Its hard to say. Unless somehow you could decrease the amount of energy while making the actions worth more to almost bridge the gap? That could cause problems I guess too because if you miss a day you would really get behind.

If you increase the cap to 800 it would be only getting on twice a day then -- which I guess would help a lot of people. Since bringing it to the 2400 would be nonsense because you lose some of the strategy that you need to be active in playing to do well. But something needs to be done to stop all this complaining. haha

I think whatever is done will be alright -- I'll still keep playing.

I think the rate energy refills at (100 per hour) is just fine.

I would not be opposed to raising the cap to 700-800. Logging on twice a day is FAR more manageable than four or five times per day. Perhaps we should take an informal poll in the suggestions forum about raising the cap.

The other side of the coin though is raising the limit would make it much harder to fundraise without falling behind in the current season, since you could basically submit before you go to sleep, then wake up and not being maxed out in energy even without any fundraising. This would make it harder for groups that need to fundraise to keep moving up in FMA.

I agree with the concept that the more active players should be rewarded, but the system as it is right now literally has NO room for error. I mean, if you miss logging on ONE DAY in a five- to six-week stretch you have no chance to win. That's ruthlessly extreme.

The system already has options where it will automatically spend energy on fundraising or influence... how much coding would be required to allow the system to "automatically" rehearse for you? It could be very simple.

Here's my idea: a rehearsal drop-down menu that allows you to choose one option for the system to "Rehearse" when you aren't logged on.

For example, drum corps and marching band would give you seven options:
Fundamentals - Winds
Fundamentals - Percussion
Fundamentals - Color Guard
Show Rehearsal - Winds
Show Rehearsal - Percussion
Show Rehearsal - Color Guard
Show Rehearsal - Ensemble

Each of these would be coded to tie to just one (preferably balanced) rehearsal option. For example, "Show Rehearsal - Ensemble" would tie to "Music & Visual Rehearsal (115 energy)." Whichever one you select, the game would automatically rehearse for you while you were away as soon as your ensemble had enough energy.

Since it's only focusing on ONE option, your caption ratings could get very imbalanced. Thus, it would still be up to the player to come back and rehearse the other options to catch up. But at least the energy wouldn't be going to waste, and you could miss a weekend for a family trip or a funeral without having your entire season blown to pieces. As a penalty, since the game is spending your energy as fast as it accumulates, when you came back to the game and shut off the automatic rehearsal, you'd more or less be at zero energy and have to wait three or four hours for it to build back up for your manual rehearsals.

There's my rough idea. It might not work, it probably can be improved upon, but there it is. I think I will give this it's own thread in the Suggestions area.

I could be wrong about this, but it's my personal theory so far as of having played this game for a season and a half now that literally the most important thing by far is not submitting constantly, not necessarily to have totally balanced stats. Even if it was, you could just have a rotation of automatic rehearsals that would balance your stats out. I feel like there should be some kind of cap as to how much you are able to automatically rehearse. I agree that there should be a way to avoid what is basically a ruthless penalty for having to miss even a little bit of rehearsal but I don't think it should go too far the other way because this would almost eliminate the need to log on entirely.

In other words, since the season is 5 weeks and really all that matters is championships, even if balance were super important, I could just divide up the amount of time it would take to get even stats everywhere and switch my automatic rehearsal at just the appropriate time for everything to balance out. This would basically eliminate the need to go on at all.

Maybe next season we can experiment with a happy medium, start with small steps like increasing the cap to 600.

Got my support. I have no problem making changes in increments.

(How about 2400?) lol jk

I would like a raise to 600 points. Kind of eliminates the "I have tons of rehearsals and lost 200 points" thing. It doesn't need to be a radical change (the people who play more really should get the benefit) but I think a little breathing room would be nice for everyone.

Missing a day should still hurt, a corps or marching band wouldn't be able to get away with that. I like the middle ground here. A lot of good ideas in this thread.

"Missing a day should still hurt, a corps or marching band wouldn't be able to get away with that."

You think World Class DCI corps don't have free days during the summer? Not a lot, granted. But I still argue that missing ONE day in a five-to-six week stretch shouldn't destroy your entire season.

We didn't really have free days at MCDC. We had one day where it was a laundry free day, but after that one our laundry days became days where half of us did laundry while half of us were practicing.

A 600 buffer would be nice simply because I sometimes forget after 4 hours and I look at the time and see I'm 30 minutes late making miss out on some points lol. Should be interesting.

I mean in relation to other groups. Probably could have worded that better. If everyone had a built in off day in this game (or some similar system, would have to be mandatory I guess) things would obviously be different.

I've never actually found that one missed day would ruin my season. It certainly could cost a spot (I think I've lost a spot because of missing one day before, I'll have to check on that). But that's assuming the other person also played perfectly and missed no days.

I still agree on the 600 point thing.

I'm pretty sure missed days have cost me spots before. But I don't think it's been the difference between medaling and not or finals or not ever.

Forgeting to rehearse is like an "off day" for a real life corps. Sometimes, the focus level is just not there, so not much work gets done. Buffing up to 600 would help the people with less time a slightly easier playing era, so there would be a lot less "off days" so to speak. A real DCI corps wouldn't have too many of these kind of days.

I think it should be kept the same. Automatic rehearsals? Raise the cap or the points?
Why not just make everyone tie for first so that everyone will "win"

If you forget to show up to work.. they fire you. If you forget to show up to practice.. they cut you. If you show up late.. you don't that time back, you miss out. Show up late to a movie theater? They won't rewind it just for you. This is a game. You either play it or you don't. You miss it by 30 minutes.. well life will go on.

Yes, it does suck that you max out every 4 hours.. but you know what.. if someone really wants to set an alarm every 4 hours and lose sleep over it, then let them. Obviously they want to "win" more than you. Rules shouldn't be changed just because someone can't do as good as everyone else. That's part of competition.

Indeed. somethings might change, in the future, but I like where it is right now. It gives me a sense of responsibility when I log on, that I have to keep up, I miss some weekends because of Drum Corps camps, and yeah that will hurt my groups, especially in May, June and July, but if a real corps missed a rehearsal like mine did last weekend, then I would expect them to be.. well... not as good as if we did rehearse. So, if there are changes, cool, if not, also cool. Let's get this party going.

This whole thing sort of reminds me classes that grade on a curve.. it's BS. You either pass or you fail. You either win or you lose. There can only be one winner. Everyone else will lose. Get used to it. Sorry if that sounds harsh.. but this is a game, if you can't get through this game without complaining and wanting to change the rules to make you do better, how are you going to get through life?

I agree but at the same time we should be looking at giving people more incentive to want to play this game. While I am fully all about putting in the time doing submissions myself, I'm sure a lot of people determine that it isn't really worth it to play this game because to be competitive you have to put a lot of time in it.

That is exactly why there are THREE divisions.. I'm sure you can do fairly well in Div 2/3 and not be THAT active in the game.