spend until you took a mortgage out on your house in the BA, you wouldn't beat me (Unless you spent on items today). No matter how much stamina you have, you couldn't defeat me in BA. Only a few people can do that and you are certainly not one of them.

I am not sure what players like you think should happen. Should leveling be restricted to a level a day so no one gets too far past you? Should Kong make items at lower levels somehow stronger and better so you can beat higher levels without having to spend on Limited Quantity Items? This thread was about leveling with RAIDS vs PVP and then went to how fight wins from PVP as leveling partners are not real wins to how your game is not any worse than mine? Long before the internet I played D&D with a group of guys from school. And when I started, I was a level 1 Fighter and was weak as crap. I never complained that the guys I was playing with were so far beyond me that I would take years to even be competitive with them. I never looked for a way to buy items or purchase "improvements" to my game character. I certainly never whined about how the game wasn't fair to the newbies and how I should be just as strong as them and be able to win once in awhile. Instead, I spent the time playing and leveling and putting in "my dues" until I became quite strong and then I became one of the players who watched new comers to the group start as level 1 players and start from the beginning.

Most of the people on this forum just complain about how they cannot be as strong as people who spend either a million hours playing the game, or as strong as those who are spending a weekly pay check on the game, or as strong as those finding ways to use "loopholes" to level either with a million bosses, RAIDS, or leveling partners. Maybe we should start a new forum about how Donald Trump's parent's didn't give us a million dollars so we could become millionaires too.

 

Most spenders seem to value only leveling as a way to show off. I think it would be better if people couldn't buy levels so much, but rather got to rank/show off in different ways. Anyway, a lot of people have complained about how raids have made it super easy to buy levels.

None of this disagrees with what I said. I said that there should be less focus on leveling. That doesn't mean that people can't rank in other ways. You are really just attacking a straw man here.

That would be a good example. Most successful free games have something like that, so free players can take on the spenders a bit. Like draft events for card games, free events using a supplied car in Asphalt, etc.

You kind of did: "But for those players who are 100% "free players", there is no possible way that they could ever imagine that they can beat me." You may not have said that your wife was prettier, but you did point out that you were stronger as if that means everything.

But perhaps you meant it different from how I interpreted it.

Yet thankfully they don't, which reduces the number of lower levels that quit. Although unfortunately it requires too much commitment for most players.

LOL, 'it's not much of a contest because I don't work to win it.'

It is a real contest for synds like ReD, KEY, TTK, etc. It's just that synds primarily do well by big commitment, not purely by spending. But I think that is just as valid an option.

Add content that is fun for players from level 100 to level 10000. Not all content has to be like that, but more than now.

It's not about fair or not. It's about my perception that this game is dying and wanting to stop that.

You seem to lump me in with that, but I actually never complain about that. So perhaps you are reading what you think people say, instead of what they actually write.

 

Again - so you think we should not rank players by levels. Then how would you rank players? If you take away the experience for leveling, how would we rank players? A player for each hitlist kill gets 5 skill points? For every challenge you complete you get 2 skill points? Every BA you rank in you get 5 skill points? Every second you can heal on the hitlist you get 1 skill point? Levels are designed to take all the things you do in the game and move you to the next step. And every time you move up a step, it moves you closer to bigger and better things. Jobs open at certain levels. Cities open at certain levels. Fps are awarded at each level. 500 energy is awarded for each level. And 50 stamina is awarded for each level. The game by its core design is based on a ranking system centered around levels..... of course levels can easily be replaced by money spent.

What? As if being stronger means anything? Then what is the point of this whole game? Why are people spending to buy items? Why are people trying to get into as many high level bosses as they can and often complain when they don't feel someone has shared enough? Why are people wasting time doing raids for the reward item? Why are people spending hours and hours leveling with leveling partners? If being stronger means nothing, then why are all these people spending and playing for hours for nothing? The whole purpose of everything you do is to get stronger and kick the butt of the other guy. Otherwise you might as well play Farmville and see who can grow the biggest flower garden.

I think you were intending an insult here but since "working to win it" would just simply mean spending on refills which you tried earlier to insult me for being able to win BA by spending. Most of the higher levels don't play SW or get too serious about it because we don't need that "one way to be even" feeling that seems to be the need for most low to mid level players. Most of the top players win everything else, SW is just another way for Kano to get us to spend and we don't "need" to as some way to satisfy some feeling or desire to be "equal" to the stronger players.

From your last several posts, you have made it very clear that you would prefer the game to be "everyone is equal" and let's take from the rich and give it to the poor so we all can have fun. Levels shouldn't matter. We should rank everyone by what they did today and how much they tried. Let's rank by "commitment" and not by results. HAHAHAHA yeah, that sounds like a hoot!

 

Perhaps we should all be like the little kids at school where they don't keep score anymore because adults don't want their kids feeling like losers. We'll all get a ribbon for 'trying hard' and go have ice cream.

 

No, I said that leveling should not be the only point of this game. You keep pretending I said things that I didn't say.

Yet I don't get that feeling while leveling. Most players at my level are way weaker or way stronger than me, so I don't see a direct advantage to leveling. And new jobs/cities take reaaaaaalllyy long to reach. So leveling doesn't give me much satisfaction.

I would have quit this game if not for SW. But what is the draw for people who cannot commit to spending so much time on that and aren't huge spenders? You get (or got) satisfaction from leveling, but you need to realize that a game can only be successful for a long time if there is satisfaction for more than just the top spenders.

Again, this doesn't mean I want to take something away from top spenders. It means I want something extra for other players.

I didn't intend an insult, but I'm getting rather exasperated at your disdain for people who don't value the same things you do. I was trying to point out that you come across as very dismissive of anyone who doesn't play as you. Players are playing hard to do well in SW. Just because you don't, doesn't mean that you can just dismiss what makes them happy.

And my experience is that spending is much less important in SW than in BA. I pretty much always get top-5 in points (in my generally top-3 synd) and don't refill in most wars (and when I do, only with free FP). From what I've seen, good coordination is more important than spending, although the latter can of course make the difference in a close fight.

Every player needs to feel that they are achieving something. By definition, very few players can do that by outspending everyone else. SW helps a bit to keep the rest happy, but it's not good enough, due to the required commitment. So I think that there should be something more in the game for low- and non-spenders.

This doesn't require removing leveling or spending from the game, but the new feature preferably should not be about leveling or spending. Those 'low to mid level players' that you have so much disdain for are important for the game. If they leave, as many are doing, then the game dies.

Again I want to point out the card games that have drafting. Such a game mode gives players temporary equality with top players in 1 game mode, which gives skillful players a chance against spenders. But they don't keep the cards, so in normal play they still have a disadvantage against spenders or long-time players. But this is not so much of a problem because drafting provides them an additional way to achieve something meaningful (to them).

No, you've made it very clear that you have a fear of seeing this game change in ways that you don't like and this causes you to misread my words. I actually think that we are much closer in beliefs than you think and that you are fighting shadows.

Perhaps you should take a step back and reread this thread, but a bit more objectively. Then you will see that the only person who talks about removing differences in the entire game is you.

I don't begrudge you that you want to preserve what you enjoy, but I would like you to show a bit more empathy for other players. I don't want to take away the fun that you get from leveling, but you need to realize that this game has been doing in 'your' direction. With raids, leveling by spending is easier than ever and it is killing the game. The game needs to go in the other direction now to save it! Again, this doesn't mean a radical change that removes leveling, but a Kano needs to forget about making money for a bit and find a way to make low to mid level players happier to save the game. Once that is achieved, they can go back to making features for level 15k or whatever makes you happy.

 

I actually agree with most of this. I have gotten myself to a point where I can't compete with the spenders. Quite a few of my friends have given up, and I still enjoy the game, just not as much as I used to. I don't want to take anything away from the high levels/spenders. But you have to do something to keep low to mid levels from dropping out, which would lead to more high level players, which would be good in the long term for the game, don't you think?

 

What would be good is if no one was quitting. if you look at the past 2 years, almost all of the top levels from two years ago are now gone as they have quit. And if you look at the list of top 30 now, quite a few no longer play. Several of the top 10 six months ago have quit and now have been passed. So there is clearly a problem on Kong LCN about top levels quitting as well.

I guess the issue with "levels" has become more complicated with RAIDS as before RAIDS, several of the top levels like Graveyard and Stone were not the strongest - just the highest. Funlover and Shant were the rare exception of players who leveled fast and were beasts. But there were a lot of super strong players who had stayed mid-level. When I was doing my monthly "strength" contest, at least 10 people who participated could beat me and there was probably another 10 who did not participated who could beat me. And of those 20, there was maybe 3 or 4 who I could not beat. There was a better balance of power it seemed before RAIDS. But now with RAIDS it seems not only can players buy items and become power houses, now levels can be bought as well. PVP leveling even with leveling partners takes hours unless you are using scripts- and even then, scripts are not instant. I literally have spent up to 10-12 hours leveling paying my kids to heal so I could take short breaks while my leveling partner leveled..... and after 3 years of leveling without a life, I am only up to 11k with a lot of players catching me fast. One player alone when from nothing (below level 1000) to like level 4500 in like 2 months. And they can beat me easily.

Levels used to be an achievement that required TIME which although levels always could have been bought with buying challenges, energy for jobs, and stamina refill for bosses - it was outrageously expensive and still required time for bosses and challenges to regenerate. Now if a player has the money, they could do a couple thousand levels on a weekend. I bet if Funlover could have gotten a refund for all those challenges she purchased to level and could do it over with RAIDS, she would save a ton of money and maybe even be farther ahead that she is now.

Maybe that is partly why the exp is so low for RAIDS and the developers won't increase the experience per stamina. If players are already spending to get 500 levels a day with RAIDS, if they increase the exp, won't that just make it to where players are getting even more levels faster?

 

That's why I suggested they actually LOWER the xp up to the point of doing the minimum for reward, then gradually increase it for doing more than minimum. This forces people to do more IF they are trying to use raids to level, which in turn helps the raid owner to not have to do 250M themselves, it will force people to spend more for the same number of levels if they can get into as many raids (so that either is more profitable for kano or slows the leveling).

 

And in those two years several cities have been introduced for the high levels...so that doesn't work to even keep the high levels who have access to those cities.

Other than that we have the very broken new feature that is raids and the redesigned BA that is not very popular. So from my point of view, most of Kano's changes to the game in that time have been duds. That's why I am calling for a change of perspective on the part of Kano. What they are doing so far isn't working.

Yeah....I'm not going to do that. That's actually another thing I really dislike about this game: the mindless wastes of time that are encouraged by the game. An example is that level partnering gives more exp than other forms of gameplay. That gifting requires the mindless clicking of buttons. Hitlist hunting requiring refreshing the hitlist page a ton an then hoping your lag is low enough to get the list.

That is also why this game has a scripting problem. With less frustrating mindless gameplay, there would be less incentive to do that.

That's why I earlier suggested limited the number of raids a player can do. That would solve the entire fast leveling issue and solve the problem of people doing the minimum (or less) on many bosses. Of course, it would cost Kano a lot of short term income, so it's not going to happen.

 

Either way raise the experience or lower it - I am not interested in RAIDS. Too much experience ruins the game and makes the spenders able to go from level 1 to level 10k in a few months. Too little experience and it is not worth spending on RAIDS when you can just buy items with better stats. And RAIDS are not much of a team effort anyways since it almost always requires one or two people to do all the work while the other 25 or so do minimum. So good luck to everyone else who participate in them!

 

In those two years, they basically did keep the interest when Seoul and Antarctica came out. Most players had to still do more leveling to get to Antarctica. Then they took forever to come out with Moon and by time they did I was already long past it and was already ready for a new city the day Moon came out. Now I am 3000 levels past Moon - that is about SIX cities past. So no offense, but Moon is not much of an incentive since I have close to 4000 drops from the boss and almost full on all the job drops. If they had 4 new cities TODAY, I might not be quitting. I would want to get all those boss drops, all those job drops, all those new achievements with job completions and boss completion awards. And that would also mean new challenges as well which offer achievements.

 

IMO opinion if the journey is not interesting or fun,what is the point, between raids and leveling partners ,two things that have had a negative impact on the games, I have not used a leveling partner and could have done with out raids, altogether,the only thing raids has done is allowed me to add to stamina, so I spend almost nothing anymore and also filled the battle lists with the weak players,but they are only around during raids for the most part,This rush to get nowhere fast so someone can say I am Level such and such, does not interest me, I enjoyed getting to where I was, before raids, I was 3,000 levels lower than I am now and it took a year with raids to do those 3,000 levels,just mindless clicking and dreading every raid, I seem to average maybe 200 to 300 levels a raid just to stay relevant,in one of my games, and that game is the easiest to level with raids, but having higher stamina is a big plus for me now.

 

as for battle list full of weak players LCN is a little different when it comes to drops say person x does 100 raids per time after 10 times that 1000 items of the total 12,000 total you can use in PC and VC the total amount is insane so yes the raid items there would not have as much effect item wise there it is having a huge effect in LCN along with item att n defense is totally insane compared to what im used to seeing

 

It was not a rush to get to "nowhere" back in the early days of KONG lcn. There were cities far beyond the highest level and the drops from jobs and bosses were pretty awesome, even compared to the items you could buy. When the best item was a 170/60 and you could get job drops near or in the 100's, getting to those levels meant being stronger and competitive even if others were buying items. And in order to get to those levels without going broke if a person did not have a lot to spend, it could be done by forsaking skills in Attack, Defense, and Health and putting everything into Stamina. That way when you did refill it was well worth the fps as your max stamina was so high. Refilling stamina at 7500 is much more of a return than a refill of a max stamina at 2500. And I don't play VC, PC or any other of those games but I know that from the ORIGINAL mob wars back in 2006 or 2007 (when I started playing) that leveling partner have always been apart of the game and so it was not a surprise for Kano in LCN when people used leveling partners. So it was expected and DESIGNED into the game.....

That comment about leveling partners is 100% incorrect as it was always part of the game from the day LCN started. The fact is you don't want to level so you don't want anyone else to - just like I hate the idea that people can buy items and I wish no one could. But buying items is part of the design and it is what makes the game what it is from the beginning. I just wish they limited on what people could buy at such lower levels - I think higher levels and higher items need to be reached and not just immediately purchased. And do you know why there were so few higher levels before RAIDS came out? Because no one wanted to spend the hours upon hours it took to get to higher levels. Even with leveling partners it was no piece of cake and it took forever. With RAIDS, there are a few players that could be level 12,000 to level 14,000 after playing one year if they keep up the current pace. Before RAIDS, that would have required 4 years of solid dedication and more hours on the computer than living a real life in order to do even using multiple leveling partners.

 

I think not enough raids. And the PvP is dead in this game.