Suggestions

[quote name="Valoria" date="2018-12-10 17:03:42" ] But just because nobody has claimed the week doesn't mean it should automatically go to earth. The beastclans being in second whilst you're in first could be indicative of people feeling like there's no point in trying to beat you, but I really don't know. [/quote] if earth is the flight exalting the most amount of dragons, to the point where beastclans being above most other average flights because they aren't exalting... why is that bad?? it's only recently that earth beat plague's record for most first-place pushes (plague has 41, earth has 42, possibly soon to be 43). light still has more second and third place wins than earth does (50/69 vs. 35/46). light, in fact, has placed in the top three more than any other flight so far (a total of 158 times). and that's fair, because they were constantly pushing. light was (is?) notorious for doing near-constant profit pushes, stepping up in the weeks nobody else was pushing to stage profit pushes and generate income. if nobody's pushing, it's a free-for-all, and that includes giving earth space to grind out more income. plague, in fact, has only placed 79 times in contrast to light, and yet were still considered a powerhouse because of how often we conquested for first place and won. different powerhouses have different attitudes on how often to push and whether it's worth it to mass-exalt every week. and then consider again that since earth has a large population of dom people, most dom-heavy players constantly exalt, even on off-weeks, in order to generate income for battles/the bank. so not only is earth taking weeks that nobody cares about, not only is earth mimicking what light did previously, but they're also just... making money. so why is it bad that earth is doing the same? [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/gde/1001338](statistics from the dominance tracker.)[/url] --- EDIT: unrelated to what i was responding to above but i don't like this attitude of "the site is LETTING earth win and it's not fair!". like, no, earth puts in massive effort to win the conquests they do. don't devalue their work by tying all their wins solely to the ratio.

[quote name="SilverQuark" date="2018-12-10 15:51:45" ] You Earthlings, if Earth suddenly became bad at dom, would you leave just so you could have dom again? Maybe some of you would, but not all of you, I'd bet. And even those who would, wouldn't you be upset (to say the least) that you can no longer have dom AND the community you love, just because suddenly some other flight took over and/or suddenly everyone in Earth lost interest in exalting? Also, tell you what, here's an additional suggestion: free flight change for everyone if the dom mechanics are changed. Yep, so all of you who joined Earth for the dom can change if Earth somehow becomes bad at dom (I doubt it) after whatever change is applied. [/quote] double posting because... this happened already? plague lost its powerhouse status soon after LvP? and guess what? a lot of plaguelings went to earth, and a lot still stayed. plague tanked overnight when the majority of our dom team left (to earth, to vacation, before it became a powerhouse). i love our current team, i think they do a wonderful job and get way more flack than they deserve, but we're no longer a powerhouse by any means, and it's not rude to say that. plague no longer gets dom as often as we used to. the culture is not quite as dom-orientated as it once was. and people had to make a choice. did they want to stay and try to revitalize the dom? did they want to stay because the aesthetics and community mattered more? did they need to leave because plague wasn't what they remembered? and people made that decision, and plague's culture shifted with newbies coming into the fray, with new people from other flights, etc. except our "collapse" was due to players leaving due to burnout, not because the site decided it wasn't fair anymore that we worked hard to get dom and then took it away from us, which is what you're asking. so i imagine quite a bit more earthlings would be absolutely furious. so, y'know, this has already happened, and it's weird to scaremonger about it with earth when plague is sitting right there as an example of a powerhouse gone byways. and i'm sure ice went through something similar way back when it lost its powerhouse status.

Regarding “claiming” weeks, and how Earth members seem to handle other flight’s pushing:

The one impromptu contested conquest of 2018 occurred when Ice announced a conquest push but had nothing in place to give people in other flight’s an incentive to send them dragons. Earth ended up ranking higher on the leaderboard than Ice, THEN decided to conquest (which is 100% fair) and ultimately ended the week on top. (I think this plays into why we do not see flights attempting to conquest without oof support anymore).

I do not think the practice of “claiming” a week by announcing a conquest push and then expecting other flight’s to allow you to win first place should be something that is encouraged at all. I think people need to acknowledge that for many players leveling fodder is how they make money and those players need to be given an incentive to do something other than exalt the fodder they level, be it entering an oof raffle or sending to a public buy or any other program flight’s think of.

History has shown that when flights make it appealing to oof players to support them in a conquest push, they are successful. No conquesting flight has placed below a profit pushing flight in the last 2 years (perhaps longer, I have only looked at 2017-current stats). And it is impossible to know for certain if Earth would have achieved triple dom had another flight decided to conquest push last week or the week prior.

It’s illogical and in my opinion bordering on poor sportsmanship for people to think that other players should alter how they play the game if there is no personal benefit to changing ones gameplay. And if no flights are paying more than exalt payouts for leveled fodder (or offering a potential prize for sending them dragons) it’s not fair to expect Earth players to refrain from exalting the dragons they level.

And expecting the rules of the game to be altered because your opponent manages a high level of success doesn’t seem very fair or sportsmanslike to me either...

[quote name="Sopheroo" date="2018-12-10 19:15:30" ] [quote name="Valoria" date="2018-12-10 17:03:42" ] [quote name="Jussie" date="2018-12-10 16:44:08" ] Now, the part I don't see is that Earth will hold back when conquest battles are announced. Announce a battle, we sell our fodder for the week, or we hang onto it for next week. If no one wants it.. we take it. If beastclans are in second or third place, people really aren't exalting very much. Earth didn't win during Lightning vs Ice, we sent them fodder, we boarded their fodder. So just announce your plans? It's like playing soccer. You want the field? Say so. Profit pushing is another beast and doesn't count. [/quote] But just because nobody has claimed the week doesn't mean it should automatically go to earth. The beastclans being in second whilst you're in first could be indicative of people feeling like there's no point in trying to beat you, but I really don't know. [/quote] Or you know - exalt more than us if you want to be in front of us - even if we're not pushing. Don't expect us to not want to make money. If you're not exalting, if you already gave up, if you're sitting on your steak because "Earth is unbeatable", well, you only have yourself to blame. [/quote] I think you're missing the crucial concept that [i]nobody can get in front of you[/i]. That's the whole point we're making here; Something needs to change so that earth isn't so untouchable. As it is, it feels like the entirety of dom is dictated by earth's whims, and that's frustrating. Edit: and I'll add, I also get that what I'm saying is frustrating to pebbles. I'm not saying you don't work hard and none of this is your fault, but to every other flight it feels like you can steamroll over us whenever you want and that's really, really frustrating.

@Pyatiugolnik just pinging to say thank you; I appreciate the support. <3

Also everything you say is true. We still have a lot of heavy exalters in Plague, BUT - and this is an important BUT - a lot of our heavy hitters moved to Earth after LvP and PvE, and they are there in Earth exalting.

And while I don't speak for all of Plague, I know a number of murderpups who stayed in Plague through it all, or decided to come to Plague from other flights, who have a strong fighting spirit - many of us would rather have a hard-won victory than have it handed to us by penalizing a flight who also works hard in the interest of being "fair".

[quote name="Sopheroo" date="2018-12-10 20:27:48" ] [quote]I think you're missing the crucial concept that nobody can get in front of you[/quote] Ding-dong you're wrong. It's absolutely possible for flights to flip us (Lightning did so last week) or win against us. The thing is that people DON'T BOTHER TO DO SO. But, it's absolutely possible to beat us - using the ratio excuse is so 2016. [/quote] Lightning flipped you twice, with a public buy, in seven days. You had no public buy and 20% fatigue. Lightning only flipped you twice, with a public buy, for no more than two hours at a time. Do you not see the problem there? If you had no fatigue, lightning wouldn't have even flipped you once. If you can't see the issue then I don't know what to say. I understand it's really great and really exciting! But it's not so great for anyone else. But I'd really rather not bicker back and forth because we're obviously coming from two different perspectives and they're quite inconsolable with each other. edit: welp, I see you edited your post again. My point stands.

[quote]You Earthlings, if Earth suddenly became bad at dom, would you leave just so you could have dom again? Maybe some of you would, but not all of you, I'd bet. And even those who would, wouldn't you be upset (to say the least) that you can no longer have dom AND the community you love, just because suddenly some other flight took over and/or suddenly everyone in Earth lost interest in exalting?[/quote] It will be somewhat upsetting, yes, but I would still stay because I love my flight. I was there when it was an underdog hardly ever placing above 5th, I helped it become good and helping it stay good by doing as much as I can during pushes, I'll be here when all else crumbles :3 However, I would be annoyed much more if a flight is banned from placing in the competition simply because it has already placed too often. I find it more unfair than one flight dominating the board, as the latter is more or less natural state of the board to begin with, just the exact flight changes every couple of years. @Silverquark, you were just somewhat unlucky to join when Light started slowly losing the powerhouse status (I just looked at your joining date), before that Light was the same "stinky board-hogger" as we're now, just like "oh joy, Plague is placing first again..." before them. Wasn't there for "duh, Ice is throwing money around to get on top" phase, though XD As for the free change for those whose flight got worse due to the mechanics change... please. If someone doesn't have spare 1500g for a switch, high chances are, they're not even a heavy exalter actually involved in dom. It can be earned in a few days otherwise, especially if someone else is pushing.

@Sopheroo I've been saying the same thing re: the eventual new powerhouse, my money's on it being Water tbh.