Player Auction

[jmdt]

I don't really like the whole loyalist idea at all.  I like something akin to a sports draft where in random order each team picks a player each round based on resume.  We all know certain elements have advantages as is and allowing the best players to remove their name from consideration of weak ones will make another one-sided war.

Ultimately a balanced war will lead to more interest in the war.   If players are really interested, they won't care about the element they play.  With a well constructed vault, every element should have atleast a chance to win every match.

[Antagon]

i only read the first few postings, but thats pretty enough for me to have an opinion: crap.

first i like my team and my members right now, i would be glad to have them also in the next war event on my side (if im still the master of fire then), and i also want to win this event or come close to that.

but the key for victory is the deckbuilding, and you have more options with more cards, so im not willing to "pay" lots of cards for someone who "just" plays. i have great deckbuilders and players in my team, but one builder and the others with the amount of rare-cards, they need, an a bit of experience, and the right amount of online-time, are enough. more are better, but not needed that hard.

i also dont want "forced" players in my team, nor i want to bid for someone whos wish is - for example - entropy.

if im not the mof then, i also dont want to play for any other element, except of fire, and i may drop-out, if im not bought by my favorite (and THE strongest) element: fire

[MaxMilen]

Personally, I like how the "loyalist" idea has developed. To be precise, this is how I'm understanding the proposal as it stands. (If this isn't exactly what people are understanding the current idea to be, well, consider this how I'd like to see it.)

The Masters will, of course, be tied to their own element.

Other players will sign up as either "loyalist" or "mercenary." This will most likely include giving some facts about themselves as players, such as what rares they have available. Once these signups are complete, the Masters will hire players to be on their teams, by bidding cards from their Vault.

A "loyalist" will pick 3 elements. Only those elements can "hire" that loyalist.

A "mercenary", on the other hand, will be available to all the elements. They may or may not be able to apply a "preference" for or against a particular element(s). I've seen proposals for this to be either an all-out veto or an automatic boost/penalty to that element's bids. (Personally, I'm not sure which I'd prefer, though I'm leaning toward the latter; if this is done, I'd suggest allowing a maximum of one preference for and one preference against. The difference should be significant, but not as big as the difference between hiring a mercenary and hiring a loyalist. If a veto system is used instead, I'd say that a mercenary should not be able to veto more than 2 elements, and it may even be wise to only allow 1 veto.)

Hiring a "loyalist" will be more expensive than hiring a "mercenary". IMO, this difference should be significant, but not so large as to strongly discourage the hiring of loyalists.

We may want to assign some other advantage/disadvantage as far as hiring a mercenary versus a loyalist. Note that the following point is not something I've noticed in the proposals thus far.  As an example, though, to help offset the disadvantage from hiring a loyalist, perhaps a loyalist will be able to use some upgraded cards, though fewer than the Master, but mercenaries will not be allowed to use upgraded cards.

As far as numbers, as far as I can tell, that's still under discussion. I'm not going to assign specific numbers in this post, as I'm not sure what the economics are or how we want them to be.

[Malduk]

People are overthinking this with some vague "whats good for the war" conclusions.
War will be good if most players participating in it are happy about being part of it. If people are happy about that, they are more active and involved. If they are more active and involved, war is a success.

and have some amazing players in their team. is dominating, while is making decks two minutes before the deadline.
It is great to have balance between teams, but that is certainly not the most important factor.

Now, here's another fact: there are 3 types of players:
- those that want to fight for their element only (prime examples would be overthrown masters probably)
- those that DONT want to fight for certain elements or their masters
- those that dont care who they fight for (or in other, prettier words, they will be happy to fight for whoever)

All those are interested in the war and are most likely to apply.

If you make rules on assumptions like "limiting 1 of something is OBVIOUSLY better than 2 of something" for whatever reason, you are risking of having "balanced" teams whose players will cool off after a round or two.

After all, we dont have any money placed on winning the war, we're here to have fun with it. That is all.

[Svenningen]

Antagon, u can buy me for 0cards =)

[Scaredgirl]

Malduk.

You know what makes gamers happy? Winning.
You know what makes gamers sad? Losing.

Go ask team and team about their experiences in War. Which team do you think had more fun?

While playing your favorite element is cool, I think event balance is the most important thing here. If we have rules that would give us a better event balance, we should use those rules. One team being 12-0, and another 0-12 shouldn't happen in an balanced event.

And the reason why many people prefer a specific element is not necessarily because that element is cool, and they hate to play some other element. The reason is usually that people like to pick an element that has an advantage.

Not giving a veto right is not taking away fun, it's taking away that advantage.

[Malduk]

Veto is not gaining advantage. If someone wants to go for , , just because those elements proved the best in this war, vetoing 1-2 elements will not get them there.

And the reasons of extreme results are mostly in the fact this was the first war, and lots of elements screwed up in one way or another. If you're trying to say that or lost first because they had weaker players, thats not true. There's also the luck of drawing your opponents and devestating effect losing has on your future rounds. But thats the topic of another thread.

is about to face terrible round. If that was our first round, and we lost most of our matches, + the recent screw up and penalty, I dont think we'd do any better than or , regardless of team "balance".

If round 1 of war goes badly for whatever balanced side (and it will), who's more likely to stick around and try to do the best for the next rounds: guy who didnt want to really be there in the first place, or that other guy that was happy about his element choice?



To add something:
Vault mechanics is whats doing a big hit on players morale. It is easy to be happy in a war while your team is winning and you have the option to make decks you want to make.
But when each loss takes away big chunk of your vault, forcing you to make suicide decks, or just simply fortfeit a match, you're not that thrilled to play that match, or to try to make a deck for it.

Truth is, players balance is not what wins you matches. With severe penalties, luck is playing a huge factor there; whether it be guessing a strategy and fielding a good counter, or just not drawing your perfect counter in those two matches.
If there are more battles in the war, skill indeed would be deciding factor. With 12 matches for some elements, and not much more for others, vault plays the biggest factor there.

[Antagon]

While playing your favorite element is cool, I think event balance is the most important thing here. If we have rules that would give us a better event balance, we should use those rules. One team being 12-0, and another 0-12 shouldn't happen in an balanced event.

i think its the vault-issue. at "normal" pvp, you cant exspect anything, but with war-rules, you know, against elements like for example life, chance is good they dont have any permanent-destruction, so - for example - a splash of phase shields and maybe a few quintessences is nearly an auto-win, if they dont have a way to go around shields.
the exspectations are very different here, while against aether nearly anyone is planning going around phase-shields and dealing with lightnings against, its pretty much useless for aether to use - at least - phase shields.
on the other side now fire, nearly everyone has to exspect deflagrations, so the average permanent-usage against it is much lower, and noone tries a phase-shield lock.

against earth, we saw enchant artefacts, but they know, opponents exspect artefacts, so they maybe dont use earthquakes, etc.


its not the rock-paper-scissor anymore, its more like a coinflip, in some cases with advantages on one side, cause they have more or better "non-auto-losses" against their decks, exspecially fast decks are that (time demonstrated that), but - and again - against life you can exspect a fast deck => hm...

...maybe more random, BUT at least you would see the elements strenght working (like phase shield-immortals of aether, or antimattered lockdown from entropy), if you would have to build decks for your team before you know your opponents, then there wouldnt be any purifys, etc., but you would have to build 6 good decks that still could suit to your element-strenght, and have to take some cards used in specific cases, like momentums if opponent uses phase shields (now some elements lost with their (one) phase-shield deck, and you know, youre not running in it), or deflagrations, and not cards like purify against death or holy lights against death-darkness, reflective shield against fire-air, etc.

[xdude]

While playing your favorite element is cool, I think event balance is the most important thing here. If we have rules that would give us a better event balance, we should use those rules. One team being 12-0, and another 0-12 shouldn't happen in an balanced event.

i think its the vault-issue. at "normal" pvp, you cant exspect anything, but with war-rules, you know, against elements like for example life, chance is good they dont have any permanent-destruction, so - for example - a splash of phase shields and maybe a few quintessences is nearly an auto-win, if they dont have a way to go around shields.
the exspectations are very different here, while against aether nearly anyone is planning going around phase-shields and dealing with lightnings against, its pretty much useless for aether to use - at least - phase shields.
on the other side now fire, nearly everyone has to exspect deflagrations, so the average permanent-usage against it is much lower, and noone tries a phase-shield lock.

against earth, we saw enchant artefacts, but they know, opponents exspect artefacts, so they maybe dont use earthquakes, etc.


its not the rock-paper-scissor anymore, its more like a coinflip, in some cases with advantages on one side, cause they have more or better "non-auto-losses" against their decks, exspecially fast decks are that (time demonstrated that), but - and again - against life you can exspect a fast deck => hm...

...maybe more random, BUT at least you would see the elements strenght working (like phase shield-immortals of aether, or antimattered lockdown from entropy), if you would have to build decks for your team before you know your opponents, then there wouldnt be any purifys, etc., but you would have to build 6 good decks that still could suit to your element-strenght, and have to take some cards used in specific cases, like momentums if opponent uses phase shields (now some elements lost with their (one) phase-shield deck, and you know, youre not running in it), or deflagrations, and not cards like purify against death or holy lights against death-darkness, reflective shield against fire-air, etc.

Not really. For example, how many of the decks Light used were expected by you?

[jmdt]

Well I don't see anything wrong with this.  The point of the vault is to augment synergies with your element and strengthen weaknesses of your element has against other elements.  A vault allows an element such as life to use creature and permanent control they wouldn't other wise have.

The war is all about outguessing your opponent and constructing a deck that best counters theirs.  Sometimes you're right and sometimes you're wrong, but that is where the fun comes in.  In the first round I used a counter deck to death's strongest attackers, vulture and poison, but they thought I might use a conter poison deck with purify and freeze so the ran adrenalined spiders.  This is precisely what the war is about, strategy on both sides to counter the oppenent.

Honestly after balencing players, the next single improvement would be using the experience from this war to construct better vaults and better decks.  A poorly constructed vault can haunt an element throughout the war and makes it much tougher to compete.  Which with better players spread around more evenly, there would be more input on vault and deck construction.

I also like the idea by others that no element should play the same element twice in one round.  This makes strategies/counters much more difficult to set up for all parties.

While playing your favorite element is cool, I think event balance is the most important thing here. If we have rules that would give us a better event balance, we should use those rules. One team being 12-0, and another 0-12 shouldn't happen in an balanced event.

i think its the vault-issue. at "normal" pvp, you cant exspect anything, but with war-rules, you know, against elements like for example life, chance is good they dont have any permanent-destruction, so - for example - a splash of phase shields and maybe a few quintessences is nearly an auto-win, if they dont have a way to go around shields.
the exspectations are very different here, while against aether nearly anyone is planning going around phase-shields and dealing with lightnings against, its pretty much useless for aether to use - at least - phase shields.
on the other side now fire, nearly everyone has to exspect deflagrations, so the average permanent-usage against it is much lower, and noone tries a phase-shield lock.

against earth, we saw enchant artefacts, but they know, opponents exspect artefacts, so they maybe dont use earthquakes, etc.


its not the rock-paper-scissor anymore, its more like a coinflip, in some cases with advantages on one side, cause they have more or better "non-auto-losses" against their decks, exspecially fast decks are that (time demonstrated that), but - and again - against life you can exspect a fast deck => hm...

...maybe more random, BUT at least you would see the elements strenght working (like phase shield-immortals of aether, or antimattered lockdown from entropy), if you would have to build decks for your team before you know your opponents, then there wouldnt be any purifys, etc., but you would have to build 6 good decks that still could suit to your element-strenght, and have to take some cards used in specific cases, like momentums if opponent uses phase shields (now some elements lost with their (one) phase-shield deck, and you know, youre not running in it), or deflagrations, and not cards like purify against death or holy lights against death-darkness, reflective shield against fire-air, etc.

[Antagon]

Not really. For example, how many of the decks Light used were expected by you?

i would exspect miracles in pretty every deck. miracle is not counterable, as key card, a shield, for example, is.

I also like the idea by others that no element should play the same element twice in one round.  This makes strategies/counters much more difficult to set up for all parties.

i would also like that

[safko01]

With vetoing and loyalist this isn't really a slave market anymore.

I'm pretty sure Roman slaves didn't get any vetos and I know from my history that black slaves definitely had no choice where they were going.  Part of being a slave is either making the most of your situation OR being completely miserable and trying to escape or killing yourself.

It could be kind of cool if we tried to implement all of those scenarios.  For instance an unhappy slave could try dueling the people in his element to "escape" and go to another element.  He could also just kill himself and by that I mean quit the war.  Now of course we are starting to get way more complicated though and I'm not sure if that is the solution we are looking for.

I think the key here would be to vote on some rules go with the ones that the community likes best and then just stick with it so people can get experience with the rules and the experience will improve over time.