I made a mistake.
So this EC's idea and perks was worked out well before war began, and I had a rough outline of everything by R5. But one thing my outline didn't account for was teams playing less than 4 matches. I just had a nicely fitting linear equation for the relic award, with weights based on win vs loss significance in a round. But today when I had to type up the entire wording of the EC, I rushed and missed details (many of which are there in that edit). I also simplified the relic awarding scheme, but that meant letting go of the weighting. But for perfect balance, I'm going to add it in:
The relic award for R1 will be weighted as 2/5, and for R2 by 3/5. Final relic counts will be rounded. So the round 1 record will award 2/5 times the relics of the same record in round 3. These weights are based on the difference between a win and a loss in a given round.
I'm really sorry for not making this change earlier. I understand that I might not have even made this change unless it was heavily discussed, and that might send the wrong message that complaining will get you stuff. But please, don't take this the wrong way. I had this balance in mind for a long time, and I'm simply implementing it because I believe it makes for the best version of the EC possible. That is the policy I have followed elsewhere too.
On another note, there might be confusion about the extra match assignments, specifically the mention of vault size:
All additional match will be pooled together and matched up on the basis of vault size. If there are an odd number of teams wishing to participate, one of the matches will be randomly cut and the relic refunded. Priority for cutting goes to teams playing more additional matches, then higher vault size. If a team has more than half the matches, then their extra matches are refunded.
The first rule means that teams with similar vault sizes will be matched with each other. The priority for cutting means that among teams playing the highest number of matches, the one with most cards i.e. best position will not be allowed to play.
Can't ship with the idea of losing being rewarded and winning being punished. There was a lot of dispute over "winning being punished" in the past and rules have evolved in an attempt to fix that. Because we ended up with a team or two having to play gazillion more matches and have a better win rate than the final winner of the event. Which never really happens in an esport / real competition.
Can't ship with the idea of breaking even each round and still being on a losing track, or one game in R4 potentially eliminating you from competing at all. There was a flaw with the discard intensity and the cutoffs, and potentially in other key parts of war too. That is WM's fault. But Super ECs were always intended to help fix war, and this is what I'm trying to do. If this doesn't make the winning teams happy about not continuing on the win train, then I've done a good job.
But if it makes the winning team unhappy about bad strategic decisions or difficulty/design issues, then we should talk.
