War #3 - Feedback

[truddy02]

I don't think massive overhaul of the vault system is necessary. Strategic salvaging, figuring out other teams vaults, what they may know (or think they know) about your vault, etc. is one of the main aspects of war.  If you want to simplify the work, the spreadsheets exist to hold all of the information needed in one spot (salvages, discards, vault, decks) and I'm guessing at least  and  had access to these.  These sheets can hold everything in one spot and not require several different topics and edits.  When secret sections are released they will probably become public.  This could be made as the official sheet for showing all of your information for a round.  It may also make it easier on the organizers to see everything together and check for mistakes. 

Also to promote diversity in deck building and not just massive copies of the same deck I would like to see the maximum of a single card lowered to 9 off element and 18 on element or if vaults are made smaller possibly even 6 and 12 (I believe these were the original restrictions in war 1). 

[Sevs]

Automating the vault process would be sooo helpful. so far UW has just been counting cards by hand. takes forever. especially with 8 decks. i guess i am am kind of thankful for entering at round 5. i cringe at the thought of 5 rounds of salvaging and discarding for 8 decks.

[TStar]

One simple change to make is finding a way to stop the "strategic" subbing and passing on salvages.  One possibility is assign a penalty to teams that must sub, in addition to the no-salvaging.  The current system seems to be getting exploited far too much to avoid getting more decks.  Most teams must pay cards to replace a player entirely, so paying cards to "sub" for a player as well seems reasonable and promotes getting active players.

Another solution could be a sliding penalty scale for subbing.  Maybe your first 3 subs in War are free and after that subbing for a player becomes increasingly more of a penalty, say -2 or -3 stacking per sub and once you hit -12 it then becomes more affordable to replace players instead of subbing them.  This would greatly reduce the incentive to "sub" in the late rounds which gives the smaller vaults an advantage.

[truddy02]

One simple change to make is finding a way to stop the "strategic" subbing and passing on salvages.  One possibility is assign a penalty to teams that must sub, in addition to the no-salvaging.  The current system seems to be getting exploited far too much to avoid getting more decks.  Most teams must pay cards to replace a player entirely, so paying cards to "sub" for a player as well seems reasonable and promotes getting active players.

Another solution could be a sliding penalty scale for subbing.  Maybe your first 3 subs in War are free and after that subbing for a player becomes increasingly more of a penalty, say -2 or -3 stacking per sub and once you hit -12 it then becomes more affordable to replace players instead of subbing them.  This would greatly reduce the incentive to "sub" in the late rounds which gives the smaller vaults an advantage.

Much of the "strategic" subbing is do to the 35 card rule.  The rule seemed like a good idea at the time but has caused more problems than it has solved.  A return to the rule of field as many decks as you can (every 30 cards is a deck) would greatly reduce this.  What is happening now is we are trying to come up with solutions to problems that are caused by other rules rather than removing an unnecessary rule.  We were better off with the old rule that didn't have the loophole than constantly adding new rules to close loopholes that are created.  Subbing may still occur with teams sitting at 56 cards or so if they don't want to have 2 decks out but at least the team is still at risk and cannot sit in a spot where they are unable to be eliminated in a round.  If you stop strategic subbing then teams will just not sub and happen to get a 6 card penalty in the sweet spot and we will have to make a rule for that until someone finds another way to get around it as we keep piling up rules for one specific case.  If we eliminate the sweet spot completely by going back to the rule from war 2 at least we will eliminate certain card amounts that are immune to elimination.  The original idea for the rule was that if you happen to end up right around a certain number you are forced to use all or most of your cards.  Now we have it so if you land on a certain number you get a free pass to another round.  Even if we are able to stop teams from exploiting this spot, it is just as bad to let a team get lucky and end up there.  No matter what some numbers of cards left are going to be better than others and the current system is more exploitable than the old one so I say go back to the old one.

[kev]

For Vault managing, completely automatize it, as it is too much pressure on the team and takes a lot away from the fun. Use decklists to check everything in the official Google Docs. Leave it to Warmasters only, and make it public but ineditable. War teams must post their decks and Warmasters will put decklists into the document and it will check if everything is legal and ok. Make it so that discarding is either randomized - and automated - or total - every lost match is a lost deck. Scrap salvaging from the enemies' deck and add bonus cards for won matches. These will be chosen by the players and they will create a decklist with those, which will be put by the Warmasters in the big Vault document and everything will be automatically added. As for conversion, teams will make a decklist with conversion targets, choose either Pillars or Pendulums each round and will receive the proper amount - again, by an automated google docs activated easily by Warmasters.

I threw this  (https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqCh8-BfWOzYdGZUZFZmVDQwY201amZBcjVVNERmbEE&authkey=CNyumGc&hl=en_US#) together as a first attempt to automate part of vault management.  It might also be the last attempt.  Checking card availability by posting deck codes is the easy part.  I don't think SG is willing to change/eliminate the way salvaging and discarding works.  When I proposed at the end of War2 what you proposed above, SG told me it sounded like a PvP Event (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,27449.0.html) idea in the making. 

It's also ill advised to rely on WMs more than we already do.  Everything you propose above could be done by the players faster than the WMs.  The key is in finding a system that isn't as time consuming and prone to error.  And I don't know how to go about doing that or whether it can be done at all.

Does anybody else have an idea for how to simplify vault management without eliminating s/d/c?  Does everyone agree that the "homework effect" is a problem?

[Skydaemon]

Does anybody else have an idea for how to simplify vault management without eliminating s/d/c?  Does everyone agree that the "homework effect" is a problem?

I can tell you what we ended up with in War 2 for a SS, it worked well enough and dealt with salvage etc.

First tab - cards remaining in vault.  This is a visual display of all non-spoken for cards you have to use that round.  Individual cards are calculated as initial vault tab + salvage/etc tab - decks.
Second tab - initial vault.  This is just your starting cards before salvage/discards/penalties.
Third tab - salvage/conversion/discards/penalties.  This tab just lists +/- of cards for these four activities.  It's important that this be separate from the vault, because people change salvage as they work on decks.
Fourth tab - currently used decks.  Decks and counts of individual card usage.

Basically, you just need to add a separate tab for the salvage.  Your checking for legality gets done on the cards remaining vault and the individual decks.

[Skydaemon]

Much of the "strategic" subbing is do to the 35 card rule. 

Since you apparently don't remember old wars, that was an issue in the 30 card bracket as well - there was more incentive then actually.  Apparently you've also forgotten the suicide tactics which were pervasive in that old system as well.

[truddy02]

Much of the "strategic" subbing is do to the 35 card rule. 

Since you apparently don't remember old wars, that was an issue in the 30 card bracket as well - there was more incentive then actually.  Apparently you've also forgotten the suicide tactics which were pervasive in that old system as well.

I do remember last war (not first war, I wasn't a part of it).   You quoted the very first sentence of my post but left out the rest.  Perhaps I should have led with "The biggest problems from 'strategic' subbing are due to the 35 card rule."  My ultimate point was that in the old system you couldn't use strategic subbing to stay safe from elimination.  In the old system you could sub at 56 cards but you are still at risk of elimination.  In the current system when you are in the spot where you are going to strategically sub you have to get beat 2 rounds in a row to be eliminated.  This to me is more of a problem because it extends war and in my opinion when you have that few cards you should be at risk of elimination.  There shouldn't be these safe zones.  As to the suicide decks I can only speak definitively of air's suicide in war 2, which was due to not having enough pillars to make all of our decks.  This has been addressed with the move to 24 card conversion.  I was of the understanding that the majority of suicide decks were due to not enough pillars or not enough on element cards.  Good vault management and 24 card conversion can keep most suicides from happening. 

[The_Mormegil]

I threw this  (https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqCh8-BfWOzYdGZUZFZmVDQwY201amZBcjVVNERmbEE&authkey=CNyumGc&hl=en_US#) together as a first attempt to automate part of vault management.  It might also be the last attempt.  Checking card availability by posting deck codes is the easy part.  I don't think SG is willing to change/eliminate the way salvaging and discarding works.  When I proposed at the end of War2 what you proposed above, SG told me it sounded like a PvP Event (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,27449.0.html) idea in the making. 

It's also ill advised to rely on WMs more than we already do.  Everything you propose above could be done by the players faster than the WMs.  The key is in finding a system that isn't as time consuming and prone to error.  And I don't know how to go about doing that or whether it can be done at all.

Does anybody else have an idea for how to simplify vault management without eliminating s/d/c?  Does everyone agree that the "homework effect" is a problem?

I probably will end up creating two PvP Event Ideas with the above format - they sound fun in my head at least - but I thought I should throw 'em out here too, because I think these are the only two ways of getting rid of the "homework effect" + increasing strategy in War without getting inherently unbalanced Event Cards. They can easily be tweaked and altered even totally scrapped, but I believe we should either scrap Vault managing, create a War where deckbuilding is not as fixed and go ahead with EC, or scrap EC and create a parallel system that doesn't influence deckbuilding and Vault managing and automatize Vault managing as much as possible (that will mean streamlining S/D/C, as that is the most important, time-consuming and error-creating part).

About WMs, the system I suggested is actually less time-consuming than Audits to be sure, although it may require more WMs to make sure War goes along at a constant pace (sudden illnesses would stop all of War progression otherwise). Anyway, since Vault managing is automatized and salvaging will not be done by opponent decks, copypasting 10 or less codes into a google docs for 13 teams is not that hard...

I will try to think of a way to keep s/d/c, but I think the problem is right in that part, so...

[Sevs]

I threw this  (https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqCh8-BfWOzYdGZUZFZmVDQwY201amZBcjVVNERmbEE&authkey=CNyumGc&hl=en_US#) together as a first attempt to automate part of vault management.  It might also be the last attempt.  Checking card availability by posting deck codes is the easy part.  I don't think SG is willing to change/eliminate the way salvaging and discarding works.  When I proposed at the end of War2 what you proposed above, SG told me it sounded like a PvP Event (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,27449.0.html) idea in the making. 

It's also ill advised to rely on WMs more than we already do.  Everything you propose above could be done by the players faster than the WMs.  The key is in finding a system that isn't as time consuming and prone to error.  And I don't know how to go about doing that or whether it can be done at all.

Does anybody else have an idea for how to simplify vault management without eliminating s/d/c?  Does everyone agree that the "homework effect" is a problem?

Using your list of card codes, I just finished making a spread sheet that uses your old vault in the "vault" format. It automates everything but I feel i should not show it unless the community makes the decision to completely automate the system.

[The_Mormegil]

Ok, Entropy has a good chance to win this War too now. This had me thinking for a while, actually, because even if Aether and Water rocked this War, at the bitter end it was the same old decks - hence the same old elements - to have the upper hand. Fire, Entropy... there is a reason for people calling them unbalanced. I'm starting to believe it's true.

Hence, the idea: how can we make sure other elements have an even (or at least slightly greater) chance? By adding more upgrades.
The execution is simple: get rid of most team roles as Vault is being automatized (and I believe it will be, because it's just a strictly better solution), get rid of Vault Editor, Salvager etc. Reduce the roles to General, Lieutenant, Strategist, Organizer, Soldier, Soldier, Soldier, Soldier. Increase the number of upgrades in the event allowing Soldiers to use 3 upgrades, Lieutenant to use 6 and General to use 9.

Why? Because allowing for a greater variety of decks will probably benefit some teams, because upgrades are something that really change your deckbuilding possibilities and because I think it would be more intresting and fun. As for people needing to HAVE upgrades, well, most members of this community have a decent FG grinder - any FG grinder really - and we all know that upping 3 cards is an hour's work, tops. If you need 3 upgrades every week and can't farm that much, you're probably not playing Elements at all...

We are a growing community, and this is the most elitist event. I think increasing the number of upgrades, although slightly, could potentially change the face of the whole event, increasing the chances of different teams and producing more intresting and balanced Wars.

[Scaredgirl]

I threw this  (https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqCh8-BfWOzYdGZUZFZmVDQwY201amZBcjVVNERmbEE&authkey=CNyumGc&hl=en_US#) together as a first attempt to automate part of vault management.  It might also be the last attempt.  Checking card availability by posting deck codes is the easy part.  I don't think SG is willing to change/eliminate the way salvaging and discarding works.  When I proposed at the end of War2 what you proposed above, SG told me it sounded like a PvP Event (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,27449.0.html) idea in the making. 

It's also ill advised to rely on WMs more than we already do.  Everything you propose above could be done by the players faster than the WMs.  The key is in finding a system that isn't as time consuming and prone to error.  And I don't know how to go about doing that or whether it can be done at all.

Does anybody else have an idea for how to simplify vault management without eliminating s/d/c?  Does everyone agree that the "homework effect" is a problem?

Using your list of card codes, I just finished making a spread sheet that uses your old vault in the "vault" format. It automates everything but I feel i should not show it unless the community makes the decision to completely automate the system.

I was going to make a post about this after War is done.

We have people in this community that have more than enough skills to make an advanced Google Docs Vault that will eliminate all the errors and difficult deckbuilding. People have been building these in the past, but I think it's not time to make an official one that is perfect and that all teams can use.

Most important part of the new Vault will be that it can be used to build the decks as well. Teams can all open Google Docs, use the chat provided, and collaboratively build all the decks in real time. While they use up certain cards, their Vault diminishes, so using extra cards is impossible. When all decks are built, the spreadsheets even gives the code that players post on their secret forums. This would make deckbuilding in War 10 times easier and more fun.

@Sevs: if you have something good, please post it and we'll have a look.