War #5 - Suggestions and Feedback

[kev]

Would like to suggest WMs assigning players to duel (instead of just teams) and allow roles to be determined at a later time during deckbuilding.

- I agree.  Seed names like we did in War 4 and have Generals apply roles during deckbuilding (or just have them attached so that one player is Aether’s assassin throughout the War).  The theoretical benefits of seeding teams rather than players were far outweighed by the drawbacks in practice.

- I feel the bye rule was finally done right.

- I liked random discards from assassinations.  They were probably super painful to endure but I think they made for more varied decks in late War.  If assassins were truly OP, teams would’ve been using them instead of Lieutenants in late rounds.

- Prop needs a complete overhaul as I said here.

- Revised subbing salvage rules.  I posted two ideas here building on feedback from other players.

- I don't think the community minds complex rules for an event like War if they make the event more fun.  The much publicized "homework effect" felt in War 2 was mostly eliminated by the vault tool, but War 5 rule changes brought with them a lot of moving pieces to keep track of.  If the pieces stay in the rules going forward, a bunch of effort needs to be put into simplifying and streamlining.

[Shantu]

 - I loved the support team idea, so much that I originally wanted to be a support team member. I had a suggestion for support teams here. I believe it would fix the 'unusable decks' problem that we often faced. I don't know how to fix the scheduling problem, but I remember a suggestion somewhere that support battles should happen alongside the main battles. So in deckbuilding you only build decks (for both the main team and the support) and in the duel phase you only play duels. Capping the number of support people active or attacking at a time can work as well. I'd also like to point out that the inability for support members to participate in the main team's discussion alienated them. This rule also prevented a goal I thought support teams had (that turns out wasn't really a goal for the WMs): make newbie players familiar with War and teach them the ropes.

 - The only problem I have with random discards is the fact that it adds more randomness into a game that is already way too random. However I hate ghostmare, this War might have had a different outcome if Time didn't lose all those cards in the Chaos Lord round.

- Complex rules are - in my opinion - fine as long as they are don't take away from the fun. I hated for example, that only the Lt. could post the support stuff or the scout the scout stuff. Or that only certain people could sub attackers and some others the defenders. Team Death lost one chance to scout because of these unnecessary rules (we lost the battle tho so it didn't matter in the end).

[Demagog]

Long time no see.

While I no longer play the game nor partake in the community, I do check up on the going ons from time to time. War used to be one of the more interesting things to check out, but it's lost that appeal since it has hardly changed. So, would the organizers be willing to discuss a drastic or complete overhaul of the format of this event? I'm interesting in seeing what new ideas can arise to make this event interesting again.

[Helston]

It's been mentioned time and again, but feedback is the most important tool when refining any event. The three new Warmasters - bjessee, Jenkar and myself - are working hard on the forum's biggest event, but we will read and take into account every piece of feedback and every suggestion posted here.

If you have anything else to say on War 5, or any suggestions for future wars, now is the time to say it. An element can only reign in peace for so long, and Winter War is coming...

[~Napalm]

Well I'm pretty sure I've stated it several times before, but have you seen the 'Elemental Vault' idea? Rather than specific cards being in your vault, you have 12 different cards. One kind for each element. These can be played as any card from that element, at any time. That's the basic idea. This has been brought up after Wars 3 and 4, with no success, but I'll bring it up again anyway...

[Cheesy111]

Well I'm pretty sure I've stated it several times before, but have you seen the 'Elemental Vault' idea? Rather than specific cards being in your vault, you have 12 different cards. One kind for each element. These can be played as any card from that element, at any time. That's the basic idea. This has been brought up after Wars 3 and 4, with no success, but I'll bring it up again anyway...

I dislike this idea because it gives teams far too much flexibility.  Prediction is a huge part of war and this almost nullifies it.

[~Napalm]

Ah yes. I forgot to mention there would be certain limits in place to prevent total flexibility. Prediction would still be key. However, knowing an enemies vault would not be as important. Ultimately the argument in favor of this was to make War less about 'homework' and more about building decks and throwing down. Obviously the downsides are changing the way War is currently fought (which at this point, may actually be a good thing), and removing certain aspects that a number enjoy.

[mesaprotector]

From what I experienced in War #5 as a member of Team Entropy, I think the penalties for losing a match were too lenient early on, and too harsh in the later rounds. How your team does in Round 1 should count for something, even though it'll be less than in, say, Round 7.

[Acsabi44]

It's been mentioned time and again, but feedback is the most important tool when refining any event. The three new Warmasters - bjessee, Jenkar and myself - are working hard on the forum's biggest event, but we will read and take into account every piece of feedback and every suggestion posted here.

If you have anything else to say on War 5, or any suggestions for future wars, now is the time to say it. An element can only reign in peace for so long, and Winter War is coming...

As every marketing-guy will tell ya, advertising is the key. This topic is buried pretty deep, so few people find it. Maybe opening a "war6 feedback" topic in general, or putting a link in the news headline will help.

Ontopic: Light penalties early on are good IMO to ge newbs into the ebb and flow of war without too much stress on them.

[kev]

Ah yes. I forgot to mention there would be certain limits in place to prevent total flexibility. Prediction would still be key. However, knowing an enemies vault would not be as important. Ultimately the argument in favor of this was to make War less about 'homework' and more about building decks and throwing down. Obviously the downsides are changing the way War is currently fought (which at this point, may actually be a good thing), and removing certain aspects that a number enjoy.

For reference, here is Napalm's original post.  willng3 added some comments shortly after and I commented on it when Nap asked me to one War later.  Because you're asking again, here's more current feedback: Napalm, that idea is yucky.  will pointed out problems with the idea and they still haven't been solved.  More importantly the idea was an interesting way to solve the homework problem from War 3 but now that problem has been solved in other ways.  Removing deckbuilding constraints does not lead to more creative and inspired deckbuilding.

[kev]

For what it's worth I have no idea what the new WMs have planned.  They could bring back Team Underworld, make a silent draft, and eliminate propaganda altogether.  I really have no idea.  But I found that when I became a staff member I put into effect the changes I had already proposed.  In that light, I've compiled the posts of our new WMs from this thread to give players a taste of what changes War may be facing:

Jenkar: #1, #2, #3
Helston: #1, #2

Feedback from the departing WM: #1, #2


If you're looking to provide feedback, the above links might be a good place to start.  I think there was a lot of excitement around new WMs being appointed.  It's interesting that there hasn't been much feedback to help guide them...

[plastiqe]

War at it's core is a team based vault building pvp event.  Then we added extra stuff to it.

I really, really don't like when we mess with the vault later on with event cards or whatever.  The hard choices shouldn't be which cards to discard, or left up to RNG.  The strategy is in building the vault to begin with, and then making the hard choices on how to play with it. 

Event cards are by and large bad.  I have seen a handful that were balanced for each and every team, but more often than not they aren't.  Not to knock people making the event cards, it's just really difficult to make good ones.  I would get rid of these in a flash.

If you want more variation in War I would suggest bans like we've used successfully in other events.  RR had some interesting ideas for Trial bans that added strategy and variation to the matches.  An idea could be like at the start of War every element gets to pick a franchise card of theirs that they and only they may use.  So like Entropy might pick Nova, and then they are the only team that can use Nova.

Propaganda is fun but it's always rushed.  I would let propaganda run on till about Round 6 and then give the bonus, and make the bonus like 12 individual cards for first place, 11 for second, 10 for third etc AND I would make this the only opportunity to add cards to your vault outside of building it.

So while I like vault building I actually dislike the whole discarding and whittling down mechanic we use to eliminate players.  I would massively change War by giving every player 60 cards and 3 lives.  When you've lost 3 matches you're out, and you take the 60 cards you brought to the vault with you.  While you're still alive your 60 cards are shared with your team mates.  Put in special rules where a player can sacrifice themselves to save the General if the General is about to run out of lives.  Or that support team can work to adding an extra life for the soldiers if they are successful.  IMO it would be simple and would make War a lot more War-like as opposed to spreadsheet management-like.

And lastly I personally do not like pvp'ing with upgrades.  More upgrades ≠ more fun.  I liked it back when only the General and Lt. had a handful of upgrades because it was meaningful, but maybe that's just me.