WAR - Suggestions and Feedback

[Scaredgirl]

Is an "imbalance" due to more experienced players really all that much of a problem?

14-0

How's doing again? 

Exactly ... Rasta, Jmizz and Perv don't exactly have reputation for being total newbies here.

You two are missing the point here. There is a big difference between active veterans and inactive veterans.

You think it's a coincidence that with 14-0 just happens to be the most active team in terms of preparation? And with its losses and penalties just happens to be the least active?

An active newbie is ten times better than an inactive veteran. If a veteran doesn't build decks, or even bother showing up to fight, what purpose does he/she serve, other than hurt the team by removing salvaging.

And it's these active veterans that smart Masters recruit. If a couple of teams have all the active veterans, event will be imbalanced for sure, just like what we are seeing now with .

[Jangoo]

Ok Scaredgirl. I couldn't tell simply because I wasn't around to properly follow the course of things lately but apparently a decent share of team-earths success is indeed due to incredible ability and activity.

However, would you see this as a problem that has to be dealt with by introducing rules and regulations?
Or isn't it really more a matter of "being a smart master" and recruiting the right=active players during the preparation for the war?

Moreover, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on those issues that are really not player/team related, like suggested for the case of "earths general supremacy in pvp-tourneys".
I mean, do you mean to say that team earth made a 14:0 just by being active and awesome, that Terroking landslided the masters-tourney simply because he is such a good player, that there is no immanent disadvantage to, e.g., a team-water that is not permitted to use Sogs ... ?

Again, I feel that while the team-building issue can or should hardly be regulated it is these deck/vault-issues that leave the most room for improvement in the tourney-design.

[Scaredgirl]

Moreover, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on those issues that are really not player/team related, like suggested for the case of "earths general supremacy in pvp-tourneys".
I mean, do you mean to say that team earth made a 14:0 just by being active and awesome, that Terroking landslided the masters-tourney simply because he is such a good player, that there is no immanent disadvantage to, e.g., a team-water that is not permitted to use Sogs ... ?

This event is not about Elements game balance. That is a totally different topic. We are not going to give some element a starting disadvantage simply because it is supposedly so much better than others.

Sure you can say that the elements who lost, did so because of game balance or because they were unlucky. But once the secret sections are made public, you will see that these elements also happened to be the ones where their decks were made by one person a couple of hours before the deadline.


Team building problem has already been addressed here: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,8230.msg101569#msg101569

[Jumbalumba]

I don't know what you can see, Sg, but I do believe Entropy uses offsite/offforum means of communication a lot so one cannot fully judge based on what is happening here. I'd also like to say that quantity does not equal quality. Anybody looking within the War section can see how many pretty much useless posts the members of Earth post here there and everywhere, congratulating each other to no end, and all round bragging for the whole world to see. Certainly, it is only 1-3 of the members but, if it is any reflection of their secret section, it serves as an example of the different styles people have in forums and demonstrates how quantity does not necessarily mean actual activity and definitely does not mean quality. (I should note that this is nothing personal against the members of Earth but just my opinion with the help of choosing the most prominent example, again, in my opinion.)

While activity certainly could contribute positively to results, that does not mean there are no inherent imbalances between the elements. Of course nobody wants to punish active or actually 'good' teams just because they are 'good' but the reality is, as you alluded to, Masters will learn from the past, choose 'good' teams and the final result of that is everyone being on equal footing as much as the rules and the game allow.

We are discussing whether there is a significant imbalance between the teams considering what the game and the rules allow. Rules such as allowing people to choose which teams they prefer and which teams they do not prefer only serve to emphasise imbalances by allowing active or 'good' people to stick together one way or another. They could of course choose to do the opposite but, let's face it, that's not going to happen is it?

Not attempting to address elemental imbalances just takes away the point of these events because, while certainly any team has a chance to win, the chances are not inherently equal. Such events would not be so much endeavours to find the best team of people but rather endeavours biased toward the best elements. If that is the intended purpose of these wars, to find the best element, then that is one point for such events taking place at longer intervals because 2 months time won't really change imbalances between elements.

[Demagog]

Anybody looking within the War section can see how many pretty much useless posts the members of Earth post here there and everywhere, congratulating each other to no end, and all round bragging for the whole world to see. Certainly, it is only 1-3 of the members but, if it is any reflection of their secret section, it serves as an example of the different styles people have in forums and demonstrates how quantity does not necessarily mean actual activity and definitely does not mean quality. (I should note that this is nothing personal against the members of Earth but just my opinion with the help of choosing the most prominent example, again, in my opinion.)

Common sense would reveal that if we congratulate each other outside of our secret section, we would have no need to do it inside. And perhaps it seems like we do it a lot only because we win a lot? We haven't lost yet, so there hasn't been any reason to say "aww man, tough luck/we chose poorly/how the hell did we lose?/yada yada yada."

Anyway, you'll just have to wait and see our section once it's revealed to know if your thoughts are correct.

PS: There is no hostility in my "tone."

[Wisemage]

Just thowing my 2 cents in here.  I think that team earth is winning from Skillful deck making, not from skillfull players.  While they can be the same thing, they dont HAVE to.

[Malduk]

I believe many strategies, decktesting, discussions among the players of the team etc, happen outside of secret deck preparation area. At least for teams that have members online at the same time.
started preparations BEFORE the rules were even finalized, and took their communication to private IRC channel. Some use Elements chat and do that in PMs etc. You cant talk about activity only through posts in deck prep area.

Now, this talk about is getting rather pointless. They are kicking butts in this war, and congrats on that, but if you're gonna draw conclusions about war from a team that "has it all" (experience, skill, activity, above average mono element, graboids doubling the shriekers card count in the vault etc), you wont draw many good conclusions.

Vault restrictions apply differently to different elements simply because - they have different set of cards in that same vault. If you have several different deck strategies that all revolve around same card, losing that card will lose you all those possible decks, possibly making other cards worthless in the process.
If you have element that is not well rounded in its mono form, every loss hits you so much harder. Losing 30 cards is not just losing 30 cards.

[Jangoo]

Now, this talk about is getting rather pointless. They are kicking butts in this war, and congrats on that, but if you're gonna draw conclusions about war from a team that "has it all" (experience, skill, activity, above average mono element, graboids doubling the shriekers card count in the vault etc), you wont draw many good conclusions.

One does not need to fall for "the war" as a monolithic event that stands way isolated from the game as such or several other events that have already taken place in the past. War doesn't change the rules of the micro-game just because some funky macro-aspects like the vault have been introduced or because a "terror-team" has been formed in this specific war.

Here is a comment from the Master of Earth on his landslide victory in "Battle of the opposing elements":

Face it, Earth has the protection monopoly, as well as the offensive monopoly. Now all we need is a spell to burrow things...

If this thread is neither about balancing the game in a macro-game-design (war-rules) nor about team-building, then what is left for this thread to be about?


Concerning team-building I do find Jumbalumbas remark that "more active" may also mean "more associated with each other", hence -> forming the same old powerful "pro-gamer-alliance" pretty interesting.
I am still not sure if this is something that can and should be regulated ...

[Malduk]

If this thread is neither about balancing the game in a macro-game-design (war-rules) nor about team-building, then what is left for this thread to be about?

Allow me be less eloquent than you: umm... wut??

Obviously the thread is about giving feedback about war. But there's SG saying how the sole reason for dominance are their members. Hands down, they all did a great job here, but the truth is, has it all, not just members. Giving feedback looking at 1 element out of 12 will get this thing nowhere. I *thought* I said the same thing in my last post, only in different words. How you concluded what you concluded is beyond me.

Lastly, I think its pretty obvious that same rules do not affect all elements in the same way. Instead of looking at a team that was never faced with loss of cards, how about looking at effects vault rules have at other elements? You know, those that actually experienced vault mechanics.

[Jangoo]

Well put Malduk ... sorry for being kinda dicky if I came across wrong.

Since I can hardly chip in on the "feedback"-part here I am left with making assumptions about how things came to pass the way they did while drawing on my general knowledge about the game.

I just have the impression, that "Not losing cards because one wins battles way above average" is just as big a part of vault mechanics as is "Losing 30 cards several times due to constant losses" ... both are most probably tied back to the initial vault-rules which certainly do influence the micro-game of single battles.
Imho, you cannot really think the spheres of micro/macro and win-side/lose-side apart from each other ...

Some other suggestions I made a bit earlier in this respect were: Not permitting shards and limiting upped cards the way it was done puts elements like entropy and water at a severe disadvantage. Now this would be a disadvantage rooting in micro-game mechanics like we all have known them way before the war ... the effect of having to discard a whole 30 cards after losing a battle is merely the last instance of the macro-game. (vault-mechanics)

You see what I mean? It doesn't really matter to consider, e.g.,  if losing a whole 30 cards is too heavy a penalty as long as the losing itself may be too heavily favoured by the vault building rules ... A team won't care if they only lose 20, 10 or 2 cards next time as long as their chances to even score a win are heavily crippled.

[PuppyChow]

Note about  :


Yes, we "have it all". Creature control, stalling, rushing, permanent control, and we are the only element with permanent protection.

That doesn't mean we can use it all in one deck. We, the members, have to predict what type of deck the opponent will use and run with it. Think they'll use a stall/CC deck? We run a immortal deck. Think they'll run a deck using permanent control? We'll run some enchant artifacts. However, if we were wrong, then we have dead cards or a dead deck.

Just because earth has everything doesn't mean you can fit everything into one deck. For unupped pulvys, we need to go a full earth/gravity duo, which we can do, but it then hinders our ability to rush. For stalling, we could run BBs and miracles, but we make ourselves vulnerable to huge rushes, since they can only stall for so long. We aren't unbeatable. We just make good deck choices.


That said,  is indeed one of the more powerful elements. However, instead of nerfing cards earth has, simply give the other elements more of them. Earth's strength is that it has a wide variety of strategies, which some other elements don't have and could do well to get.

[Malduk]

Puppy, no one is even trying to say that is winning just because it is . After all, players are who make and play the decks. When I say you "have it all", I'm not just talking about variety of cards, but also playing/deckbuilding/predicting skills of players, activity, etc etc.
Of course, every element is beatable, I myself spectated few of matches that were decided by coin toss (luckily for you guys, in your favor).

On the topic of nerfing some elements or buffing others, I dont think such steps should be done. Trying to make up rules that would "balance unbalanced game" is... well, impossible.