olesien [2187764] —
Original article
It has now been over six months since the medical revamp was implemented. Have the changes been good for Torn? I reached out to the community to find out!
On the 23rd of February 2021, our Lord and savior Chedburn released an update that would fundamentally change the revive and medical system. Six months on, the Torn City attacking scene is now markedly different from what it was before this update.
In this article, we're going to look at how those changes have bedded in half a year on from their introduction. We'll look at revive prices, warring statistics, and hear the opinion of faction leaders to see what effects the new medical system has had on warring in Torn City. We'll begin with a short recap of the major changes made back in February.
THE CHANGES
The Revive System
Previously a reviver (defined by someone who had completed the medical city job) could use energy to instantly take someone out of the hospital. These revivers would then generally be paid for their energy usage, typically 1 xanax or $1 million. This figure remained the same regardless of whether the revived spent the maximum of 75 energy or the minimum of 25 energy to perform it. There were no restrictions to how many revives a certain person could receive within any time period.
Today, after the medical update, the energy usage for a revive remains the same, but success is no longer guaranteed. The more revives a person has received within a certain time frame, the more likely the next one will fail - success rates recover after 24 hours. The success rate of a revive is also based on something called revive skill, which is a measurement of how good the reviver is based on the total revives they've performed during their lifetime.
These two factors combine to determine how successful any one revive will be. If a reviver fails to revive someone, they may try again, until their own energy supply is exhausted. The motive for these changes was to reduce the reliance of factions on revives, as infinite revives meant huge revive bills for those involved in conflict. The idea was that by reducing the influence of revives on warring, more wars would take place.
The Medical System
Previously, the base medical cooldown was at 24 hours - this value can be increased with certain faction perks. What this means is that every medical item you use would add time to your cooldown, and once you reached the 24 hour limit, you would then have to wait for your cooldown to... cool down. The values used ranged from 15 mins for a Small First Aid Kit to 6 hours for a Neumune Tablet.
The medical update saw the base cooldown reduced to 6 hours, with all medical items having their cooldown reduced and their effectiveness boosted. With revives made harder to acquire, the motive behind this change was to put the onus on medical items as the primary method of getting fighters out of the hospital. With medical items being much cheaper than revives, the hope was that factions would be left with lower bills come the end of a war, thus ensuring more wars. For more details on both of the major medical changes, see the newspaper article announcement.
LINK
THE EFFECTS
Revive Pricing
Pre-changes, the price for a revive was around $1m or 1 Xanax, and sometimes lower for individual or bulk revives. These figures also applied to contracts, where an entire faction is paid or promised payment to revive another faction. Big wars could sometimes cost one faction upwards of $10 billion for 10,000 revives, so this was obviously something that needed to be changed.
After the revamp, the price for individual revives has remained the same, and in some cases gone down depending on the reviver's individual skill. There are several reasons for this, the main one being that freevives are available in abundance. With new revivers coming into the industry every day, these players need a way of boosting their revive skill quickly. Freevives achieve that, and thus the cost of individual revives has been affected.
However, the price of a contracted revive, the type most relevant to warring, has actually gone up - by quite a lot. The reason for this is that most revive contract factions now also require that their revive failures are paid for, because these still cost the reviver energy when performed. Whereas individual freevivers are happy to absorb the cost of failures as a necessary personal expense, contracted revive factions are understandably less keen to do so.
The Financials
Let's look at an example to explore the figures involved. Let's say that our patient has received 12 revives in the last 24 hours, and this has resulted in our reviver having a 50% revive change. This means that on average, our reviver in this situation will fail 50% of the time.
The default price for a contracted revive from the UHC faction is $1m for a successful revive, and $600k for a failure. If you have one player with a 50% revive chance, they will either cost you $1m or $1.6m to revive, on average. If you have ten players in this situation, then the bill for reviving them should also work out at between $10m and $16m to revive them. A hundred players? You can see where I'm going with this.
These figures only get worse as a war goes on, as your army's revive chances become lower and lower the more times they've been in the hospital. Whereas pre-change revives cost a flat $1m or a Xanax throughout the duration of a war, they now cost $1m at the beginning, but much, much more after that - sometimes far more if it is a high skill only contract.
The Failures
Despite the figures we've quoted, the total bill for a war likely never costs more than a few hundred million daily. But this still does lead one to think, maybe the rate of failure is too much? The whole point was to make revives cheaper after all. So if revives are now more expensive for warring factions, isn't the solution simply to reduce the failure rate? Or, if not, perhaps the energy cost for failure should be reduced.
Both of these are potential solutions. But before we consider what we need to do, we should know what the failure rates are. There is a common belief among revivers that the rate of failure for revives is higher than advertised. I asked my co-leader, Pyrit, to gather some data on this from UHC. According to his figures, the average chance of attempted revives has been 83.942352%, while the global success rate has been 84.07911203237418%.
What this tells us is that the success rate might actually be higher than it should be, not lower. Be aware that this very much falls within the margin of error, however, and the gap therefore has little real meaning. At the very least it can be concluded that the real success chance is at least almost the exact same as the success chance stated for the reviver when before the revive is attempted. Ideally, these two numbers should be identical, but they aren't far off.
Nonetheless, revive failure rates are still quite high across the board. It is not uncommon for there to be more failed revives than successful ones in a contract. One option to partially solve this is to provide a small energy refund (say 10 energy) for a failed revive. But even if this refund were imposed, the total cost of contracted revives would still be greater than it used to be, as the revivers would likely still charge for their lost 15 energy.
Revive Totals
Another statistic we must look at is the total number of global revives every month. If the goal of Torn was to reduce its reliance on revives, then we should hope to witness an overall drop in the number of revives being performed.
As you can see, this isn't the case at all. Huge spikes like those in January were, of course, possible before the changes were made, but once the medical revamp was released, we still saw a larger than expected increase in the number of revives being performed.
This trend was almost certainly due to the huge number of revives being done for free by revivers who are attempting to increase their revive skill. The number of revives has now fallen as more and more low-skill revivers have reached a level they are happy with. You could, therefore, say that it is still too early to say whether the number of genuine revives has increased or decreased.
Warring Levels
The whole point of the revive and medical changes was to increase the feasibility of warring in Torn, not just for big factions but medium and small ones too. The financial burden of a conflict had many knock-on effects in Torn City, as with many sides unwilling to war, this meant that activities such as faction extortion and protection were able to flourish.
So has this update made the angry population of Torn more eager to war? It is of course too early to tell (yes we are looking at you ranked warring), but here is the data so far with regards to Territorial Warring.
December was incredibly calm, likely due to Christmas town, but activity picked up in January, which saw a huge rise in warring. February, the month of the medical revamp, saw most wars in the last 7 months. After this, the number of wars seems to fluctuate, rather than fall into a consistent pattern. May and June are usually low on wars - nothing has changed here - and the same goes for July.
You could say that this proves that the changes haven't had much of an effect, but without the data for previous years' being available, we aren't able to confirm this. What we can do is look at the City Hall graphs for attacking, drug use, and users to see if attacking overall has increased.
Pictured: Three-year Attacking Results graph.
Pictured: Three-year Drug Use graph.
Pictured: Three-year Users graph.
Attacking did increase notably after the medical changes were brought in, but they have now fallen once more. One suspects that players were simply keen to try out the new system, hence the short rise in attacks post-changes. However, since the totals for Xanax use and Users Per Day have also grown year on year, we can safely assume that at least some of these extra attacks can be explained by the increase in Torn's population too.
It's also important to note that a large chunk of the wars we've analysed are fake, meaning they were created by two friendly factions to help with chains and other tasks. We (UHC) can back this up because we have been watching every new war started in Torn through the YATA bot. To our disappointment, almost all of the wars we detected were not real wars, just allied factions attacking for more respect. The few real wars we found were particularly one-sided as well.
PUBLIC OPINION
Statistics can tell you some things, but it's also important to hear what the players themselves think of the changes. Whereas the hard numbers can tell us how successful the goals of the developers were, the feelings of the players can tell us whether they're heading in the right direction. I don't think anyone disagrees that more wars would be a good thing, and if revive bills were preventing that, those bills needed to be cut - this would allow more wars than before to take place, resulting in revive profits potentially going up.
But are the developers on the right track? To make sure we platformed only the most informed opinions, I thought we should speak to those at the very top. I asked 20 faction leaders what their opinions were of the updates. Here are my questions, and the faction leaders' responses:
Do you think a change to reviving was needed?
The vast majority of faction leaders agreed that a change to the medical and revive system was indeed needed. There were a few who disagreed, of course, but they were in the minority. I believe Xanty, the leader of PT, summed it up best:
“I have a double answer for this, yes and no, yes because now it makes the game different in some war situations bringing new challenges so in that subject it’s positive, no because most factions had their squads build based on activity and this revive changes nerfed that activity a good chunk.”
The revive faction leaders I asked were a lot more split on the decision. Some, such as Leokes and Shoshana believed that there was no need for a change. Others, such as -Yeti and Natty_Boh, (along with myself) believed that something was needed, but they weren't sure what.
Do you think that they overdid the nerf, or was it the right amount (or even too little)?
On reflection, this question has been worded in quite a biased fashion, as the changes have been described as a nerf, which implies they could have only a negative result. Nevertheless, the answers still varied in response to this query, with half feeling it had been overdone, some people feeling that the scale of the changes was necessary but should be tweaked, and a few abstaining, feeling it was too early to tell.
“I think they overdid it and killed a play style supposedly for ranked war but there is no ranked war. If it’s for it then bring it out with it. I have friends who love the revive style of play and I personally preferred the old style if I’m honest.” - Mysteria
“I think the scale was fine. I would be open to seeing and considering other approaches. But in general, for a broad question, the scale was fine.” - MightyGoober
“For now I think it’s ok because I hadn’t enough war experience with it to say it was too much.” - Xanty
Have the changes to reviving positively or negatively impacted warring?
Once more, many respondents stated that it was too early to tell, but many of those who did give their opinion felt that the warring scene had been negatively impacted. Mightygoober was a notable exception, as he feels that the changes have been “So far positive”.
Some of those who were unhappy with the changes mentioned the fact that revive contracts are much smaller now as a reason they had failed. Smaller revive contracts could be said to be a goal of the developers, since their plan was to reduce the reliance on revivers overall. Because of this, you could argue that revive leaders were always going to be against such a change, as it means they will receive lower profits if the number of overall wars didn't increase as hoped.
The reduced price of revive contracts coupled with the increase in the cost of revives due to failures indicates that the opposite of what the developers intended has occurred. Revive contracts are now lower because wars are much smaller now. Every revive faction leader, including myself, believes this to be negative consequence of the changes.
Others, such as Ali_Looya, root, and Nightsfury complained that the changes were negative for a different reason. They felt that the warring scene had become less interesting now because factions with larger stats are now almost guaranteed a victory over their lower-statted rivals, whereas previously, such obstacles could be overcome with high activity and clever tactics.
Lilypop, co-leader of Bloodbath & Beyond, agreed with this assessment.
"The changes really don't help the little guys if they are getting f**ked by bigger HoF like SA, NS, or the other big ones. This whole revamp was to balance things. But so far it hasn't been viewed like that. But when I said yes I said it because the point is counterintuitive. Like I also find that it does work on wars, but if it is an even war. The current changes aren't balanced for all of Torn players, imo.”
Lilypop added that this change also affected revivers too much for her liking, although this was somewhat inevitable. She feels that revivers may not wish to take up this playstyle anymore with such a huge chance of failure present upon so many revives. She notes that some revivers don't charge for failures, whereas others do, and that this allows those needing revives to play the market.
However, as we've already discovered, the price of individual revives isn't really as important as the price of contracted revives. Individual revive prices have, as Lilypop suggests, become under pressure from freevives. The opposite is true of contracted revives, which have increased in cost when failures are factored in.
What about meds? Are they in a good state or should they be made more or less powerful?
This question was far less disputed. Most of those I spoke to agreed that while the changes to medical items weren't bad, a higher cooldown could only do good. One notable exception was Andyman, who didn’t have a problem with the existing 6/9h cooldown. He feels that cooldown management is much more interesting now, as it inspires action and "requires strategy when hitting above your weight class", adding that you can no longer "rely on blowing a bunch of stacked energy and then going AFK."
Titan, on the other hand, believes we should double the existing medical cooldown limit. He says this would allow players to use far more medical items in a shorter period of time, which in turn could lead to more wars and fewer revives being needed. Interestingly, many revive leaders were reluctant to answer this question. The best I could squeeze out of most was that they desired a slightly increase to medical cooldown, but most were fine with the changes to medical items overall.
How have the changes impacted your factions and incomes?
This is where things get sticky. While we have to respect the opinions of every revive leader, the fact that all of them stated that their earnings had gone down massively must be considered when we take in their comments. That doesn't mean that all revive leaders are selfish and only care about profits, but it does mean that money will always be a motivating factor for those in charge of the purse strings.
Without the increase in wars needed to mitigate the drop in revive contract prices, it was reported that membership counts were down among smaller revive factions who struggled to pay the bills. Larger outfits, such as Torn Medical, were not affected nearly as much. However, this may not be the case for long, as even TM's income has decreased by a substantial amount. A decrease in revive faction profits was expected, so a decrease in revive faction numbers was also inevitable.
To get around this fall in revenue, most revive factions have implemented a one of two pricing system. The first system is the one we mentioned earlier, whereby revive factions charge one price for a successful revive, and another for a failure. The failures cost roughly half a successful revive, and this results in the situation we mentioned earlier where overall revive bills are now higher in return for fewer successful revives.
The other method is a static cost for both successful and failed revives. This works up to a point since most revive factions by default will stop at any revives that have a lower than 50% success chance. However, if the revivers were to go lower than 50%, a static cost would be disastrous. To counter this, some revive factions will charge more money for failed revives when the original chance of success is lower than 50%.
MOVING FORWARD
The reviving community's response to the medical changes was passionately negative, to put it lightly. However, since then, our research has found that the vast majority of medical faction leaders believe that there are many useful aspects of the current system, and those that they dislike could still work with some tweaking.
Many revivers feel the medical cooldown needs to be higher. The original 6 hours / 9 hours with faction perks is seen as a step in the right direction, but most feel it is just not quite enough. Many feel that increasing it by 3 hours to 9 hours / 12 hours would help massively, as this will not only make chains much more doable but also allow for more hits to be made. It is however important to note that a few, such as Andyman, believed that the current cooldown was fine as it is.
Another popular suggestion regarding reviving was that the recovery rate of your revive chance should be brought down to 12 hours from the current 24 hours, which in theory should mean double the revives. Such a change, it is argued, would bring down failure rates, meaning revivers could stop at a much higher chance (say 70%). Proxima is a fan of this suggestion.
“Yes a 12hr regen coupled with maybe 9-12 med cooldown was a suggestion I made myself. I think there is a problem with wars especially in the HOF becoming unbalanced toward teams with a small number of beasts as opposed to a squad with depth. a bit more opportunity to get out of hospital would maybe alleviate this, maybe not, but I think would be good to investigate.”
Natty_Boh also feels that a lower recovery rate duration would also help those who end up trapped in the hospital due to the attentions of determined foes. We do not have any figures on how many people are enduring longer than usual stays in the hospital due to the medical update, but if we can reduce this idle time, it would only be a positive step towards retaining more players.
“Yes, while it would definitely increase the numbers of revives in a contract, I think it would help the warring factions as well. It would help keep members engaged if it's faster for them to get back in the game. I think one of the most unpopular aspects of the changes is ending up "trapped" in hosp unable to participate in something fun.“ - Natty_Boh
An alternative proposal suggests that there could simply be a revive cooldown similar to the one that exists for medical items. This would see an individual revive adding 1 hour of cooldown, with up 12 hours or so permitted. Such a change would entirely eliminate the cost of failure, which is a major cost in contracts currently. But in turn, this would also remove the aspect of revive skill entirely, and such a prospect seems unlikely to be entertained now that so much work has gone into its implementation. MagicDust feels a small change would be enough.
“Yeah I would tweak how reviving works, or the penalty for fails. So the fails don't cost as much.”
One suggestion brought forward by Andyman (and backed by others such as Proxima) was that reviving within one's own faction should provide a massive boost to your revive chances. This change could be harmful to revive factions, as they would need fewer contracts to compete in wars. Or, it could lead to an interesting situation whereby factions have to give over a large chunk of their membership allocation to dedicated healers, whether permanently or temporarily.
It was also suggested that the revive system should be more transparent, with the current revive chance made visible to the recipient. Titan, along with Heasleys4hemp and Isca argued that it was more important for us to reduce the decline curve for failed revives, with values of 3% to 6% allowing for more revives per 24 hours. Titan feels it currently drops off too quickly, and that fewer fails are the answer to the question of how to improve the medical update.
CONCLUSION
I don't think anyone doubts that the medical changes we were given were needed for some time. However, while many aspects of this update were positive, both the numbers and opinions of Torn citizens show that improvements can still be made.
The fact that contracted revives are more expensive but smaller in scope is a huge red mark against the medical update. While the addition of the revive skill and failure elements make for interesting individual gameplay, the current values used in this system have made revive factions less profitable while doing nothing to increase the warring activity in Torn City.
On the other hand, the increased importance of medical items was commonly
seen as a good thing. If a few small changes were made to their cooldown limits, there appears to be little else that needs to be tweaked on this front. Of course, everyone will disagree on the exact numbers involved, but I don't see many calling for a complete overhaul of the medical system, simply a little change here and there.
One area of major concern, however, is the fact activity is no longer as important as it was. Many faction leaders have commented that it is now harder for lower-ranked factions to compete against larger foes, mostly due to the reduction in the importance of activity brought about by the medical changes. I imagine this is the exact opposite of what the medical update intended to achieve, and it would be no surprise to me if amendments were made on this front one day.
The question is when, if ever, will changes be made to the medical system? I wouldn't expect them this year, that is for sure. Ranked warring is rumoured to be out soontm, but before then, Elimination will prove an excellent test of the new medical system, as will Halloween. These periods of heightened activity will expose whether the issues raised are indeed issues, or if things are working fine, and they just haven't been put through their paces yet.
Time will tell.
In this article, we're going to look at how those changes have bedded in half a year on from their introduction. We'll look at revive prices, warring statistics, and hear the opinion of faction leaders to see what effects the new medical system has had on warring in Torn City. We'll begin with a short recap of the major changes made back in February.
THE CHANGES
The Revive System
Previously a reviver (defined by someone who had completed the medical city job) could use energy to instantly take someone out of the hospital. These revivers would then generally be paid for their energy usage, typically 1 xanax or $1 million. This figure remained the same regardless of whether the revived spent the maximum of 75 energy or the minimum of 25 energy to perform it. There were no restrictions to how many revives a certain person could receive within any time period.
Today, after the medical update, the energy usage for a revive remains the same, but success is no longer guaranteed. The more revives a person has received within a certain time frame, the more likely the next one will fail - success rates recover after 24 hours. The success rate of a revive is also based on something called revive skill, which is a measurement of how good the reviver is based on the total revives they've performed during their lifetime.
These two factors combine to determine how successful any one revive will be. If a reviver fails to revive someone, they may try again, until their own energy supply is exhausted. The motive for these changes was to reduce the reliance of factions on revives, as infinite revives meant huge revive bills for those involved in conflict. The idea was that by reducing the influence of revives on warring, more wars would take place.
The Medical System
Previously, the base medical cooldown was at 24 hours - this value can be increased with certain faction perks. What this means is that every medical item you use would add time to your cooldown, and once you reached the 24 hour limit, you would then have to wait for your cooldown to... cool down. The values used ranged from 15 mins for a Small First Aid Kit to 6 hours for a Neumune Tablet.
The medical update saw the base cooldown reduced to 6 hours, with all medical items having their cooldown reduced and their effectiveness boosted. With revives made harder to acquire, the motive behind this change was to put the onus on medical items as the primary method of getting fighters out of the hospital. With medical items being much cheaper than revives, the hope was that factions would be left with lower bills come the end of a war, thus ensuring more wars. For more details on both of the major medical changes, see the newspaper article announcement.
LINK
THE EFFECTS
Revive Pricing
Pre-changes, the price for a revive was around $1m or 1 Xanax, and sometimes lower for individual or bulk revives. These figures also applied to contracts, where an entire faction is paid or promised payment to revive another faction. Big wars could sometimes cost one faction upwards of $10 billion for 10,000 revives, so this was obviously something that needed to be changed.
After the revamp, the price for individual revives has remained the same, and in some cases gone down depending on the reviver's individual skill. There are several reasons for this, the main one being that freevives are available in abundance. With new revivers coming into the industry every day, these players need a way of boosting their revive skill quickly. Freevives achieve that, and thus the cost of individual revives has been affected.
However, the price of a contracted revive, the type most relevant to warring, has actually gone up - by quite a lot. The reason for this is that most revive contract factions now also require that their revive failures are paid for, because these still cost the reviver energy when performed. Whereas individual freevivers are happy to absorb the cost of failures as a necessary personal expense, contracted revive factions are understandably less keen to do so.
The Financials
Let's look at an example to explore the figures involved. Let's say that our patient has received 12 revives in the last 24 hours, and this has resulted in our reviver having a 50% revive change. This means that on average, our reviver in this situation will fail 50% of the time.
The default price for a contracted revive from the UHC faction is $1m for a successful revive, and $600k for a failure. If you have one player with a 50% revive chance, they will either cost you $1m or $1.6m to revive, on average. If you have ten players in this situation, then the bill for reviving them should also work out at between $10m and $16m to revive them. A hundred players? You can see where I'm going with this.
These figures only get worse as a war goes on, as your army's revive chances become lower and lower the more times they've been in the hospital. Whereas pre-change revives cost a flat $1m or a Xanax throughout the duration of a war, they now cost $1m at the beginning, but much, much more after that - sometimes far more if it is a high skill only contract.
The Failures
Despite the figures we've quoted, the total bill for a war likely never costs more than a few hundred million daily. But this still does lead one to think, maybe the rate of failure is too much? The whole point was to make revives cheaper after all. So if revives are now more expensive for warring factions, isn't the solution simply to reduce the failure rate? Or, if not, perhaps the energy cost for failure should be reduced.
Both of these are potential solutions. But before we consider what we need to do, we should know what the failure rates are. There is a common belief among revivers that the rate of failure for revives is higher than advertised. I asked my co-leader, Pyrit, to gather some data on this from UHC. According to his figures, the average chance of attempted revives has been 83.942352%, while the global success rate has been 84.07911203237418%.
What this tells us is that the success rate might actually be higher than it should be, not lower. Be aware that this very much falls within the margin of error, however, and the gap therefore has little real meaning. At the very least it can be concluded that the real success chance is at least almost the exact same as the success chance stated for the reviver when before the revive is attempted. Ideally, these two numbers should be identical, but they aren't far off.
Nonetheless, revive failure rates are still quite high across the board. It is not uncommon for there to be more failed revives than successful ones in a contract. One option to partially solve this is to provide a small energy refund (say 10 energy) for a failed revive. But even if this refund were imposed, the total cost of contracted revives would still be greater than it used to be, as the revivers would likely still charge for their lost 15 energy.
Revive Totals
Another statistic we must look at is the total number of global revives every month. If the goal of Torn was to reduce its reliance on revives, then we should hope to witness an overall drop in the number of revives being performed.
As you can see, this isn't the case at all. Huge spikes like those in January were, of course, possible before the changes were made, but once the medical revamp was released, we still saw a larger than expected increase in the number of revives being performed.
This trend was almost certainly due to the huge number of revives being done for free by revivers who are attempting to increase their revive skill. The number of revives has now fallen as more and more low-skill revivers have reached a level they are happy with. You could, therefore, say that it is still too early to say whether the number of genuine revives has increased or decreased.
Warring Levels
The whole point of the revive and medical changes was to increase the feasibility of warring in Torn, not just for big factions but medium and small ones too. The financial burden of a conflict had many knock-on effects in Torn City, as with many sides unwilling to war, this meant that activities such as faction extortion and protection were able to flourish.
So has this update made the angry population of Torn more eager to war? It is of course too early to tell (yes we are looking at you ranked warring), but here is the data so far with regards to Territorial Warring.
December was incredibly calm, likely due to Christmas town, but activity picked up in January, which saw a huge rise in warring. February, the month of the medical revamp, saw most wars in the last 7 months. After this, the number of wars seems to fluctuate, rather than fall into a consistent pattern. May and June are usually low on wars - nothing has changed here - and the same goes for July.
You could say that this proves that the changes haven't had much of an effect, but without the data for previous years' being available, we aren't able to confirm this. What we can do is look at the City Hall graphs for attacking, drug use, and users to see if attacking overall has increased.
Pictured: Three-year Attacking Results graph.
Pictured: Three-year Drug Use graph.
Pictured: Three-year Users graph.
Attacking did increase notably after the medical changes were brought in, but they have now fallen once more. One suspects that players were simply keen to try out the new system, hence the short rise in attacks post-changes. However, since the totals for Xanax use and Users Per Day have also grown year on year, we can safely assume that at least some of these extra attacks can be explained by the increase in Torn's population too.
It's also important to note that a large chunk of the wars we've analysed are fake, meaning they were created by two friendly factions to help with chains and other tasks. We (UHC) can back this up because we have been watching every new war started in Torn through the YATA bot. To our disappointment, almost all of the wars we detected were not real wars, just allied factions attacking for more respect. The few real wars we found were particularly one-sided as well.
PUBLIC OPINION
Statistics can tell you some things, but it's also important to hear what the players themselves think of the changes. Whereas the hard numbers can tell us how successful the goals of the developers were, the feelings of the players can tell us whether they're heading in the right direction. I don't think anyone disagrees that more wars would be a good thing, and if revive bills were preventing that, those bills needed to be cut - this would allow more wars than before to take place, resulting in revive profits potentially going up.
But are the developers on the right track? To make sure we platformed only the most informed opinions, I thought we should speak to those at the very top. I asked 20 faction leaders what their opinions were of the updates. Here are my questions, and the faction leaders' responses:
Do you think a change to reviving was needed?
The vast majority of faction leaders agreed that a change to the medical and revive system was indeed needed. There were a few who disagreed, of course, but they were in the minority. I believe Xanty, the leader of PT, summed it up best:
“I have a double answer for this, yes and no, yes because now it makes the game different in some war situations bringing new challenges so in that subject it’s positive, no because most factions had their squads build based on activity and this revive changes nerfed that activity a good chunk.”
The revive faction leaders I asked were a lot more split on the decision. Some, such as Leokes and Shoshana believed that there was no need for a change. Others, such as -Yeti and Natty_Boh, (along with myself) believed that something was needed, but they weren't sure what.
Do you think that they overdid the nerf, or was it the right amount (or even too little)?
On reflection, this question has been worded in quite a biased fashion, as the changes have been described as a nerf, which implies they could have only a negative result. Nevertheless, the answers still varied in response to this query, with half feeling it had been overdone, some people feeling that the scale of the changes was necessary but should be tweaked, and a few abstaining, feeling it was too early to tell.
“I think they overdid it and killed a play style supposedly for ranked war but there is no ranked war. If it’s for it then bring it out with it. I have friends who love the revive style of play and I personally preferred the old style if I’m honest.” - Mysteria
“I think the scale was fine. I would be open to seeing and considering other approaches. But in general, for a broad question, the scale was fine.” - MightyGoober
“For now I think it’s ok because I hadn’t enough war experience with it to say it was too much.” - Xanty
Have the changes to reviving positively or negatively impacted warring?
Once more, many respondents stated that it was too early to tell, but many of those who did give their opinion felt that the warring scene had been negatively impacted. Mightygoober was a notable exception, as he feels that the changes have been “So far positive”.
Some of those who were unhappy with the changes mentioned the fact that revive contracts are much smaller now as a reason they had failed. Smaller revive contracts could be said to be a goal of the developers, since their plan was to reduce the reliance on revivers overall. Because of this, you could argue that revive leaders were always going to be against such a change, as it means they will receive lower profits if the number of overall wars didn't increase as hoped.
The reduced price of revive contracts coupled with the increase in the cost of revives due to failures indicates that the opposite of what the developers intended has occurred. Revive contracts are now lower because wars are much smaller now. Every revive faction leader, including myself, believes this to be negative consequence of the changes.
Others, such as Ali_Looya, root, and Nightsfury complained that the changes were negative for a different reason. They felt that the warring scene had become less interesting now because factions with larger stats are now almost guaranteed a victory over their lower-statted rivals, whereas previously, such obstacles could be overcome with high activity and clever tactics.
Lilypop, co-leader of Bloodbath & Beyond, agreed with this assessment.
"The changes really don't help the little guys if they are getting f**ked by bigger HoF like SA, NS, or the other big ones. This whole revamp was to balance things. But so far it hasn't been viewed like that. But when I said yes I said it because the point is counterintuitive. Like I also find that it does work on wars, but if it is an even war. The current changes aren't balanced for all of Torn players, imo.”
Lilypop added that this change also affected revivers too much for her liking, although this was somewhat inevitable. She feels that revivers may not wish to take up this playstyle anymore with such a huge chance of failure present upon so many revives. She notes that some revivers don't charge for failures, whereas others do, and that this allows those needing revives to play the market.
However, as we've already discovered, the price of individual revives isn't really as important as the price of contracted revives. Individual revive prices have, as Lilypop suggests, become under pressure from freevives. The opposite is true of contracted revives, which have increased in cost when failures are factored in.
What about meds? Are they in a good state or should they be made more or less powerful?
This question was far less disputed. Most of those I spoke to agreed that while the changes to medical items weren't bad, a higher cooldown could only do good. One notable exception was Andyman, who didn’t have a problem with the existing 6/9h cooldown. He feels that cooldown management is much more interesting now, as it inspires action and "requires strategy when hitting above your weight class", adding that you can no longer "rely on blowing a bunch of stacked energy and then going AFK."
Titan, on the other hand, believes we should double the existing medical cooldown limit. He says this would allow players to use far more medical items in a shorter period of time, which in turn could lead to more wars and fewer revives being needed. Interestingly, many revive leaders were reluctant to answer this question. The best I could squeeze out of most was that they desired a slightly increase to medical cooldown, but most were fine with the changes to medical items overall.
How have the changes impacted your factions and incomes?
This is where things get sticky. While we have to respect the opinions of every revive leader, the fact that all of them stated that their earnings had gone down massively must be considered when we take in their comments. That doesn't mean that all revive leaders are selfish and only care about profits, but it does mean that money will always be a motivating factor for those in charge of the purse strings.
Without the increase in wars needed to mitigate the drop in revive contract prices, it was reported that membership counts were down among smaller revive factions who struggled to pay the bills. Larger outfits, such as Torn Medical, were not affected nearly as much. However, this may not be the case for long, as even TM's income has decreased by a substantial amount. A decrease in revive faction profits was expected, so a decrease in revive faction numbers was also inevitable.
To get around this fall in revenue, most revive factions have implemented a one of two pricing system. The first system is the one we mentioned earlier, whereby revive factions charge one price for a successful revive, and another for a failure. The failures cost roughly half a successful revive, and this results in the situation we mentioned earlier where overall revive bills are now higher in return for fewer successful revives.
The other method is a static cost for both successful and failed revives. This works up to a point since most revive factions by default will stop at any revives that have a lower than 50% success chance. However, if the revivers were to go lower than 50%, a static cost would be disastrous. To counter this, some revive factions will charge more money for failed revives when the original chance of success is lower than 50%.
MOVING FORWARD
The reviving community's response to the medical changes was passionately negative, to put it lightly. However, since then, our research has found that the vast majority of medical faction leaders believe that there are many useful aspects of the current system, and those that they dislike could still work with some tweaking.
Many revivers feel the medical cooldown needs to be higher. The original 6 hours / 9 hours with faction perks is seen as a step in the right direction, but most feel it is just not quite enough. Many feel that increasing it by 3 hours to 9 hours / 12 hours would help massively, as this will not only make chains much more doable but also allow for more hits to be made. It is however important to note that a few, such as Andyman, believed that the current cooldown was fine as it is.
Another popular suggestion regarding reviving was that the recovery rate of your revive chance should be brought down to 12 hours from the current 24 hours, which in theory should mean double the revives. Such a change, it is argued, would bring down failure rates, meaning revivers could stop at a much higher chance (say 70%). Proxima is a fan of this suggestion.
“Yes a 12hr regen coupled with maybe 9-12 med cooldown was a suggestion I made myself. I think there is a problem with wars especially in the HOF becoming unbalanced toward teams with a small number of beasts as opposed to a squad with depth. a bit more opportunity to get out of hospital would maybe alleviate this, maybe not, but I think would be good to investigate.”
Natty_Boh also feels that a lower recovery rate duration would also help those who end up trapped in the hospital due to the attentions of determined foes. We do not have any figures on how many people are enduring longer than usual stays in the hospital due to the medical update, but if we can reduce this idle time, it would only be a positive step towards retaining more players.
“Yes, while it would definitely increase the numbers of revives in a contract, I think it would help the warring factions as well. It would help keep members engaged if it's faster for them to get back in the game. I think one of the most unpopular aspects of the changes is ending up "trapped" in hosp unable to participate in something fun.“ - Natty_Boh
An alternative proposal suggests that there could simply be a revive cooldown similar to the one that exists for medical items. This would see an individual revive adding 1 hour of cooldown, with up 12 hours or so permitted. Such a change would entirely eliminate the cost of failure, which is a major cost in contracts currently. But in turn, this would also remove the aspect of revive skill entirely, and such a prospect seems unlikely to be entertained now that so much work has gone into its implementation. MagicDust feels a small change would be enough.
“Yeah I would tweak how reviving works, or the penalty for fails. So the fails don't cost as much.”
One suggestion brought forward by Andyman (and backed by others such as Proxima) was that reviving within one's own faction should provide a massive boost to your revive chances. This change could be harmful to revive factions, as they would need fewer contracts to compete in wars. Or, it could lead to an interesting situation whereby factions have to give over a large chunk of their membership allocation to dedicated healers, whether permanently or temporarily.
It was also suggested that the revive system should be more transparent, with the current revive chance made visible to the recipient. Titan, along with Heasleys4hemp and Isca argued that it was more important for us to reduce the decline curve for failed revives, with values of 3% to 6% allowing for more revives per 24 hours. Titan feels it currently drops off too quickly, and that fewer fails are the answer to the question of how to improve the medical update.
CONCLUSION
I don't think anyone doubts that the medical changes we were given were needed for some time. However, while many aspects of this update were positive, both the numbers and opinions of Torn citizens show that improvements can still be made.
The fact that contracted revives are more expensive but smaller in scope is a huge red mark against the medical update. While the addition of the revive skill and failure elements make for interesting individual gameplay, the current values used in this system have made revive factions less profitable while doing nothing to increase the warring activity in Torn City.
On the other hand, the increased importance of medical items was commonly
seen as a good thing. If a few small changes were made to their cooldown limits, there appears to be little else that needs to be tweaked on this front. Of course, everyone will disagree on the exact numbers involved, but I don't see many calling for a complete overhaul of the medical system, simply a little change here and there.
One area of major concern, however, is the fact activity is no longer as important as it was. Many faction leaders have commented that it is now harder for lower-ranked factions to compete against larger foes, mostly due to the reduction in the importance of activity brought about by the medical changes. I imagine this is the exact opposite of what the medical update intended to achieve, and it would be no surprise to me if amendments were made on this front one day.
The question is when, if ever, will changes be made to the medical system? I wouldn't expect them this year, that is for sure. Ranked warring is rumoured to be out soontm, but before then, Elimination will prove an excellent test of the new medical system, as will Halloween. These periods of heightened activity will expose whether the issues raised are indeed issues, or if things are working fine, and they just haven't been put through their paces yet.
Time will tell.
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