My great Conspiracy theory

[DanthemanBoone]

So here's the thing.......

Several people have observed the lack of top end trophy animals in the game.
Combined with a perceived increase in low scoring males and non scoring females.
Particularly those who have been playing long enough to remember better days.
Are they really imagining it or is there a basis of truth in their observations.

Lets consider the effect this phenomenon would have if it were true.

Less top end trophy animals, more juvenile males, more non scoring females.
If say there was a reduction of 20% in the numbers of top scoring trophy class
animals and a 10% increase in juvenile males and the same in female numbers
that would materially effect the amount of $Gms that was being distributed among players.
That would flow on into extra $Ems being purchased y those same players to maintain their game incomes.
Smaller CCs returns on more smaller animals would most assuredly have the effect of
E.W. saving in Gratuitus costs. Basically giveaways.

Since the game went Free to play some may have wondered how the loss of income
would have been compensated for under the new monetary regime.
\Since May of 2019 costs have steadily been increasing in all areas of the economy and
to believe it has not effected Classics bottom line would be Naïve to say the least.

Personally I believe it is about time undisclosed game cost increases and stragedies
for dealing with them were made more transparent, maybe even to the point where
some form of surcharge was introduced on an annual Basis.

As a result of this animal numbers in the upper echelon could be returned to more
enjoyable levels and spikers and non scoring female numbers reduced.
After all, we get what we pay for and we aint been paying much for the most
outstanding hunting game available.

Do I really believe this situation exists. Damned if I know for sure, but it makes a whole lot more sense than believing the situation surrounding the deterioration in higher scoring animals has come about purely by accident.

[HooCairs]

Interesting thought. Never thought of it that way.

My recent experience has been a drop in average scores for several animals. When I do the same tournaments repeatedly, I see animals by the hundreds and believe to have a basis for my assumptions. Also I see how the results in competitions have changed over time.

For example, if I do a competition with 10 attempts, I will encounter* on average (males and females)...
- 160 arctic foxes
- 300 black bears
- 300 sambar deer
- 40 eurasian lynx
* Encounter meaning I either hear them, see them or find tracks. I will of course only follow or call in the promising ones.

I have always played comps until I felt it was way too much work to finally find a good score. I have seen many declines, for example
- Back in the day, I would find a 400-490kg track from a brown bear in every hunt. It was just a matter of running around until found, we didn't even have baiting then. Go look for one of those now, even with baiting.
- Black bears would usually have 3, 4, 5 scoring over 23 in a comp. Now it might be 1.
- Arctic foxes I have given up recently. I would usually find 3-4 over 7kg in a comp, then suddenly I had trouble finding 1, constantly.
- Roosevelt elk are a joke these days. I rather hunt the real goats.

On the bright side
- Rocky mountain elk still have many large racks in their herds. They are still worth it.
- Mule deer seem to have recovered after they served nothing for many years.
- Eurasian lynx and puma are unchanged. They are too scarce already to reduce the average scores.

EW might say to this "we have changed nothing". Ths might be even true, that they are not aware of changes. They could run reports to see the average of all shot animals of a certain species, and draw some curves if they were interested in helping us investigate. But then, if your conspiracy theory is true, they would either play dead, or deny. The days where we would have a good discussion directly with them are long gone. Who of EW is even left? We only interact with outsourced resources, who are wonderful people, but too scarce to be deeply engaged.

To speak to the money, yes they would save on the gm$ payouts, but on the other hand run the risk of losing players. Less players, less real income. A constant monitoring and adjusting would be needed, and I wonder if they have time for that these days. If they really reduced scores, it might have other reasons.

Let's go to Stockholm, pay them a few beers, and let them talk.

[DanthemanBoone]

Hoo.
is there any way to get into the past Seasons leader boards and compare the bests to see if there is any marked declines in the top scoring animals. I have looked but cant find any link to previous season records. This would be a way to confirm any downward trend.

[HooCairs]

There might be ways for those who understand how to script a website to fetch that data. For the others such as you and me, I see no way.

But you can look at competitions and compare what has been found.

[HooCairs]

My theory is, if they wanted to earn more money, they should greatly increase the middle tier, and give us loads of the big racks for elk, whitetails, etc., but keep the number of trophy bulls/bucks/etc. the same or only sligthly higher.

What I mean, while you might see now in an average whitetail distribution (just guess work and a limited number)...
182
175
172
155
140
125 (crap starts here)
115
115
115
115
115
115
115
115
115
105
100
85

...How about
182
180
175
172
172
170
155
150
145
142
140
125
115
115
115
105
100
85

[HooCairs]

And then elk, the mighty elk, loved by many. Put 1-2 large racks into every herd! They don't all need to score +350, only now and then. But I still feel like I am hunting elk like in the golden days.

[trulight]

Personally I've had to change from my old playstyle after coming back after a while. The way I used to hunt is no longer as effective. Mainly because I feel the populations in general are a lot more sparse, as well as reduction of big animals.

[HooCairs]

Personally I've had to change from my old playstyle after coming back after a while. The way I used to hunt is no longer as effective. Mainly because I feel the populations in general are a lot more sparse, as well as reduction of big animals.

Would be interesting to hear how you played before, and how you play now.

The number of animals seems to have been decreased every time a new animal was added to the same reserve. The only reserve that could easily take more animals without any changes to the exiting numbers, is Redfeather Falls. I would love to see a bird there, such as Turkey or a North American grouse type (copy and paste wood grouse to what ever type is closest ).

[Deconstructed]

In general, I am not finding too much of a problem finding high scoring animals (with a few exceptions - primarily older species). This could be due to long breaks from the game. I often find for the first month or two it's pretty easy and then seems to slow down.

Always feel better with some numbers to look at so I have gone through my personal bests, listed them by year attained, included score and score % compared to top scoring animal on this season's LB and my total number of kills for that species.

I have colour coded each entry as follows:

Red - Something def wrong here considering % score compared to top of LB and # of kills I should have been able to improve this by now.
Green - Considering % score I wouldn't necessarily expect to improve this.
Blue - % score could be better but due to not a lot of kills this could be fine.

2014

Roosevelt Elk 403.147 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 91.24%) (1246 kills)
Coyote 58.868 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 98.9%) (1011 kills)
Moose 227.607 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 97.34%) (1389 kills)
Roe Deer 241.123 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 91.81%) (1342 kills)
Red Fox 31.123 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 91.86%) (757 kills)
Canada Goose 8704.425 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 96.74%) (1097 kills)
Cottontail Rabbit 1832 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 91.62%) (194 kills)
Alpine Ibex 269.578 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 94.45%) (253 kills)

2016

Mule Deer 241.929 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 98.91%) (1062 Kills)
Feral Hog (Piebald) 1194.214 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 99.33%) (809 kills)
Brown Bear 28.582 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 98.77%) (1042 kills)
Polar Bear 30.945 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 99.81%) (125 kills)
Rocky Mountain Elk 413.423 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 94.37%) (552 kills)

2017

Northern Pintail 1264.317 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 90.44%) (291 kills)
Gadwall 1354.269 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 96.75%) (200 kills)

2018

Pheasant 28.947 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 98.29%) (563 kills)
Grey Wolf 16.851 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 99.37%) (312 kills)

2019

Reindeer 639.399 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 91.18%) (473 kills)
Red Kangaroo 88.819 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 97.78%) (280 kills)
Snowshoe Hare 1848 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 92.63%) (195 kills)
Willow Ptarmigan 789 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 97.76%) (153 kills)
Rusa Deer 192.873 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 97.69%) (217 kills)

2021

Blacktail Deer 195.0393 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 99.16%) (905 kills)
Wild Boar 1198.7631 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 95.3%) (512 kills)
Euro Rabbit 2496.288 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 99.88%) (589 kills)
Sitka Deer 102.6774 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 90.93%) (310 kills)
American Black Duck 1562.3958 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 97.71%) (270 kills)
Rock Ptarmigan 632.4663 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 98.89%) (126 kills)
White-tailed Ptarmigan 458.5023 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 95.71%) (76 kills)
Grizzly Bear 27.2952 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 99.65%) (148 kills)
Bighorn Sheep 186.4568 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 97.33%) (202 kills)
Feral Goat 372.8211 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 96.48%) (394 kills)
Water Buffalo 279.5252 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 97.35%) (155 kills)
Bobcat 9.4085 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 97.67%) (144 kills)
Sambar Deer 243.8977 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 92.98%) (685 kills)
Banteng 165.8811 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 96.18%) (81 kills)
Magpie Goose 3871.5455 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 96.8%) (714 kills)
Eurasian Lynx 10.9875 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 94.94%) (56 kills)
Snow Goose 4276.099 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 95.04%) (419 kills)
Puma 15.9216 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 99.19%) (78 kills)
Axis Deer 202.874 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 96.17%) (99 kills)

2022

Whitetail Deer 196.8895 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 95.73%) (1371 kills)
Mallard 1597.8458 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 99.95%) (708 kills)
Fallow Deer 159.0875 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 83.13%) (37 kills)

2023

Turkey 68.7553 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 96.74%) (589 kills)
Black Bear 23.2933 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 97.19%) (1081 kills)
Red Deer 277.3502 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 98.78%) (1153 kills)
Arctic Fox 16.4575 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 93.43%) (297 kills)
Bison 126.2567 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 98.49%) (267 kills)
Dall Sheep 205.0002 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 98.65%) (251 kills)
Wood Grouse 6452.6631 (Score % compared to top score on current LB = 89.68%) (40 kills)

The Reindeer we can probably let go as I do believe there was an issue with they were being scored for years and that has now been corrected. Even though I have marked them as 'not expected to improve' I will say other older species such as Brown Bear and Coyote are much harder to find very high scores than in the past. This is especially true when you look at how easily I have attained near max % scores with species I have relatively a low number of kills with.

[Deconstructed]

Personally I've had to change from my old playstyle after coming back after a while. The way I used to hunt is no longer as effective. Mainly because I feel the populations in general are a lot more sparse, as well as reduction of big animals.

Would be interesting to hear how you played before, and how you play now.

The number of animals seems to have been decreased every time a new animal was added to the same reserve. The only reserve that could easily take more animals without any changes to the exiting numbers, is Redfeather Falls. I would love to see a bird there, such as Turkey or a North American grouse type (copy and paste wood grouse to what ever type is closest ).

Put Puma there too.