War #4 - Feedback

[deuce22]

A couple Wars back the decision was made to give byes to the lowest ranked teams first, which was updated to be the lowest ranked teams that could field more than one deck.  I'd like to see the rule go the other way.  The highest ranked team should get a bye first.  Or even better, the highest ranked team should get the bye always, regardless of whether they've had a bye before.  That will make it harder to usurp the top team (which most players won't want), but it will also shift the advantage from "not losing" to winning, and may also assist teams who choose to salvage late in War rather than hiding under the cap.  I raise this issue here rather than just implementing it because it's been a hot-button issue for several Wars now.  Feedback appreciated.

At first glance, I loved this idea (only #1 gets the bye) because I was thinking about being the top team (aether war 3) and having a deserved/earned advantage. Then as I thought about it more, I thought that it would really suck to be the #2-4 teams as you could be very close to the leader but the extra match most likely guarantees you will not catch up as the top team has more versatility and less risk each round they have a bye. While I like it better than the bottom teams receiving byes, I think it still isn't perfect (probably never will be). Giving byes to only the top team is might be going too far, but directly flipping the rule from war 3 could be not as good. Because later in war, the team that receives the bye could be the 5th ranked team with only 2 or 3 matches to play, which is a bigger advantage than if the top team received the bye.

As I'm writing this, I find my opinion constantly flipping back and forth as there are pros and cons of each. Bottom line is that using a bye system is always going to get complaints because it is impossible to balance appropriately. In an ideal world, it would be nice if there were no byes. A crazy suggestion might be to implement a "bonus match" in rounds with uneven players. There are probably a ton of ways to go about this, and I have no idea what would be the best or most efficient. So I am asking in chat right now

Update: first idea i came up with was the top team always plays the bonus match, and they would play a randomly selected deck from the #2 team from the previous round (or all previous rounds?). The top team gets normal gains/losses, and the #2 team gains/loses nothing except for a chance to hand the top team another loss.

[hainkarga]

If your team has more cards than is required, it will make deckbuilding easier. If a team has less decks than necessary to complete all their assigned matches, (so any team more than one deck under average) they are eliminated. 

Sounds too cutthroat and unforgiving. How about they are forced to complete their required matches even if they have only 1 deck, they should repeatedly play with whatever they have in their vault only being able to salvage once for each deck they can initially field that round.
Like;

At the beginning of Round X:
TeamA can field 8 decks
TeamB can field 6 decks
TeamC can field 4 decks
TeamD can field 2 decks
TeamE can field 1 deck.

Average is 21 (decks) / 5 (teams): 4 matches, for each team on round x.

TeamA & B do 4 matches and sit,
TeamC fields all of their vault, 
TeamD & TeamE has to play multiple times but can't salvage so.
This gives the better performing dudes some advantage while still giving the poor fellas some fighting chance. Just made this up after reading your idea.

[YoungSot]

If your team has more cards than is required, it will make deckbuilding easier. If a team has less decks than necessary to complete all their assigned matches, (so any team more than one deck under average) they are eliminated. 

Sounds too cutthroat and unforgiving. How about they are forced to complete their required matches even if they have only 1 deck, they should repeatedly play with whatever they have in their vault only being able to salvage once for each deck they can initially field that round.
Like;

At the beginning of Round X:
TeamA can field 8 decks
TeamB can field 6 decks
TeamC can field 4 decks
TeamD can field 2 decks
TeamE can field 1 deck.

Average is 21 (decks) / 5 (teams): 4 matches, for each team on round x.

TeamA & B do 4 matches and sit,
TeamC fields all of their vault, 
TeamD & TeamE has to play multiple times but can't salvage so.
This gives the better performing dudes some advantage while still giving the poor fellas some fighting chance. Just made this up after reading your idea.

That was actually my original solution. I changed it because even with increased chance to lose it, allowing a lower rank team to use their best decks multiple times in a round seemed like more of an advantage than a difficulty. But I suppose it's still an option. As a side note, I'm proposing the number of matches be equal to the average minus one, so they'd only be fielding three decks in your example.

[kev]

At the start of each round a Warmaster checks to see how many matches each team can play and finds the average. Subtract one from this average number, and you have the number of matches that each team will be required to complete in that round. The Warmaster then assigns those matches normally. If your team has more cards than is required, it will make deckbuilding easier. If a team has less decks than necessary to complete all their assigned matches, (so any team more than one deck under average) they are eliminated. This solution is promising imo, because it doesn't remove any of the key concepts of the War experience, it doesn't hold back teams that have large vaults (which are large due to skilled play after all), nor does it reward them so much that a middle-of-the-pack team has no chance to overtake them. It should hopefully be more intuitive in it's results.

If I get your math six 8-deck teams, five 7-deck teams and one 6-deck team = an average of 7.5 and so the 6-deck team would be eliminated.  Eliminating a 6-deck team in such a situation seems a bit harsh, and yet I agree with you that letting teams use existing decks in remaining matches (ie forcing a 1-deck team to fight a bunch of times) seems wrong, too.  Part of me likes the idea of assigning matchups based on number of remaining matches.  Assigning them based on a set number (8 in rounds 1-3, 7 in round 4, 6 in round 5) is just impossible.

Also who would you propose giving the bye to in this system?  It already rewards the top team, so giving it to the top team as I proposed above seems excessive.

Thoughts?

[majofa]

Link to discussion here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37403.0.html)
(worked on by ~Napalm & majofa)
[Auction Rules credit: TStar & Roles Idea credit: Jaymanfu]

(Part 1) General Information
12 Masters = 12 Generals
400 blank cards are given to each

(Part 2) Auction
Before the auction, each General may recruit one Lieutenant of their choosing. This player will join their team at no cost. (Recruit means the player would have to accept the invitation to be the Lieutenant.)

- Auction House -
Players who want to join War will each start their own War application topic where they include important information about themselves like their score and the number of rare cards they have.
In the Title, the player will include any elements they wishes to ban; the starting bid of this player will be 1+x, where 'x' is the number of elements banned.
Generals may not bid on any player that has banned their element.

The rest of the Auction House will remain the same as in the last War.

(Part 3) Vault Building
Vault building rules:
- at least 50% of cards have to be from your element
- maximum of 18 per card from your element (restriction doesn't apply to Pillars or Pendulums)
- maximum of 6 per card from other elements (restriction doesn't apply to Pillars or Pendulums)
- no Shards

(Part 4) Member Roles
General - 6 extra upped cards
Lieutenant - 3 extra upped cards
Strategist - May use a sideboard of up to 6 cards
Mercenary - 33% on-element rule
Scavenger - Salvages 3 extra cards after a win
Bulwark - Discards 3 less cards after a loss
Scout - Sees opponent's deck before match
Assassin - Your opponent discards 3 additional cards if you win

(Part 5) Round Matches
Opponents will be determined randomly by Warmasters using an online randomizer, with the constraint that no team will play another team more than once within a given round if possible. [[Only Generals will be included, the rest of the spots will be filled with the elements only.]]

In the google doc, each team will input which player will be fighting which element.

If there are uneven number of players fighting during a round the lowest ranked team that can field more than one deck gets a bye, meaning that one player in that team will skip the round. If that team already had a bye during the previous round, the next lowest ranked team gets a bye instead. No team may have a 2nd bye unless all other active teams have had at least 1 bye.

Sideboards
If you are to play an opponent with fewer players in battle in a given round, you may choose to include a sideboard of cards along with the deck. Your sideboard can contain 2 cards if your team has one more player in battle, plus 1 for each additional player in battle, up to a total of 6 cards. If you lose the match you can chose to discard from your sideboard instead of your deck, but your opponent can NOT salvage from your sideboard.

(Part 6) Decks Played

Decks Played Vault Range Extra Cards 8 286+ 46+ 7 246-285 36-75 6 206-245 26-65 5 166-205 16-55 4 131-165 11-45 3 97-130 7-40 2 64-96 4-36 1 30-63 0-33

(Part 6.5) Deckbuilding and Conversion
Deckbuilding rules:
- Any mark
- At least 50% of your cards have to be from your element
- All players may use up to 3 upgraded cards (unupgraded cards taken from the Vault are transformed into upgraded ones)
- You cannot change your deck until the round is over
- Player Roles may override some of these rules.

Teams can convert a maximum of 24 cards per round.

(Part 7) Discarding & Salvaging
ROUND 1: discard 6
ROUND 2: discard 12
ROUND 3: discard 18
ROUND 4: discard 24
ROUND 5+: discard 30

Teams may salvage 6 cards from each deck they defeat.

[UTAlan]

Not sure if it has been suggested before, but in an attempt to eliminate substitutions for the purpose of staying in the "sweet spot":

If you use a sub and win, normal salvages.
If you use a sub and lose, discard 3 (or 6?) more than normal.

[10 men]

My personal theory about the whole big teams vs small teams thing is that it kinda balances out if you don't do anything. I mean so far we had two cases of a team getting a big lead in early/mid War and one time that team also won War (2), one time it didn't (3), so 50% so far. That seems like a good place to be, as you definitely want it to be an advantage to do well early on but don't want to have a predetermined winner after a couple rounds either.

Of course there are some minor balancing factors that can help the small teams (e.g. bigger sweet spots) or the big teams (e.g. more conversions) but as it has been pointed out the main balancing factor is that the big team has the advantage of being more flexible in their choices while the small teams have more raw power with more upgrades.

Here also lies the biggest failure of War #4, the round 8 Event card, as it turned that balance on the head completely. It was basically unusable by big teams (they have to convert pillars and are unlikely to have a mono left with their Vault bloated by salvages) while the small teams had the option of either making their Vault MORE flexible than the one of the big teams, or going completely nuts for one round with 24/36 upgrade decks. While the "United We Stand" half had the bigger long-term impact on the War, several losses of that round have to be attributed to the "Victory to the Pure" half only, which is huge as well that late in War. It turned doing well in early War not only to a non-advantage, but even to a disadvantage - being able to benefit from the Event was better than winning earlier. As a consequence the top 2 teams until that point (Entropy and Earth) were both eliminated in the Quarterfinals. In conclusion I have to say that it was the most unbalanced Event in the history of all War, easily leaving behind the "Age of X" cards (though not the Veils I guess).

Since I don't know the thoughts that went into making this card I can't give much of a suggestion except putting more thought into the Event cards - I believe that a few times SG let it shine through that some Events were made in the last minute before (or after) the round started, so that would be a good idea to avoid. It still surprised me a little too, as I liked pretty much all the other Event Cards and I also think that the War was very well-executed otherwise.

[YoungSot]

At the start of each round a Warmaster checks to see how many matches each team can play and finds the average. Subtract one from this average number, and you have the number of matches that each team will be required to complete in that round. The Warmaster then assigns those matches normally. If your team has more cards than is required, it will make deckbuilding easier. If a team has less decks than necessary to complete all their assigned matches, (so any team more than one deck under average) they are eliminated. This solution is promising imo, because it doesn't remove any of the key concepts of the War experience, it doesn't hold back teams that have large vaults (which are large due to skilled play after all), nor does it reward them so much that a middle-of-the-pack team has no chance to overtake them. It should hopefully be more intuitive in it's results.

If I get your math six 8-deck teams, five 7-deck teams and one 6-deck team = an average of 7.5 and so the 6-deck team would be eliminated.  Eliminating a 6-deck team in such a situation seems a bit harsh, and yet I agree with you that letting teams use existing decks in remaining matches (ie forcing a 1-deck team to fight a bunch of times) seems wrong, too.  Part of me likes the idea of assigning matchups based on number of remaining matches.  Assigning them based on a set number (8 in rounds 1-3, 7 in round 4, 6 in round 5) is just impossible.

Also who would you propose giving the bye to in this system?  It already rewards the top team, so giving it to the top team as I proposed above seems excessive.

Thoughts?

Hmm yeah the question of what to do with the teams that can't field a proper number of decks is the toughest part of this suggestion. Just eliminating them is nice and simple but I guess I have to agree it's too excessive in some scenarios. I suppose we could decrease the required number of decks to average -2, but it still doesn't seem optimal when it doesn't take into account the size of your vault at all beyond comparing it to other team's size.

*paces back and forth for a while*

Ok here's a thought:
Teams playing less than the required number of matches could be required to discard cards at the end of the round equal to one additional loss. Alternately they could be penalized with a number of such "auto-losses" equal to the number of decks below the required amount that they fielded. This has the advantage of starting out slower due to lower loss discards, and it won't instantly eliminate a team that still has a fairly large vault. You might change the number of required matches from average -1, to just average, in this case.

Some of the possible rule sets. I'm not sure which one would be best:
1. If you can't field a number of decks equal to the current average -1, you suffer one auto-loss at the end of the round and choose cards to discard from your vault accordingly.
2. If you can't field a number of decks equal to the current average -1, you suffer a number of auto-losses equal to the number of decks you failed to field that round.
3. If you can't field a number of decks equal to the current average (not minus 1), you suffer one auto-loss at the end of the round and choose cards to discard from your vault accordingly.

This seems like a much more moderate suggestion than simple elimination, while at the same time still being fairly simple. It's also thematically pretty intuitive (if you don't have the forces to deal with all the threats posed by your opponent, you automatically lose those battles). Are there any glaring problems with this approach that I haven't thought of?



As for byes... since by their very nature they give an un-earned advantage to a team, they're never really "fair". If we were adopting one of the more severe alternatives above then I would say go ahead and give it to the lower ranked team, as they are already suffering enough disadvantages that a bye for them has very little chance of changing the end results. If using a more moderate option like number one, I lean towards giving it to the #1 team but going ahead and alternating so that a team doesn't get more than one bye.

Or just to think out loud: What if we add a "neutral" deck when the number of players is odd, so that a team doesn't get a bye but rather just fights the neutral deck. We could determine the nature of the neutral deck by randomly choosing a team to build it based on cards in their vault (but not actually removing those cards). Then the designated team would play as the neutral deck in addition to their other real matches, but would not actually lose anything if the neutral deck lost (the team assigned to fight the neutral deck would still salvage and discard normally though.

[Cheesy111]

I like the idea of the "neutral" deck, but one of the most important things in War is knowing something about your opponent.  If such a neutral deck system were used, I think the best plan would be to tell the team facing the neutral deck which team is building the neutral deck (team that is building the neutral deck should probably be randomized).

[YoungSot]

I like the idea of the "neutral" deck, but one of the most important things in War is knowing something about your opponent.  If such a neutral deck system were used, I think the best plan would be to tell the team facing the neutral deck which team is building the neutral deck (team that is building the neutral deck should probably be randomized).

Well, yes, whichever team was assigned to face the "neutral" deck would of course know who was going to play it. Fighting the neutral deck would probably be considered a slight disadvantage since the team assigned to supply the neutral deck could always send their best remaining deck. That's not entirely fair, but compared to the much bigger imbalance of just randomly letting one team avoid their match entirely, I think it might be an improvement.