anonrerising

I think what's wrong with dominance today is that each Flight has a buying power that's linerally scaled. That seems fine but it doesn't account for how mercs are a thing. That's why Earth and the smaller flights always win. Instead of using a linear function, it should be a negativve quadratic one to give larger flights a chance. At least it would shake thigns up. But the admins are too incompetent to realize that.

10000% this

staff please hire math whizzes to redo the dom algorithm. the linearity isn't working anymore.

God this would be amazing. But quite honestly it doesn’t seem like the staff give a single fuck about dom balance so I doubt we‘ll see any significant changes to the system.

Dom Revamp is on their list of upcoming updates, so I think they are aware of the issue :) (at least it was on the refactor list for the 7th anniversary update -- see the very bottom of the first post in the corresponding thread: https://web.archive.org/web/20211020191639/https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/ann/2870531/1)

I really suck at math, but a negative quadratic would mean both the smallest and largest flights get a bonus, evening them out to a middle term?
Shadow may have 86k users, and Earth may have 18k, but that doesn't mean shadow also has 4 times as much active dom users

that's part of the problem, each flight has a diff proportion of active players. i think bigger flights may have more inactive players and casual players.

Inactives already don't count. It's the casual and the profit above all else types that sell out of flight that make calculations strange. (I refuse to be the dick that calls folks who play different a problem.)

SA

inactives dont count for dom but im referring to when people say "shadow has 86k members" when looking at the world map. unless the inactive people dont show up in that count, but i dont think thats the case.

I meant a negative quadratic function where the mean is at zero. So only the positive side of the quadratic function would apply, since flighs only have positive numbers :)

What I would do if I were an admin is add a counter to each dragon which increments each time it is leveled up but resets to zero when the dragon changes ownership and then weigh the counter heavily in the dominance calculation--i.e. reward dragons trained IF and weaken the relative impact of OOF/mercs/prehoarding.

Then, make being counted in dominance more of something to opt-in to rather than just exist as an active user. I.e, the way it is currently communicated is that all users who logged in the past two weeks are counted in the denominator for calculating dominance, but I would change it to only users who have exalted a level 2 or higher dragon during the week in question. Why level 2? Anyone who has observed newly hatched dragons during ID countdowns would see that casual players often immediately exalt their own hatchlings, but those players' motivation for doing so is likely to free up lair space, not to contribute to Dom. If the algorithm tried to only count players who appear to either be actively profit exalting or actively contributing to dom, it could help remove the "dead weight" feeling large flights have. Also, the self-trained counter would mitigate some problems that the opt-in system would otherwise have: even if a flight tries to game it by bottlenecking all of their dragons to a few users who opt-in, self-trained dragons are worth more so it may not help them win to do that.

I also approve of a lot of suggestions I've seen for a dom token trade-in shop which opens the week after dominance is calculated. You exalted a trained dragon this week? You get a token next Sunday! You exalt a lot more of them? You get more tokens! Tell the player how many tokens they'll get at the next dom tally could strike a medium between immediate feedback and making it feel more rewarding (generally good) but still hiding their exact numeric contribution to dom (which could be gamed if fully revealed). With this system or something else, if I were an admin, I'd be worried about how much dom coordination is done off the site on services like Google Sheets which is impossible to moderate and has user privacy concerns and do what I could to help players participate without feeling obligated to use outside apps.

Mostly agree - just not with this 'resets to zero when the dragon changes ownership' because you are immediately restricting (of sorts) all suppliers, breeders, "art for fodder" and other supporting players from dominance. I get that dominance is about exalting but that would remove most of the community aspects from it, so I'd fear it would turn more players away from dominance rather than improve anything.

Oh, sorry, I described it as if I were programming it myself (setting the counter in the database to the value of zero) rather than properly explain what impact the counter would have. Dragons with a zero on the counter would still "count", just not as much.

Here's an example of how it could be programmed:

Hatchling, training counter is zero by necessity -> 1 dominance point when exalted
Level 1 adult, training counter is zero because untrained -> 1 dominance point when exalted
Level 5 adult, training counter is zero because the exalter bought the dragon pre-trained -> 5 dominance points (1 base * 5 from levels)
Level 5 adult, training counter is four (went up four times each time the dragon gained a level, never reset) because the exalter trained the dragon -> 25 dominance points (1 base * 5 from levels * (1 base counter + 4 from counter value when exalted))

OOF dragons still have an impact on the dominance calculations and it is still worth doing raffles and buys, but the flight gets more mileage out of its IF trainers.

Thanks for the clarification, now I get what you meant! I think that maybe it could work - but only if there was some sort of incentive to go to all flights (yes, I loved that whole 'personal dom bonus' idea). Otherwise the number of IF trainers will determine the winner and the flight with fewer trainers would be 'locked' into losing just because they will neither have the manpower to train nor (possibly) even more funds to overcome that increased disadvantage.

Hell, you know what would work with this very well? A really radical idea I've seen exactly once on forums: just split the dom flight from eye flight. Like, now there's, for example, the Light flight with its eyes and dom, there's Water flight with its eyes and dom, but then there would be Light flight eyes, Water flight eyes and (randomly assigned and even changing) Sparkling and Moist dom teams.

... let me say this much: Your system wouldn't fix things.

Earth's power exalters level their own dragons. If anything, this would make them more effective.

It just penalizes the ones that need help.

Re: The problem with dominance

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Re: The problem with dominance

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-21 22:34 (UTC) - Expand

oh. baby. talk math and dom strategy to me...

Well, since you asked. The fundamental problem is the current linear ratio introduces an ironclad distortion into the market.

Larger flights pay more money for levels that are worth proportionally fewer dominance points.

Smaller flights pay less money for levels that are worth proportionally more dominance points.

There is no way to fix this without tackling the economic side of the problem, and/or without understanding that the reason dom battles have become expensive is that out-of-flight SPENDING by smaller flights is multiplicatively more powerful.

It's like if large flights were retail investors and small flights were private equity firms.

Granted the smaller flight does not always win. In a perfect world (gonna be honest) the smaller flight would always win under the current algorithm. The fact that it doesn't happen is a reflection of the challenge of organizing people. But therein larger flights also have significantly more organizational challenges -- herding many cats rather than fewer.

Larger flights can supposedly raise more money, but that fundraising ability also has a tendency to be linked to organizational effectiveness.

'Fairness' is a horribly woolly concept, but I would raise this -
Is it fair to implement a system that penalises flights for encouraging active exalting and being well organised? Earth gets more points per dragon purchased, but each point also costs more per person than any other flight.

However, Earth has had one battle in the last few years. The 'dom powerhouse' aspect has little to nothing to do with Earth having greater dom point purchasing power - it's from establishing an exalting culture and having effective support in getting newbies/new joiners into the various aspects. Implementing changes based solely on exalting numbers says 'if you're working too hard, you'll be penalised'.

I am 100% behind the idea of having a system to handle the issue of OOF support. Perhaps something that accounts for what element a dragon came from - basing it on who last held the dragon for over X period of time, or similar. A blanket approach that doesn't distinguish between individual effort and OOF participation? Not cool with me.

AYRT

"Fairness" was not present in my original response, if you were talking to me. FR as a site is already dealing with the blanket approach that doesn't distinguish between individual effort and OOF participation, too. That's the scaling algorithm as currently implemented.

I don't envy the coder who has to try to balance this mechanic since it so heavily interacts with the market economy, tbqh.

Re: The problem with dominance

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-21 09:29 (UTC) - Expand

lol, earth's mythical superior exalting culture is just having the aesthetics of dirt as no one moves there for anything else

When does Earth place in dominance? When other flights aren't pushing hard for first. Earth isn't buying dragons these weeks, they have an extreme amount of internal exalts.

In WvE and LvF - how did the larger flight win? By being organized and having the finances to buy enough dragons from OOF to overcome the ratio.

Any system that devalues OOF support will only "buff" Earth further.

NAYRT

This is a very simplistic understanding of dominance calculations.

Keep in mind that raffles and public buys take advantage of OOF support. The smaller flight's OOF support from all sources counts more (at the level of the ratio) than the larger flight's.

The ratio is scaled to active users and unfortunately, if Light vs. Earth was any judge, probably doesn't cap out. So if one flight is 1/3rd the size of the other, all the dominance levels they exalt (OOF, IF, ALL of them!) count for 3x as many points...

AYRT

Yes. I know that.

Implementing changes in the algorithm that attempt to make OOF sourced dragons count less would then make Earth a larger threat for first on non-contested weeks where another flight is hosting a raffle or pb. They are already consistently placing on these weeks under their own exalt power.

In Light vs Fire, Light received over twice as many dragons through their raffle as Fire did, enough to overcome the population ratio we can estimate. If OOF support is devalued, small flight wins as usual.

In Water vs Earth, Water received more raffle support and actively seemed to be buying a lot of mercs as well on top of that. The board flipped all week long. If OOF support is devalued, Earth probably wins as usual.

When people say OOF activity is the reason why the smaller flight will "always win", they have a "simplistic understanding" of how the larger flights have actually won these recent battles and why Earth places so frequently on non contested weeks. (They exalt. A lot. On their own.)

I support the dom algorithm being changed just for the sake of something new, by the way. But I predict a lot of the "fixes" that attempt to nerf raffles/pbs/mercs would actually only make things more stagnant.

Re: The problem with dominance

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-20 23:47 (UTC) - Expand

Earth's dominance at Dominance doesn't come from Mercs tho. It literally comes from their own exalting power. It's their ratio of active power exalters versus active peeps, which is way more favourable to getting dom than for other flights. Mainly bc Earth doesn't have a lot going for it except for its Dom Power.

And the biggest discrepancy in battles also isn't Mercs -- the main chunk of levels afaik during battles come from PB and Raffle. Mercs make up a tiny proportion.

Honestly it's turned into a vicious cycle. Dom people keep moving to Earth for the bonuses so you've got a flight that's really got a disproportionate amount of exalters per active users. As a fake example let's say you've got a sample of 1000 active users in Nature and 100 of them are active in dom, but in Earth there's 200 for each 1000, well that's an extra obstacle for fixing the algorithm.

The problem with dominance is that it's boring as fuck, and quite frankly baffling that the staff hasn't given us some more ways to level dragons aside from the Coliseum, which stopped being fun five years ago.

It's hard to get active users in large flights to be active also in dom, when dom is such a monotone