Auraqai here... Damn! Wish I'd seen this thread earlier...
Con, we have a sort of mild telempathy, as I've been brainstorming very similar ideas. It involved canvassing more than 80+ alliances and asking what their boost preferences were as well as the initial cost of their boosts vs. member capacity. I wrote it all down: initial costs, decrease increments, cost per member, yada yada yada. I also agree, we MUST maintain the challenging aspects of filling tasks. This means toughening up a few existing ones.
The post below contains these questions + suggestions:
1) New tasks and the 5th cycle
2) simplify initial boost cost to 29 tokens per member, removing decimal places
3) stop rounding boost costs to the nearest 5. Exact prices are fine, and more natural.
4) increase each task reward to 9 tokens, from 8 (total 36, up from 32)
5) Increase price drops from 4 total (1 every 24hrs) to 8 total (1 every 12 hrs). Many players with highest ranks in their alliances are NOT online when the price drops occur. This is an important detail. A leader may not be able to trust others with tokens, but members become disgruntled when boosts are purchased late.
6) Daily FUEL loot cap + fuel boosts. Time to get honest
19+ months now leading what is arguably the consistently largest Looting alliance in the game (#AP). We figured out a way to buy a good boost every single week & GOLD Boost at least once a month, while still saving a small profit. (cant give away the secret! :P). Up to 20,219 tokens just before we got the GOLD boost a few days ago. I believe I can bring a heap of token/boost experience to the table here. And really help out with quality suggestions, as did MW3 in their thread.
#1) Lets focus now on task specifics. Below is a link to a detailed - yet simple chart I made for tasks. Please check it out! ,,,click the magnify glass to max image size.
http://s1339.photobu...xfnvdl.jpg.html
I studied the combinations of the 4-task setups for each cycle VERY tediously... and concluded with what I have there now, which is almost perfect. Minimal overlaps and maximum variability. The quota suggestions i didn't just pull out of my arse; i strongly recommend you devs integrate them.
You mentioned the tribulations involved with having to navigate the achievement-system codes in allowing creating those new tasks.... well what else is there to resort to? Those are the most sensible tasks to add. honestly, not many folks i think care much if achievement/awards had to be changed up a bit.
Now to the bread 'n butter. I have a couple juicy questions.
#2) Whats with the strange decimals used in determining each members' weight to initial cost of each boost? EXAMPLES: in a 50-member ally, initial boost cost= 1430 tokens. 1430 divided by 50= 28.6
...but its not consistent. In a 24-member ally, initial cost= 690. 690 divided by 24= 28.75
9-player ally, initial cost 260. 260 divided by 9= 28.88
You should simplify this! Change every initial boost cost to a solid 29 for each member. Yes, it will slightly increase the overall costs for the larger allies. however its a minuscule change.
#3) This one is easy, just stop rounding the boosts to nearest 5, lol. There is nothing wrong or unsightly about exact numbers.
#4) Please Increase each task reward from 8 tokens each, to 9 (total 36, up from 32). This will offset the small price increase of boosts for the larger alliances once you solidify the cost per member, to 29 tokens. Essentially there is no significant change in an ally's ability to save more tokens just because there's a tiny bit more being earned.
#5) Increase price drops to every 12 hrs. This one is VERY helpful! It saves loyal leaders the hassle of having to stay up late or wake up early to grab the boost for their ally in order to keep members happy, its much more convenient. Many folks would rather pay a handful more tokens than deprive themselves of sleep or risk handing a non-so-trustworthy member control of tokens. 8 separate price drops 12 hrs apart, beginning 12 hrs after round begins. So, those of you reading this, you just divide the initial boost cost by 10 to see the incremental decreases. Of course, the price drops still cease 48 hours before the round ends.
#6 Daily FUEL cap. Sensitive topic and I want to be gentle about this, because it strikes at the heart of ConArtists' profit machine. But secrecy doesn't help anyone. When you revealed that 4 uni's per day was the Uni cap, we were grateful for that. It breathed clarity. We would like to know the current FUEL cap.... lets say, for a LVL 55, with absolutely no oil books or oil boosts, I will guess 60-80, maybe 100. It used to be higher for LVL 50's back in the day, but most have noticed over the years it is sneakily reduced.
Nowadays, even with 25% peak oil equipped, and even 15% Fuel boost on top of that, we aren't seeing more than 120-140 FUEL looted per day. Thats honestly rubbish. If we are adding another 5th cycle into alliance rotations, the GOLD boosts need to be appealing and damn well worth it. That means one of the GOLD boosts should include a very juicy FUEL boost actually worth buying. Can you please provide us with the daily FUEL cap, and then propose what the GOLD Fuel boost could do to increase daily Fuel loot?
A breakthrough reveal can help us create a positive shift in trust and motivation to play harder, as well as souping up some awesome boost combinations to match up with the new 5 cycles. Obviously, creating a couple brand new boosts to fit into the new cycle rotations is a must, and we can fanagle some cool ideas as the dialogue builds.
THANKS EVERYONE for your time and input! Hope this helps inspire ya'll.
-Aura