It feels like you're just confusing a whole lot of stuff. What do you even know about effort? Do you think capping my pet years ago, without BQing at all somehow happened effortlessly?

You're against a phantom cap because you don't want people who kept on spending hours battling every week and piling up exp for months/years after capping or people who've spent hundreds of millions, or billions of sP which also equals countless hours of playing to spend what they earned on their pet because........ 10 people having mega pets is bad? Please? Who does it hurt? Why does it impact you at all? Are we getting yet another episode of the selfish "I want to catch up and be on top as well, but with a fraction of the effort" that we've been served for the past three years?

@ Andrew First off, for me personally, the stat high scores list isn't "competitive" it's just more like a showcase, that's how I see it. So I think that's the direction Keith wants, not having stats be the be all end all, which to me means focusing on the actual battling aspect. And the rest of my idea means that if someone is willing to put a buncha effort into battling regular opponents, they're going to cap faster. Not instantly, but the more effort, the more xp, the more stats etc.

I mentioned in some other post somewhere an idea of really toning down boosters a TON except for csc boosters and int boosters and making xp a lot more viable way to train long term so that even from the start someone who wants to battle can actually progress rather than waiting forever before facing the next set of opponents for 10 wins each. I think it might have been on the BQ revamp thread. I think it'd be a decent balance of battlers being able to support the site and battling being something more activate rather than wait, battle, wait.

Nah, I've got a good handle on what I'm saying and what I'm basing it on :). I'm well aware that it took more effort then than it did now. I'd like to increase the amount of effort it takes now and have that effort be actively participating in battling because it makes a whole lot of sense, no :)?

I'm against a phantom cap for many reasons I've mentioned previously such as discouragement for new battlers, whom I do care about as I like to see the community grow. PLus larger community means more staff attention which would be nice. Another Aspect would be pvp. Even user run competitive PVP isn't viable with phantom cap unless everyone makes lowbie pets specifically for it. It makes more sense to have a variety of capped builds competing. And then there's boss fights, something which right now is the only real way to be rewarded for putting effort in the form of time into battling. Phantom cap means someone with money to burn but no time has a pretty huge advantage over someone with the opposite. It'd be less as time goes on with dwindling returns on stat points but it'd still be there. And of course again, a newbie would never have the faintest hope of catching up. And of course, there's almost 0 reason to balance out stats if they can all be trained infinitely. What does it matter if speed is useless if it's not higher than your opponent if it can always be trained higher than your opponent without sacrificing anything else. I would hardly call an objective view and trying to put the overall site and battling community before myself selfish :) And I find it ironic coming from the point of view of someone who wants to be one of ten mega pets o.O Besides which, even with a phantom cap, I'm fairly confident in my ability to be one of those ten mega pets as well, I just don't think it's for the best or even for the good of the site.

I'm undecided on the Phantom cap, because it's not well defined enough. I think phantom cap is too confusing compared to cap vs no cap.

What stats actually count towards the sum for the str/def/speed/hp/(intel if included) attributes? Is it user chosen up to the cap, or just a cutoff of like 10k attribute (so in a way makes a pet evenly trained if all stats are beyond the cutoff point). And if it's user chosen, is it fixed forever, changeable after a time, or could it be changed anytime (so your pet becomes a Swiss army knife if trained way over 7k each attribute)?

There are just 10 mega pets? O_o You sure pet number 11 with just 100 stats lower than pet number 10 isn't mega too? ;)

How confusing?

The phantom cap means no opponent will be built that will require more than 22k stats to beat.

That is all.

That cap is "phantom" because you can keep training past that, but content as in challengers will be capped in difficulty at 22k stats. That's why it's not a hard cap.

I am very serious though. I support a cap increase but I wanna get as close as I can to it before it happens just so I'm not that far behind :p It's not hypocritical, flip floppy, or stupid.

What about the pet then Can you raise stats beyond 22k (or whatever the Phantom cap is), and if yes what does the extra stats do?

Edit: OK that simple? Thanks for clarifying it.

They do the same thing the stats under 22k do. As in, your dpi increases, you heal more from scrolls, defend harder, etc. Nothing changes.

Hard cap is a cap on stats Phantom cap is a cap on challenger difficulty

A phantom cap allows for people to catch up as challengers will not get harder. It also allows for people to keep training if they want to, fully knowing there won't be any harder content.

Yup, very serious :P File that as a wish, not a suggestion.

In that case Alex, looks like I am for the Phantom cap. Unless I missed something (probably not?)

My suggestion is to raise the cap though, my hope is that it takes a bit longer just for my own personal benefit :p

Though I would rather see a hard cap.

Im sure you have your ideas all thought out and you have your own opinions, fair enough. But sometimes I feel that you are jumping from argument to argument or responding to a question with an answer to a different question. Anyways, here goes

1. Im assuming you are talking about having the ability to infinitely earn xp? If so, im sure everyone would want that. No arguments there.

2. if that suggestion^ happens, people are essentially paying for stats. what's new. but you are now penalizing those who own boosters.

3. i dont see why there's a problem with boosting. There are a bunch of people who do and a bunch who dont. Just because X person can cap in 5 minutes, how does that affect Y? X person has to spend some amount of sp to do so anyway. The sp is earned by spending Z amount of time on subeta or at work to earn money to buy csc. Regardless, time/effort IS spent whether you are buying stats via EXP and grinding or by sp.

4. im sure you'll bring up pvp as an argument. Well, for pvp, just scale pets down to the cap. whether by the pets' stat ratio or evenly.

And pvp is not a strong argument because it's so far down the pipeline that most people dont see it happening. Thats like saying we should all stop driving gas-powered cars because in a few hundred years there will be no more oil.

My posts are jumpy because i'm a horrible writer and I'm terrible at structuring my arguments or even focusing long enough to write down everything in my head XD. I hope they're at least not impossible to follow lol.

1. infinitely but at a slower rate than there is currently, but still a lot higher than compared to buying boosters by grinding tokens. Needs to have a balance of course.
2. I think a big problem with battling is that it's not interactive enough. I suggest this because if there's a reason to spend time battling, people who want to do that will be more active and be rewarded for it directly in what they're doing. It would penalize people who have a ton of boosters right now, which sucks, but it'd be a long term positive IMO.
3. I don't think its a problem per se but I don't think it makes much sense to be able to buy a capped pet without ever lifting a finger in the coliseum. I know it costs a SHIT TON to boost a pet to the cap and that at some point that involves some type of effort. I just think it makes a lot more sense to have a system that rewards time put in more directly and in a viable way. The balance to that has to be by curving boosting otherwise all it's doing is essentially making it EVEN easier to cap a pet, which it's already easy enough. I also don't want to hinder people who're spending real money on the site for obvious reasons, I really think a balance could be struck quite well.
4. I have dreams man, big dreams :P I only use that to beat a dead horse because pvp is love, pvp is life. And i see a phantom cap as a hinderance. Scaling stats is ineffective because who's not just going to boost as much as they can as cheaply as they can. Stat ratios will be meaningless for me at least, without a cap.

Bulleted points make things a lot easier I'm sure it's still jumpy though, my apologies XD.

what about the old/already established battlers who've put 5, 6, 7+ years into training? The idea of 'make it easier for the newbies' starts to ring a bit hollow when it's all coming at the expense of people who've been here for years.

you keep mentioning pvp, but I think it's a bit presumptuous to say that it's not gonna be viable with a phantom cap. and then there's the fact that pvp is a distant speck on an even more distant horizon, so it's not really relevant to right now anyway.

again with the newbie argument. should we all just stop training now so people who join the site in three years can 'have a chance' too? c'mon. me training my pet to infinity will absolutely not take away from anyone else's experience UNLESS they're already stupidly competitive.. in which case they'll bust their ass/boost to catch up. you're making newbies sound kind of hopeless. If someone really wants a well-trained/top pet, they'll work for it regardless of how many people are in front of them. sorry, but I'm not hearing any genuine reasons to not have a phantom cap in your arguments, just a lot of speculation.

Mike, all your arguments for no stat cap revolve around either very tiny parts of battling that happen once a year and ought to be changed anyway, like bosses, or things that will never happen, like pvp. There's a billion reasons as for why pvp isn't an option in this system and getting rid of the cap would have the slightest impact really. People would have to make their own set of rules for it to work, ban a whole lot of weapons that are fine otherwise in 1p, make leagues aka brackets of pet stats, etc.

I commented on bosses a few pages back but I feel like people forget the strength and defense formulas aren't linear. A pet with 10k strength isn't twice as strong as a pet with 5K strength, and adding an extra 10k strength won't make it 4 times as strong either. Not by a mile. You don't get any tremendous advantage by training strength and defense past 7k or so. It takes a huge amount of stats to get the slightest changes, it's really putting in a lot of effort to achieve little more. But some people value that little extra, or want to put in twice the effort anyway.

It has no impact on the community whatsoever. Who's the community anyway, when the most dedicated users aka the heart of the community, in your scenario, are just being ran over by a bus full of newbies, every day, all day ?

Only a foul doesn't recognize the value of its senior players. Out of 1000 people joining Subeta, how many do you think stay more than a month ? A year ? Very little. So when you have a user that made it through entire years of virtual labor, which are eventually converted into hundreds of dollars, you can't just ditch them for 5 new users joining a "community". It makes no financial sense, so we can stop throwing that argument around.

It sounds like the question now isn't whether to raise the cap or not, it's all about raise with a hard cap, or raise the cap to infinity and cap opponents. Either way, the cap is raised. I really haven't read any arguments or reasons not to raise the cap though I know there was one years ago. What IS the reason today?

It's not at our expense. I don't want to make it easier for anyone. o.O

PVP is a glimmer of a hope, and I like to mention it every chance I can get. If you're njot worried about it don't provide a rebuttal. It's not presumptuous. I can say for sure that if there was a phantom cap, scaling back by ratios would be without a doubt meaningless for me, as my stats would be whatever was cheapest and easiest to get. Takes 0 creativity to build a pet with a phantom cap. And without scaling back by ratios, it just becomes whoevers got the most stats wins. I wouldn't find it fun to not have much competition if there was pvp. If there's a cap, there's more likely to be a variety of builds which means much more interesting pvp.

Yes I think that a growing community is the key to success of battling on subeta. I'm in favour of anything I think will help that. Having an infinitely growing pet makes catching up outside of reason. I'm going to make a ton more sP at every event on subeta, I'm going to get more regular challenger loot to sell when the price is higher to begin with from regular challengers, and I'm going to reinvest that into battling. A new user has 0 hope of competing with me with a phantom cap unless they're willing to spend tens of thousands of IRL cash, which I don't particularly mind if they did, but is someone likely to do that just to have a CHANCE of competing at the top? Or is it more likely to happen if someone knows for sure they've secured a spot to compete with all the other equal stat totaled pets. Until I hear an argument for why having a phantom cap is BETTER for the battling community as a whole and not just for the elite few, again I include myself in those few, that's all the reasoning needed. In fact I haven't heard any compelling reasons to have a phantom cap. People want it so they can be on top of the high scores list without boosting level exclusively, not very compelling... People want it because they have 60k stat points worth of boosters they want to use... not very compelling. Can anyone say why a phantom cap is in the best interest of the site and not just themselves?

yeah yeah you won't be able to buy a ferrari for the price of a ford either, poor ford owners can't compete with the elite why don't you just drop that BS already

looool. high scores and boosters have sweet FA to do with it. I'm out of different ways to say 'we just want to train', it's obviously not sinking in.

Your arguments for a cap are elitism and vanity.

My pvp reasoning is still valid. Anything that makes it less viable is a mark down, plain and simple. I've already addressed the other issues with pvp several times, and personally volunteered to help create the player run system.

I mentioned the decreasing reutrn on stat points, you must have skipped over it somehow.. In any case I'll point back to another previous example, the person who always gets first place against bosses. The stat difference is far less than the amount of time put in to fighting the boss was and yet first was first. In fact they said it themselves... Even considering as time goes on those differences will necessarily be much smaller, what becomes the pro phantom cap argument then? Just wanting to have the highest numbered stat point. There's level and intelligence for that :).

The community is growing. I see new faces all the time. I do think it's more important to have a constantly growing community than to lose a few people who might rage quit because they can't have an elite infinitely growing pet that new users can only stare in awe at. For them most part I don't think any reasonable player would quit because of keeping the cap. If someone would, speak up, though I will necessarily think you unreasonable :).

Again if you really think we're going to lose 1 veteran for every 5 new ones that join, I'm just gonna chuckle. Unless there's an argument for how a phantom cap encourages new players?

In case you've forgotten I'll also restate my point that having a cap encourages users to train multiple pets which means multiple opponent loots, if they sell of their extras, newer users can buy them and be more competitive. That's a solid point for the cap.

Lastly only a fool doesn't recognize the need for an environment that actively encourages new players joining and being able to compete seriously. It makes no financial sense to think that some player is going to continue to spend hundreds of dollars of irl money when they are already secured in the top 10 pets and all they need to do is participate in a few evens to make the sP to continue boosting at a rate faster than any new user can possibly hope.

I don't see some users saying we want to train more as a compelling reason to get rid of the cap. It doesn't benefit the site as a whole in any way that I can see. And in the end that's what matters.

Mike have you ever thought:

1. You say people want a stat raise because then they can just use up all their boosters and exp on an already high pet.

1A) Many of the higher stat'd pet owners have multi pets they are training, so this point seems mute to me because they are still going to want to use boost on their other pets.

2)You say it is all about being on a top battlers list.

2A) Raise cap or not, those same people that are there now, will still be there. Most of those people there are ones that have been here 5, 6 7 yrs and spent a shit ton of time, energy and money (training the hard way) so not sure what the whole top battler list has to do with anything.

3)You say leaving a cap (that we were promised would be raised at some point mind you) will be more welcoming to new battlers.

3A) New battlers? really? should we just hand them a good pet on a silver platter? If the opponents stay capped this makes no sense either, as they will be starting at the same place we all started..... At the bottom with a baby pet. Maybe this right here is what is wrong with part of the real world. I have always been the type that would rather work hard for what I have then just to be handed it.

so basically not to have a phantom is just so all newer or people that don;t want to work as hard as others can be coddled? I mean it is already easier for people to train their pets, with the Quentin quests tossing out amulets, shinwa quests tossing out 2 items instead of just the one and not to mention the EXP is now catered to lower pets to grow quicker.

so let's just keep smacking the hand of those that want to raise the cap so lower stat'd pets can play catch up...pfft!!

You just said: InSaNe Your arguments for a cap are elitism and vanity.

and that is wrong on a site like this why?? People have HUGE wardrobes, a shit ton of stickers, plushies. beanbags and so on. Why is wanting to train you pet how you want any different then the other shit on the site? I will say it again. maybe the site should cap all those right? That way no one can look like they worked harder or put more time and money into those collections, because heaven forbid someone is out doing another because they chose to work harder, spend more energy and time into a collection.

1. Well considering that several people with boosters totaling to probably more than 5 capped pets worth of stats have said that they're waiting until after the cap raise to decide how to use them, I'd say it's relevant. I'm all for having an army of capped pets, by all means make some funky builds make them all even statted however you want :D. But someone else with just one capped pet will still be able to compete since they'll all be on even field. I've stated many times and ways that this is for the better.
2. Those same people feel cornered now like they have to boost level obscenely or else fall in ranks. There's a lot more competition at the top now than there was 4 eyars ago, without a doubt.
3. Yes new battlers. No we shouldn't hand them anything. They should have to work for it and I proposed a way to make it harder for a new player to cap and yet still be very competitive and constantly progressing. I don't see how anything I've said is akin to hand outs or the easy street, only competitive viability.

I don't see any of that as solid reasons against a stat cap, nor as a reason for a phantom capo.

Wardrobe, beanbags plushies trading cards all already have caps. Stickers don't so I guess all the users with 12 block bb's stuck to them have it good XD.