Suggestions

@peachblossoms

I don't think it's just about the triple dom, but just in general how it seems impossible to win against certain flights on regular basis.

And it doesn't necessarily need fixing, but a checkup.
I mean, it wouldn't be the first time is some code bit didn't work as was intented. >:3

You can't account for Dom culture, though, or organization issues. Wind practically prides itself on being too laid back for Dom; Fire recently suffered a bank catastrophe and probably won't be conquest pushing for a while. (I really hope they're recovering though. Tiny flights unite!)

You can't have equal share of something that's a competition. There will be those who want it more, are willing to work for it more, and there are those that it won't matter much to. If you have a large flight but a small proportion of Dom-centered members, Dom isn't enough of a group priority to win. Earth has a small population with a high proportion of exalters. We don't really have "fodder rescues" or exaltation as a bad thing. It's a mindset, a cultural difference, and a recent one at that. There shouldn't be additional handicaps to shackle the groups that value Dom so those that don't can have "equal shares" of the rewards.

@peachblossoms
Except there are a lot of flights that do care about dom, excluding Wind, and they literally can't afford dom because what it takes to beat Earth is a conquest push. Rewards are based on mechanics; changing the mechanic is not taking away rewards from anyone. It's redistributing the wealth. As I was saying, I'm totally fine with Earth having the most weeks out of the year. 1/4, heck maybe even 1/3, since their efforts are obviously greater than other flights. But not half the time, because there are other flights putting in very similar efforts if not the very same, who can't compete with Earth just because it's so SMALL.

I echo @UrbanPhantom here, especially in the last paragraph.

@peachblossoms Actually, fire is conquesting next week.

I think various people are worried the current dom system doesn't work anymore. Back when it was put in place, it didn't account for OoF support, for example. People do understand you are all working hard (or at least, I hope they do), but these concerns are there. Earth is seen as an unbeatable flight by many, partly because of your size. For them, it feels like that no matter how much they try, they would never stand a chance, especially when OoF support is added into this.

[quote name="Revius" date="2018-12-09 03:21:48" ] (...) If you look at the numbers for that week Earth /had/ more OOF support, I believe it was twice the numbers Light pulled out for that week, hence total dominance (also how everyone loves "the underdog" I guess). When it's a battle like that anyone can win, Earth just happended to get more support and at a ratio of aproxx 1:3 it's really no wonder how we pulled ahead and kept it. Light would have to exalt TRIPLE the lvls Earth had to keep a tie, so coupled with the OOF support yeah, Earth would pull ahead and keep it that way. (...) [/quote] Yeah, that was really interesting, as Earth got double the support, meant Light had to exalt 6 times that, or receive 500% more support to even the OOF. Between the amount of preparation of both flights, the amount of retired and kickstarter stuff, the amount of treasure and gems spent and dragons exalted, it was a boring and disheartening battle. As much as WvW or EvN or EvP. Each time more and more funds are required for preparation and conquests, and it is disheartening when flights actively pushing trying to not rely in those funds just can't pull out a win. Sadly, the Fatigue system just adds (is not known if linear or multiplicative) 10% fatigue per week, which means Earth has around 30% Fatigue at this point. But what is 30% vs 500%? Seeing the differences between Earth and Light that last time, and the constant migration of Dom-caring players to Earth (because has become popular assumption that "Earth has all the Dom") its just ...hard to assume that just dom fatigue will do anything in favor of competition. The flights have been primed and molded for 5 years now, and all the interests and movements within the FR community have settled in ways that obviously were not expected by the scripters. Not all flights have the same population, not all flights have the same ratio of active clans, nor the same ratio of permanently staying/playing ones, nor the same ratio of active exalters, nor active exalters interested in dom, nor the same ratio of heavy exalters, nor any heavy exalter can permanently exalt 5000+ levels each week. Flights are deeply different in dom culture, but that doesn't mean that dozens of players burning themselves and exalting thousands of levels each during a push must resign their aesthetics and community choices, and go to the primed flight because even after all their organized efforts their flight can't pull 1st against a flight that isn't even actively pushing. Again, just in case, is not about Earth going for QuaDom (you guys stay rocking and go for it!! you have all my eternal love <3). The quaDom just brought attention about Dom, and Dom is now to be discussed. The mechanics that were supposed to maintain Dom fair and fun for all flights are simply lazy and we (as players) are exploiting them, making Dom a boring activity, not fair anymore. Yet we can still dream about pushing against the system and survive and maybe even come victorious. I believe in any and all flights.

I'm up for Dom Fatigue being upped. That's fine. I don't think we'd see a great deal of difference in the top-3 rankings though - the flights with Dom-heavy culture will still top the board, and flights that don't have a large proportion of organised exalters will still sit around the bottom. However, it would prevent so-many-weeks-in-a-row top spot... probably by having it alternate between Earth and Light every week or two barring fest and dom battles. If people are happier with that, that's fine.

Battles are a different matter, and almost impossible for FR to fix. OOF support is often what swings the balance, given it's independent of flight size, and unless you're asking FR to somehow track who trained any given dragon irrespective of who exalted or hatched it and adjust the levels of those based on the dom balance of the leveller's flight... yeah. Not sanely possible.

However, small flights do have an inherent disadvantage in battles: They still have to fund a competitive raffle. Say Time Flight and Metal Flight have the same proportion of active exalters, but Metal Flight is 1/3 the size. Metal flight has 1/3 the number of people to put money and items into a raffle - and raffle quality can make a huge difference. Per person, Metal Flight has to spend far more to compete.

Tldr; imo nothing about the way dragons are counted for levels should (or even could) be counted, but upping Dom Fatigue is reasonable so long as people realise the same group of flights is still going to get dom, just fewer times in a row.

[quote name="peachblossoms" date="2018-12-09 04:00:17" ] You can't account for Dom culture, though, or organization issues. Wind practically prides itself on being too laid back for Dom; Fire recently suffered a bank catastrophe and probably won't be conquest pushing for a while. (I really hope they're recovering though. Tiny flights unite!) You can't have equal share of something that's a competition. There will be those who want it more, are willing to work for it more, and there are those that it won't matter much to. If you have a large flight but a small proportion of Dom-centered members, Dom isn't enough of a group priority to win. Earth has a small population with a high proportion of exalters. We don't really have "fodder rescues" or exaltation as a bad thing. It's a mindset, a cultural difference, and a recent one at that. There shouldn't be additional handicaps to shackle the groups that value Dom so those that don't can have "equal shares" of the rewards. [/quote] Basically this. I also 100% agree with upping dom fatigue!

I personally think it would be interesting to see by just how much Earth is winning by.

Like if there was some kind of meter with each flight symbol on it, and each symbol would move up and down depending on how close they are on overtaking each other.

Unless something like this exists already? Feel free to correct me lol.

Y'all Earth peeps are awesome though, although Light is my true home, Earth would always be my second choice ^.^

What is the most interesting for me is what is an actual number of active players in all flights. 1551 users are online now, but what is the rotation? How many players log in in two weeks on the site? 5k? 10k? 15k? This is the real question, how's FR doing.
It can be Arcane has only 2k active players while Light, e.g. 1,5k.

How to at least try to count it?

It used to be difficult to place a few times in a row simply because there were much more conquests before. E.g., last year there were 9 conquest battles, and 10 more pushes. Add fest weeks, and we get 22 out of 52 weeks that were non-conquested (and 74 profit pushes overall but I'm too lazy to check how they correspond to the non-conquest weeks). There were literally no 3 weeks without someone already conquesting.

This year we had 4 battles (one is Earth's), with 5th coming and one more impromptu battle with no oof (with Earth), again about 10 conquests and only 43 profit. Many of the latter were by Earth, too. There are much more opportunities for double and triple, so it's natural that they're taken.

I mean, we have a lot of exalters, more than other flights (in %). First week was fest, the week after no one was conquesting and we were exalting the additional remaining dragons from games, aff and such to make up for fatigue. Third week many were hyped to try for quad, people bought mercs and exalted a lot, and still no one was conquesting - Lightning was profit pushing, true, and made the average buy thread that eventually allowed them to flip quite a few times before we made a poll and it was officially decided to try for quad so people who were sending to Lightning or hoarding for the next week started exalting too. This week no one is conquesting again, and we have PB to compensate for the fatigue.

Basically, a flight with the highest ratio of exalters is going all out involving oof support to some degree every week for the whole month, and no one else is conquesting, why is it that surprising that we are managing to hold on? :D

Upd: as for "At this point I don't think consecutive dom weeks should be possible at all" - idk. I might be fine with tweaking the fatique (make it 20%?) but a flight should be able to place at least twice in a row. Imagine if you accidentaly get dom a week before the holiday push, that would be very upsetting. Or a week before the planned conquest? You'd have to actively stop exalting then which would make people lose money and create a general annoyance.