War #4 - Feedback

[ralouf]

that's one reason don't tell me that 10 mins each week is too much.. this betting form is very good for me. Maybe I don't spend enough time on this though..

[Mithcairion]

I've tried thinking of a way to say this without sounding whiny and haven't come up with a way so I'm just gonna go ahead and say it. 

I feel like the kid whose playmate keeps changing the rules of the game we're playing whenever things don't go the way he wants.  This isn't meant as an attack on SG or the WMs and I don't want it to be taken as such because I realize that everyone is doing the best job they can, but changing the rules along the way simply doesn't feel right to me.  I know we want War to be shorter, I know we want imbalanced event cards out of the event, I know we don't want UW to be OP compared to the rest of the teams when they enter, I know we want it to be fun, and I know we want as many people involved in War as possible, but from the time the very first round (the scouting round) the rules have been changed along the way.  I understand that the WMs and SG have had a plan all along that we are not privy to this plan, but being on the other side of it, it simply feels disheartening.  And yes, I get there's the whole debate of "This is War!  Unexpected things happen and you have to adjust" vs. "It's a game, this should be fun, not soul-sucking" debate and I'm not trying to say that either one is more right than the other, I'm simply giving my feedback on the event thus far (Round 8 just being announced).

[Djhopper :)]

I guess this is where i should put this. For war betting only 13 of the people who have started the betting process, have actually submitted every round. I think this is kinda of significant in that it shows the process might be a little bit too difficult. Not that it is hard, but the most of the time people are more focused on war activities themselves, and the time to meaningfully go through 30-50 matchups just isn't there. 

What if instead of each individual matchup, we bet on how each team does per round. So like a mix of the old betting system and the new betting system. I think this would cause a much greater participation rate then the current one.

I simply stopped betting because one round, the system didn't register my vote. I fell behind.

Next time, I will take screen-shots every round just in case.

[Jenkar]

I must say one opinion (feel free to ignore) :
War plan should exist before war. What card to use at which round. Basicly, imo, the idea should be : each round, the warmaster's only jobs would be to : check vaults, give penalties, randomize battles, post thread. (eventually settle disputes if any). Nothing more.
[/opinion]

[Avenger]

[15:27:14] ~Napalm: This sucks.
[15:27:22] ~Napalm: I already hate this War and it hasn't even started...
[15:28:21] ~Napalm: Rules went 1 step to far. 2 steps were taken when only 1 was needed. As far as I'm concerned, 20% Reduction in starting vault OR 24 Discards from Round 1 was necessary.
[15:28:26] ~Napalm: Both is just awful.

Start a quote pyramid if you agree!

Round 8 sux. Loser teams will get all mono all upped decks. Current leader teams will suddenly collapse from the strain. I wouldn't be surprised if fire wins this war again.

[Jenkar]

[15:27:14] ~Napalm: This sucks.
[15:27:22] ~Napalm: I already hate this War and it hasn't even started...
[15:28:21] ~Napalm: Rules went 1 step to far. 2 steps were taken when only 1 was needed. As far as I'm concerned, 20% Reduction in starting vault OR 24 Discards from Round 1 was necessary.
[15:28:26] ~Napalm: Both is just awful.

Start a quote pyramid if you agree!

Round 8 sux. Loser teams will get all mono all upped decks. Current leader teams will suddenly collapse from the strain. I wouldn't be surprised if fire wins this war again.

Well, i'll leave you to read the text just above the card 5 times. If you still think that after, reinstall vault study.

[The_Mormegil]

[15:27:14] ~Napalm: This sucks.
[15:27:22] ~Napalm: I already hate this War and it hasn't even started...
[15:28:21] ~Napalm: Rules went 1 step to far. 2 steps were taken when only 1 was needed. As far as I'm concerned, 20% Reduction in starting vault OR 24 Discards from Round 1 was necessary.
[15:28:26] ~Napalm: Both is just awful.

Start a quote pyramid if you agree!

Round 8 sux. Loser teams will get all mono all upped decks. Current leader teams will suddenly collapse from the strain. I wouldn't be surprised if fire wins this war again.

It depends, some teams won't be able to field competitive mono decks, not even if full upped and will be forced to use version 1 or 2 of the card... That said, it IS the less balanced of the event cards so far, as far as I can see... but I'll wait the start of Round 9 to complete my judgement.

[Scaredgirl]

I guess this is where i should put this. For war betting only 13 of the people who have started the betting process, have actually submitted every round. I think this is kinda of significant in that it shows the process might be a little bit too difficult. Not that it is hard, but the most of the time people are more focused on war activities themselves, and the time to meaningfully go through 30-50 matchups just isn't there. 

What if instead of each individual matchup, we bet on how each team does per round. So like a mix of the old betting system and the new betting system. I think this would cause a much greater participation rate then the current one.

That's a pretty good idea actually.

I simply stopped betting because one round, the system didn't register my vote. I fell behind.

Next time, I will take screen-shots every round just in case.

I have never seen Google Docs simply not register a form submission, and I've used it a lot. A more likely explanation for your situation is user error, like you closing the window before the page fully loads and you get the confirmation page (has happened before). I will pay $1000 to anyone who gets the confirmation page but their submission somehow disappears. It just doesn't happen.

I must say one opinion (feel free to ignore) :
War plan should exist before war. What card to use at which round. Basicly, imo, the idea should be : each round, the warmaster's only jobs would be to : check vaults, give penalties, randomize battles, post thread. (eventually settle disputes if any). Nothing more.
[/opinion]

From participants perspective, it should not matter when Event Cards are made. Whether it was done 1 year ago or 1 minute ago, you as a participant will see it when the round topic gets posted, and not a moment before that. I would understand making everything 100% ready if we had a bias like "team X is not doing well so we'll make an Event Card to help them", but that's not how we do it. We mainly tweak the numbers to make sure that War ends during round 10.

I think this is something many people do not understand. War 4 has 10 rounds so it must end during round 10. If we do not do things like nerf salvaging, we might be in a situation where only option to end War during round 10 would be to just ignore the Vault numbers and give the win to the team who wins a battle. That would lead to more whining then we have ever seen on these forums. The fact that we do not have a crystal ball and do not know in advance how Vault numbers develop, means it's pretty much impossible to make all the cards 100% ready, and I don't see a reason why we should have them 100% ready.

In War 3 we had all the cards before the event started and it was a total nightmare. The event dragged on and on, and we even had a round where we had to cancel the Event Card because it would have done some serious damage. For War 4 we had a general plan on which type of Event Cards are used during each round. So far this method has worked much better because it's much more flexible.

[Jenkar]

War 4 has 10 rounds so it must end during round 10. If we do not do things like nerf salvaging

This is the problem imo. A fixed number of rounds means that there's a big possibility of tweaking during the event (as you said). This leads to changing rules which, imo, are bad. If that's the aim, just have a -rules are not fixed and may change each round- at the beggining of rules thread next war, so that participants know that that can happen. (miscommunication)

*checks rules* There was (or at least there is, nor do i remember there ever being) nothing about it HAVING to be 10 rounds there. Which, again, is miscommunication between participants and organizers. Had i known that, would i have planned the same way at all rounds? Or even joined war? I do not know, but imo it's a pretty important variable i did not have knowledge of.

I'm all for flexible event cards, but... here it seems just too flexible. As in, as if players were sheep. Which i don't like *shrug*.

[Sevs]

Random thought

There should be an event card called agression or defensive (awful names) but agression lets you win if you are up 2-0 and defensive allows you to retreat from a battle on the first turn if get an awful draw (max of 1-2)

[10 men]

War 4 has 10 rounds so it must end during round 10. If we do not do things like nerf salvaging

This is the problem imo. A fixed number of rounds means that there's a big possibility of tweaking during the event (as you said). This leads to changing rules which, imo, are bad. If that's the aim, just have a -rules are not fixed and may change each round- at the beggining of rules thread next war, so that participants know that that can happen. (miscommunication)

*checks rules* There was (or at least there is, nor do i remember there ever being) nothing about it HAVING to be 10 rounds there. Which, again, is miscommunication between participants and organizers. Had i known that, would i have planned the same way at all rounds? Or even joined war? I do not know, but imo it's a pretty important variable i did not have knowledge of.

I'm all for flexible event cards, but... here it seems just too flexible. As in, as if players were sheep. Which i don't like *shrug*.

I agree with this, forcing War to 10 rounds would be very bad right now. Simple arithmetics tell that it is practically impossible for War to end on round 10 without some large events from the outside, and there is simply no way this would not generate tons of drama (rightfully so because one way or the other some teams would be screwed by this big time without being able to do anything about it).
Besides, there no real reason to cut War at 10 rounds imo, it's going very nicely so far so why force something on it? There were some complaints last War that it's too long (mainly by people who did well at the beginning and badly in the end), but putting an artificial end to it by some Deus ex Machina Event Card would be much lamer. Since when do you know before a War how long it will take?

[Higurashi]

It's also important to note the feedback on War length was after the longest War we have ever had. So we saw a huge change being made in initial 24 discards and, as many have expressed, that was a big overreaction to that feedback.
16 Rounds was brutal, but there is no way we'll end up there this time around. Even 12 Rounds would be fine.