War #4 - Feedback

[Jen-i]

Bigger vault - shorter war - wow do have problems making up our minds. Yes without a doubt these rules change the event. They'll make for tough choices starting with our initial vaults and will make the first couple rounds matter far more. But let's see what are warmasters do with event cards and such first. Let's give them a little trust to run a good event before we decide on how the event has gone.

[markilleruk]

Bigger vault with large discards gets my vote, although Ive never taken part in a war before so my opinion may vary later

As for the propaganda I don't want to see it die, I think it is a fun sideshow and a chance for teams to come together and express their creativity. It would be a crying shame to lose that now.

I am however all for making some changes to make it more interesting and 'fair' Some suggestions I liked largely based on what I heard from others in chat(sorry I don't recall who had what idea!)

1. Separate voting for song/speech/banner.
Should reduce the impact of people making a humerus comic/speech but then not putting much thought into song/banner yet getting lots of 'ooh thats funny' votes. As well as reducing the impact of people just voting on their fav song etc

2. have additional awards for organizers choice, generals choice (obv no self votes!) etc

I really don't think the handful of extra cards earned are super significant compared to initial vault starting sizes, so I think that the rewards should remain the same.

Thoughts?

[MrBlonde]

Well here's my  .

Vault/Discards
1. Bigger vault - Allows us to have more versatility and more decks.
2. Less discards - I personally liked the 6 discards round 1. Basically it's a feeler round and you get to see the decks people are playing. Rounds 2/3/+ could be 18/24/30.

I personally don't mind long drawn out wars though.

Propaganda
My view is likely biased here since i've placed well every time and have won it the last 2 times.

1. I like Propaganda. I think it's fun for people to look at and it gives War another element (oh look a pun). I take personal pride in my Propaganda and really am my biggest critic since everyone really is pretty nice with their comments (they never say they hate my stuff just don't agree that the speech should be.. humorous).
2. I think all Propaganda should be done in team. Also a little more time to do Propaganda wouldn't hurt.
3. I like the idea of splitting the Propaganda in sections. Speech and Banner could be 2 categories. Songs IMO doesn't deserve it's own category unless we're making our own songs. 
4. The goal of Propaganda is to get votes. People have really gotten bent out of shape with speeches not being within the spirit of motivation or rallying your troops. I won't disagree that i have taken liberties with my speech portion but i'd also like to mention that i likely have spent more time then any two masters combined the last 2 wars in creating it. I also have had people requesting to be on my team just to be in the speech portion of my Propaganda (is that not a sort of rallying of troops?).

All in all i think Propaganda is a fun portion of War and it would be a shame to have it not included. I wouldn't cry if it was gone though as it would mean less work and more sleep for me. 

Misc
I also think there should be unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. Like raging in chat or in posts about RNG should get penalties. Perhaps a warning/1 card/2 card/etc. This is just a game and an event that should be fun. Bad RNG will happen but we can still be good sports about it. Anyhow just my opinions so should be taken with a grain of salt.

[suxerz]

In regards of the propaganda, I feel we should still have it along with the voting phase because as some already said it's all about popularity. I really don't mind comics or abstract arts as a part of the propaganda - in fact I'm looking forward to this "extra stuff".

However, one thing that kinda bothers me when looking at the rules for making banner:

Requirements and restrictions:
- has to be unique (don't simply steal copyrighted images from the web. Here is a good source to get you started: http://www.sxc.hu/ )

I'm not pointing at any team particularly and maybe I should have brought this up earlier.. But I feel somewhat off when it is clearly stated and because our team tried hard to follow this requirement (not saying that we can create a more awesome-looking banner if we didn't). Also, it probably didn't matter much since I think the "extra stuff" was the main reason for the votes.

On the other hand, I doubt we can do much about this requirement since in order to completely follow this, teams will need to provide links to each and every images that they used in the banner; which will then means more work for the warmasters to validate those links and it's just too troublesome for something so simple. I think this particular requirement at least needs to be clarified/refined/elaborated/etc because I think everyone can agree with me it's not acceptable if I use this image for the Light banner, right? 

[Jenkar]

War 5 vault would be even better with a ''vault after deckbuilding'' tool that allows you to see the cards left in your vault.

[deuce22]

War 5 vault would be even better with a ''vault after deckbuilding'' tool that allows you to see the cards left in your vault.

You have to manually input your decks in the deckbuilding tool. It lets you know on the left side what cards you have left in vault.

Not sure if it is possible, but it would be nice you could enter a deck code and have the tool automatically fill itself out.

[suxerz]

I'm pretty sure this option was available for the vault at one time, so there might be just a simple answer/fix to this. I hope that we're able to see the decks and SDPC that were submitted for previous rounds. Especially since now the related threads are not compulsory nor audited.

Though it will be quite unlikely, it could prevent the scenario of using wrong decks because if I understand the system correctly once the decks were "submitted", the copy of the same data in the Deck Compliance tab can be edited; thus it is possible that they are not the actual decks that were officially "submitted". About the SPDC, it's more like "history" thingy especially once the war is over; I like to be able to see how teams managed their SPDC because I doubt that every team will record the exact info within threads.

[Jen-i]

Should be easy enough sux - the info is all on the Vault Archive sheet.

[Sevs]

Should be easy enough sux - the info is all on the Vault Archive sheet.

Iirc we dont have access to see the vault archive sheet

[suxerz]

Should be easy enough sux - the info is all on the Vault Archive sheet.

Iirc we dont have access to see the vault archive sheet

Yep, we don't. I think Jen is trying to say it's a simple fix. So, if it's not much of a problem for the warmasters, I appreciate if this tab could be put visible but of course still protected; similar to the Current Vault and Starting Vault tab.

[hainkarga]

I think team should start the WAR on round 1. Current system is causing various problems;
* Hard to balance the rules to make it fair both for uw and other elements
* UW starts the war with a very limited variety of decks compared to other elements. This is diminishing the fun and tactics. UW starts the WAR exactly 8 determined decks, where other elements can play with their vaults like a lego and make more variety of decks than their vault size / 30. (This has nothing to do with vaultsize compare on a certain round. I'm talking about how UW and others begin their journey)
* UW starts the war with limited yet totally unknown vault, giving the other elements a handicap
* Strangely, UW may also start the war with a vault advantage, depending on other teams performance, but not their own achievement. What i mean is UW may start at 9th place or 5th place without earning it.
* UW starts on round4, making the war potentially shorter for them and without the excitement of exploring opponents as they play. It is less fun. On WAR2, i did 1 match and sat until the end of the event due to vaultsize. Even the worst performing elements' members played for 4-5 rounds.

UW tourney should end before the actual WAR begins. The tourney can even take place during the auction phase, giving more time to end. If the problem is that UW tourney participants are slackers like on this one, then eliminate every participant who don't show up and get active people outside the auctions if you lack 8. It is annoying to see people raising on tourney without doing any matches.

[Calindu]

Bigger vault should resolve all  problems, or at least less discard.