War #10 - Planned Changes (Discussion)

[iancudorinmarian]

If we keep 6 players with 5 matches, please add a ruling regarding multiple subs per round. 1 sub is okay, but any further than that should be penalized imo. Certain teams last war really abused the fact that most generals allow full salvage anyway for fairness/not being considered an asshole.

So if a team has 2 players who are active but due to bad timezone can't meet their respective opponents, whose fault is it?

I'm not talking about 100 card penalties or anything like that. I'm just saying that the "Your opponent decides how much you salvage" should just be put at like 0 to 2 cards or something along that range.

And if you and your opponent are both active, you'll find a time even in opposite timezones. And if not, well, someone will get less salvage.

I don't think I'm asking for anything extreme here. I just don't want to see a player play like 3 matches every round with no penalty. Then what's the point of letting newbs play their matches? Just get them to work on the strategy and then let them be subbed every round by someone else.

What team abused that rule? Newbs are allowed to play the matches, no one subs them because they don't want the newbs to play, they sub them because they are inactive. Forcing a penalty because people go inactive is absurd, they are already pretty damaged by that, no need to hit them even harder. If you suspect foul play from the other team, just give them 0 salvage.

I'm not going to start pointing fingers, but fair enough.

[ARTHANASIOS]

what about this:
We are going to have 2 wars taking place at the same time. The 1st War is going to include the top 6 elements (a.k.a. elements which have done well at war in the past) while the 2nd War will include the weak elements (a.k.a. elements that have done bad at past wars). The top 3 of each war are going to participate in a 3rd war which will be a final showdown. In certain cases, we can even allow people participating at both wars (e.g majofa is a soldier at team aether at high-tier war and a soldier at team life at low-tier war) but they will have to choose their team if both of them advance at the final 3rd-war phase (e.g majofa choose to play as an aether soldier instead of a life one and team life has to take a replacement at 3rd phase).

Do you genuinely believe this is a good idea?

Keep teams at 6 but only have 5 matches. That gives you a one-person buffer in case someone goes afk. The team would just arrange the players in a thread in their team section stating the players who will be battling that round.

If we get 60 signups, we'll go for this. Several players have already expressed to me that they like the idea of having an extra player in case someone disappears, as well as having the option of rotating out of their match if they have a busy week.

Yes, I believe having 2 war phases is a good idea. We have forced elements which we knew or believed they are weak against superior ones for many years. At least pit the 'weak' ones against themselves as well as the 'strong' ones against each other. I know it sounds like a racism but it can balance things a little bit. Aether vs Air vs Fire vs Darkness vs Entropy vs Time and Life vs Light vs Earth vs Water vs Gravity vs Death (or something similar). Of course, people may believe that Shards may change the meta enough to fill in the power gap...

Moreover, let's go for Majofa's suggestion. If signups are fewer than the ones we need, let us have 3 or 4 players per team with a 4th or 5th player as the filler...

[iancudorinmarian]

I don't think that balances things at all...

That's like having two different wars and it really wouldn't be fun at all. We'd have the same matches every round. (each team facing every other team)

[ARTHANASIOS]

I don't think that balances things at all...

That's like having two different wars and it really wouldn't be fun at all. We'd have the same matches every round. (each team facing every other team)

That's exactly the reason it is balanced.

[Afdarenty]

Darkness was considered poor before Odii/Physs came along. Possibly TorB had a big impact too - that was before my time.
Speaking of Time, wasn't that considered weak before 10men? (also before my time)
And Air weak before Jenkar in War 5? Look how that one snowballed.
No one seriously thought that Gravity could win a war before Laxa/Ginyu came along.
Wasn't Light considered terrible in War before Majofa lead it to second, and arguably deserved first?

Why take away the best chance weaker elements have to prove themselves?

[ARTHANASIOS]

Darkness was considered poor before Odii/Physs came along. Possibly TorB had a big impact too - that was before my time.
Speaking of Time, wasn't that considered weak before 10men? (also before my time)
And Air weak before Jenkar in War 5? Look how that one snowballed.
No one seriously thought that Gravity could win a war before Laxa/Ginyu came along.
Wasn't Light considered terrible in War before Majofa lead it to second, and arguably deserved first?

Why take away the best chance weaker elements have to prove themselves?

Because weak elements make tons of efforts to prove themselves once while strong ones (especially fire & aether) prove themselves every day. Just my 2 cents. When was the last time that Life's efforts to prove itself were praised by the community, for example?

[Afdarenty]

Darkness was considered poor before Odii/Physs came along. Possibly TorB had a big impact too - that was before my time.
Speaking of Time, wasn't that considered weak before 10men? (also before my time)
And Air weak before Jenkar in War 5? Look how that one snowballed.
No one seriously thought that Gravity could win a war before Laxa/Ginyu came along.
Wasn't Light considered terrible in War before Majofa lead it to second, and arguably deserved first?

Why take away the best chance weaker elements have to prove themselves?

Because weak elements make tons of efforts to prove themselves once while strong ones (especially fire & aether) prove themselves every day. Just my 2 cents. When was the last time that Life's efforts to prove itself were praised by the community, for example?

Life received a lot of praise in War 8, Round 1 for going 5-0 before eventually losing their first game. That's not too long ago.

[Jenkar]

(i also like how you put an element won a war in the weak ones... )

[mrpaper]

If we'd wanna go in that system.. it would have to be Division 1 and division 2 type... as in whichever teams finish 1st in division 2 will compete with the big boys while the last place of division 1 gets demoted...
I guess the average finish of wars would be a fair way to determine the top 6.

On the minus side, as it's been stated before, it won't be much fun to face the same elements every round (and often same decks) and I think most people prefer a slim chance to get 1st place then an ok chance to finish first of the bottom 6.  So I think we should not go that path and I personally wouldn't wanna be part of a team who can't play for the real win ... I would't even be surprised if a couple of masters from the bottom teams would decide to pass on the war if we'd go that route!

[JonathanCrazyJ]

As one of the percieved weak elements, i hate that idea. Give me a glorious destruction with a chance for a legendary performance over a slow, boring trudge to mediocrety any day.
The market system is enough of a handicap, don't introduce a kiddy league too

[ARTHANASIOS]

but monoaether is OP

And a lovely excuse to do any of the followings:
* Blaming your opponent's OPness instead of your lack of effort for losing (e.g. "I am not noob for playing a completely ineffective deck, it is just that Aether is OP").
* Auto-quitting any games against your OP opponent; games in which you had a fair chance if you put effort (e.g. "I have this awesome rainbow deck, but Aether is OP, I won't have a chance, I auto-quit").
* Causing urge to join that OP element instead of supporting the "weaker" ones (e.g. "I want to join the super awesome team Aether this War because it is so OP; please, I don't want to be picked by those other weak elements...")
* Causing hate against the OP element; I am such an example.

 Vets have a greater responsibility for the above syndrome, because they prefer to harvest the benefits of already expoiled strategies instead of exploring new areas and comboes and mindgating, thus creating even a greater gap between the strong elements and the weak ones. That's my 2 ...

I am going to leave this quote in here to further explain my reasoning.

[mrpaper]

but monoaether is OP

And a lovely excuse to do any of the followings:
* Blaming your opponent's OPness instead of your lack of effort for losing (e.g. "I am not noob for playing a completely ineffective deck, it is just that Aether is OP").
* Auto-quitting any games against your OP opponent; games in which you had a fair chance if you put effort (e.g. "I have this awesome rainbow deck, but Aether is OP, I won't have a chance, I auto-quit").
* Causing urge to join that OP element instead of supporting the "weaker" ones (e.g. "I want to join the super awesome team Aether this War because it is so OP; please, I don't want to be picked by those other weak elements...")
* Causing hate against the OP element; I am such an example.

 Vets have a greater responsibility for the above syndrome, because they prefer to harvest the benefits of already expoiled strategies instead of exploring new areas and comboes and mindgating, thus creating even a greater gap between the strong elements and the weak ones. That's my 2 ...

I am going to leave this quote in here to further explain my reasoning.

Hence why the market price... which is still not fair enough for weaker elements, but has closed the gap quite a bit.  Since WMS don't seem to want to do anything about the fact you don't salvage cool in elements cards while other elements always do... there will still be a huge gap... but not even have a shot in war isn't the best option... now if you have other options to offer... go ahead...

I already thought of:
-Having the right to salvage in element 1:1 in 1 of the duel if you couldn't salvage 6 in elements cards (as in you only face a grabbow that had 2 life cards in it.. whether you salvage em or not.. you can pick 6 life cards in any win instead).  I don't think it should be allowed if you face a deck with tons of life  but lost vs it though.  Maybe have a price tag total so water don't pick 6 sopa from it for exemple... as in 6 in elements which cost 300 cards or less total.
- Lower the price for cards of elements who did poorly in war average, especially of cards not much used outside the element.
- Give a 12% bonus cards to the team who is the poorest in average win... 11% to the team which is 11th... and so on...
-Force team to have a minimum of cards from each element.. say 3-4 from each so you'd have at least a chance to face in-element a bit.  Or maybe just from the bottom 6 element?

One or 2 of those things in play and life is almost becoming equal to aether in terms of winning chances.

this link is a good way to see how well teams do and what the realistic way of them to win a war... of course the meta has change a bit over the years... but not so much as weaker elements have done bad all the time.. save for once or twice where they had great leadership/luck/tons of new decks to show... you can't count on that to even things before a war starts.
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/community-recommended-decks/war-decks-archive/