War #3 - Feedback

[Tiko]

I can do no other, but to strongly support this idea.

[suxerz]

..snip..

Interesting idea! Two things I would like to say:

Strategist role or vault intel probably has very little or no use at all - which may not be a bad thing, but I think some people will miss that part. Personally, I see this as a bad thing because to me this will take away the strategy play in war altogether.Though I like the simplicity of the "Elemental" cards concept, it feels a bit iffy... Especially when it comes to conversion because I can practically convert any 24 off-element cards to ANY in-element cards in a round. On the other hand, I can't seem to spot what's really wrong with it either. Haven't put much thought on it so probably it's just me.

[willng3]

There's a few issues I'm having with this system, actually.

I'm going to assume that the conversion system would now work the same except to replace converting into Pends/Pillars into in-element cards?  That's a huge problem.  I don't like the idea of Fire having a never ending supply of Immolations, or of Entropy having a never ending supply of Novae, or even of Aether having a never ending supply of Dim Shields; it's going to make the stronger teams near impossible to weaken which would only make for a less balanced event.  Based on the reaction to the Round 6 Event Card favoring teams with larger Vaults, I'm pretty sure that many people would have an issue with a rule that favors the strongest teams.  The only way to solve this problem would be to remove the conversion system completely (hello forced suicides) or to make the beginning number of Pends/Pillars set in stone throughout the war, which obviously causes problems for teams whose Vault size goes below 100 for example.  However, the last solution would be to make the salvage only count towards Pillars/Pends which in turn means that the team's Pillar/Pend count would have to be monitored during the entire Event, in which case I'm not sure I would understand why this rule was added in the first place.

I'm personally a huge fan of strategy being a greater factor than luck in the games that I play.  If this change were to be instituted then the RPS factor of the War in its entirety would be increased greatly to the point where I honestly would not want to play in it at all.  In later rounds it's an extreme advantage to know the cards that are in your opponent's vault.  With this change that advantage becomes practically nonexistent; 6 Nova could easily become 6 Discord during the next round and I doubt that every team has a way of countering every single different card of a particular element without knowing it's coming beforehand.  The role of the strategist would become rather redundant because all that would happen would be that the player would report how many cards of a particular element each team has been shown to have...which isn't exactly a very groundbreaking discovery, in my honest opinion.

Lastly, I'm really not getting how this is supposed to make Vault auditing easier than it currently is.  Currently I would imagine that the War Master would go through each element, look at the number of cards within that element (which is present on the Vault spreadsheet already, as a reminder), and if that number matches up to the changes made by the S/D/C thread, then he/she could move on to the next one.  If there's a difference in numbers then there's obviously a problem.  The only time where this does become a problem is when someone accidentally adds too many of a particular card to the Vault and removing too many of another to make the total amount equal, but the individual amounts wrong.  I'd imagine this is much more of an issue in the team's element because of Pillar/Pend conversion issue, but even then I'm not really sure of how often this occurs (but then again Aether never having a Vault mess-up doesn't make me a good judge here; if someone else with a differing opinion here could speak up to better my understanding, I'd be appreciative).  So all that's really being done is removing the need to count up the total amount of individual cards for each element; this doesn't seem to be all that painstaking of a task to begin with.  All that Kael currently has to do is take a look at the S/D/C thread, look at the totals for each card total changed by the S/D/C for that round according to the previous vault situation during the last round, and then compare those numbers to what a team currently has listed in their Vault.  Now I'm sure the argument could be made that this doesn't solve the issue of teams "accidentally" changing the number of certain cards which SHOULD be left untouched by the S/D/C for that round.  Let's be honest:  There's no reason those numbers should be changed unless the one updating the Vault had no clue of what they were doing or there was some foul play involved or lastly if there was a last minute change to S/D/C and someone forgot to change the amount of a particular card (which would still result in a conflicting total of that particular element's cards which would have been checked in the process).  This problem would manifest in different form due to the restriction of in-element/off-element cards in place by this new proposed system:  If someone accidentally gives themselves 25 Phoenixes during a round, but fails to notice it, then there's a chance of it going unnoticed by the War Masters until future rounds...in which case we're back to square one.

Rambling aside, just my 2

[deuce22]

It might be easier to audit if there is another column added to each vault spreadsheet that shows "# changed" from previous round for each card. Basically just compare that list to the S/D/C thread. This column would be "locked", so that it could not be edited. This will also make it easier for teams to see if they messed up their vault or not, which ultimately makes it easier on the war master.

[Demagog]

Easy fix, without reading much: Keep the vault as normal, so the spreadsheets would look the same. Teams could change in-element cards to anything in that element. A team may not have more than X amount of an own-element card in a round (pillars/pendulums don't count, nor do salvages). If X = 24, and team entropy has used 24 "different" novas and never salvaged any, they may not use more. During discarding, teams choose specific own-element cards to discard. So if they lost two games with 6 novas in each, and decided to discard those novas, they would be limited to 12 novas in a round unless they could salvage some.

[willng3]

Easy fix, without reading much: Keep the vault as normal, so the spreadsheets would look the same. Teams could change in-element cards to anything in that element. A team may not have more than X amount of an own-element card in a round (pillars/pendulums don't count, nor do salvages). If X = 24, and team entropy has used 24 "different" novas and never salvaged any, they may not use more. During discarding, teams choose specific own-element cards to discard. So if they lost two games with 6 novas in each, and decided to discard those novas, they would be limited to 12 novas in a round unless they could salvage some.

Not exactly an easy fix really.  Sure it makes for a simple solution, but now you've just created more work for the War Masters since they're required to keep a tab on how many of a particular card you're limited to in addition to making sure that the element total is the same for each round.  This really makes the current system seem simpler.

[The_Mormegil]

I don't like the proposed system at all. I'm with will in saying it would render War a completely different event, lacking in the strategic aspect a lot. I think Vault building and management throughout the whole event is one of the most interesting parts in War. I'd be sad to see it go like this. Also, I agree with most objections that Will pointed out.

Anyway, I agree that as it is, War is a bit overcomplicated. The problem is, therefore, trying to find out a balance between interest and complications.

EDIT: I'm gonna list the problems that I remember with the current system.

1) War Betting had some issues IIRC, but that can be easily handled with another, different proposal.
2) Event Cards helping stronger teams over weaker ones. This will be solved with SG's new system - whatever it is.
3) War Auditing is difficult and requires a lot of work. I don't know if this can really be solved, or if it is a problem at all. I mean, Kael is awesome, but I don't recall him asking for easier Auditings.
4) Some teams got screwed by penalties due to Auditing pretty hard. This is leading some people to consider an easier, less time-consuming War, in order to avoid penalties due to mistakes.

Is there something else I missed?

[suxerz]

I guess we have the same view, willng; though you really elaborated your points by a whole lot. >.<
Also, thanks for pointing out what's exactly wrong with conversion part.

At this point, I'm not even sure if it's possible to tweak the suggested system to make it.. plausible. It's just.. not WAR to me.

In regards of the auditing, I think I can see how the suggested system would make it easier for the warmasters. I would imagine that not requiring to count individual cards is a huge relief for the warmasters because counting individual cards also means "tracking" the origin of the cards - either by salvage or conversion. Therefore, by removing the individual cards in vault, warmasters only need to track the numbers for each elements and compare it to decks and DSCP. From my view, it's simpler. On the other hand, I agree that it doesn't really reduce the possible errors that teams could make. In fact, I feel that the errors might be more frequent without any dedicated tools.

[the dictator]

I have to say, I'm with willing, building and managing your vault is a great aspect of the war: will I salvage poisons or bone walls from death?
With this system, the decisions war is almost build on (like the one above) are completely eliminated. Especially salvaging from a mono deck will become a lot less fun (hmm, will I take 6 entropy cards, or 6 entropy cards, as opposed to: will I take 2 discords and 4 antimatter, or do I take some nova's too).

For the auditing, it isn't that difficult, only time consuming, especially when one person has to do it all on his own. That can be easily fixed by taking 3 or 4 war masters (one for dd's role, and 2 or 3 to do the auditing), which will reduce the pressure on the audit-masters.

Also, it shouldn't be that hard to make a spreadsheet that compares vaults with decks to see what cards there are left, and what cards are overused (actually, I have a spreadsheet like that, and the only times we failed in deck building, are the times last minute edits were done which I couldn't recheck with my spreadsheet).
I can image an excel spreadsheet to do the same for salvaging (basically, substracting the vaults of different round, and comparing those with salvaging discarding, or, even better, using the sheet to do the camparing too (might be easier with deckcodes in SDPC, see team water section (when it opens))).

Anyways, I don't see really big problems with the current system, apart from human errors. The only human errors that could be eliminated is the vault updating, by giving the vault spreadsheet the SDPC input, and have the spreadsheet update the vault.

[Marvaddin]

I don't like the proposed system at all. I'm with will in saying it would render War a completely different event, lacking in the strategic aspect a lot. I think Vault building and management throughout the whole event is one of the most interesting parts in War. I'd be sad to see it go like this.

Agreed. Vault building, and efficient deck building with limited resources should give advantage to the teams that are able to do it. Also, I dont think a team should be able to "completely shift its strategy" during the war.

I like the way it is, but I would like it being more flexible about Pillars and Pendulum. About these, I think the "generic" way is better, even why doesnt help with anything using Pillar of an element you have no cards to play.

About auditing, I also think it could use more people to make the job easier.

[Skydaemon]

I'd agree with willing here.  There are only two things I like about war (which willing mentioned), and the proposed idea breaks them both while offering nothing beneficial in return.

You're also dreaming if you think that would fix vault problems.  Teams that are too lazy or disorganized to spend the 60 seconds it takes to plug their decks into a spreadsheet to check if it's valid aren't going to track in/out elements or generic element cards either.

[suxerz]

..snip..
Anyways, I don't see really big problems with the current system, apart from human errors. The only human errors that could be eliminated is the vault updating, by giving the vault spreadsheet the SDPC input, and have the spreadsheet update the vault.

I disagree, saying an efficient vault tools could eliminate the human error in vault updating altogether is too good to be true. There are many ways that a team could fail in updating the vault from as simple as code copy/paste fail to major fail such as salvaging/discarding the wrong deck.

My point is that I'm not convince by adding complex formulas in the vault spreadsheet is a good solution. I'm saying this because I have my own vault system and it certainly works just as you described it above, but I still rely on quadruple checking and asking my teammates to check the results over and over again.