War #4 - Feedback

[Legit]

I've been through three wars and I think it's time for change. Here's my idea for a completely different war. There are pros and cons to each system, but my main point is that this idea solves many problems that people have pointed out and experienced during previous wars.

8 players per team, war auction, all that stuff stays the same.

War will be divided into 9 rounds lasting 1 week each (roughly the same length as this current war). Four days of deckbuilding and three days of duels. Matchups will be determined each round so that every team faces every other team AN EQUAL AMOUNT OF TIMES.  8 players x 9 rounds = 72 matchups for each team during the entire war. 72/12 teams = 6 times a given team will play another specific team.

Vaults are the same for every team. Each team receives 24 copies of each card of their element, unlimited pillars/pends of their element, and 12 of every other card in the game. That's right, 12 of every single card. During deckbuilding teams can use any cards in their vault to build decks. The reasoning for such a change is that teams are not limited to their starting vault and they have freedom to build whatever decks they want using any cards in the game. This 1) Prevents situations in which teams with a small vault are disadvantaged by facing other teams that have decks which counter every possible option. 2) Encourages a variety of decks instead of every team taking the same deck archetypes every war and using them every round. For example, just look at previous wars, every team uses Graboidbows to be "competitive" and in my opinion those decks are lame and boring. While Graboidbows will be present for sure, once a team loses with one it is gone forever, and they will have to use alternate decks, hopefully more unique ones. 3) Rounds are more or less equal in importance, so if a team goes 1-7 in Round 2, they aren't screwed for the rest of the war.

Teams can choose their own matchups every round, exactly like this event card: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,32499.0.html.

Discards are set at 30. Salvages are 0. Each round you can convert up to 24 cards to ANY CARD of your element. Exception: Entropy cannot convert cards into Novas.

Event cards would not focus on vaults and instead focus on deckbuilding and other aspects of war.
Examples of good event cards that could be used:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,33433.0.html
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,26537.0.html
No more event cards like this:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,33101.0.html

The team with the best W/L ratio wins the war.

Of course these rules are not perfect and some things could probably be changed, but the basic idea is the important thing.

Rules are nice but let's see how this will actually affect war:

Pros
- Solves any Event Card complaints due to "unfairness" or war changing capabilities.
- Solves any problems (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,34709.msg467750#msg467750) created by the match randomizer.
- Solves any problems (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,31674.msg453900#msg453900) related to the number of times a team faces a certain team in relation to the rest of the teams.
- Less reliance on initial vault.
- More variety in deckbuilding, which, in my opinion, is something this game needs desperately. You won't see the same decks used over and over again throughout the whole event. Many people support this change, evident in the War Feedback thread.
- Everyone on the team gets to play a match every round = more fun for all participants.
- The old war system is getting stale.
- Less vault work needed.
- No team will have advantages or disadvantages based on vault size. No "sweet spots", no strategic subbing.

Cons
- Less strategy involved, because 1) No strategy at all needed in creating vaults. In previous wars, vault building strategy was a significant part of success in war. With this new system, this strategy is no longer needed. 2) Less strategy in predicting opponent's decks based on vaults. With the current system, predicting what other teams will use against you and how you can counter them is an important part of war strategy.
- No epic final battle.
- War could potentially be over early if one team wins an abnormally large amount of games before round 9, and that team's wins > 12+2nd place team's win. This could ruin the fun for eleven out of twelve teams.
- This new system allows too much freedom for deckbuilding. I see this is a good thing, but I can see why some people will dislike it. 
- This idea is a drastic change, some people don't like change and therefore will not like this completely revised system.

Might have missed some things, but there you have it.

[ralouf]

It's a nice idea but it kill the main charm of this event : building deck with limited vault is for me the best part of war, which make teams build amazing unexpected deck (sometimes ^^).

[Djhopper :)]

It's a nice idea but it kill the main charm of this event : building deck with limited vault is for me the best part of war, which make teams build amazing unexpected deck (sometimes ^^).

Yeah, war creates beautiful, unique decks every war because they don't have the cards to build orthodox deck.  I don't think we should stop this.

[The_Mormegil]

As far as I can see the issues that derailed this War and led a great and perfectly organized event (thanks WMs) to be rather disappointing to many people are the following:

- War #3 was way too long, thus War #4 had a forced end at Round 10.
- War #3 was way too long, thus War #4 had a smaller starting Vault.
- War #3 was way too long, thus War #4 had increased discarding right off of the bat.
- War #3 was way too long, thus War #4 got rid of salvages.
- War gets stale fast, thus intresting Event Cards need to be introduced to revitalize an otherwise plain event.

Now, I am one of those people that found this War to be particularly unbalanced and unpredictable, in a bad way, because a combination of fixed, small starting Vault, huge early discard for early losses and few chances to get back on track led to a chaotic resolution.
Another few issues are being reported in Feedback, namely:

- War is about losing less rather than winning more.
- Winning teams are punished in the end.


I think some massive brainstorming will be required to solve all the above problems, but I will add some ideas to the mix:

1) Salvage is not the only possible advantage a win can have. A solution to some problems might come from this simple fact: if you want to encourage winning without tweaking the Vault numbers even further, you may add other benefits to a win. Things like information, control over matchups, Vault conversion, control over opponents' Vaults... the options are there, and mainly unexplored.

2) Information is awesome in War. Event Card Number One is a step in the right direction but I for one would love more things like that (well, that one was awfully useless, but you get the drift). Maybe add a "Scout" role alongside Soldiers (or even Spy) that works like that. The point is this: add the possibìlity of having information in War.

3) Predictability is losing. Event Card Number Eight (United We Stand) is something I'd like to see more of. It adds to the weight of information from mid War onwards, allows teams to field unpredictable decks and ultimately add to the fun of War. However, it is something winners shold be able to do more so than losers, otherwise it turns into the infamous "diamond rubber band" we had in round 8. I'd also love to increase Salvage altogether, as it makes your options more fun.

4) Softer start helps avoid problems. Discarding set at 6 for the first round was a good idea in previous Wars, then perhaps escalating to 12 and finally 24 from Round 3. Numbers can be adapted to this, especially if you go with YoungSot's suggestion and kill any team under a certain amount of cards in any given round.

5) Discarding from Vault is no taboo. Penalties force you to do that. Why should losses be any different? With YoungSot's suggestion, you'll reach a point where losing teams are out and winning teams can still field the required decks with a good margin of cards. Increasing discard to affect Vaults directly is perhaps a good idea in that case.

[Demagog]

So what if we remade the format of war? Some of the basic concepts would be there, such as the vault and deck-building rules. What I'm thinking is turning war into a round-robin event. During each round every team plays against one other team. Assuming there are 9 members on each team, the match between each team would be best of 9.

I have to leave so I can't really go into detail. but basically the concept is to combine war with 3-man Team PvP. It's not an elimination tournament, though. Once each team has played every other one, the top 2 or 4 teams duke it out to win the war.

Seems like this was ignored. I think it's a way to make war more fair. Everyone faces everyone and you don't lose/gain cards between rounds. Teams don't get screwed over by playing against elements they are weak against early on. The deckbuilding phase would be much shorter because you are only playing against one element.

[dragonsdemesne]

2) Information is awesome in War. Event Card Number One is a step in the right direction but I for one would love more things like that (well, that one was awfully useless, but you get the drift). Maybe add a "Scout" role alongside Soldiers (or even Spy) that works like that. The point is this: add the possibìlity of having information in War.

What if we had one player on the 8-player roster whose role, rather than 'soldier', was 'scout'?  Every time that player wins a game, they get information on the opponent's vault.  It would be just like round 1's event card, only it would be an ability of that player for the whole War.  Every time the scout wins, they could learn one thing at random about the opponent's vault.

Along those lines, we could add other roles as well, rather than just 6 soldiers.  I'll let other people brainstorm that, but it would make things a little more interesting.  There could be the 'combat medic', who has a salvage/discard bonus, or maybe can use free shields (like the sword/shield event card we had) or that sort of thing.

[Sevs]

To be honest, once the war became a tournament, the entire value of war seemed missing. I almost feel the winning of this war or at least placing high doesn't carry the same weight it used to.

In the end of war event cards that give cards from "outside" of war gives a significant advantage to smaller vaults over those with larger vaults. As many people have stated before, the upside of having a larger strained vault is more options to counter what is a mostly known vault of lower teams. If you give event cards like these, than that upside is gone. It happened last war with event cards giving the smaller teams a chance to topple aether. and it happened this war as well. I think event cards like these should scale to the size of your vault or at least how many people you can play. so teams with 30 cards can make an entirely new deck and larger vaults are pretty much stuck making the same stuff.

Higher discards just meant a tougher time coping with each round not a shorter war. and then artificially removing cards by removing salvage and 30 cards discard isn't the answer either. The higher discards just meant that cards dropped from the vault much faster than last war but also led to less duels faster. which also means less total discard for the round. This war if it weren't for the tourney ending would probably have lasted till 14 or more i think. And the no salvage this just kept well placed teams well placed. never forcing them to use more players.


Other than that war was run pretty well. No major incidents, and no major breakdowns. Also, the vault tool was a wonderful addition. I think i already gave + rep for that. And except for the Round 8(converting should not conflict with max 24 pillar and the others should be an added bonus not a multiplied bonus) and the ridiculous "Add 60 cards" one the event cards were great and i think most should definitely be reused.

[Jenkar]

Also, the vault tool was a wonderful addition.

I ish happy.

[dragonsdemesne]

Re: Sevs:

What if instead of an event like reinforcements = get 60 new cards (or whatever it was this War) there was a card that said something like reinforcements = get a number of new cards equal to 10% of your current vault, rounded up.

[Onizuka]

I'd have preferred if teams could have readded 2 decks they had lost in early rounds. While it broke the 3 card rule, I disliked the large unpredictability that added cards brought.

[the dictator]

Well, now that war is almost over, time to put my stuffs in:

First let me quote a great post:

As far as I can see the issues that derailed this War and led a great and perfectly organized event (thanks WMs) to be rather disappointing to many people are the following:

- War #3 was way too long, thus War #4 had a forced end at Round 10.
- War #3 was way too long, thus War #4 had a smaller starting Vault.
- War #3 was way too long, thus War #4 had increased discarding right off of the bat.
- War #3 was way too long, thus War #4 got rid of salvages.
- War gets stale fast, thus intresting Event Cards need to be introduced to revitalize an otherwise plain event.

Now, I am one of those people that found this War to be particularly unbalanced and unpredictable, in a bad way, because a combination of fixed, small starting Vault, huge early discard for early losses and few chances to get back on track led to a chaotic resolution.
Another few issues are being reported in Feedback, namely:

- War is about losing less rather than winning more.
- Winning teams are punished in the end.


I think some massive brainstorming will be required to solve all the above problems, but I will add some ideas to the mix:

1) Salvage is not the only possible advantage a win can have. A solution to some problems might come from this simple fact: if you want to encourage winning without tweaking the Vault numbers even further, you may add other benefits to a win. Things like information, control over matchups, Vault conversion, control over opponents' Vaults... the options are there, and mainly unexplored.

2) Information is awesome in War. Event Card Number One is a step in the right direction but I for one would love more things like that (well, that one was awfully useless, but you get the drift). Maybe add a "Scout" role alongside Soldiers (or even Spy) that works like that. The point is this: add the possibìlity of having information in War.

3) Predictability is losing. Event Card Number Eight (United We Stand) is something I'd like to see more of. It adds to the weight of information from mid War onwards, allows teams to field unpredictable decks and ultimately add to the fun of War. However, it is something winners shold be able to do more so than losers, otherwise it turns into the infamous "diamond rubber band" we had in round 8. I'd also love to increase Salvage altogether, as it makes your options more fun.

4) Softer start helps avoid problems. Discarding set at 6 for the first round was a good idea in previous Wars, then perhaps escalating to 12 and finally 24 from Round 3. Numbers can be adapted to this, especially if you go with YoungSot's suggestion and kill any team under a certain amount of cards in any given round.

5) Discarding from Vault is no taboo. Penalties force you to do that. Why should losses be any different? With YoungSot's suggestion, you'll reach a point where losing teams are out and winning teams can still field the required decks with a good margin of cards. Increasing discard to affect Vaults directly is perhaps a good idea in that case.

I agree with almost all those points, except maybe for the last one (unsure, need to see how it works out).

For points 1 or 2, you could (as sevs said) add an extra role, or which would be even more fun, every time someone wins he gets to know one (two?) of the cards that weren't used by that team (or make it a percentage like 5% or 10%, rounded up). A role like scout or spy could have a bonus on that. Because yes, information is power.

On point 3, that is so true. Predictability is the most important thing in war, which is why I really disliked the loss of salvage in the last rounds. (also, as I stated earlier, I don't see why war has to end quick, it just has to end in a 'linear' way, without the dragging on we had in war 3). On that note:

To be honest, once the war became a tournament, the entire value of war seemed missing. I almost feel the winning of this war or at least placing high doesn't carry the same weight it used to.

Also I would like to see our soft start back. The scout option was in my eyes a failed attempt, because every team had to reveal only 2 decks, which means, if you really want to keep a deck for suprise, you don't have to reveal it at all.


On Youngsot's idea, even though it solves a lot of problems, I really dislike it. The thing I like most about war (and other events) is the limited deckbuilding it provides. There is a reason some people (like me) don't play in leagues: otherwise you will just fight the same decks over and over again. Limited deckbuilding on the other hand, leeds to a lot maybe a bit less effective, but way more fun like this one (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,32951.0.html).

Then, while the event cards all made for great strategies, I felt most off them were a bit too much made up to fix the flaws off the event (even though that is good to keep it balanced, it felt a bit eh... artificial).

Oh, and please decrease the early discarding a bit, that might lead to a longer war, but something like 11-13 sounds is good, and it allows more matches, which means the players ranked last in the fighting order will get some matches too.

[kirchj33]

Ah war.

This war was quite a bit different than the ones before, as expected, and I will post my thoughts here.  First of all, war is a lengthy event, but as a master & through trials it becomes much much lengthier because of preparation.  Some masters might totally wing it coming in, others might put too much effort (as I believe I did).  I felt that I could gain a significant strategic advantage for Team Earth if I did much preparation beforehand and between myself and my teammates, 100's of hours were spent in preparation.

"Its just a game!"

Was this stupid?  In retrospect, yes.  Earth has several key deficiencies that needed to be accounted for and covered up.  I had no clue going in, how to do this initially, so the time was necessary to get to know my element.  Testing all hypothetical decks vs. other hypothetical decks helped me to get familiar with what worked and what didn't, while having an idea of how strong certain decks were overall.  I was sad to see that after the 4th or 5th round, all of this testing was not even useful.  At the time, I had no job, and by the end of war, I had two, so it made sense at the time to me.

All of this testing "paid off" in the sense that it helped us gain an early lead and a position of power in the standings throughout the first 7 or 8 rounds.  Unfortunately for us, the rules were crafted this war so that taking an early lead may not have actually been as nifty as it seemed.  I admit, I was slightly disheartened by the way several things played out. Disclaimer: skip if not wanting to read bitching and moaning.

1.  Leading early on was actually somewhat detrimental over the course of a long event.  All of the surprise decks led to a nice lead that was evened out by the fact that many of the discards and event cards were built to help others stay alive.  Harsh penalties for losing were softened early on and midway through by allowing teams to rebuild against those that led (and UW).  Towards the end, those experienced teams/generals adjusted best due to their skill at managing vaults.  Ultimately, it led to ourselves, entropy & time having to battle more matches vs. upped card advantages & with cards that were better suited to help teams counter others.  It was no mistake that all three of these teams that jumped out to large leads in the standings and in their vaults fell hard, the format of this war meant this was going to happen.  It was a great way to keep all teams' spirits up, but was difficult to be on the receiving end of this situation.  I poured some liquor out for my homies 10 men and MatrimKK and their cronies as I saw this happening to them as well.  I saw firsthand, how we affected the final outcome of war because of harsh discard/salvage rules, just simply based upon where we placed decks.  Had we decided to place them elsewhere, we still would not have won, but other teams probably would have had final success.  Leading early on in this format means a team will have to play a higher percentage of their vault spread throughout more decks vs. a higher percentage of officers with upped card advantages with these teams gunning to beat them.  This isn't really a complaint, its a product of the rules, just merely an observation that led to ours, time's, and entropy's demise.

2.  Again, Event cards and discards were crafted to help keep the downtrodden teams alive.  We kicked so many teams while they were down early on, but the event cards kept helping them get back up in an even stronger and less predictable form.  I'm guessing this is how the WM's wanted things, but it sucked for us.

3.  RNG in matchups absolutely destroyed us and finished us off.  We made a fatal mistake vs. NotP in miscalculating our counter by one card.  The result was us being matched with them repeatedly, each round afterwards.  We created more desperate and weaker counters each round until darkness crushed us into oblivion.  Being matched with darkness round after round at the end of war was quite boring and killed what little morale we had left at the end.
War in a shorter (less rounds) format was not a success in my opinion.  The event cards such as adding 60 cards to a vault meant much more time actually had to be spent on war itself.  Things played out much less straightforward than expected, and the investment of time spent on war itself per round was much larger than in war 3.  Ultimately, the 60 card event meant UW had no chance whatsoever when you combined that event with their activity level.  I believe adding UW was a pointless exercise in tradition this war.

In the end, I had a great time.  I came to appreciate each and every participant in war, especially my teammates.  War wore me out this time, but I attribute most of this to the fact that I was trying to stay engaged to my fiance and work 70 hours a week simultaneously.  This event truly is the glue that binds this community together.