I understand the value of commitment to the game, but having the energy system replenish hourly and max out at 400 kind of makes it rather difficult to compete for those of us who don't have the time to get on six times a day, making it that much harder for us to win competitions and lead to that situation from the last system that the same bands always won every season. Perhaps we could either increase the maximum energy for the group, if not remove the limit outright, or lower the frequency of energy refreshes?

Maybe make a system where it will equal out the playing field.

In the beginning you would choose whether you want more practice times at shorter intervals (a), or less practice times and longer intervals (b).

(a) would be set up for users who can be more active on the site. They would have to practice more to use their energy, say for example every 1 hour it will max out at 100 points - 24 hours = max 2400 points a day

(b) would be set up for users who can't be as active (those who work full time etc).. They have a longer time to practice, but their refill rate and max does not get filled as fast.. so they would max out at 600 points every 6 hours. 2400 points a day

There should be some kind of incentive/bonus for choosing either way, say (a) would give you more $ where (b) would give you more influence.. or something like that.

This way everyone could participate to their own schedule and people with "no lives" wouldn't always get the upper hand.

Perhaps every 8 or 10 hours. I lost over 500 points from sleeping.

I do want there to be an incentive to play more often. That is how most multiplayer games like this work. While I understand that not everyone can play the same amount of time, that is the entire reason behind the changes to the division system.

Players that put a lot of time and effort into the game will be put into Division I to duke it out. The players in the middle and those that are just starting out will be playing against players with similar schedules and commitment levels. Granted, some might get unlucky, like that last person in Division I who maybe should've been in Division II, but that will come with this type of design.

I should have known you had a plan for all of this. I like this plan for divisions based on skill level.

Agreed

Eh, It fixes the problem, I just wish there wasn't a cap on the energy, 400 is kinda low. Maybe 800?
What happens if someone goes on Vacation, or has to work an extra long day, or gets called in or something like that, they lose SO MUCH energy.

Priorities.

what? Priorities?

How about a "rest" option for a group for like 8 hours so while a player is sleeping, the energy isn't going to waste. And perhaps this option could be used once every 24 hours or so.

I agree with stargazer... there should be a que that could be set up once your a certain level and then you could increase the maximum number qued for skill points...

You can increase your maximum energy amount through a Director Skill.

honestly Alex, adding an extra "5" for a level will not do anything. If the bonus was like 50 or something it would be more inticing. When I saw it I was like "YEAH! First things when I get skill points" Then I saw how low of a gain it actually was and decided it was not worth it at all, which in reality, 5 extra energy is nothing.

5 extra energy may seem small at first. But when you add up all that energy over the course of the season, it is actually quite a large increase in the possible number of caption points you can gain.

For example, if you typically spend full energy twice per day, you would gain 10 energy if you had 1 rank of that Director Skill learned. There are 42 days per season, so that's about 420 extra energy from just 1 rank. That's essentially one additional day of rehearsal.

But even after that, the discussion in this thread was really centering on people wanting a higher overall cap, or for it to replenish more slowly so they didn't miss out. Basically, as I said earlier, I want there to be an incentive to log on and I want to reward players that choose to make that extra effort. If a player simply doesn't want to play that often, or can't physically play that often due to other constraints, that's fine, because they can play in a lower division with people that are closer to their level.

With the large number of players, it may be necessary to add additional divisions in the future to further break down the players based on their commitment and skill level.

The latter part of your response makes sense. But as I've said, PERSONALLY, 420 extra for an entire season isn't that big of an incentive for me.

Hey, its 420 more to use on promotions to save more for rehearsals.

I understand what you are saying about this and how people can't get on all the time but i lose a lot of points too from sleeping we all do personally I think the energy is fine right now.

Is the cap really supposed to be 400? Because mine is capped at 370.

Are you running a campaign? If so is it set at 30 energy? I bet it is.

While I sleep, i usually put either the money or the influence campaigns to max so that way i'm earning while i sleep.