I've been both the heir of a deadbeat and on the receiving end of turbo-boosted inheritors, and I can't disagree more with the prevailing opinions here. The current system is
not fair and I will do my best to address arguments to the contrary.
Argument 1: Forgiving / Casual / Friendly"Conquer Club is meant to be friendly for casual play and as such, is forgiving for emergencies and reasons beyond your control that you would miss turns" ~ blakebowling
"Why should they suffer? What happens if that player was actually missing turns for a real reason? Family emergency? Gone on vacation? Loss if internet? Not everyone does it as a strategy, as 99% of the time, the team/player suffers, as they miss spoils, they lose deployment, and lose half of their attacking force for 3 turns. " ~ TheForgivenOne
Why should the reason for missing several turns make any difference on how the spoils are handled? If my team mate can't get his act together for 48+ hours, then that's his problem (and mine). Entering in to a team I think it's completely fair to assume some risk -- that my team mate might deadbeat or, heck, actively sabotage the game in other ways. It should not become the problem of the rest of the players who are now possibly going to get blitzed when I cash in his spoils and leverage all his territorial advantages that I was previously unable to do. How is it remotely fair to punish the other teams that came by their advantages by grinding it out? Forgiving would be (something like) allowing the remaining team member(s) the option of forfeit without impacting their ranking and having the territories go back to neutral so that the rest of the players can carry on. I'd rather just have a game go void than suffer through the death throes of my victimized opponent(s) or myself.
Argument 2: Better than the alternative"People bitch about this all the time, but I think it's much better than the alternative which is give nothing to the teammates." ~ Army of GOD
This presents a false dichotomy. Why only one alternative? There are many more than 2 options available here. One of which I proposed in my previous response. For the sake of thoroughly debunking this argument's premise, I'll propose yet several more alternatives:
- The territories could be given the the other team member, but the spoils could be dropped (I see those as being the most disruptive aspect of the current rule).
- The remaining player could only be allowed to take a subset of the players territories (say, up to 3), and the remaining would go neutral.
- Or instead of going neutral they could go to the other members if there are enough to go around--which could be a very interesting piece of strategy.
- The remaining team member(s) could be granted any adjacent territories and could pick 1 of the spoils that the other team member left behind.
As you can see there are other options that are worth debating. And I posit that the status quo is decidely NOT the fairest of possible policies available to us. I'll concede that the technical overhead required to address this issue might be prohibitive. But while we're brainstorming in a hypothetical realm, I see no logical basis for the either/or argument--it's simply lazy.
Argument #3: No one's cheating."It is also the case that this is the first game these two people have played together on, so it is rather unlikely that they created this strategy just now for this one game." ~ Metsfanmax
Nothing could be further from the point. The individual instance reported by Gumby7524 on this thread is one of many instances where this rule has created negative externalities. That is to say, extracted a toll from other players in the game during a situation that otherwise should have only had a private (team-only) costs.
The actual point is that the policy in general is, at worst, egregiously under developed and simplistic or, at best, unfair. It's nigh impossible to prove that the feature is being abused at a large scale, but the fact remains that it most certainly could be abused. And even if it's not being abused, it's certainly not a universally fair way of handling the situation.
Argument #4: low priority issue / force of nature"At any rate, this mechanic has been discussed a number of times in this and other forums on CC, and it seems unlikely to change." ~ Metsfanmax
Oh ok, so let's stop the discussion because it's unlikely to change. Not to get too grandiose, but it's a good thing certain people kept up the discussion on, let's say, civil rights when it was unlikely to change. Come on. Perhaps, the issue should be put to a vote rather than hem and hawing around the forums with weak arguments that, frankly, don't hold much water.
If there are other threads that are more active on this topic, I would be glad to contribute there.
Final notesApologies if this message comes off as somewhat combative. Sorry. My goal is not to put anyone on the emotional defensive. The policy (or
mechanic, as Metsfanmax termed it) appears unfair to myself and many others as evidenced by our "bitching." I would love to brainstorm and debate ways to remedy this issue, but it seems first I need to convince people that there is an issue.
Thank you.
