War #12 - Suggestions and Feedback

[MasterWalks]

So with all the discussion around how next war will have fewer players, many have liked the idea of "Dual elements" war, but I feel like it wouldn't feel as satisfying to win, if you share the win with another element.
But what if we ran 2 smaller wars each year? Had some discussions with Jen earlier, and this was the end result

The first, a "losers" war, would feature the bottom 8 teams of this war (or the bottom 8 from a Masters tourney or something), where they fight. The top 4 of that war then join the leftover 4 for a "winners war", where the winner of that is prestigious or something. With the bottom 4 from that war demoting back down to the losers war. Trials can be handled between the winners war and the following losers war, with Brawl in the middle of the year. With the smaller amount of teams, it can be balanced to average the War to 10 rounds or so, and due to the setup, new Masters will always get a chance to win the winners war.
The problem would be that not all elements would feature in every war, but the idea might still have some merit

EDIT: Noted that I had discussions about this with Jen, who initially brought up the discussion with me and suggested a few of the things. I don't want to take full credit~

-1

Care to elaborate why -1? What changes would you make?

[rob77dp]

Promotion / Relegation style War setups... I'm not good with details, but it seems like that is what dawn's suggestion somewhat sounds like, and I like the idea to the point it has been discussed at least.

[Wyand]

So with all the discussion around how next war will have fewer players, many have liked the idea of "Dual elements" war, but I feel like it wouldn't feel as satisfying to win, if you share the win with another element.
But what if we ran 2 smaller wars each year? Had some discussions with Jen earlier, and this was the end result

The first, a "losers" war, would feature the bottom 8 teams of this war (or the bottom 8 from a Masters tourney or something), where they fight. The top 4 of that war then join the leftover 4 for a "winners war", where the winner of that is prestigious or something. With the bottom 4 from that war demoting back down to the losers war. Trials can be handled between the winners war and the following losers war, with Brawl in the middle of the year. With the smaller amount of teams, it can be balanced to average the War to 10 rounds or so, and due to the setup, new Masters will always get a chance to win the winners war.
The problem would be that not all elements would feature in every war, but the idea might still have some merit

EDIT: Noted that I had discussions about this with Jen, who initially brought up the discussion with me and suggested a few of the things. I don't want to take full credit~

-1

Care to elaborate why -1? What changes would you make?

I just happen to like ALL elements going to War at the same time. "Dual elements" or "different division" just dilute the original idea. I think the format only needs
some balancing. Make a reasonable market, or replace it with something which brings more balance into War. Currently it feels like the distribution of nuclear power
in the world. There are some superpowers with vaults full of nukes, there are those who has a few rockets, and there are those who just watch the big boys playing.

[rob77dp]

Wyand-

In which category are you placing Life? Also, ask the Element which I'm sure many of the teams are "gunning for" as a likely end-game leader and you'll find them quite a ways down the initial vault-size food chain. Aside from just complaining that the game has some elements that just don't quite keep up as easily in the current War event meta/ruleset, what are some actual things you see causing the imbalance if not just built-in elemental aspects? 

[Wyand]

Wyand-

In which category are you placing Life? Also, ask the Element which I'm sure many of the teams are "gunning for" as a likely end-game leader and you'll find them quite a ways down the initial vault-size food chain. Aside from just complaining that the game has some elements that just don't quite keep up as easily in the current War event meta/ruleset, what are some actual things you see causing the imbalance if not just built-in elemental aspects? 

I just go back testing decks. It was a mistake I haven't answered that to MW in the first place. Simply don't have the time to flesh out my opinion.

ps: My comment was vague on purpose. And I should have used a different word for 'vault' with my nuke metaphor.

[dawn to dusk]

Elemental representation was a worry that I had with the Prom/Rel (promotion/relegation) system, and is a valid concern. It's worth noting that with approximately 1 war per year, this would optimistically have 2 smaller wars a year, but each element would feature in at least 1 war. I will discuss some of the questions that I remember from chat below, but first I would like to discuss some of the problems I have with a dual element war.

It's pretty much impossible to prepare for. With such a drastic change to the format, the first war will almost certainly be disgustingly unbalanced. This is fine if it were only for 1 war, but even 2 or 3 wars down the line, I feel like some of the kinks will still be ironing out. The decision to choose the pairings needs to be more than "first place with last place", "opposite elements", or something similar, else you're going to end up with one or two pairings being horrendously stronger than others, while others would be much much weaker.

Assuming the pairings change each war (and I don't see why they wouldn't unless you go opposite elements), a crapton of work would need to go into balancing the market. And initial market prices are almost never perfectly balanced. Trying to balance for dual elements is worse than trying to balance for mono elements as well. It would be that much a hassle that you'd honestly need to get rid of Market (which is what some want anyway, but still). However it does go back to the thing of "how are elements decided"? As to how much a nightmare market pricings would be

Last thing I'll note, I feel like " "Dual elements" or "different division" just dilute the original idea." is grossly underplaying. I mean it's bad enough that you'd need to share your win~ But the idea is more like a PvP Event than a War Change. Solo is almost always more popular than Duo, assuming the duo exists at all. Tennis being the primary example. Solo accomplishments feel better than duo accomplishments.

Minor note but the banner would be weird, but you could probably manage the banner being one element and the icon being a different element, or something similar.


Onto a few questions about Prom/Rel that were asked

Will the winning teams stay the same if they promote?

It would probably be optional. Players can opt in to stay on their original team, else they would be put up on auction.

WM workload?

I have never been a WM, so some of the stuff here is from Math and Asdw in chat
Most of the work would be done for the first war of the year, presumably. Rules would remain the same, but a few unbalanced things could be ironed out. Vault Tools are a pretty hefty problem, but the workload is reduced by a lot with the introduction of GDocs, and they could probably be optimised further. With less teams, the workload of individual wars would drop, and the war in total would only really have to go for 10 rounds or so, maybe less maybe a little more depending on rules and such. WM's could switch between wars, and you can still hire the pre-War Warmasters, as was mentioned elsewhere in this thread (which is an idea that I fully +1).

[Linkcat]

This idea has nothing to do with balance, it's about the declining playerbase. It's gotten so bad that we're down to 4 player teams with 3 players in them. Obviously everyone wants a big War with all the elements, but it's just not feasible for the future. I've been checking up on the stats page for the last couple years, and I doubt most people have seen this:



We have to adapt to what we have become. Dawn's idea is a great way to keep the integrity of the event. Two 10 round Wars a year does sound a bit much, with prep time and delays that can be half the year or more spent actively Warring. I suggest shortening the first War to 8 rounds and/or extending the cycle past a year. Having a War planning team is also a great idea as it lets people improve War who would rather play than WM and don't want to deal with all the bullshit drama during the War. We can further streamline War by creating the simplified market that dd was talking about, making simpler ECs, getting rid of Super ECs, keeping some form of draft, having clear rules and costs to substitutions, and clearly setting out penalties for different situations.

[TheonlyrealBeef]

So, regardless of anything else, I personally think the flexible team size is a success. Every player got onto a team and we still have a decent number of matches for each team, regardless of their actual size. I definitely think this is a keeper. We don't have the luxury of an enormous player base, so including everyone that wants to join is good.

[ARTHANASIOS]

I will suggest something extreme, but I think I am against having any transmutation dust and alchemy role at all; it just breaks the market system imo. Do you want an in-element card really badly? Buy it several times from the start. It is a more unforgivable suggestion but more fair imo...

[serprex]

I will suggest something extreme, but I think I am against having any transmutation dust and alchemy role at all; it just breaks the market system imo. Do you want an in-element card really badly? Buy it several times from the start. It is a more unforgivable suggestion but more fair imo...

Just needs to not cap out at 155+, maybe say can't transmute 200+, but transmutation is necessary, a team that salvages enough would end up in a position where even if they started with 80% in element deck discards will've depleted most of their in-element, more so for teams on elements which aren't often featured in duos (How often has Life been able to salvage Life cards?), don't think 24 cap is necessary tho given market

[dawn to dusk]

Can we put in a clause to say "Teams cannot have more than 1 similar match from the last round" until at least 4 teams are eliminated? Round 5 had to be redone since 3 teams had 3 similar matches, and Round 6 Light has 3 similar matches as well. It makes trying to build seem super unfair, especially for teams that had a bad round

[ARTHANASIOS]

I will suggest something extreme, but I think I am against having any transmutation dust and alchemy role at all; it just breaks the market system imo. Do you want an in-element card really badly? Buy it several times from the start. It is a more unforgivable suggestion but more fair imo...

Just needs to not cap out at 155+, maybe say can't transmute 200+, but transmutation is necessary, a team that salvages enough would end up in a position where even if they started with 80% in element deck discards will've depleted most of their in-element, more so for teams on elements which aren't often featured in duos (How often has Life been able to salvage Life cards?), don't think 24 cap is necessary tho given market

My problem is that in past Wars the was the 2:1 ratio rule where you could discard 2 off-element cards and gain 1 in-element card, but all cards costed the same back then. Now, we have the market system but the market card's cost and the transmutation dust's cost is not necessarily the same and that triggers me. What if each time you salvage a card you get exactly X transmutation dust where X = sum of market prices of each salvaged card and you can then use X/2 to buy as many in-element cards as you can afford? Also, unused transmutation dust should carry from round to round in order for this to be both more fair and add a more in-depth strategy. What is your thoughts about it?