UPDATED: Hit Range Adjustment

Update:

Hi again, PIMDasaurs, PIMDizards, and PIMDoises!

This change made it so that you can hit only across your own bucket plus one more bucket.
So let's refer to that as your hit range being reduced from 3 buckets to 2 buckets.

As of this morning, May 23, there are two additional changes:

1. If you're hitting someone who hasn't logged in for 48 hours or more, the range expands back to 3 buckets.

2. If you hit someone, you can be hit from 3 buckets again for a while*.

Why the extra changes?

The bucket change did more damage to players who wanted to fight each other from 2 buckets away than we planned for. With these new changes, active players who want to PVP and SFW aggressively can still fight as they could before, and players who aren't active can still be potential farms just as they were before.

Also, these additional changes will reduce the frequency of an exploit that we see starting to crop up in recent months.


me trying to explain why we didn't do this in the first place

*Note that we will be tuning what "a while" is, but it should be enough to retaliate. Let us know your experiences!

-Strange

Original Post

Hi PIMDfriends!

It's your old pal Strange, back with two spicy meatballs for you.

Since there's a PVP event on, it's a good time to talk about PVP.

First off, I want to address a long-standing community myth: The 5x rule.

No such rule?

We often get people writing in asking why someone who's 6x their size can hit them. This is because the 5x rule is not a real rule - it's an estimate that's been invented by the PIMD community.

What really controls hit ranges is something we sometimes call "matchmaking buckets". I'll give you the math first and then explain what it means.

To estimate your bucket, sum all your combined stats from tutors, rs, dormies, and misc. Divide by 2. Keep dividing by 2 until you get less than 1. The number of times you had to divide by 2 is your bucket.

Me IRL

You could also convert the number to binary and count the digits. Your calculator probably can do this. The number of digits is the bucket.

(To prevent people from edging the top of their buckets, this is not an exact calculation. But it's close and should illustrate the point, as well as totally vanquish the 5x rule myth.)

Finally, we smush all the really low level buckets into one so that we don't have tiny bucket slices for new players - otherwise they'd find it hard to meet friends. If you're reading this post you're well above the smushed bottom bucket.

Buckets of Fun

You can hit people in:
- the bucket you're in
- the bucket below you
- the bucket above you

This has always been true. However, until today, you were also allowed to hit people in the buckets 2 above you and 2 below you. Today that has changed.

This change also affects the Meet People list, which shows only those in eligible buckets.

Why did we do this?

Now that misc has been rebalanced and is not trivializing combat, matchmaking is much more important. Based on the data we have gathered since the misc rebalance, we have decided that there's not really any reason for someone 8+ times your size to be continually wailing on you. Hence, we have narrowed the hit ranges by 1 bucket. You can now only hit your own bucket, 1 bucket up or 1 bucket down.

One more thing!

One thing to note about this is that bucket you lost below you is much smaller than the bucket that got cut off above you! Wait.. that sounds, wrong, doesn't it? But it's true. Check out this image that I totally made with data and didn't just draw with markers that were sitting on my desk:

Every bucket is twice as big as the previous one. (The paper wasn't big enough to go any further, so the bucket +2 above you goes way off.)

Suppose your bucket is 100 wide. That means the bucket below you is 50 wide. The bucket below that is 25 wide. The bucket above you is 200 wide, and the bucket above that is 400 wide. Hence, the bucket you lost above you is (400/25)=16 times as big as the bucket you lost below you.

For most people this is only a concern when it comes to griefing. Anyone two buckets below you gives insignificant rewards when you hit them, while anyone two buckets above you will be incredibly hard to beat unless your build hard counters them. If you were at the very bottom of your bucket and your opponent was at the very top of theirs, you can see why this would be a problem.

We believe this is a positive change for the overall health of the game, as we think that PVP against "Worthy opponents" makes better gameplay. But your experience is different than ours.

Spicy or not? As with all PVP changes, please provide your feedback here.

 

Re: Hit Range Adjustment (and how hit ranges work!)

It still matters for you because PvP isn't always your choice in PIMD. Now people who are a jillion times stronger than you will get DTW when trying to attack you!