Post by: ddevans96 on March 17, 2012, 01:55:43 am
Please post suggestions and feedback regarding War #5 in this thread.
Post by: deuce22 on March 17, 2012, 02:03:37 am
War #4 - Feedbackit's war #5 :P
Post by: ddevans96 on March 17, 2012, 02:04:41 am
Post by: bogtro on March 17, 2012, 02:04:46 am
Not sure what kind of perk would be good for Strategist. Possibly something that affects discard/salvage, or maybe some sort of lasting effect on the opponent (e.g. Strategist salvages 3 more cards or discards 3 less, or Strategist chooses which cards the opponent discards on a win [or even what they salvage]).
Post by: The_Mormegil on March 17, 2012, 07:43:39 am
I think it would be nice if Strategist could have some battle "perk" (e.g. Scout has Vault adv., Salvager has relic gain, etc.) As it stands now, Strategist, while important as a capacity, is rather useless as a role. Basically this means that while it's important to draft a Strategist, there's no advantage to having that player in the Strategist position. Thus, when drafting a Strategist who is also a good player (which is true in most cases IMO), it's advantageous to leave the position for your "worst" player. Some Generals/Lieutenants are probably capable of adequately performing this position as well, making the Strategist position even more "useless"I liked the idea of a three cards sideboard for the Strategist (fits with the theme). Another idea would be the ability to trade his upgrades with other players, but that would probably solidify it in the last position. Hmmm...
Not sure what kind of perk would be good for Strategist. Possibly something that affects discard/salvage, or maybe some sort of lasting effect on the opponent (e.g. Strategist salvages 3 more cards or discards 3 less, or Strategist chooses which cards the opponent discards on a win [or even what they salvage]).
Post by: Jenkar on March 17, 2012, 11:57:18 am
Some Generals/Lieutenants are probably capable of adequately performing this position as well, making the Strategist position even more "useless".+1. I know for a fact war tool hash no secretz for some of us. :P
Post by: Onizuka on March 19, 2012, 03:11:27 am
Post by: Sevs on March 19, 2012, 06:24:27 am
Ghostmare should be considered in element for all teams.Except for :earth ghostmare hates earth
Post by: Onizuka on March 24, 2012, 10:51:12 pm
Post by: Onizuka on March 26, 2012, 08:13:54 pm
300 card vault is alright, justifiable by less people.
I dislike the +2 for each element you want unable to bid on you. Banning two elements will in most cases probably make you cost around 10 cards, which is already 1/30th of the initial vault.
I can't abide by the dropping 18/6. Just harsh for some elements.
Can't like how support teams are picked, the team that got 2nd last war is the biggest loser in this. Seems more like a punishment to teams who were close to winning and rewarding teams who did not do so well.
Strategist role seems like it could use a perk, but this has been vastly covered already. Assassin is harsher with the limit of 6 off element cards.
Would have liked to see Lieutenants be included with generals in what is generated for each round.
Post by: Acsabi44 on March 27, 2012, 04:02:27 pm
(either in every game/ the first game)
Post by: ~Napalm on March 27, 2012, 04:08:22 pm
Post by: Jenkar on March 27, 2012, 04:10:20 pm
:fire Strategist vs :air Strategist. Flip a coin?Y u vs me. Air wins toss anyways.[/needless support]
I'd say normal coin then.
Post by: Acsabi44 on March 27, 2012, 04:12:51 pm
:fire Strategist vs :air Strategist. Flip a coin?exactly.
however, if :fire doesn't assign the strategist to the :air match, then :air goes first by default. But :fire 's strategist can go first in another matchup.
I don't see a problem with that, every team has a "potential to go first" advantage and a "potentially the other team goes first" disadvantage. It is the team's strategy to use these two potentials as they fit.
Post by: ~Napalm on March 27, 2012, 04:21:44 pm
Post by: Jenkar on March 27, 2012, 04:34:21 pm
And what if :fire has 6 matchups and everyone sends their Strategist. :fire Strategist MUST face another Strategist. We simply toss a coin to determine who gets the benefit?Or let the game do it :>
Post by: Acsabi44 on March 27, 2012, 04:39:34 pm
And what if :fire has 6 matchups and everyone sends their Strategist. :fire Strategist MUST face another Strategist. We simply toss a coin to determine who gets the benefit?I don't seem to understand your problem....
1, In a strategist-non strategist game, the strategist goes first. This can be accomplished by the other player doing nothing on the 1st turn if s/he wins the cointoss.
2, in a strat-strat matchup, a normal cointoss happens.
Or do you have a problem with the potential unfairness of everyone sending their strategist vs. a particular team? well, it seems to be unfair, ,but it can happen with assasin and lieutenant etc. as well.
Post by: ~Napalm on March 27, 2012, 04:44:48 pm
Post by: The_Mormegil on March 28, 2012, 01:01:27 pm
I'm just saying that leaving a bonus like this up to RNG doesn't seem like a good idea to me.No, it's just that strategist vs strategist nullifies both capacities. It's something minor, but at least it's something.
Post by: Onizuka on April 11, 2012, 10:22:00 pm
Post by: hainkarga on April 18, 2012, 12:35:32 pm
If my favorite elements are
1) :life
2) :light
3) :water
Any bid that master of water places on me is increased by +1, light +2, life +3. But those bonus points will not remove cards from the initial vault if one of those masters win that player. Like, if master of :life bids 1 card on me, any non-favored element's master should at least bid 5. Or he can surpass a 3 card bid simply by bidding 1.
Post by: Onizuka on April 18, 2012, 08:13:08 pm
I don't get why we should be paying for a player that was passed by by every team in both auctions and support teams when we can swap players between our support team and main team for free.
The only reason I wouldn't enforce some kind of penalty on subbing support teams is because currently support team drafting punishes high ranking teams that didn't win war. I still can't get behind previous wars affecting current wars, though.
What if a teammate is inactive but the general needs replacing?
A la new rule updates. Still don't like the punishment of high ranking non-first place teams.
Post by: willng3 on April 19, 2012, 05:19:10 pm
1) It shouldn't have been started until the main teams were finalized. Having to seek and find and then potentially change choices based on if a player was drafted by a General or not is quite honestly a disorganized mess that I personally found extremely irritating and confusing.
2) The way that this secondary auction was organized was "pick a list of X players" to be drafted. Assuming one of your higher ranking players is picked you fall down to the next ranking player. But this is also unnecessary and in conjunction with the problems listed in number 1 causes the entire process to be filled with a mass of PMs every single time that a player requesting to be drafted for a support team has been selected for a main team or a different support team. For me it would be more practical to have a topic set up where Generals reply with a draft choice in the order set up by Warmasters. This allows the secondary auction to become much more strategic and would make me feel more involved with the entire thing. I understand that you run into a back draw with inactive Generals, but I still find it hard to believe that the entire process couldn't be completed within 3 days with support teams of this size.
3) A list of players available for secondary auction would be ideal here. As it stands I didn't look at a single player who was not bid on at all during the auction simply because having to comb through the current auction status spreadsheet was already enough for me to deal with. That in conjunction with other Generals urging you to hurry up and make your picks doesn't exactly lead to you feeling that you can make picks at a relaxed pace.
Post by: kev on April 19, 2012, 06:01:57 pm
stuffEveryone is eager to have everything in place and begin the Event, but there's really no rush here. Just PM a list to WMs in the next three days.
Following the auction the five players selected by each team are removed from the player pool. Generals will have three days to PM Warmasters a ranking of all remaining players. Using these lists each remaining player will be assigned a Support Team.I don't want this to be a frustrating experience so let me reword the above process:
-89 players entered the auction.
-60 end up on Main Teams
-24 end up on Support Teams
-5 end up as replacement candidates later in the War
Generals should make a list of the 24 players they most want on their team. (Note: if you're first to draft you only really need 13, if you're second you really only need 14, etc.) This is complicated by not all Main Teams being set. If there are ten unsettled players, you can rank your top 34 and WMs will sort it out. Or you can just wait until teams are settled. No biggie. Have fun with it, guys.
Post by: YoungSot on April 19, 2012, 06:08:10 pm
Post by: RavingRabbid on April 19, 2012, 08:15:08 pm
Perhaps once teams are settled the WMs will post an announcement stating so and listing out the potential support team members? If you're not already planning to do so, that would be convenient.+1 so much.
Post by: Glitch on April 19, 2012, 09:37:40 pm
Quote
February 18th, the 329th year after our creator Zanzarino
February is the month of death.
Historians, such as myself, debate whether each month was ever truly allocated to the elements. However, with the starvation and the cold and the emptiness, there is no doubt that if the months were matched with might, February would be death's.
And death is smiling.
Introductions are in order. My name is Sir Heinric Borius, Henry in friendly company. I am a historian, geographer, and geologist. Specifically, my area of study is in the wars of years past. From what I've gleaned, the wars are long, harsh, and brutal, each element fighting to the death and showing no mercy. These wars have been known to span decades, or be as short as days. Violent, bloody, grim, gut wrenching days. I am not entirely sure of how the wars ended, as I've only documented a few battles here and there. I'm only sure that death won the last one, and then the warfront grew silent.
But death is smiling.
The remnants of these battles have fascinating results. Apparently, the massive destructive forces left latent energies, condensed forms of a side effect from older times. These "shards", as I decreed them, give fascinating insight into perhaps ancient and lost power. It is in order to learn about these shards I picked up the study of geology. These shards seem to bond with certain elementals. This would allow for neat segregation and collection of the trophies, and increase the prosperity of all the lands. However, the old boundary's have changed, and battlezones no longer fall in locations that would seem rational today. I had a difficult time finding shards in significant quantities to confirm my theory.
It is because of this I started learning geography. The old nation lines are fascinating. Apparently the lands of life used to be clear across the continent, but their woods were burned to the ground. Over the years, the lands of air too moved, drifting as the wind slowly pushed them northward. Learning these I traveled to ancient battlesights, stared in awe at the destructive forces that had once surged, and cataloged the location of the shards. I then sent my findings to the nearby nations, hoping for assistance in the potentially dangerous excavation. Perhaps doing so was naive of me. Regardless, ever since the publishing of my research, I have regretted it immensely.
Each shard, identical in form, has a strange calling to certain elementals. Not their magic, rather, their mark. This has led to an interesting phenomenon, and a horrifying prospect. Rather than each land neatly segregating out the shards to their respective elements, they fight over them. A waterborne elemental who has since begun serving the lands of fire has just as much claim over the "Shard of Patience", as I call it, as a water elemental who remained true to his homeland. All twelve nations have equal claim over all twelve shards, and as these shards tend to form on battle sites by old boundary lines, frequently several lands lay claim to the same shards. There is great frustration in the fair division of this fascinating find, and the discord is escalating.
And death is smiling.
It is in the cold month of February, huddled around a fire, safe for the moment from angry earth elementals who did not appreciate my study of their Golem (I did not know I could kill it!), that I decide that I must put down my map and chisel, and once again resume my role as historian. Forces are being rallied once more. Great general's amass colossal swarms of violent magic, slowly segregating their strength and delegating their might to the most frightening warriors I've seen in all my years. These shards have true value to them, and I'm afraid they've awoken an old vendetta, and old grudge, an old hatred of one another from times prior. Their destructive motives are slowly evolving from desire of the shards to sating an old thirst for blood. It is not safe to travel at night anymore, nor is there safe passage anywhere without identification. Every nation I pass through doubts my neutrality and spies on me like a traitor. A few of them are even beginning to openly call for war.
There is no avoiding this bloodbath. I had options prior, I could have kept this power secret. In fact, the concept of saving all the shards for myself and attaining inconceivable power, which seemed laughable when I had the option, now appears to be the only way I could have prevented global catastrophe. I am a historian, and while my expertise lies in the past, it's time I set my eyes squarely on the present in future. Some day, years in the future, if wars might ever break out again, someone needs to have a written log of what happened here. Someone needs to understand the self extinction we attempted, starting in February of Zanzarino's 329th year. The animosity is approaching a breaking point, bloodshed will soon follow.
And death is smiling.
Post by: majofa on April 24, 2012, 10:00:16 pm
Quote
propaganda could be done right after trials... and only by the Master/General of the element... then the winners get to use the bonus cards only during the auction phaseJust a random thought... Also, I don't think that one person should make a banner for multiple teams.
Post by: YoungSot on April 24, 2012, 10:41:04 pm
Quotepropaganda could be done right after trials... and only by the Master/General of the element... then the winners get to use the bonus cards only during the auction phaseJust a random thought... Also, I don't think that one person should make a banner for multiple teams.
I guess it depends why we have Propaganda in the first place. Personally, I think we should move in the opposite direction, making it LESS restricted if possible. Imo Propaganda is about having fun celebrating and showing off your element. I think the rules should be very open and flexible, designed mostly to require a certain amount and quality of material, but imposing few restrictions on it's exact structure. Basically, take the approach we do with speeches, and apply it to all of propaganda. Compliance with unnecessary restrictions sucks some of the fun out of the creative process.
Post by: majofa on April 24, 2012, 10:42:44 pm
Post by: deuce22 on April 24, 2012, 10:46:49 pm
Plus the War speeches now are more comedic than inspired...
I agree. Ban funny speeches!
Post by: Avenger on April 25, 2012, 05:29:42 pm
The current war subforum title is incorrect: "104 Players. 13 Teams. Which element will rule them all?"
Post by: deuce22 on April 25, 2012, 06:38:49 pm
Maybe this was already written somewhere.
The current war subforum title is incorrect: "104 Players. 13 Teams. Which element will rule them all?"
The element of surprise!!!
Post by: Zso_Zso on April 26, 2012, 03:47:19 pm
As it is now, the rules (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37505.0.html) and the rosters (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37689.0.html) have both numbered team members from 2-6 with generals listed as #1, but the 1st round posting (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,39212.new.html#new) lists generals without numbers and team members numbered 1-5. This will likely lead to some confusion about who is to play who in the round.
Post by: Jenkar on April 26, 2012, 03:51:00 pm
I would humbly suggest to use a consistent team member numbering between rules and match listing for the round.This is unlikely because save for generals, no player vs player matchups are predetermined (ie generals chose who fights whom).
As it is now, the rules (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37505.0.html) and the rosters (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37689.0.html) have both numbered team members from 2-6 with generals listed as #1, but the 1st round posting (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,39212.new.html#new) lists generals without numbers and team members numbered 1-5. This will likely lead to some confusion about who is to play who in the round.
Post by: hainkarga on April 26, 2012, 03:51:50 pm
Cut down vaults, now a forced card discard.
Woo?
Post by: Jenkar on April 26, 2012, 03:58:49 pm
Post by: Onizuka on April 26, 2012, 06:23:15 pm
As in last war, in principle its bad to inject cards essentially mid-game because of the perceived/actuality of the going into war OPness of UW.
To cut down vaults and then to do a round 1 mandatory discard is not right to me.
Post by: Sevs on April 26, 2012, 09:02:56 pm
Post by: deuce22 on April 26, 2012, 10:14:30 pm
Cut down vaults, now a forced card discard.
Woo?
forced discard vs. bonus cards don't matter as long as it is balanced between teams. So I agree with kev that there really shouldn't be any complaining (unless something is unbalanced).
Post by: Onizuka on April 26, 2012, 11:02:29 pm
And discards will affect all teams differently because while we all started with the same amount of cards for bidding,this event card, how much every team bid, and propaganda change the balance.
Post by: deuce22 on April 27, 2012, 12:16:54 am
Bonus cards are unbalanced if they're given after war begins. Being able to change what has already been set in stone after the fact won't be balanced.
And discards will affect all teams differently because while we all started with the same amount of cards for bidding,this event card, how much every team bid, and propaganda change the balance.
If I recall, each team started with 300 cards + 12 for propaganda. requiring each team to sacrifice 1 card (or more if you choose) before a battle is ever played seems balanced. In order to field a team, you have to do the exact same thing in the auction...
Post by: Onizuka on April 27, 2012, 12:41:48 am
300 cards pre-auction. Less/more after prop. One card's worth is changed for each team. Prop bonuses then add in, based on whoever appealed to the masses the best, further distorting the value of a card. If I had learned that I was going to be forced to discard an extra card, perhaps I would have changed my auction bidding. 1 card is worth different to each team, in the end.
And note I've never been arguing directly against the event card, but the principle. Lowered vaults, lowered pre-R1 maximum card amounts and now a forced discard doesn't sit right with me.
There's also another point I could mention, but I don't know the future event cards to whether or not vault numbers changed because of event cards is unknown to me, in addition to results involving assassins.
Post by: deuce22 on April 27, 2012, 12:54:10 am
If I had learned that I was going to be forced to discard an extra card, perhaps I would have changed my auction bidding.
This is funny coming from the general with the most expensive team. :P
But overall, I generally agree with you. Bottomline is that elements is not perfectly balanced, which makes war impossible to balance. Therefore, I am not going to lose any sleep over forcing every team to toss 1 pend before any battles are ever played.
Post by: furballdn on April 27, 2012, 01:55:15 am
Post by: Jenkar on April 27, 2012, 05:12:21 pm
Post by: UTAlan on April 28, 2012, 01:26:28 pm
Post by: deuce22 on April 30, 2012, 10:36:52 pm
Post by: willng3 on May 02, 2012, 04:20:40 pm
'k, i think this fits here : i think propaganda advertising should follow the same rules as competitions : advertise the polls in chat, okay. Advertise an element by a forum post in the votin' thhread, okay. Advertise a specific element by chat/forum pms : not okay.Hmm yes I quite agree with this. Otherwise you may as well expect to use this method and win even if the propaganda in itself was lackluster.
Post by: Jenkar on May 02, 2012, 04:42:59 pm
Post by: TheonlyrealBeef on May 02, 2012, 04:54:46 pm
The current solution has the advantage of the cause of the bug probably be forced into getting rid of said cards, but is extremely painful for the losing team. I'd personally find it ideal if the deck could be replaced with a similar deck that does not cause the bug. In the example of the occurrence this round: replace Black Nymphs with Black Dragons. It's not ideal but it would be great if both teams and/or wms could come to an agreement of a deck that is considered to be both similar as well as not causing the bug to replay with. I emphasize similar because this must not by any means be abused to change your deck into something counter-ish by purposefully adding a bugged combo into the deck.
This replacement deck would then replace the old, bugged deck in every possible way (vault, for the match etc.).
Post by: RavingRabbid on May 02, 2012, 05:21:21 pm
People are just going to vote for the element they like the most, the element they're in, or the element that spammed them to vote there (I hope no one does this).
There isn't a reason to keep propaganda.
Post by: Anthraxx on May 02, 2012, 05:42:14 pm
Post by: YoungSot on May 02, 2012, 06:02:51 pm
Post by: kev on May 02, 2012, 07:13:23 pm
- Further unite your team in the early stages of War. Ideally multiple players would contribute from each team.
- Give War more color and take it to another level.
- Showcase the community's talents.
It's not accomplishing the above quite like it used to/is supposed to, and Brawl will do a much better job of showcasing the community's talents. Prop will see some changes next War. If you have an outside-the-box idea on how to replace/rework Propaganda with something fun and additive to War, reply here or PM the Warmasters (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;u=10,13,35).
Post by: Tiko on May 02, 2012, 07:25:00 pm
The bonus for completing the Propaganda should be kept, though (if Propaganda will remain, of course), as it forces the teams to put in some effort at least.
Post by: willng3 on May 02, 2012, 08:00:16 pm
- Remove the reward from Propaganda voting completely (I assume the completion bonus still applies)
- Invoke a judging system instead of a community vote
- Remove Propaganda completely
This seems like a fairly good solution, in my opinion. The biggest issue is of generals providing poorly done pieces for Propaganda just to satisfy the bare minimum, but I really don't mind that aspect too much myself; I would much rather prefer the pre-Round 1 phase be dedicated to Vault building, Member Roles, etc. than having to worry about Propaganda as well. If the completion bonus doesn't apply anymore then I find it hard to believe that most Generals will bother doing Propaganda at all.
Judging system:
I would like to see this invoked since it removes the unreliability of community voting, but it seems very, very similar to what is proposed for Forum Brawl already.
Removing Propaganda completely:
At this point I'm really not against this either, but on the other hand I will acknowledge that Propaganda does serve as a great team building exercise in some cases.
The biggest issues that I'm seeing with Propaganda currently mainly involve the voting system in itself and the criteria for each part of the submission in itself.
Many people disagree on what exactly defines a speech, and I honestly don't feel that what is outlined in the rules thread can be called a Propaganda speech when the bare minimums are followed. A speech by definition amounts to a spoken work (in this case typed since it's over the internet), aimed at moving a target audience in favor of a particular cause or gain. Well the requirements for Propaganda currently only make a block of text aimed towards one's team necessary. However, much more than just that team is voting on Propaganda in general therefore you're not directly speaking to a rather sizable portion of the audience you should be targeting. I also don't believe that any pieces of artwork except for the main banner should be presented on the main post. If you want to give a shout out to fan-made banners then that's fine, just do it in a separate post designated for that type of thing; the rules specifically state that a Propaganda post needs a banner, meaning that all other artwork should not be part of Propaganda. I also don't find comics speech-worthy, as humorous as they may be, but that may just be my opinion.
The voting system is probably the biggest issue. Firstly when the advertisement for Propaganda voting explicitly states, "Go vote on who put forth the best effort and created the best banners, flags, and speeches. " then I would assume that things such as Element loyalty, who's on a particular team, or how someone convinced you to go vote on the Propaganda page should be irrelevant; it's all about the works created. I admittedly did not vote for anyone else's Propaganda page because of the benefit the bonus may have provided me; that also needs to be taken into account with other voters. From the rumors surrounding the whole advertising via PM issue I would say that it is incredibly likely that teams in future Wars will use PM advertising as a method to gain more votes unless it is strictly forbidden in the rules. This is naturally a big issue because 1) It could result in spam and seriously annoy people not participating in War and 2) There's no telling if bribery or other impure methods were being used to garner votes. Or let's say that during this War I was on Team Fire and PM'd someone a link to our propaganda page before telling them to go vote on the poll thread. Well Team Fire has two images set up on the thread currently, so if I don't like the first one, but do like the second then I would suspect that might change how I would vote in the Polls since I've already seen what Fire's banners look like. Yet another reason why I would like 1 image per Propaganda page, incidentally.
EDIT: One final thought. I was disappointed how the song choice played absolutely no part in how Propaganda votes were decided. Offering bonuses on as many self-made projects as possible is good, but really what's the point of even posting a song if it doesn't make a difference in the long run? I also spent a considerable amount of time trying to integrate the banner, speech, and song into one piece for greater effect as a whole. Whether or not this would have given us a better chance in the voting is unknown, but I would like to receive a warning ahead of time when changes like this are made.
Post by: Cheesy111 on May 02, 2012, 08:05:48 pm
Post by: mesaprotector on May 02, 2012, 08:13:13 pm
Post by: RootRanger on May 02, 2012, 09:34:53 pm
I would like to propose another idea for how to solve this frustrating problem. Perhaps, Propaganda could be its own Competition that takes place as War is starting. The prize for propaganda would be a forum icon instead of bonus cards in an entirely unrelated event. Competitors would be able to submit a speech or banner for any element they like, and then the award would go to the person with the most votes. This way, propaganda remains a part of the forum, but War is not worsened because of it.
I'm not too upset, as Fire and Death would need significantly more than 9 cards before they could compete with a team as powerful as Air, although I feel sorry for the weaker teams. Hopefully, these flaws will be fixed next war.
Post by: deuce22 on May 03, 2012, 12:44:10 am
As I said before: Just drop the bonus cards that the Propaganda "winner" recieves. The Poll should only reflect the community's view of the Teams' self-advertising and nothing more. I think any kind of 'drama' that we had now can be avoided this way.
The bonus for completing the Propaganda should be kept, though (if Propaganda will remain, of course), as it forces the teams to put in some effort at least.
I like this
Post by: furballdn on May 03, 2012, 01:15:53 am
Post by: ddevans96 on May 03, 2012, 01:22:40 am
I just remembered. Where's the betting?
Not existent, unless something really awesome happens.
Post by: Avenger on May 03, 2012, 06:35:04 am
The reasoning: the team just formed, people need to integrate this into their daily schedules, learn team methods, etc.
Post by: pulli23 on May 03, 2012, 02:00:53 pm
Post by: hainkarga on May 03, 2012, 02:05:50 pm
Post by: majofa on May 03, 2012, 03:18:33 pm
I think it would be nice if you post next round earlier if all the matches are complete. In fact you can do it now. I wish for that and also i wish i was a sith lord.
Support Team actions can change until the deadline.
Post by: The_Mormegil on May 03, 2012, 03:29:40 pm
Chaos Seed, Mutation, Fallen Elf, Shroedinger's Cat.
Not exactly what I call Entropy-based decks. Sure, some powerful decks can come out of it still, but that's not the point.
I'd rather have different rules, while not limiting the support teams to monos or almost monos for obvious balance reasons.
Post by: Avenger on May 03, 2012, 07:38:00 pm
I find it strange that Support Team rules force them to play with decks that are based more on the elements they are not supporting than on the elements they are supporting. For example, Entropy support players can use the following in-element cards:Both players set to defend can use 2 of the used cards. Basically, any deck style is possible.
Chaos Seed, Mutation, Fallen Elf, Shroedinger's Cat.
Not exactly what I call Entropy-based decks. Sure, some powerful decks can come out of it still, but that's not the point.
I'd rather have different rules, while not limiting the support teams to monos or almost monos for obvious balance reasons.
Post by: Onizuka on May 03, 2012, 08:05:32 pm
Post by: Glitch on May 04, 2012, 12:41:02 am
Quote
February 21st, the 329th year after our creator Zanzarino
I write this from hidden underneath a wagon. I think my leg has stopped bleeding, but I cannot tell as I haven't had feeling below my waist for a good fourteen hours. I dearly hope I'll be able to walk again.
I appears as though the fighting has stopped. No... not stopped, merely paused. Perhaps armies are attempting to regroup and form more of a strategy, but for now it's just chaos.
I suppose I should get my thoughts in order.
I found, in one of the dig sites, a strange object. It was fascinating and full of ancient magic, the likes of which hadn't been surfaced in decades at least. I uncovered it and brought it back to the local university for further study, and to my surprise, several elementals were waiting on me. I knew my knowledge of the shards was notorious, but for all twelve nations to set tails on me? That still seems a bit severe. They saw my object and all started asking me about it, with progressively less subtlety until time through enough gold to pay 17 men at my feet and ran off with it. The others there didn't take well to that and the battle began.
From what I've read in the papers that have fallen to the ground near my wagon, apparently this was the signal for simultaneous war on every front. It's chaos. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. It's as though the nations divvied up the best of their troops and had at it with whomever they could find. There's sabotage and assassination and I've heard that civilians are even involved, trying to break and protect supply l
Sorry about that, I took a brief pause to investigate my toes wiggling again. Thank Zanzarino.
Anyway, it's far too early to evaluate the war. Air claims to be winning, but this will be a grueling confrontation at best, and it's far from over.
To anyone in the future reading this, if you ever uncover a strange artifact with mystical powers, bury it again.
Post by: TheonlyrealBeef on May 04, 2012, 01:01:47 am
For the first time since 4 wars my head is simply exploding with details and even when you think you've done everything you will most probably have missed another rule stating you can't do that if the sun rises before 8am on Thursday. Yes, that's how much sense some rules make to me by now.
The new roles might have been an interesting "try out" but I deem them to be a complete failure.
- Assassin: discarding random cards is simply unfun. Not to mention the extra amount of effort a losing team has to put into it to not lose even more cards (yes, every extra action is one too many in an event where more and more actions are simply not taken for losing oversight).
- Salvager: not too bad on itself. Support teams however...
- Scout: extra rules, confusion and overhead for little gain. Just not worth it imo.
As for support teams... The way duels are managed is confusing and chaotic. I haven't noticed any good come from it, yet.
Suggestion?
Keep it simple:
- Vault
- Auction
- Deckbuilding
- Duels
Last but not least, keep announcements on one thread, short and to the point. It doesn't help anyone to have a dozen updates scattered over half a dozen threads.
Post by: hainkarga on May 04, 2012, 11:29:41 am
Support team deckbuilding rules suggestion;
Rule 1) 50% must be in-element. All cards unupped.
Rule 2) Support team members can use any card except shards.
Rule 3) A support team member cannot use a deck which has half of the same cards (non pillar/pend) with any of support team's earlier decks.
Rule 4) No rule 3 restrictions for 100% mono decks.
So deck building of support teams will be entirely separate. Support teams will be forced to be innovative due to rule 3 or just repeat mono decks which has a better feel for the elements-war. The rule should act like a loosely ruled vault. IE; every support team can use a good grabbow, then a mediacore grabbow, then a crappy one or unable to make it at all. I didn't build decks to test with this rules but this way support team should be able to build good decks which are not repetitive.
This is only about support team deckbuilding, not the matchmaking rules or the rewards.
Post by: Onizuka on May 04, 2012, 09:58:59 pm
7.3. SUPPORT TEAM DECKBUILDING
- Deck creation can be a collaboration between Support teammates, Main Team members, or a solo act. There's no need to submit decks prior to using them.
I'd like this rule to be changed immediately, as it currently allows support team members to do whatever they want with no regards to the wishes of the main team.
Post by: Cheesy111 on May 04, 2012, 10:02:32 pm
If Support Teams weren't of such vital importance, I'd want the greater flexibility. As they are, the support team and the main team HAVE TO communicate effectively, or else the whole team will probably go kaput.
7.3. SUPPORT TEAM DECKBUILDING
- Deck creation can be a collaboration between Support teammates, Main Team members, or a solo act. There's no need to submit decks prior to using them.
I'd like this rule to be changed immediately, as it currently allows support team members to do whatever they want with no regards to the wishes of the main team.
Post by: Onizuka on May 06, 2012, 12:13:19 am
Post by: kev on May 06, 2012, 04:06:57 pm
When support team battles can be played should be clearer. Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't really state when support teams are supposed to play (only deckbuilding vs deckbuilding and Rx battles)Support Team deckbuilding and duels take place during the Main Team deckbuilding phase. Here's (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,39479.0.html)a timeline that may be helpful.
Post by: AnnaMall on May 06, 2012, 06:35:51 pm
E.g. Support - (TIME- def) McSod 2 - (Death-att) Shrink 0
Post by: RavingRabbid on May 07, 2012, 02:22:51 pm
So, I propose that next war duels get "revealed" 24 hours before deadline. I like the system.
Post by: Jenkar on May 07, 2012, 02:25:24 pm
I have a small problem with the duels being revealed as battle phase starts. It is kind of troublesome if you have to arrange a duel with someone who lives half the world away.Removes most strategy from duels not being vs positions.
So, I propose that next war duels get "revealed" 24 hours before deadline. I like the system.
Post by: RavingRabbid on May 07, 2012, 02:28:22 pm
You mean... a surprise Lt attack?I have a small problem with the duels being revealed as battle phase starts. It is kind of troublesome if you have to arrange a duel with someone who lives half the world away.Removes most strategy from duels not being vs positions.
So, I propose that next war duels get "revealed" 24 hours before deadline. I like the system.
Post by: Jenkar on May 07, 2012, 02:37:35 pm
More than that, silly.You mean... a surprise Lt attack?I have a small problem with the duels being revealed as battle phase starts. It is kind of troublesome if you have to arrange a duel with someone who lives half the world away.Removes most strategy from duels not being vs positions.
So, I propose that next war duels get "revealed" 24 hours before deadline. I like the system.
Post by: Onizuka on May 07, 2012, 02:38:07 pm
Post by: Jenkar on May 07, 2012, 02:40:18 pm
A surprise strategist attack.
A possum attack. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k0ety5Vado)
Post by: Onizuka on May 07, 2012, 09:26:58 pm
Post by: RootRanger on May 07, 2012, 09:31:37 pm
If my opponent brings a counter to my deck, am I allowed to get a free pass for my bad prediction and change my deck? I think it's fair.
Post by: RavingRabbid on May 08, 2012, 12:56:22 pm
If Earth is going to get a free pass on not doing what is required of a general, then I'm sure we might as well just scrap the roles topic and have everything in our discussion posts.I might have missed something going on in chat.
But yeah, it feels quite lame for other teams who did things properly.
Post by: Mithcairion on May 08, 2012, 01:00:38 pm
Post by: Helston on May 09, 2012, 04:47:39 am
Post by: majofa on May 09, 2012, 05:33:35 am
Post by: Jaymanfu on May 11, 2012, 12:02:38 am
That way if multiple teams are still sending the same amount of players its random instead of: "Oh this team has 4 more cards then this team and they are winning war so they get the bye"
Post by: Avenger on May 11, 2012, 05:38:52 am
As far as a bye is concerned, why not have it be a team that hasn't had a bye and who has the most number of players able to be sent in a round. And random if there are multiple teams sending the same amount.The fair one would be: team with most players, if more then with least cards, unless they had a bye.
That way if multiple teams are still sending the same amount of players its random instead of: "Oh this team has 4 more cards then this team and they are winning war so they get the bye"
Post by: Jaymanfu on May 17, 2012, 10:13:53 pm
As far as a bye is concerned, why not have it be a team that hasn't had a bye and who has the most number of players able to be sent in a round. And random if there are multiple teams sending the same amount.
That way if multiple teams are still sending the same amount of players its random instead of: "Oh this team has 4 more cards then this team and they are winning war so they get the bye"
Just thought id post this again as :air got another bye just because they have a few extra cards when teams are still fielding the same amount of players.
Post by: The_Mormegil on May 21, 2012, 12:29:07 pm
I find it strange that Support Team rules force them to play with decks that are based more on the elements they are not supporting than on the elements they are supporting. For example, Entropy support players can use the following in-element cards:
Chaos Seed, Mutation, Fallen Elf, Shroedinger's Cat.
Not exactly what I call Entropy-based decks. Sure, some powerful decks can come out of it still, but that's not the point.
I'd rather have different rules, while not limiting the support teams to monos or almost monos for obvious balance reasons.
I will reiterate this and add that this round's support team battle results are quite indicative of an issue in support battles rules.
Post by: kev on May 21, 2012, 03:06:06 pm
I find it strange that Support Team rules force them to play with decks that are based more on the elements they are not supporting than on the elements they are supporting. For example, Entropy support players can use the following in-element cards:Lol. Ok, so I agree that most Main Team Entropy decks don't feature the four cards you list above. Feedback would be more useful if you explained why the Support Team deckbuilding constraint either unbalances the Event (important: if it only hurt Entropy, a historically strong team, one might argue it actually adds to balance) or makes the Event less fun. Then importantly, propose an alternative set of rules that accomplishes those goals better than the status quo.
Chaos Seed, Mutation, Fallen Elf, Shroedinger's Cat.
Not exactly what I call Entropy-based decks. Sure, some powerful decks can come out of it still, but that's not the point.
I'd rather have different rules, while not limiting the support teams to monos or almost monos for obvious balance reasons.
I will reiterate this and add that this round's support team battle results are quite indicative of an issue in support battles rules.In case next War's Warmasters aren't willing to look at your post time and delve into which round's results you're describing, can you give specific examples of the "issue"?
Post by: Avenger on May 21, 2012, 03:53:42 pm
I don't think it was an issue. Maybe future deck builders of attacking teams will be more innovative. Or the constrains will be lesser due to more support team, less main team (less constraints).
Post by: The_Mormegil on May 21, 2012, 06:03:53 pm
I find it strange that Support Team rules force them to play with decks that are based more on the elements they are not supporting than on the elements they are supporting. For example, Entropy support players can use the following in-element cards:Lol. Ok, so I agree that most Main Team Entropy decks don't feature the four cards you list above. Feedback would be more useful if you explained why the Support Team deckbuilding constraint either unbalances the Event (important: if it only hurt Entropy, a historically strong team, one might argue it actually adds to balance) or makes the Event less fun. Then importantly, propose an alternative set of rules that accomplishes those goals better than the status quo.
Chaos Seed, Mutation, Fallen Elf, Shroedinger's Cat.
Not exactly what I call Entropy-based decks. Sure, some powerful decks can come out of it still, but that's not the point.
I'd rather have different rules, while not limiting the support teams to monos or almost monos for obvious balance reasons.
Fair enough. The issue is that by making it impossible to use the in-element cards your team used in the round, you're very likely not to have any good in-element cards left, but still need to use 50% of it. This has led to various matches where the only in-element cards used were pillars or pensulums! (Light, for once, fielded a rustler deck with 15 light pillars and a NT deck with 15 light pendulums). This is... not really representative of a war environment IMO. You are using the other elements much more than you are using your own... :-/ Also:
Quote
I will reiterate this and add that this round's support team battle results are quite indicative of an issue in support battles rules.In case next War's Warmasters aren't willing to look at your post time and delve into which round's results you're describing, can you give specific examples of the "issue"?
There were no attacking wins. Some were close, but still, this is a pretty clear sign of an unbalance of rules IMO. Losing access to all your good in-element cards while other still can field decks with 2 or 3 of their best cards is not balanced. Defending is too much of an advantage.
I believe something like this would be better:
1) No rares.
2) Number of defending players determinates how many off element cards you can use in your deck while defending:
1 defender - 4 cards
2 defenders - 8 cards
3 defenders - 10 cards
4 defenders - 12 cards
5 defenders - 13 cards
6 defenders - 14 cards
7+ defenders - 15 cards
3) Same goes for attackers.
To further restrict deckbuilding and make things a bit more interesting, I'd add some extra rules not based on the main team's performance. For instance:
4) Every support team member must choose a role at the start of War. Warriors must use at least 8 creatures in all their decks. Spellcasters must use at least 5 spells in all their decks. Smiths must use at least 4 non-pillar/pendulum permanents in all their decks.
...or something.
Post by: deuce22 on May 21, 2012, 07:09:44 pm
Now, as a team loses members, their attackers get stronger and stronger to the point where a top team with only 2 defenders is actually very vulnerable. This war seems fairly balanced so far, but this could still become an issue. I would suggest maybe teams with 100% defenders get a bonus card to defend with.
I think these are simple changes that won't drastically change support battles, but should make them more balanced and consistent with war decks.
Post by: Onizuka on May 21, 2012, 07:14:50 pm
Post by: mega plini on May 23, 2012, 06:23:22 pm
Also I suggest that the scouts get a bigger role. Knowledge is power. But with only two cards per round, that knowlegde isn't much.
I suggest to change it and make a scout able to scout all cards of the scouted element. This would mean that a scout doens't hev to name cardnames, but an element. as for the result of the scouting action I would say that you get to know all the cards the opponent has on that element (including the number of cards)
As we do not want to make Scout OP, I suggest that the scout would not be able to scout the element of which the opponent is a member. Any comments on this idea?
Post by: xdude on May 23, 2012, 06:48:06 pm
is there a reason why support members can't substitute for mean team members? I suggest a change in the rules. If support members could sub for main team members, I could have played my match against Vineroz' sub (he was online but was a support team member).
Also I suggest that the scouts get a bigger role. Knowledge is power. But with only two cards per round, that knowlegde isn't much.
I suggest to change it and make a scout able to scout all cards of the scouted element. This would mean that a scout doens't hev to name cardnames, but an element. as for the result of the scouting action I would say that you get to know all the cards the opponent has on that element (including the number of cards)
As we do not want to make Scout OP, I suggest that the scout would not be able to scout the element of which the opponent is a member. Any comments on this idea?
Them not having access to the main team's section is one. They don't get access to that because other teams can recruit them in case one of their members goes AWOL.
Post by: majofa on May 24, 2012, 10:34:17 pm
We, :entropy, had two opponents that were changed, and there was zero notification that they were changed. If you're gonna change them, please let us know.I'll repost this, since the WMs didn't seem to understand it the first time....
Post by: Anthraxx on May 25, 2012, 04:01:32 pm
Solutions: subs w/o or AT VERY LEAST smaller penalty perhaps?
I understand dedication and shit, but it's just a game. I'm pretty frustrated (AND SLEEPY) all day after I got up @ 5 to make the match schedule and still got no salvage cause 1hr is apparently not enough to play bo5 with desynchs :<
Post by: deuce22 on May 30, 2012, 03:36:02 pm
Post by: Jenkar on May 30, 2012, 03:43:26 pm
Could use a rule exception to handle cases of war matches between players 8+ time zones apart. Currently at least one of them has to do something like staying up until very late or getting up super early and still one can never be sure your salvage is safe (see my match w/ pikachu).
Solutions: subs w/o or AT VERY LEAST smaller penalty perhaps?
I understand dedication and shit, but it's just a game. I'm pretty frustrated (AND SLEEPY) all day after I got up @ 5 to make the match schedule and still got no salvage cause 1hr is apparently not enough to play bo5 with desynchs :<
You mean like this? http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,40596.0.html
Post by: PlayerOa on May 30, 2012, 03:46:28 pm
Not sure if that is what Anth means, but I like 3 card salvage. I even did it in a match vs QuantumT, where warmasters allowed it.Could use a rule exception to handle cases of war matches between players 8+ time zones apart. Currently at least one of them has to do something like staying up until very late or getting up super early and still one can never be sure your salvage is safe (see my match w/ pikachu).
Solutions: subs w/o or AT VERY LEAST smaller penalty perhaps?
I understand dedication and shit, but it's just a game. I'm pretty frustrated (AND SLEEPY) all day after I got up @ 5 to make the match schedule and still got no salvage cause 1hr is apparently not enough to play bo5 with desynchs :<
You mean like this? http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,40596.0.html
Post by: dragonsdemesne on May 30, 2012, 09:14:59 pm
Support Teams: In general, I liked the idea of having separate battles over relics. However, I didn't like the specific rules for deckbuilding. It wasn't really a lot of fun trying to figure out how to make a deck with schrodinger's cat as the only creature, for example. Due to the rules, the support decks were more often about using everyone else's elements and not your own. Also, the defender's advantage was probably too much. I think they should have an advantage, but being able to use more in-element cards was too much of one.
Substitution and salvage penalty: This sucks :p In two rounds I had opponents who lived in Europe and it was in one case impossible and in the other case almost impossible to schedule the matches. I propose that we can substitute players either at will, or at least have one free one per round, or something like that, to account for different time zones.
Also, RNG can suck my twelve inch di..... yeah. But that wasn't anybody's fault :p
Post by: 10 men on May 30, 2012, 11:00:25 pm
Possibly like that except that Warmaster needs to not nosir you when you request salvage...Could use a rule exception to handle cases of war matches between players 8+ time zones apart. Currently at least one of them has to do something like staying up until very late or getting up super early and still one can never be sure your salvage is safe (see my match w/ pikachu).You mean like this? http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,40596.0.html
Solutions: subs w/o or AT VERY LEAST smaller penalty perhaps?
I understand dedication and shit, but it's just a game. I'm pretty frustrated (AND SLEEPY) all day after I got up @ 5 to make the match schedule and still got no salvage cause 1hr is apparently not enough to play bo5 with desynchs :<
This War match scheduling got a little more complicated than in previous Wars due to blind matchups, and I guess it doesn't help that no match day is on a weekend either.
I think the goal of subbing rules should be:
Primarily enable all matches to be played in a swift and uncomplicated fashion.
Secondarily reward teams whose players are active.
(not the other way round).
I'd propose the following substitution rules:
- Matches can be subbed at any time, by anyone, without penalty
- However if at the end of any round a player has played 2 less matches than he was assigned for, his team gets penalized.
And while we're at it also change the way penalties work. No salvage or chosen discard are way too often no setback at all and sometimes even profitable for the team. Better possibilities would be random discard or negative modifier on upgrades for one round.
Post by: YoungSot on May 30, 2012, 11:18:46 pm
And while we're at it also change the way penalties work. No salvage or chosen discard are way too often no setback at all and sometimes even profitable for the team. Better possibilities would be random discard or negative modifier on upgrades for one round.
More random discards is a bad idea. It can be nothing, or it can end up completely crippling a team's strongest decks. The last thing War needs is another source of rng. Less upgrades is decent idea, though I don't really have a problem with how penalties work now.
Post by: 10 men on May 30, 2012, 11:42:41 pm
More random discards is a bad idea. It can be nothing, or it can end up completely crippling a team's strongest decks.Yeah random discard sounds really ugly, wouldn't want that to happen to your team right?
Post by: majofa on May 30, 2012, 11:53:16 pm
More random discards is a bad idea. It can be nothing, or it can end up completely crippling a team's strongest decks.Crippling to your team's strongest decks?? That never happens.... >.>
Post by: Kakerlake on June 01, 2012, 07:53:54 pm
- Change the attack / defense deckbuilding rules.
Until round 4, the average chance to win an Attack is ~21%, so every fifth attack is a success. IMO, this is way too low. Attackers have it much harder to build an effective decks. 50% in element, and all used cards are banned means for certain elements that they can't build anything usefull. Just not using some useful cards so that the support team can use it fails as well, as one wants to build the best decks possible.
I'd suggest this change:
- Attacker: All in element cards allowed. You must use 20%-50% cards (in a 30 cards deck: 6-15) from the element you are attacking (no other elments allowed). Each attacker from your team and each attacker from the defending team gives +1 upgrade.
When attacking, you have to be sneaky, camoflage yourself in the element of your opponent, so they won't see you coming until it's too late. This gives you the first strike advantage aka. upgraded cards. The more defenders there are, the vewer upgrades you can use, as its harder to find a weak spot.
- Defender: All in element cards allowed. At least 50% in element. You may not use off element cards which were used by the team this round.
As defender, you can use pretty much all resources that weren't used by your team. As you don't know when and where or even if you're attacked, you won't have the luxury of going very well prepared into battle aka. no upgrades.
- Give the support team more options
Granted, war is all about attacking and preventing to be attacked, but the support team is more than just stealing relics from others. They should be able to steal cards as well, create cards or relics, spy other vaults or act as a sacrifice to boost the team for one round. Support isn't just about stealing, except for :darkness maybe.
Well, what I really would like to see is this:
- Crafting: Each support team member may craft any in element card each round. The crafted card is posted during the deckbuilding phase and added as an event card in the S/D/C phase. Alternatively, 3 supporters can craft together one relic, again it is added in the S/D/C phase for next round.
If nothing is posted, then the support team members were lazy, probably smoking a pipe and crafting nothing. As crafting is made during the day and attacking during the night (who needs sleep anyway?), this doesn't influence the attacking / defending.
- Steal cards: Instead of attacking for relics (default), the support team should also be able to steal one card of choice.
If nothing is noted, relics will be stolen, if a card is chosen which the defending team doesn't have, well, bad luck: nothing is stolen.
- Sacrifice: Remove one support team member permamently from the team. Your team gains +8 upgrades (random number is random) this round.
Using a whip and a never tired arm, you will let your support team member work 'till he dies.
also, add +1 support team member from the beginning.
Post by: Demagog on June 04, 2012, 06:34:33 pm
Post by: justaburd on June 04, 2012, 06:37:07 pm
Give each element a unique passive. For instance, salvage more or lose less after winning/losing. There are many different things yall could come up with.
Hmm I like that. Perhaps while you're at it, you can make actual relics that grant additional passives that teams can fight over?
Post by: xdude on June 04, 2012, 08:20:24 pm
Give each element a unique passive. For instance, salvage more or lose less after winning/losing. There are many different things yall could come up with.
Don't like it. War is already unbalanced. Making 12 balanced effects would be nigh-impossible so that would make War even more random.
Post by: Jenkar on June 06, 2012, 06:08:30 pm
[20:06:11] bjessee: ‹@Jenkar› But can't you say up front that "if we win, we do not want salvage" basically letting someone sub for themselves?
Post by: RavingRabbid on June 06, 2012, 06:43:49 pm
I'd like if this was considered as an alternative to strategic subbing :I've been against subbing penalty because strategic subbing.
[20:06:11] bjessee: ‹@Jenkar› But can't you say up front that "if we win, we do not want salvage" basically letting someone sub for themselves?
Post by: kev on June 06, 2012, 07:06:16 pm
I'd like if this was considered as an alternative to strategic subbing :If a team PMs me before their match starts, they may elect not to salvage. It's silly to actually require you to sub.
[20:06:11] bjessee: ‹@Jenkar› But can't you say up front that "if we win, we do not want salvage" basically letting someone sub for themselves?
In an ideal world there'd be no strategic subbing at all but there's no way to eliminate it, at least under the current ruleset. Still, I have a feeling someone this War will strategically sub and miss a bye as a result. And people will point and laugh.
Post by: Selinea on June 06, 2012, 07:10:36 pm
They could be assigned by element at the beginning, but then other people could be allowed to "steal/switch" the passives by winning support team battles, so rather than top teams getting swarmed with support team battles (as a fire support team member, it was quite annoying), the teams currently in possession of the "best" passives will be the ones with support team battles. And if multiple people attack, it goes to the team lowest on the standings.Give each element a unique passive. For instance, salvage more or lose less after winning/losing. There are many different things yall could come up with.
Don't like it. War is already unbalanced. Making 12 balanced effects would be nigh-impossible so that would make War even more random.
Post by: RootRanger on June 07, 2012, 02:22:13 pm
Teams could simply be allowed to decline a salvage by sending a PM to the Warmasters before the deadline.
Problem solved.
Yes, I'm aware that there are small side effects, but I really don't think those hold larger significance than the main problem mentioned.
Post by: ddevans96 on June 07, 2012, 02:24:49 pm
Teams could simply be allowed to decline a salvage by sending a PM to the Warmasters before the deadline.
Like this?
If a team PMs me before their match starts, they may elect not to salvage. It's silly to actually require you to sub.
Post by: The_Mormegil on June 07, 2012, 02:46:25 pm
Teams could simply be allowed to decline a salvage by sending a PM to the Warmasters before the deadline.
Like this?If a team PMs me before their match starts, they may elect not to salvage. It's silly to actually require you to sub.
No, exactly NOT like that.
Post by: bjessee on June 07, 2012, 03:00:58 pm
kev's solution only covers the "sweet spot" subbings. Root's issue is more involved, and his proposed solution is to have the PMs be sent prior to the end of the battle round (I am assuming this deadline rather than deckbuilding). While this fixes his issue, it allows for the team to choose which salvage to exclude which kev was trying to avoid.
I am at a loss for a solution that would fix both issues and fall in line with kev's thoughts on the matter.
Post by: deuce22 on June 07, 2012, 04:05:17 pm
If a sub wins, then the opponent they beat determines their salvage from 0-6 cards.
Early in war, teams will lose salvage, and late in war teams can no longer strategically sub.
Post by: Avenger on June 07, 2012, 04:18:13 pm
I have a semi-crazy idea.This is an interesting idea :)
If a sub wins, then the opponent they beat determines their salvage from 0-6 cards.
Early in war, teams will lose salvage, and late in war teams can no longer strategically sub.
Post by: RootRanger on June 07, 2012, 04:18:34 pm
If a sub wins, then the opponent they beat determines their salvage from 0-6 cards.
This is a very effective rule for rewarding activity even more than before, and rewarding skill even less. Since this is the mindset the community seems to have, I would imagine that this will be a welcomed change. Nice idea.
Post by: deuce22 on June 07, 2012, 04:28:17 pm
If a sub wins, then the opponent they beat determines their salvage from 0-6 cards.
This is a very effective rule for rewarding activity even more than before, and rewarding skill even less. Since this is the mindset the community seems to have, I would imagine that this will be a welcomed change. Nice idea.
Thanks for the support. I guess something would have to be added like the Gen or Lt needs to post the salvage decision within 24 hrs after battle phase. If not, 0 salvage is assumed.
Post by: Avenger on June 07, 2012, 05:06:01 pm
I don't know how much support is that, considering he wrote it is "rewarding skill even less". The war is teamwork, so it is obvious that it shouldn't promote the skill of a single player, but the composite skill of the whole team. Especially, as strategic subbing is not a playing skill, it is more like a math "skill". I don't think we have to support that much, subbing was not intended to do that.If a sub wins, then the opponent they beat determines their salvage from 0-6 cards.
This is a very effective rule for rewarding activity even more than before, and rewarding skill even less. Since this is the mindset the community seems to have, I would imagine that this will be a welcomed change. Nice idea.
Thanks for the support. I guess something would have to be added like the Gen or Lt needs to post the salvage decision within 24 hrs after battle phase. If not, 0 salvage is assumed.
Most teams (those that wouldn't consider the benefits of strategic subbing, just sub because they have to) wouldn't be badly affected by some gift cards.
Post by: The_Mormegil on June 07, 2012, 05:50:20 pm
Post by: Shantu on June 08, 2012, 09:42:18 am
Allow attackers to use in-element cards; however, limit the amount of copies they can have in the deck, depending on the amount the main team used. Say Team Death used 18 mummies in the third round, their support team can use only 1 (or no mummies at all) in their decks. While their deck will be still subpar, it will allow at least to put in a little damage in-element. 2 spiders, 2 poisons and 1-2 dragons would have been more than enough to form a base for any kind of deck for us. Instead, we were stuck with stalkers, soul catchers, skeletons and such.
The formula for the amount of copies could be like this: 6 - ('amount used by the team' / 3)
So for those who hate formulas: 1 copy less for every 3 mummies used by the main team.
Off-element cards could remain the same.
Defenders would use the attacker formula too to determine the number of copies they can use from a card, but the defender bonus would allow them to use 6 copies of any cards they chose. So if Team Death used only 6 dragons this round in (with PUs), their support defenders can use 4 dragons in each deck and choose to use 6 PUs with it (due to the defender bonus). They can also choose to use 6 dragons if they so wish.
Could make it more severe too, like if you use a card (any number of it) you can use 3 copies max. Then 1 less for every 6 used.
So it is a kind of buff for both sides.
If this doesn't make any sense (I'm in a bit of a hurry), let me know and I will try to elaborate later.
Post by: willng3 on June 12, 2012, 04:14:20 am
I think I should probably break this down into sections or else I'm going to likely steer off course about 50 times. May as well start at the beginning...
I don't really have any complaints or suggestions here, actually :D I've already said my bit on secondary auction as well.
About the only thing I disliked about vault building was that it seemed to severely limit the options I was able to field against each element in planning. With Life being pretty weak in terms of PvP this meant that we were unable to bring as many counters to cards like Dim Shield as we realistically would have liked. For example, during round 1 I wouldn't have been surprised in the slightest to see every single team use a duo with Dim Shields against us. And though I probably would have been able to send a deck against each and every one of them that counters Dim Shield in theory, building a vault that is completely centered around countering a single card is obviously going to open up some pretty huge holes to other strategies. However, the simplest way to fix this issue would be to essentially "fix" :life as an Element rather than modify War rules to account for various huge weaknesses that each Element may or may not have. Therefore I cannot say that vault restrictions were really to blame for this problem.
The lack of Grabbows throughout War was pretty refreshing.
I also dislike having vault construction take place during Propaganda page creation, especially now that there are 6 teammates to work with. When I first noticed how many teams were having vrt produce their banner art I thought it was just out of sheer laziness, but looking back it seems pretty logical to have someone outside of the team perform that type of work while the rest is able to focus completely on vault preparations. But as I've already said my bit on Propaganda improvements as well, I'll end on that note.
The lack of Grabbows throughout War was pretty refreshing.
I also dislike having vault construction take place during Propaganda page creation, especially now that there are 6 teammates to work with. When I first noticed how many teams were having vrt produce their banner art I thought it was just out of sheer laziness, but looking back it seems pretty logical to have someone outside of the team perform that type of work while the rest is able to focus completely on vault preparations. But as I've already said my bit on Propaganda improvements as well, I'll end on that note.
Okay, there's a lot here that I feel needs improvement.
At the beginning of War each team is responsible for preparing for 6 matches on the main team. The next couple of rounds don't really change much because it's unlikely that every single team will have their ~2 attackers charge into battle against everyone else. However the later rounds become nearly intolerable. Over the past few Wars it has been incredibly evident that Teams lose quite a bit of willpower and interest in War as it continues to play out and decks continue to be lost with each new round. War itself compensated for this in the past by requiring teams to prepare less and less with each new round which in turn caused teams to devote less time to an event that was becoming uninteresting to them. However, support team battles will cause teams to spend essentially the same amount of time on preparations in the later rounds as they had in the beginning, depending on how many attackers they face. In turn, it makes the deckbuilding phase more intolerable and frustrating for losing teams than I think is desired. Also, having to build decks and schedule matches during the same ~3 days (especially when there are quite a few teammates on the support team) is a bit too much.
Deckbuilding restrictions may need a bit of rework as well, though I'm really not sure what needs to be done. Life had its fair share of successes and failures when attacking so I can't really say if the deckbuilding rules are slanted against anyone's favor. Sure from the outside it looks as if attacking teams have a severe disadvantage against defenders, but performances don't exactly reflect that very well. I'd say that the deckbuilding ruleset causes Elements with particularly big weaknesses to be placed at a disadvantage, but again, that's not exactly War's problem as much as a balancing issue that needs to be resolved within the game itself. I enjoyed the deckbuilding quite a bit though; this kind of restrictive deckbuilding that's not bound by the numerical limitations of a vault allow for plenty fun to be had in testing, and with each new round that passes in the main team of War that's not really observed. Also, as I've advocated a desire for my team to really get to know the Element :life during War, this really allows for that desire to become a reality more easily especially when the ones developing most of the ideas are someone other than the Master/General of the team.
I personally believe that teams should be limited to 2 or 3 members acting on a support team at a time. This both takes away time required to prepare for the matches during the deckbuilding phase as War progresses and weakens the power of the team's defense slightly.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
-The rule allowing opposing teams to purchase someone off of your support team needs to be terminated and never return again. I never allowed a single support team member into my team's chatroom for the simple reason that if another team somehow found a way to bribe them into joining their side then we'd be completely screwed. And while I'd like to think this would never happen, I have no choice but to take these precautions. As a result, support team members become completely dissociated from the actions of the main team which causes severe confusion because that member has no idea what to do for that round until instructed to do so. In addition, this allow for an exploit of rule 8.2 and the "no sharing of vault secrets" rule if someone does not take the precautions I had.
-Generals being unable to sub for attacking support team members while the Lt. is freely able to do so doesn't make sense to me. Generals being unable to post support team actions while the Lt. is freely able to do so doesn't make sense to me. As far as I'm concerned the General should have the ability to do nearly everything else that their subordinates can given that they possess the highest power of their team and that they were the ones who basically gave that subordinate that power in the first place.
-Not posting each individual match-up during the later rounds was confusing considering there was no announcement indicating how things would work from that point forward. Arranging matches became increasingly difficult as well, causing nearly all matches to be done at the last minute as everyone went crazy trying to find an opponent to face.
-Having to decide what players to send again which team before the end of the duel phase was fine except for the fact that some duels might not take place even an hour before the round ends, at which time a team's Lt. may or may not be online to observe what cards were used.
At the beginning of War each team is responsible for preparing for 6 matches on the main team. The next couple of rounds don't really change much because it's unlikely that every single team will have their ~2 attackers charge into battle against everyone else. However the later rounds become nearly intolerable. Over the past few Wars it has been incredibly evident that Teams lose quite a bit of willpower and interest in War as it continues to play out and decks continue to be lost with each new round. War itself compensated for this in the past by requiring teams to prepare less and less with each new round which in turn caused teams to devote less time to an event that was becoming uninteresting to them. However, support team battles will cause teams to spend essentially the same amount of time on preparations in the later rounds as they had in the beginning, depending on how many attackers they face. In turn, it makes the deckbuilding phase more intolerable and frustrating for losing teams than I think is desired. Also, having to build decks and schedule matches during the same ~3 days (especially when there are quite a few teammates on the support team) is a bit too much.
Deckbuilding restrictions may need a bit of rework as well, though I'm really not sure what needs to be done. Life had its fair share of successes and failures when attacking so I can't really say if the deckbuilding rules are slanted against anyone's favor. Sure from the outside it looks as if attacking teams have a severe disadvantage against defenders, but performances don't exactly reflect that very well. I'd say that the deckbuilding ruleset causes Elements with particularly big weaknesses to be placed at a disadvantage, but again, that's not exactly War's problem as much as a balancing issue that needs to be resolved within the game itself. I enjoyed the deckbuilding quite a bit though; this kind of restrictive deckbuilding that's not bound by the numerical limitations of a vault allow for plenty fun to be had in testing, and with each new round that passes in the main team of War that's not really observed. Also, as I've advocated a desire for my team to really get to know the Element :life during War, this really allows for that desire to become a reality more easily especially when the ones developing most of the ideas are someone other than the Master/General of the team.
I personally believe that teams should be limited to 2 or 3 members acting on a support team at a time. This both takes away time required to prepare for the matches during the deckbuilding phase as War progresses and weakens the power of the team's defense slightly.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
-The rule allowing opposing teams to purchase someone off of your support team needs to be terminated and never return again. I never allowed a single support team member into my team's chatroom for the simple reason that if another team somehow found a way to bribe them into joining their side then we'd be completely screwed. And while I'd like to think this would never happen, I have no choice but to take these precautions. As a result, support team members become completely dissociated from the actions of the main team which causes severe confusion because that member has no idea what to do for that round until instructed to do so. In addition, this allow for an exploit of rule 8.2 and the "no sharing of vault secrets" rule if someone does not take the precautions I had.
-Generals being unable to sub for attacking support team members while the Lt. is freely able to do so doesn't make sense to me. Generals being unable to post support team actions while the Lt. is freely able to do so doesn't make sense to me. As far as I'm concerned the General should have the ability to do nearly everything else that their subordinates can given that they possess the highest power of their team and that they were the ones who basically gave that subordinate that power in the first place.
-Not posting each individual match-up during the later rounds was confusing considering there was no announcement indicating how things would work from that point forward. Arranging matches became increasingly difficult as well, causing nearly all matches to be done at the last minute as everyone went crazy trying to find an opponent to face.
-Having to decide what players to send again which team before the end of the duel phase was fine except for the fact that some duels might not take place even an hour before the round ends, at which time a team's Lt. may or may not be online to observe what cards were used.
Best of 5 is still great, with the addition of Relics I don't really have any complaints about the upgrade amounts either. I'd like to give my thoughts on each member role in more detail, but considering I didn't get to benefit from their effects even once, I can't say they wouldn't be negative. But there are a few improvements that I feel certain should be made:
-Assassins: Random discard needs to be removed. I understand that it doesn't make much sense for a team to have control over what its opposing team assassinates from a logical standpoint, but then again in this case no one has control over anything. It's just completely unfair to lose access to an incredibly important card that wasn't even used during a lost duel, especially when that card may be necessary for an entire deck to function at all. If having a team choose discards from their own vault is out of the question then maybe adding a removal of 3 cards to what's already discarded from the defeated deck would be possible. As for what happens if the discard is already at 30...maybe that's a good incentive for people to use less stalls :)
-Member roles in general: The whole free-floating member role idea doesn't seem good to me. It's nice that it allows teams flexibility when it comes to inactive players, but it effectively allows everyone to gang up on a single stronger/weaker team as desired unless that team is paired against a General. I also personally disliked having nearly every team send Salvagers against us each round because they figured we'd be a prime target for Relic farming. Also, not having members preset made match-ups a hassle to deal with.
Discarding system was pretty good. Salvaging system was fine. Conversions were okay too. Matching up teams could use some improvement though, I believe: I was disappointed that we never got to face Darkness a single time during the entirety of War even with both teams lasting until Round 7.
-Assassins: Random discard needs to be removed. I understand that it doesn't make much sense for a team to have control over what its opposing team assassinates from a logical standpoint, but then again in this case no one has control over anything. It's just completely unfair to lose access to an incredibly important card that wasn't even used during a lost duel, especially when that card may be necessary for an entire deck to function at all. If having a team choose discards from their own vault is out of the question then maybe adding a removal of 3 cards to what's already discarded from the defeated deck would be possible. As for what happens if the discard is already at 30...maybe that's a good incentive for people to use less stalls :)
-Member roles in general: The whole free-floating member role idea doesn't seem good to me. It's nice that it allows teams flexibility when it comes to inactive players, but it effectively allows everyone to gang up on a single stronger/weaker team as desired unless that team is paired against a General. I also personally disliked having nearly every team send Salvagers against us each round because they figured we'd be a prime target for Relic farming. Also, not having members preset made match-ups a hassle to deal with.
Discarding system was pretty good. Salvaging system was fine. Conversions were okay too. Matching up teams could use some improvement though, I believe: I was disappointed that we never got to face Darkness a single time during the entirety of War even with both teams lasting until Round 7.
May as well do this round by round.
-Round 1, Fateful Day: I thought this one was cool. Teams claiming that it wasn't right to force a 1 card discard during the first round seemed to be...overreacting a bit. Discard a Pend for Christ's sake, it's not the end of the world. But I was bothered by the deadline for the Event Card being 24 hours before the War began. With all the new things such as scouting threads that I now needed to attend to in addition to the deadline being stated in a rather non-obvious manner, it completely slipped my mind that this needed to be done. To my recollection last War never had anything like this, so it caught me completely by surprise. In addition, the Round 7 Event Card had a similar feature which had a deadline in line with the beginning of the duel phase and there were no problems with it. In the future I feel that these Event Card deadlines should be the same as deckbuilding deadlines, or if that's not possible make it blatantly obvious that there's a change.
-Round 2, Tactician, Reclaimer, Sniper, and Spy: Aside from the random discard from Sniper, these were good. Tactician allowed us to keep nearly everything from the deck that kept us alive for the end of the War, incidentally.
-Round 3, Full Support and Telepathic Gambit: These were both good.
-Round 4, Feint and Voodoo Curse: It seems like Feint should have been made 2 separate Event Cards, but was good overall; gaining a single Relic from part 2 seemed a bit weak though. Voodoo Curse would have been bad if not for the fact that Feint was presented during the same round. Because of this teams either had to decide between giving 3 extra upgrades to redistribute among the entire team or not get this bonus and make the possibility of one team's support team invulnerable less likely. But I did dislike the fact that teams had no control over whether they got to face a Lt. or not, even if a team decided to send in a Lt. for that round.
-Round 5, Blitzkrieg Strategy and Guerrilla Tactics: While both of these were good in theory, I think it states a lot about the effects of RNG in this game when everyone chooses the latter x)
-Round 6, Transdimensional Box and Desperate Times: I didn't see much use for the former, but that may have been just me. Desperate Times on the other hand...mmm. Again, not a fan of the possibility of random discarding. I'm also not a fan of not having a choice in whether or not your team might take a discard this late in the War. I mean it would be incredibly lame to be at 60 cards, lose, and then be eliminated by a forced discard. I suppose that you could add a rule which forbids Chaos Lord from eliminating a team though.
-Round 7, Tactical Foresight: Liked this one.
-Round 1, Fateful Day: I thought this one was cool. Teams claiming that it wasn't right to force a 1 card discard during the first round seemed to be...overreacting a bit. Discard a Pend for Christ's sake, it's not the end of the world. But I was bothered by the deadline for the Event Card being 24 hours before the War began. With all the new things such as scouting threads that I now needed to attend to in addition to the deadline being stated in a rather non-obvious manner, it completely slipped my mind that this needed to be done. To my recollection last War never had anything like this, so it caught me completely by surprise. In addition, the Round 7 Event Card had a similar feature which had a deadline in line with the beginning of the duel phase and there were no problems with it. In the future I feel that these Event Card deadlines should be the same as deckbuilding deadlines, or if that's not possible make it blatantly obvious that there's a change.
-Round 2, Tactician, Reclaimer, Sniper, and Spy: Aside from the random discard from Sniper, these were good. Tactician allowed us to keep nearly everything from the deck that kept us alive for the end of the War, incidentally.
-Round 3, Full Support and Telepathic Gambit: These were both good.
-Round 4, Feint and Voodoo Curse: It seems like Feint should have been made 2 separate Event Cards, but was good overall; gaining a single Relic from part 2 seemed a bit weak though. Voodoo Curse would have been bad if not for the fact that Feint was presented during the same round. Because of this teams either had to decide between giving 3 extra upgrades to redistribute among the entire team or not get this bonus and make the possibility of one team's support team invulnerable less likely. But I did dislike the fact that teams had no control over whether they got to face a Lt. or not, even if a team decided to send in a Lt. for that round.
-Round 5, Blitzkrieg Strategy and Guerrilla Tactics: While both of these were good in theory, I think it states a lot about the effects of RNG in this game when everyone chooses the latter x)
-Round 6, Transdimensional Box and Desperate Times: I didn't see much use for the former, but that may have been just me. Desperate Times on the other hand...mmm. Again, not a fan of the possibility of random discarding. I'm also not a fan of not having a choice in whether or not your team might take a discard this late in the War. I mean it would be incredibly lame to be at 60 cards, lose, and then be eliminated by a forced discard. I suppose that you could add a rule which forbids Chaos Lord from eliminating a team though.
-Round 7, Tactical Foresight: Liked this one.
May or may not have forgotten something. Will reply again later if I have.
Post by: Jenkar on June 12, 2012, 07:27:30 am
Warning: Lotsa reading awaits.+1
I think I should probably break this down into sections or else I'm going to likely steer off course about 50 times. May as well start at the beginning...I don't really have any complaints or suggestions here, actually :D I've already said my bit on secondary auction as well.About the only thing I disliked about vault building was that it seemed to severely limit the options I was able to field against each element in planning. With Life being pretty weak in terms of PvP this meant that we were unable to bring as many counters to cards like Dim Shield as we realistically would have liked. For example, during round 1 I wouldn't have been surprised in the slightest to see every single team use a duo with Dim Shields against us. And though I probably would have been able to send a deck against each and every one of them that counters Dim Shield in theory, building a vault that is completely centered around countering a single card is obviously going to open up some pretty huge holes to other strategies. However, the simplest way to fix this issue would be to essentially "fix" :life as an Element rather than modify War rules to account for various huge weaknesses that each Element may or may not have. Therefore I cannot say that vault restrictions were really to blame for this problem.
The lack of Grabbows throughout War was pretty refreshing.
I also dislike having vault construction take place during Propaganda page creation, especially now that there are 6 teammates to work with. When I first noticed how many teams were having vrt produce their banner art I thought it was just out of sheer laziness, but looking back it seems pretty logical to have someone outside of the team perform that type of work while the rest is able to focus completely on vault preparations. But as I've already said my bit on Propaganda improvements as well, I'll end on that note.Okay, there's a lot here that I feel needs improvement.
At the beginning of War each team is responsible for preparing for 6 matches on the main team. The next couple of rounds don't really change much because it's unlikely that every single team will have their ~2 attackers charge into battle against everyone else. However the later rounds become nearly intolerable. Over the past few Wars it has been incredibly evident that Teams lose quite a bit of willpower and interest in War as it continues to play out and decks continue to be lost with each new round. War itself compensated for this in the past by requiring teams to prepare less and less with each new round which in turn caused teams to devote less time to an event that was becoming uninteresting to them. However, support team battles will cause teams to spend essentially the same amount of time on preparations in the later rounds as they had in the beginning, depending on how many attackers they face. In turn, it makes the deckbuilding phase more intolerable and frustrating for losing teams than I think is desired. Also, having to build decks and schedule matches during the same ~3 days (especially when there are quite a few teammates on the support team) is a bit too much.
Deckbuilding restrictions may need a bit of rework as well, though I'm really not sure what needs to be done. Life had its fair share of successes and failures when attacking so I can't really say if the deckbuilding rules are slanted against anyone's favor. Sure from the outside it looks as if attacking teams have a severe disadvantage against defenders, but performances don't exactly reflect that very well. I'd say that the deckbuilding ruleset causes Elements with particularly big weaknesses to be placed at a disadvantage, but again, that's not exactly War's problem as much as a balancing issue that needs to be resolved within the game itself. I enjoyed the deckbuilding quite a bit though; this kind of restrictive deckbuilding that's not bound by the numerical limitations of a vault allow for plenty fun to be had in testing, and with each new round that passes in the main team of War that's not really observed. Also, as I've advocated a desire for my team to really get to know the Element :life during War, this really allows for that desire to become a reality more easily especially when the ones developing most of the ideas are someone other than the Master/General of the team.
I personally believe that teams should be limited to 2 or 3 members acting on a support team at a time. This both takes away time required to prepare for the matches during the deckbuilding phase as War progresses and weakens the power of the team's defense slightly.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
-The rule allowing opposing teams to purchase someone off of your support team needs to be terminated and never return again. I never allowed a single support team member into my team's chatroom for the simple reason that if another team somehow found a way to bribe them into joining their side then we'd be completely screwed. And while I'd like to think this would never happen, I have no choice but to take these precautions. As a result, support team members become completely dissociated from the actions of the main team which causes severe confusion because that member has no idea what to do for that round until instructed to do so. In addition, this allow for an exploit of rule 8.2 and the "no sharing of vault secrets" rule if someone does not take the precautions I had.
-Generals being unable to sub for attacking support team members while the Lt. is freely able to do so doesn't make sense to me. Generals being unable to post support team actions while the Lt. is freely able to do so doesn't make sense to me. As far as I'm concerned the General should have the ability to do nearly everything else that their subordinates can given that they possess the highest power of their team and that they were the ones who basically gave that subordinate that power in the first place.
-Not posting each individual match-up during the later rounds was confusing considering there was no announcement indicating how things would work from that point forward. Arranging matches became increasingly difficult as well, causing nearly all matches to be done at the last minute as everyone went crazy trying to find an opponent to face.
-Having to decide what players to send again which team before the end of the duel phase was fine except for the fact that some duels might not take place even an hour before the round ends, at which time a team's Lt. may or may not be online to observe what cards were used.Best of 5 is still great, with the addition of Relics I don't really have any complaints about the upgrade amounts either. I'd like to give my thoughts on each member role in more detail, but considering I didn't get to benefit from their effects even once, I can't say they wouldn't be negative. But there are a few improvements that I feel certain should be made:
-Assassins: Random discard needs to be removed. I understand that it doesn't make much sense for a team to have control over what its opposing team assassinates from a logical standpoint, but then again in this case no one has control over anything. It's just completely unfair to lose access to an incredibly important card that wasn't even used during a lost duel, especially when that card may be necessary for an entire deck to function at all. If having a team choose discards from their own vault is out of the question then maybe adding a removal of 3 cards to what's already discarded from the defeated deck would be possible. As for what happens if the discard is already at 30...maybe that's a good incentive for people to use less stalls :)
-Member roles in general: The whole free-floating member role idea doesn't seem good to me. It's nice that it allows teams flexibility when it comes to inactive players, but it effectively allows everyone to gang up on a single stronger/weaker team as desired unless that team is paired against a General.
Discarding system was pretty good. Salvaging system was fine. Conversions were okay too. Matching up teams could use some improvement though, I believe: I was disappointed that we never got to face Darkness a single time during the entirety of War even with both teams lasting until Round 7.May as well do this round by round.
-Round 1, Fateful Day: I thought this one was cool. Teams claiming that it wasn't right to force a 1 card discard during the first round seemed to be...overreacting a bit. Discard a Pend for Christ's sake, it's not the end of the world. But I was bothered by the deadline for the Event Card being 24 hours before the War began. With all the new things such as scouting threads that I now needed to attend to in addition to the deadline being stated in a rather non-obvious manner, it completely slipped my mind that this needed to be done. To my recollection last War never had anything like this, so it caught me completely by surprise. In addition, the Round 7 Event Card had a similar feature which had a deadline in line with the beginning of the duel phase and there were no problems with it. In the future I feel that these Event Card deadlines should be the same as deckbuilding deadlines, or if that's not possible make it blatantly obvious that there's a change.
-Round 2, Tactician, Reclaimer, Sniper, and Spy: Aside from the random discard from Sniper, these were good. Tactician allowed us to keep nearly everything from the deck that kept us alive for the end of the War, incidentally.
-Round 3, Full Support and Telepathic Gambit: These were both good.
-Round 4, Feint and Voodoo Curse: It seems like Feint should have been made 2 separate Event Cards, but was good overall; gaining a single Relic from part 2 seemed a bit weak though. Voodoo Curse would have been bad if not for the fact that Feint was presented during the same round. Because of this teams either had to decide between giving 3 extra upgrades to redistribute among the entire team or not get this bonus and make the possibility of one team's support team invulnerable less likely. But I did dislike the fact that teams had no control over whether they got to face a Lt. or not, even if a team decided to send in a Lt. for that round.
-Round 5, Blitzkrieg Strategy and Guerrilla Tactics: While both of these were good in theory, I think it states a lot about the effects of RNG in this game when everyone chooses the latter x)
-Round 6, Transdimensional Box and Desperate Times: I didn't see much use for the former, but that may have been just me. Desperate Times on the other hand...mmm. Again, not a fan of the possibility of random discarding. I'm also not a fan of not having a choice in whether or not your team might take a discard this late in the War. I mean it would be incredibly lame to be at 60 cards, lose, and then be eliminated by a forced discard. I suppose that you could add a rule which forbids Chaos Lord from eliminating a team though.
-Round 7, Tactical Foresight: Liked this one.
May or may not have forgotten something. Will reply again later if I have.
Post by: Avenger on June 12, 2012, 07:39:57 am
Warning: Lotsa reading awaits.The worst of these were:
I think I should probably break this down into sections or else I'm going to likely steer off course about 50 times. May as well start at the beginning...I don't really have any complaints or suggestions here, actually :D I've already said my bit on secondary auction as well.About the only thing I disliked about vault building was that it seemed to severely limit the options I was able to field against each element in planning. With Life being pretty weak in terms of PvP this meant that we were unable to bring as many counters to cards like Dim Shield as we realistically would have liked. For example, during round 1 I wouldn't have been surprised in the slightest to see every single team use a duo with Dim Shields against us. And though I probably would have been able to send a deck against each and every one of them that counters Dim Shield in theory, building a vault that is completely centered around countering a single card is obviously going to open up some pretty huge holes to other strategies. However, the simplest way to fix this issue would be to essentially "fix" :life as an Element rather than modify War rules to account for various huge weaknesses that each Element may or may not have. Therefore I cannot say that vault restrictions were really to blame for this problem.
The lack of Grabbows throughout War was pretty refreshing.
I also dislike having vault construction take place during Propaganda page creation, especially now that there are 6 teammates to work with. When I first noticed how many teams were having vrt produce their banner art I thought it was just out of sheer laziness, but looking back it seems pretty logical to have someone outside of the team perform that type of work while the rest is able to focus completely on vault preparations. But as I've already said my bit on Propaganda improvements as well, I'll end on that note.Okay, there's a lot here that I feel needs improvement.
At the beginning of War each team is responsible for preparing for 6 matches on the main team. The next couple of rounds don't really change much because it's unlikely that every single team will have their ~2 attackers charge into battle against everyone else. However the later rounds become nearly intolerable. Over the past few Wars it has been incredibly evident that Teams lose quite a bit of willpower and interest in War as it continues to play out and decks continue to be lost with each new round. War itself compensated for this in the past by requiring teams to prepare less and less with each new round which in turn caused teams to devote less time to an event that was becoming uninteresting to them. However, support team battles will cause teams to spend essentially the same amount of time on preparations in the later rounds as they had in the beginning, depending on how many attackers they face. In turn, it makes the deckbuilding phase more intolerable and frustrating for losing teams than I think is desired. Also, having to build decks and schedule matches during the same ~3 days (especially when there are quite a few teammates on the support team) is a bit too much.
Deckbuilding restrictions may need a bit of rework as well, though I'm really not sure what needs to be done. Life had its fair share of successes and failures when attacking so I can't really say if the deckbuilding rules are slanted against anyone's favor. Sure from the outside it looks as if attacking teams have a severe disadvantage against defenders, but performances don't exactly reflect that very well. I'd say that the deckbuilding ruleset causes Elements with particularly big weaknesses to be placed at a disadvantage, but again, that's not exactly War's problem as much as a balancing issue that needs to be resolved within the game itself. I enjoyed the deckbuilding quite a bit though; this kind of restrictive deckbuilding that's not bound by the numerical limitations of a vault allow for plenty fun to be had in testing, and with each new round that passes in the main team of War that's not really observed. Also, as I've advocated a desire for my team to really get to know the Element :life during War, this really allows for that desire to become a reality more easily especially when the ones developing most of the ideas are someone other than the Master/General of the team.
I personally believe that teams should be limited to 2 or 3 members acting on a support team at a time. This both takes away time required to prepare for the matches during the deckbuilding phase as War progresses and weakens the power of the team's defense slightly.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
-The rule allowing opposing teams to purchase someone off of your support team needs to be terminated and never return again. I never allowed a single support team member into my team's chatroom for the simple reason that if another team somehow found a way to bribe them into joining their side then we'd be completely screwed. And while I'd like to think this would never happen, I have no choice but to take these precautions. As a result, support team members become completely dissociated from the actions of the main team which causes severe confusion because that member has no idea what to do for that round until instructed to do so. In addition, this allow for an exploit of rule 8.2 and the "no sharing of vault secrets" rule if someone does not take the precautions I had.
-Generals being unable to sub for attacking support team members while the Lt. is freely able to do so doesn't make sense to me. Generals being unable to post support team actions while the Lt. is freely able to do so doesn't make sense to me. As far as I'm concerned the General should have the ability to do nearly everything else that their subordinates can given that they possess the highest power of their team and that they were the ones who basically gave that subordinate that power in the first place.
-Not posting each individual match-up during the later rounds was confusing considering there was no announcement indicating how things would work from that point forward. Arranging matches became increasingly difficult as well, causing nearly all matches to be done at the last minute as everyone went crazy trying to find an opponent to face.
-Having to decide what players to send again which team before the end of the duel phase was fine except for the fact that some duels might not take place even an hour before the round ends, at which time a team's Lt. may or may not be online to observe what cards were used.Best of 5 is still great, with the addition of Relics I don't really have any complaints about the upgrade amounts either. I'd like to give my thoughts on each member role in more detail, but considering I didn't get to benefit from their effects even once, I can't say they wouldn't be negative. But there are a few improvements that I feel certain should be made:
-Assassins: Random discard needs to be removed. I understand that it doesn't make much sense for a team to have control over what its opposing team assassinates from a logical standpoint, but then again in this case no one has control over anything. It's just completely unfair to lose access to an incredibly important card that wasn't even used during a lost duel, especially when that card may be necessary for an entire deck to function at all. If having a team choose discards from their own vault is out of the question then maybe adding a removal of 3 cards to what's already discarded from the defeated deck would be possible. As for what happens if the discard is already at 30...maybe that's a good incentive for people to use less stalls :)
-Member roles in general: The whole free-floating member role idea doesn't seem good to me. It's nice that it allows teams flexibility when it comes to inactive players, but it effectively allows everyone to gang up on a single stronger/weaker team as desired unless that team is paired against a General. I also personally disliked having nearly every team send Salvagers against us each round because they figured we'd be a prime target for Relic farming. Also, not having members preset made match-ups a hassle to deal with.
Discarding system was pretty good. Salvaging system was fine. Conversions were okay too. Matching up teams could use some improvement though, I believe: I was disappointed that we never got to face Darkness a single time during the entirety of War even with both teams lasting until Round 7.May as well do this round by round.
-Round 1, Fateful Day: I thought this one was cool. Teams claiming that it wasn't right to force a 1 card discard during the first round seemed to be...overreacting a bit. Discard a Pend for Christ's sake, it's not the end of the world. But I was bothered by the deadline for the Event Card being 24 hours before the War began. With all the new things such as scouting threads that I now needed to attend to in addition to the deadline being stated in a rather non-obvious manner, it completely slipped my mind that this needed to be done. To my recollection last War never had anything like this, so it caught me completely by surprise. In addition, the Round 7 Event Card had a similar feature which had a deadline in line with the beginning of the duel phase and there were no problems with it. In the future I feel that these Event Card deadlines should be the same as deckbuilding deadlines, or if that's not possible make it blatantly obvious that there's a change.
-Round 2, Tactician, Reclaimer, Sniper, and Spy: Aside from the random discard from Sniper, these were good. Tactician allowed us to keep nearly everything from the deck that kept us alive for the end of the War, incidentally.
-Round 3, Full Support and Telepathic Gambit: These were both good.
-Round 4, Feint and Voodoo Curse: It seems like Feint should have been made 2 separate Event Cards, but was good overall; gaining a single Relic from part 2 seemed a bit weak though. Voodoo Curse would have been bad if not for the fact that Feint was presented during the same round. Because of this teams either had to decide between giving 3 extra upgrades to redistribute among the entire team or not get this bonus and make the possibility of one team's support team invulnerable less likely. But I did dislike the fact that teams had no control over whether they got to face a Lt. or not, even if a team decided to send in a Lt. for that round.
-Round 5, Blitzkrieg Strategy and Guerrilla Tactics: While both of these were good in theory, I think it states a lot about the effects of RNG in this game when everyone chooses the latter x)
-Round 6, Transdimensional Box and Desperate Times: I didn't see much use for the former, but that may have been just me. Desperate Times on the other hand...mmm. Again, not a fan of the possibility of random discarding. I'm also not a fan of not having a choice in whether or not your team might take a discard this late in the War. I mean it would be incredibly lame to be at 60 cards, lose, and then be eliminated by a forced discard. I suppose that you could add a rule which forbids Chaos Lord from eliminating a team though.
-Round 7, Tactical Foresight: Liked this one.
May or may not have forgotten something. Will reply again later if I have.
1. feint event card for the reasons willng3 already wrote - being on the hurting side of the stick, we saw this very well, this would have worked better, if it is your own Lt. whose win counts.
2. The fact that support team members could join another team - this was a very scary thought, even though we allowed support team members to see a lot of the deckbuilding process, if they "deserted" us, we would have been screwed.
3. deckbuilding deadlines with flood of support battles (limit on support team may be a good suggestion, though i would limit it at 4).
Attacking support teams become strong one round after a team had fewer decks to play.
I think this support team system was a good overall idea to flush excess upgrades from the game, the only problem was that it strained healthy teams too much.
Post by: deuce22 on June 12, 2012, 11:39:21 am
Personally, I am not a fan of having a support team in war, but I will save my extensive rambling until war is over.
Post by: kev on June 12, 2012, 02:17:34 pm
Warning: Lotsa reading awaits.Players who put this much time into S&F single-handedly improve the Event for the future. +rep, will.
That said, I'd like to see the community build off of will's post in two ways:
1) It's hard to change War on one man's opinions. Please share what you agreed with and what you didn't.
2) Continue to brainstorm solutions for what you feel were the problems of War 5. There's a lot of ways to come at these problems and sometimes the best solution is out-of-the-box.
Keep the feedback coming, peeps. 8)
Post by: Onizuka on June 12, 2012, 03:11:37 pm
-Same in theory with will, agree with doing it during prop
-Prop...I intensely dislike an outside team doing it for you. I think it loses all meaning to have someone not from your team (or especially from another team) doing prop. If we're showing pride or whatever we should be showing for prop, I don't think we're showing it by having one guy doing half the prop. Seems more like we're selling out just to get some extra cards. I'd rather something bad like Entropy's in comparison to anything a non-team member could make. I also dislike rewarding popularity with cards.
Bo5 still the best format. Relic system was cool. Support team system needs rework (I like Shantu's idea..maybe needs a bit of a touchup perhaps, idk). Random discarding is stupidly unfun. Salvager is alright. I rather have scout tell me what people salvaged the round before rather than what they have in their vault, seems more useful. Strategist needs buffing.
I like the free floating system except when its constricted to what who has to post (except general). Having only the Lt. do something or only the scout do something seemed stupid (As will said, why only lt att sub when the gen should be able to do everything and anything?).
About sweet spots..I've always just thought it'd be easier to look at what happens if a team subs in a specific situation instead of playing and if they end up in a sweet spot because of it..to just count the salvage ya know? It seems simple in my head but there's probably implications I'm missing.
Support teams- I really think that not having set decks is stupid in an event all about set decks. Like if you find a perfect counter to what a team could normally bring but want to bring it twice, it doesn't really work out well. It also prevents support team members from doing what they want away from the main team. And the way of picking support teams, I rather have had it be the plan to 'buy' two more members and the two lowest priced on your team gets added to your support team for free. It prevents the 'oh hey lets switch a vet for a 1 carder since we get first pick cause we lost early in the previous war (I didn't like this either, still seemed to me that we were punishing success and rewarding failure)'.
Problem with support team building is that defense was inherently strong, but too strong. Offense favors teams with larger card bases or teams that have 'meh' cards that work better in a more restricted playing field (FFQ is a good example). As said before, I like Shantu's idea for support team stuff. Not having them be able to finish dueling until the end of the battle phase of that round seemed stupid as well, its not like the effects took effect the round the battles finished right? Just give like a day or so before the end to finish to allow teams to strategize or such.
Another thing with support teams was the free subbing. I had thought support teams were the new thing this war and they were to be taken seriously. But when an event where a penalty would be appropriate was not rewarded with a penalty, I just laughed. It just made me think of the whole support team system as a joke.
I'd prefer having players be picked (IE Shantu vs PlayerOa) and then being able to assign roles at the end (Ending with Scout Shantu vs Assassin PlayerOa as an example). It still allows flexibility with roles but allows for easier communication.
Event cards:
R1: I don't like forced discard without any choice in the matter, no matter what amount. Also 10 men is mean.
R2: As with multiple choice event cards, there is usually the best ones. They were all decent, at least.
R3: Good.
R4: Feint seemed weak. Personally, I like the idea of being able to deny a team the event card. This war, to me, has been about 'The power of choice'. Where to send who and what role to send where. I see being able to deny a team the event card a strong and appropriate use of this ideal.
R5: Yeah, 2-0 will either mean bad RNG or a counter in most cases. Bad RNG can't be predicted, and a counter doesn't need the help. Something like 'if you're down 1-2, the current score becomes 2-2.' or something like that perhaps. That specific idea seems OP, though.
R6: More use if defending was harder, although I suppose in later rounds it would be easier for some teams. Although hurting the main team on a 1:1 basis never seemed good enough. Random discard, yadayadayada.
R7: Great event card.
Post by: Avenger on June 12, 2012, 04:05:08 pm
- blind auction may be better (including support members as last 2 places)
- prop - i agree, it sucks that popularity has an effect on vault size, i don't know how could this be fixed though, with the community voting anyway.
Outside team working on prop is also stinky, but in the end it all boils down to community vote (popularity) anyway.
-Assassin - discard 3 more from the deck, or if that doesn't work discard 3 more cards that were in your deck, or if that won't work, discard 3 more cards from vault.
Support teams
I don't think defense was strong. it was strong only for large teams. When your team shrunk, your support team grew stronger (you had to survive one more round to be really strong).
Post by: Onizuka on June 17, 2012, 02:42:41 pm
So everyone applying to the auction is randomly assorted into sets of 12. Players that don't fit into the set of 12 will be added 1 by 1 to random groups. (Reasoning for sets of 12/13: To 100% get a team member for each set
Generals would bid on every player in each set. Once they win one member, they can't win another from that set. This goes down the line until every team has a member. Players who don't get bid on can either be moved to another group or be one of the players not allowed in war (leaning towards first just due to the possible 13 real strong player groupings)
There are obviously problems with this option. It makes auction a pretty long process. It disallows player involvement in what element they don't want to be in. Probably other things. But I think a blind auction would be a nice swing for a future war.
Generals would bid on every player in each set. Once they win one member, they can't win another from that set. This goes down the line until every team has a member. Players who don't get bid on can either be moved to another group or be one of the players not allowed in war (leaning towards first just due to the possible 13 real strong player groupings)
There are obviously problems with this option. It makes auction a pretty long process. It disallows player involvement in what element they don't want to be in. Probably other things. But I think a blind auction would be a nice swing for a future war.
Just an idea. There are probably better ideas in regards to blind auctioning, but this one seemed like a good way to guarantee every team got the required number.
Post by: deuce22 on June 17, 2012, 02:56:11 pm
This would also make the auction much faster. All generals submit their rankings of every application. Then the WMs go through the rankings to develop teams.
A bad thing about this is that some players may get on elements they don't want -_-
Post by: Jenkar on June 17, 2012, 02:58:03 pm
A snaking draft (like fantasy football) could be fun. Teams would be pretty balanced. Vaults can start equal.How would this stop bans? :v
This would also make the auction much faster. All generals submit their rankings of every application. Then the WMs go through the rankings to develop teams.
A bad thing about this is that some players may get on elements they don't want -_-
Post by: deuce22 on June 17, 2012, 03:21:20 pm
A snaking draft (like fantasy football) could be fun. Teams would be pretty balanced. Vaults can start equal.How would this stop bans? :v
This would also make the auction much faster. All generals submit their rankings of every application. Then the WMs go through the rankings to develop teams.
A bad thing about this is that some players may get on elements they don't want -_-
I said it would be a fun idea, not a good idea :P
Post by: kev on June 17, 2012, 03:44:37 pm
Post by: Onizuka on June 17, 2012, 04:22:26 pm
I guess the real question is whose fun do we value more during the auction? The spectators or the generals. 'cause I didn't find the auction all that fun (and that has nothing to do with my pricey team, just the way it went about. I find being outbidded more annoying than fun, while people not involved get to be excited over outbidding and what general bids on what and such). I think the generals should be having the fun during the auction, not the spectators (if we had to choose one over the other).
Post by: deuce22 on June 17, 2012, 07:16:26 pm
I am open to other auction options as this was frustrating from my perspective. A blind auction may help with this. I dont know.
Post by: Jenkar on June 17, 2012, 07:41:33 pm
Post by: Jenkar on June 24, 2012, 04:08:14 pm
Something needs to be done around ''no salvage''. As we can see from standings, fire used no salvage to avoid passing to two decks three times in a row. I and several others find this quite unfair.
Posting what comes from chat :
[18:05:09] Anthraxx: hmm there could be one addition that could help
[18:06:26] Anthraxx: another rule: 1st round you play under 66 cards nothing happens, but 2nd time you lose relics, 3rd time you lose 20 cards, 4th time you die
[18:06:33] Anthraxx: + some tuning
[18:06:50] Anthraxx: kinda forces you to go back to 2 decks
Post by: deuce22 on June 24, 2012, 05:02:57 pm
Another option is to not penalize subbing and not allow teams to deny salvage. Teams that win always get 6 card salvage. However, subbing can be limited to only 1 match per round. If a team needs to sub a 2nd time, they will forfeit the match entirely.
[rant]
It's unfortunate that this has been complained about for multiple wars and still no resolution. While this rule has not affected prior wars (although one can make a case for war 3, but that was more due to event card trolling), it has definitely affected this war as everyone who is still paying attention is complaining about it except for the 1 team that is abusing it. If fire ends up winning, I can see a lot of frustration amongst many war participants that may prevent them from participating in the next war. War needs to be drastically simplified in order to make it the fun event it used to be. (suggestions to come after aether is officially done with war)
[/rant]
Post by: hainkarga on June 24, 2012, 09:06:46 pm
That's because the following two problems and the rules made to solve these problems are not being used for their purposes.
1) Suicide decks are bad taste and sort of stupid.
Suicide deck prevention Rule: "vault / 30 = number of players changes to vault / 33 = number of players"
2) War is a community event, letting generals play every match nullifies the spirit of war.
Penalty rule: No salvage for subing
Right now team fire can field two decks without suiciding and "no salvage rule" isn't being used as a penalty. They are using these rules out of their context to get various advantages over other teams. Therefore this is an abuse. Both of the rules above are being milked.
War rules have been made and being changed every war to make it more fair and fun. Abusing the rules for your ends own only harms fairplay and make people resent you, which is very silly because people come here for a non-profit friendly gaming community.
So far fire members had two responses to this over and over. With same words too;
1- It is within the rules
2- lol i don't care what anyone thinks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaming_the_system
Gaming the system (also referred to as bending the rules, playing the system, abusing the system, milking the system, or working the system) can be defined as "[using] the rules and procedures meant to protect a system in order, instead, to manipulate the system for [a] desired22:11 24.06.2012 outcome".[1]
Post by: UTAlan on June 24, 2012, 11:01:59 pm
Am I going to purposely lose War so that people won't resent me? Of course not.
Feel free to use Team Fire as an example of why the rule needs to be changed, but please don't hold it against us for doing everything within the rules that we can to succeed.
Post by: YoungSot on June 24, 2012, 11:52:35 pm
Right now team fire can field two decks without suiciding and "no salvage rule" isn't being used as a penalty. They are using these rules out of their context to get various advantages over other teams. Therefore this is an abuse. Both of the rules above are being milked.
War rules have been made and being changed every war to make it more fair and fun. Abusing the rules for your ends own only harms fairplay and make people resent you, which is very silly because people come here for a non-profit friendly gaming community.
It is not abusing the rules. Not at all. Staying in a sweet spot is a well known strategy in War, and fits both the letter and spirit of the current rules. If you wish to state that the current rules still need to be improved, that we need to change them so that sweet spots are no longer part of the equation, I will easily agree. In previous War feedback threads, I myself have attempted to suggest alternate rules to eliminate these sweet spots.
However, to attack the integrity of our team over this is uncalled for, unfair, and smacks of bad sportsmanship. Please redirect your frustration towards improving the rules for future Wars, and I will happily join you in working towards that end.
Post by: dragonsdemesne on June 25, 2012, 12:05:27 am
1) You cannot refuse to take your 6 salvage cards (or however many it is)
2) All teams get 1 free sub per round, to cover things like funerals, final exams, players 12 hours apart on the planet, etc
We'd need a rule for what happens if you sub more than once in a round. I don't have a specific example, but if you create two different penalties and then let the *opponent* choose them, then there should hopefully be no way to abuse the system.
Also, while I haven't followed War much since my team was eliminated, I have no problem with Fire (or anyone else) strategically subbing or doing anything else, so long as it is within the rules. In War 4, I know Time did this at least once to avoid fielding an extra deck. (maybe twice? not sure now) When salvage was eliminated, we also subbed a couple times just to allow our player with 4 time nymphs to play them in the desired match. (which was not very popular amongst the other teams, and got some similar comments to what fire is getting now) One game, I even spectated the player who was subbing for me :p
Post by: Onizuka on June 25, 2012, 12:31:14 am
The penalty for inactivity (subbing) has been a lack of salvage. It is hard to refute that subbing was not made for inactivity/partially for mismatched times. Furthermore, we have rules now that can even stop the inactivity of a general or multiple members from being a problem late game. Meaning that the only real reason to sub for over a round is due to a scheduling conflict.
On the basis of that, strategic subbing goes against the spirit of the rules. To sub when inactivity/time zones are not a problem to subvert the subbing, while legal, is against the spirit.
Now we have the new rule that you can request not to salvage if you win. If we consider that strategic subbing is a problem (which, according to the large majority, is), then we can see that this rule is made to stop from using subbing as a way to not salvage. Considering that, we can evaluate that both of these are in effect the same, only changing what is done to subvert salvaging. This means that both are against the spirit of the rules, assuming that strategic subbing is against the spirit of the rules.
A well known strategy? Sure. So is scorched earth (Ohohoho you see what I did thar?).
You say that it is bad, but yet you do it. You say to fix it, but not right now. Obvious conclusion is that your actions are both bad and hypocritical. As individuals, I have nothing against you. As a group, Team Fire is bad.
Post by: YoungSot on June 25, 2012, 01:08:48 am
When you win, you salvage.
The penalty for inactivity (subbing) has been a lack of salvage. It is hard to refute that subbing was not made for inactivity/partially for mismatched times. Furthermore, we have rules now that can even stop the inactivity of a general or multiple members from being a problem late game. Meaning that the only real reason to sub for over a round is due to a scheduling conflict.
On the basis of that, strategic subbing goes against the spirit of the rules. To sub when inactivity/time zones are not a problem to subvert the subbing, while legal, is against the spirit.
Now we have the new rule that you can request not to salvage if you win. If we consider that strategic subbing is a problem (which, according to the large majority, is), then we can see that this rule is made to stop from using subbing as a way to not salvage. Considering that, we can evaluate that both of these are in effect the same, only changing what is done to subvert salvaging. This means that both are against the spirit of the rules, assuming that strategic subbing is against the spirit of the rules.
A well known strategy? Sure. So is scorched earth (Ohohoho you see what I did thar?).
You say that it is bad, but yet you do it. You say to fix it, but not right now. Obvious conclusion is that your actions are both bad and hypocritical. As individuals, I have nothing against you. As a group, Team Fire is bad.
When I refer to the "spirit of the rules" I refer to their intent. It is well known that strategic subbing is legal within the current rules. No one (that I know of) intended the current ruleset to eliminate that option. Therefore it is intended.
As for my "hypocrisy", your argument makes no sense. I think the rules for War can/should/will be improved. I have from time to time put forth suggestions as for how that could (imo) be done. Following your logic, the only way to play War that is not "bad" or "hypocritical" would be for me to make up and play by whatever rules I personally think would be the most fun, even if those rules are the complete opposite of what is actually in the official rules topic.
Hope that clarifies things.
Post by: deuce22 on June 25, 2012, 01:23:02 am
It is not abusing the rules. Not at all. Staying in a sweet spot is a well known strategy in War, and fits both the letter and spirit of the current rules. If you wish to state that the current rules still need to be improved, that we need to change them so that sweet spots are no longer part of the equation, I will easily agree. In previous War feedback threads, I myself have attempted to suggest alternate rules to eliminate these sweet spots.
However, to attack the integrity of our team over this is uncalled for, unfair, and smacks of bad sportsmanship. Please redirect your frustration towards improving the rules for future Wars, and I will happily join you in working towards that end.
I agree with you and UT in that if I were in your position, I would likely forfeit salvage salvage as well to give my team the best chance of winning. In fact, I asked kev in an earlier round if there was some way i could get a 3-card penalty to bump my team down 1 duel. I was denied as it was deemed unfair, and any penalty I made before the end of that round would be assessed 2 rounds later so that I could get no benefit from the penalty. However, accepting a penalty to improve one's chances of winning completely defeats the definition of a penalty as Oni so nicely explained. If this is the "spirit of the current rules" how come kev did not let me accept a penalty to help my team?
Based on your perception of the "spirit of the current rules" and the comments posted in chat by members of team fire regarding their opinions of the rule (which I have no specific quotes of atm), I think an "attack on your team integrity" is perfectly warranted. I'm not sure what your definition of "bad sportsmanship" is, but I'm pretty sure no one on team fire will be winning a sportsmanship award this war (same goes for team aether, I think :P).
Unfortunately, this rule cannot be fixed this war because kev did not address the issue soon enough. IF fire does go on to win war, it will be a tainted war win in that fire would not have won war if it wasn't for that rule, which will likely no longer be available in future wars. While I would want to do everything in my power to win war, I wouldn't get any satisfaction out of winning by exploiting a rule. Like I said, there is nothing we can do about it now to make things right this war, which really sucks because winning war is the biggest achievement within the community and I feel like no one truly wins this war (except maybe time if they can pull off the upset).
When I refer to the "spirit of the rules" I refer to their intent. It is well known that strategic subbing is legal within the current rules. No one (that I know of) intended the current ruleset to eliminate that option. Therefore it is intended.
As for my "hypocrisy", your argument makes no sense. I think the rules for War can/should/will be improved. I have from time to time put forth suggestions as for how that could (imo) be done. Following your logic, the only way to play War that is not "bad" or "hypocritical" would be for me to make up and play by whatever rules I personally think would be the most fun, even if those rules are the complete opposite of what is actually in the official rules topic.
Hope that clarifies things.
You ninja'd me 8)
People have complained about strategic subbing almost every war, and rule changes have been gradually changed to minimize this option being available to teams. The "intention" of the rule changes was to prevent strategic subbing from happening. Unfortunately, the rule changes haven't eliminated it, they only made it less common. It upsets me that you think strategic subbing is a fair rule rather than just a legal one. And everyone is all up in arms about it this war because it is even more unfair given the support team rules. When fire dropped to 1 deck, about 1/2 of your vault was unknown, you had the most relics, and you were able to field 7 support members each round (fire is the most balanced element, so their support team is OP as is). Strategic subbing in this instance was far more advantageous than any other instance in any other war. The reason it was never eliminated is probably because it never really completely impacted the outcome of a war until now.
Again, there is nothing we can do about it now, and I would be doing the same thing as you if I were in your position. But I think everyone is upset over the way fire has stated their opinions of this issue in chat.
Post by: YoungSot on June 25, 2012, 02:27:25 am
I agree with you and UT in that if I were in your position, I would likely forfeit salvage salvage as well to give my team the best chance of winning. In fact, I asked kev in an earlier round if there was some way i could get a 3-card penalty to bump my team down 1 duel. I was denied as it was deemed unfair, and any penalty I made before the end of that round would be assessed 2 rounds later so that I could get no benefit from the penalty. However, accepting a penalty to improve one's chances of winning completely defeats the definition of a penalty as Oni so nicely explained. If this is the "spirit of the current rules" how come kev did not let me accept a penalty to help my team?
Please see my response to Oni for an explanation of what I mean by "spirit of the current rules".
Based on your perception of the "spirit of the current rules" and the comments posted in chat by members of team fire regarding their opinions of the rule (which I have no specific quotes of atm), I think an "attack on your team integrity" is perfectly warranted. I'm not sure what your definition of "bad sportsmanship" is, but I'm pretty sure no one on team fire will be winning a sportsmanship award this war (same goes for team aether, I think :P).
I've been out of town for a week, so I'm not aware of the nature of these comments to which you refer. I always try to treat my opponents with courtesy and fairness, and I've never observed any of my teammates to do any differently.
Unfortunately, this rule cannot be fixed this war because kev did not address the issue soon enough. IF fire does go on to win war, it will be a tainted war win in that fire would not have won war if it wasn't for that rule, which will likely no longer be available in future wars. While I would want to do everything in my power to win war, I wouldn't get any satisfaction out of winning by exploiting a rule. Like I said, there is nothing we can do about it now to make things right this war, which really sucks because winning war is the biggest achievement within the community and I feel like no one truly wins this war (except maybe time if they can pull off the upset).
Sweet spots existed in, and helped determine the winners of, previous Wars too. Not sure why you choose now to declare it all as "tainted".
Post by: Helston on June 25, 2012, 03:03:23 am
In the position they're in, some teams face VERY hefty penalties for winning their match. Life requested no salvage on the round we were eliminated because we were approaching that stage. Our life cards consisted of 6 frogs, 2 adrenalines and pendulums, so if we entered the 2-deck territory we would have fielded a frogtal and a suicide (or a mono-death + life pendulums + our 2 adrenalines - which is hardly better) leaving us in a significantly worse position than we were beforehand. Winning should not carry a 30-card penalty for the next round.
Edit: Strategic subbing isn't really a problem by the time teams ask for no salvage, too. If you're trying to micromanage how many decks you're going to field in the next round, chances are your weaker players have already been eliminated anyway.
Post by: RootRanger on June 25, 2012, 03:47:37 am
If Fire had chosen to salvage in situations in which it would be purely stupid to salvage, then this would be no different from making any other mistake in war, such as fielding a bad deck or making a wrong prediction. If people are raging at Fire for playing the best they can under the given rules, why not rage at the other 11 teams for playing the best they can under the given rules?
Post by: rosutosefi on June 25, 2012, 09:11:15 am
Now this: If you were on fire's position, wouldn't you do the same? Wouldn't it be more disrespectful of you did not try to win war in the best way you could? If you limited yourself out of some honor system and some other team will suddenly did what you intended to do, how would you feel? Even if no one did the same and you lost because of this unofficial honor system, wouldn't it still raise the question about "who actually won"? Tell me honestly, what will you do? I'm not saying fire did what's right, I'm just saying they do not deserve this hate.
Post by: Jenkar on June 25, 2012, 09:22:32 am
Under the current rules it's allowed, and even though i feel iffy about it, there's no reason to hate fire for it. The only personn i dislike is the one who said it was an abuse, so wat, in chat. It's up to each personn to set their honor system for themselves, but when they don't respect it and don't care about it, that's a problem. (Sot& UTA for example are not doing that and therefore don't deserve any of the hate, nor does the fire time as a group)
Also, most of you : keep in mind honor systems are meant to be personnal. Right now most of you are trying to put guilt on fire for not respecting your view of what's right, which is beyond silly.
Post by: Higurashi on June 25, 2012, 09:50:40 am
Post by: rosutosefi on June 25, 2012, 10:28:58 am
Post by: mrpaper on June 25, 2012, 02:01:04 pm
I think it would be better if the number of players fielded would be based on the number of losses incurred. If there aren't enough cards in the vault, then let them field less players. No 3-player teams returning to four players and such. This way, all these "stay in this sweet spot" shenanigans will be stopped, and you'll give more incentive to winning. Could be balanced by making card discards based on your "extra cards" but all balancing could be thought out by the more experienced war people here. ;)for that to work, all rounds would need to make you lose the same amount of cards, so no more 12, 18,24, 30. Maybe starting at 24 but staying there could be ok, but I am not convince if it is a good idea or not. Also, the whole auction on players would need to be blown away (for snake selection?) because you can't ask a team who paid 25 more cards then another to field the same amount of deck.
On the war rule for subbing now... I don't feel there is much to add in the fact any of you don't like that rule, we got that and warmasters also. I gotta say that this wouldn't be talked half as much if we had lose any of our matches. Also, no one have mentionned that last round event helped the 3 other teams (giving em 4 cards of they're choice) which we couldn't take. I interferred once in chat about it and it was to say that solutions must be taken here and that personal hatred is bad for the community no matter what. I still believe that so I hope we will only see constructive solutions for war 6, I'M all about that too.
For my personal solutions, I doubt having a max of sub can work, some teams have a member or two that go m.i.a so the whole team would die by this, and if I go unlucky and face someone 12 hours apart from me a couple of time I won't wake up at 4 a.m. for a match. That being said, I have merge some ideas, how about you can elect not to salvage once no matter when in war, if you try to do that two rounds in a row, you're opponent decide for a 0 or 6 card salvage and that whether there is a sub involved or not. I'd also give access to team to get rid of regular member to put em in support team and the opposite at any time in case the general can prove the member is inactive.
Post by: Jenkar on June 25, 2012, 02:24:13 pm
Also, no one have mentionned that last round event helped the 3 other teams (giving em 4 cards of they're choice) which we couldn't take.Wouldn't*. That was a choice event card.
That being said, I have merge some ideas, how about you can elect not to salvage once no matter when in war, if you try to do that two rounds in a row, you're opponent decide for a 0 or 6 card salvage and that whether there is a sub involved or not. I'd also give access to team to get rid of regular member to put em in support team and the opposite at any time in case the general can prove the member is inactive.I like this.
Post by: kev on June 25, 2012, 02:55:15 pm
I have a semi-crazy idea.Intriguing. The downside is that, as proposed, it’d almost require an extra phase each round for Generals to post opponent sub salvage decisions. It can only be part of the deckbuilding phase if we lengthen the phase accordingly.
If a sub wins, then the opponent they beat determines their salvage from 0-6 cards.
Early in war, teams will lose salvage, and late in war teams can no longer strategically sub.
Maybe instead Warmasters should make the decision. So the language in Rules would become “Penalty for using a replacement is that you claim no salvage if you win, or salvage in-element pillars if no salvage would cause you to field fewer decks next round.” For that matter, maybe subs should just always salvage in-element pillars, which would be way simpler and still meets all our goals.
I’m happy to see so much thought being put into problems with the current rule set in this thread. I’d love to see additional thought being given to out-of-the-box ideas on how to make War more fun and fair. I don't think War needs a complete overhaul, but I don't think the War6 Warmasters will be committed to running the exact same event, either. I'll be posting here after the War ends, too, and simplification will be a central theme in my wall o text.
Post by: rosutosefi on June 25, 2012, 03:24:58 pm
for that to work, all rounds would need to make you lose the same amount of cards, so no more 12, 18,24, 30. Maybe starting at 24 but staying there could be ok, but I am not convince if it is a good idea or not. Also, the whole auction on players would need to be blown away (for snake selection?) because you can't ask a team who paid 25 more cards then another to field the same amount of deck.Of course there has to be a cushion, and some balancing. For example, everyone fields 6 players at the start of war. Discard is 12. Let's say you start with 240 cards. I'm a potato. My brain cogs are stuck and need to start over on a new idea.
Maybe this: Once your vault hits 3 players, make it so that salvaging cards won't push you to to 4 players. But deck discards could be increased. Maybe like if you have 128 cards this round and won all three of your matches (which pushes you to 146 cards) you'll still field 3 players next game but will have to discard 5 more cards per loss ((146-131)/3). The team could assign which extra cards could be discarded in case of a loss, and there will be less exploiting of these sweet spot thingies.
Post by: kev on June 25, 2012, 03:55:26 pm
Don't forget to multiply by the square root of X/Y, where X is the number of cards discarded two rounds ago and Y is the current phase of the moon. I kid because I care. :P Seriously, though... simplification.for that to work, all rounds would need to make you lose the same amount of cards, so no more 12, 18,24, 30. Maybe starting at 24 but staying there could be ok, but I am not convince if it is a good idea or not. Also, the whole auction on players would need to be blown away (for snake selection?) because you can't ask a team who paid 25 more cards then another to field the same amount of deck.Of course there has to be a cushion, and some balancing. For example, everyone fields 6 players at the start of war. Discard is 12. Let's say you start with 240 cards. I'm a potato. My brain cogs are stuck and need to start over on a new idea.
Maybe this: Once your vault hits 3 players, make it so that salvaging cards won't push you to to 4 players. But deck discards could be increased. Maybe like if you have 128 cards this round and won all three of your matches (which pushes you to 146 cards) you'll still field 3 players next game but will have to discard 5 more cards per loss ((146-131)/3). The team could assign which extra cards could be discarded in case of a loss, and there will be less exploiting of these sweet spot thingies.
Post by: dragonsdemesne on June 25, 2012, 04:12:23 pm
In War2 Gravity was nearly forced to show their entire vault because the rule at the time was number of players fielded =vault/30. See here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,13708.msg203064.html#msg203064). People were up in arms about it, so the rule became vault/36 for War3. I made my thoughts about the new rule clear
I think I suggested it before, but I think War would be more fun if this were changed to something like 30 + vault/30. (vaults would have to be increased by 30 cards in size, but war would take the same amount of time since both the elimination limit and starting vault are increased by the same amount) That way, if you have, say, 60-75 cards (or whatever the range) you field one deck, and if you have 59 or less, you're out, rather than 29 or less you're out like now. My reasoning is that then if a team is reduced to playing one deck per round, you can't automatically predict what they're going to use even if you know their entire vault. It allows for teams to keep more things hidden, which increases the skill required. My team didn't have issue with this in war 5 (since we went 0-5 one round and were wiped out all at once, so it never came up for us :p) but in war 4, round 10 and to a large degree the previous round or two were basically predetermined once the matchups were announced. In round 10 for instance, I successfully predicted the winner of every single match except the finals, and that only because light did not use the deck I thought they would, whereas in every other match the teams used what I thought they would, mostly because there were no other choices.
Post by: Cheesy111 on June 25, 2012, 04:40:45 pm
In War2 Gravity was nearly forced to show their entire vault because the rule at the time was number of players fielded =vault/30. See here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,13708.msg203064.html#msg203064). People were up in arms about it, so the rule became vault/36 for War3. I made my thoughts about the new rule clear
I think I suggested it before, but I think War would be more fun if this were changed to something like 30 + vault/30. (vaults would have to be increased by 30 cards in size, but war would take the same amount of time since both the elimination limit and starting vault are increased by the same amount) That way, if you have, say, 60-75 cards (or whatever the range) you field one deck, and if you have 59 or less, you're out, rather than 29 or less you're out like now. My reasoning is that then if a team is reduced to playing one deck per round, you can't automatically predict what they're going to use even if you know their entire vault. It allows for teams to keep more things hidden, which increases the skill required. My team didn't have issue with this in war 5 (since we went 0-5 one round and were wiped out all at once, so it never came up for us :p) but in war 4, round 10 and to a large degree the previous round or two were basically predetermined once the matchups were announced. In round 10 for instance, I successfully predicted the winner of every single match except the finals, and that only because light did not use the deck I thought they would, whereas in every other match the teams used what I thought they would, mostly because there were no other choices.
I like this a lot.
Post by: Jocko on June 25, 2012, 06:35:58 pm
Post by: kev on June 25, 2012, 07:18:47 pm
and if you have 59 or less, you're out, rather than 29 or less you're out like now.Scenario: Your team has been top tier all War but attrition has forced the top tier down together. It's round 9. Your vault now contains an undefeated grabow that'd be a sure thing against one opponent and PC/CC you could tweak in to make you a strong favorite against the other. You'd be confident in either matchup. But instead they'll face each other with terribad vault leftovers while you watch from the sideline because you have only 58 cards.
I dunno. To me it feels weird to be eliminated before you're eliminated. Eliminated by a cutoff rather than a team.
Post by: Avenger on June 25, 2012, 07:27:48 pm
Believe me, the current situation is MUCH worse. This war can drag on for 3-4 more rounds, with two teams stuck in the sweet spot and one unlucky one which didn't land in there.and if you have 59 or less, you're out, rather than 29 or less you're out like now.Scenario: Your team has been top tier all War but attrition has forced the top tier down together. It's round 9. Your vault now contains an undefeated grabow that'd be a sure thing against one opponent and PC/CC you could tweak in to make you a strong favorite against the other. You'd be confident in either matchup. But instead they'll face each other with terribad vault leftovers while you watch from the sideline because you have only 58 cards.
I dunno. To me it feels weird to be eliminated before you're eliminated. Eliminated by a cutoff rather than a team.
Post by: mrpaper on June 25, 2012, 08:58:19 pm
Post by: Avenger on June 25, 2012, 09:36:10 pm
Well I don't see how 4 rounds is possible, but it won't be over this round round for sure. I also think it is a terrible idea that any team is out with over 30 cards. Also, keeping cards hidden is a great skill that would be removed with that idea.What do you mean by that? It would let you keep 30 cards hidden!
If you meant keeping the steamers hidden was a great skill, then nah, it was predicted that you have them.
4 rounds:
1. aether plays and loses vs the other teams
2. team A wins one (A - ~65 B ~ 35)
3. team B wins one (A - ~35 B ~ 35)
4. one of them wins finally.
Or
1. aether loses one, beats one (40/35/65)
2. team 65 gets a bye
3. aether and loser play one, one of them wins
4. team 65 wins
Or
1. aether beats both -> (35/35/70)
2. aether loses one -> (35/40/40)
3. one of the teams gets a bye
4. final match
In fact, 4 rounds are very likely due to having 2 teams in the sweet spot, and 2 rounds to kill them.
Post by: mrpaper on June 25, 2012, 10:25:28 pm
Post by: UTAlan on June 25, 2012, 11:08:44 pm
Post by: deuce22 on June 25, 2012, 11:21:59 pm
Well I don't see how 4 rounds is possible, but it won't be over this round round for sure. I also think it is a terrible idea that any team is out with over 30 cards. Also, keeping cards hidden is a great skill that would be removed with that idea.
[troll]
So, it's a skill to lose 4 out of 4 decks in a round keeping over 1/2 your vault concealed, while trolling support and main matches waiting for the final event card to give an overwhelming advantage to the team with the strongest support?
What's funny is that I devised a strategy before the auction that involved suiciding after round 4 to fall into the sweet spot with a perfect vault and 7 support members to troll relics. I dismissed this strategy because it defeated the purpose of war. But it's kind of funny that fire fell into this situation by accident with half the teams left in war, and now they will be 1 of the final 2 teams. The rules this war are such a joke.
[/troll]
Let's keep this thread on topic. Thank you.
Will do Higs...I mean UT
Post by: Helston on June 26, 2012, 01:50:40 am
e.g.
No. of discards per deck = floor( (10x/11 - 32/11) / n)
Where x is vault size and n is number of decks fielded.
However, if you only field one deck, discard = 30
Those numbers are tuned for this war. That last rule is to ensure teams actually get eliminated when they're down to one deck. The new sweet spots are where you have JUST enough cards to field an extra deck, so your discards go from 30 per deck to between 15 and 25 per deck. Unfortunately this makes it harder to squash a team relying in one deck - if they manage to field a second deck, they could lose that same round and discard mostly pillars.
To illustrate what all that means:
Discard at 65 cards = 30 per deck
Discard at 66 cards = 15 per deck x2 = 30 total
Discard at 98 cards = 30 per deck x2 = 60 total
Discars at 99 cards = 20 per deck x3 = 60 total
EDIT: Add in a maximum total discard for the start of war, and you could multiply all those numbers by a certain amount if you wanted to ramp up discards over time (12/30 round one, 18/30 round two, etc.)
Post by: RavingRabbid on July 02, 2012, 10:50:32 am
No choice of no salvaging.
It's pretty fair, I think.
Post by: Jenkar on July 02, 2012, 10:56:32 am
Penalty for subbing: 3 cards.Do you mean, no no salvage? Then we get to the same situation as before, with ''subs'' that aren't real subs. True, the fact that it's three cards instead of 6 makes it harder to plan a tactical sub, but it doesn't remove the problem, just lessens it.
No choice of no salvaging.
It's pretty fair, I think.
Post by: hainkarga on July 02, 2012, 11:02:44 am
* No penalty for subing. You must salvage unless EC states otherwise.
* If a team fields more than 1 players and none of them subs, they earn [+2 cards / +1 up / something] at the end of turn if they like.
Edit: or if a team subs, -1/-2 up penalty for 1 player next round. Still full salvage. Basicly some carrot and/or stick against subbing that does not effect sweet spot.
Post by: rosutosefi on July 02, 2012, 11:36:44 am
Post by: Helston on July 03, 2012, 09:31:14 am
First of all, thank you to everyone who made the War possible. All of the War Masters did a fantastic job, especially kev, soldiering on alone on after the resignation of ddev and the poisonous bus-hitting of Mith. If it weren't for you there would be no War. Whoever made the Vault tool (Jenkar from memory?), thank you it's pretty well designed. I did find one bug (which I thought was a general bork and almost caused us a lot of problems) though: if you use the deck building tool before completing your SDCPA and you later add a completely new card or discard the last copy of a card the card list on the deck building tool will change, but not the actual numbers.
e.g.
Nevertheless, thank you for an otherwise great Vault tool. Everyone else who's contribution I'm unaware of, thank you for the great event.
Roles
The flexibility to choose which role went to which match-up was a good idea, but the confusion and extra work of the combined assignment of both roles and players to each match felt like it was a little too much for what benefit was gained. Fixing the players to specific matches (as mentioned below) would help.
• Assassin: Random discards have to go. Although it discourages reliance upon one specific deck, it has the potential to be far too crippling. In round 3 we lost a fractal (to go from four to three) which could have easily turned a close match against us later in war (especially due to our final reliance on a Fractal deck). If that had been a life pendulum instead we wouldn't have cared in the slightest.
• Strategist: Feels a bit left out in this system. I was Life's designated Vault Manager, however we moved the strategist around to whoever wasn't playing or had the least chance of winning. Perhaps make the Vault Manager/Strategist an auxiliary role, and make a new role for duels?
• General: I understand why you prevented the General from playing offensive support matches, to force more participation by other members of the team, but I think this can be done in different ways. Naming players in every support match would certainly help. The inability to edit the Scout's and Lieutenant's posts seemed a bit unnecessary, too.
• Lieutenant: This role worked well.
• Salvager: Seemed to work well this War.
• Scout: Seemed a little weak, but I can't be sure as we never saw the effects.
I have to agree with will (section on duels) (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg510339.html#msg510339) in that the free floating roles isn't a good idea, but mainly for another reason (although teams tendency to choose the same opponent for specific roles wasn't fun). By having so many roles, none of them felt particularly special or interesting. They didn't really add that bit of flavour to War that it looks like they're meant to add, and just became a generic "which team do we get this bonus versus?". From the viewpoint of a newb spectator last war, the Lieutenant role had much more importance and feeling in War #4 than this one.
Event cards
I'm largely in agreement with will's post (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg510339.html#msg510339) on each of the support cards.
• Round 1 Fateful Day: One card discard at the very beginning of War isn't really a problem. Very slightly annoying, but if any vault can't handle something as small as that then the team probably has bigger problems than that event card. I knew when the deadline was, but never mentioned it to will because I assumed he'd seen it, but just goes to show how easy it is to overlook something.
• Round 2 Tactician, Reclaimer, Sniper, and Spy: Very well done. You can clearly see by the spread of choices that the cards were well balanced, despite there being four, with the only real issue being the extension of the assassin's discard (which isn't really a problem with the event card itself).
• Round 3 Full Support and Telepathic Gambit: Both good cards.
• Round 4 Feint and Voodoo Curse: Feint worked well enough, but the penalty to gain the extra relic seemed too great. The two parts to the card worked well together, but probably would've been better explained across two cards, although did explain it clearly enough in the notes. Voodoo curse had the problem of being completely random: you could try to prevent other teams from being protected by loading up your Lt. on upgrades, but there was nothing you could do to protect yourself. Unfortunately switching it so that if your Lt. wins you're protected could cause some issues with everyone putting a large amount of upgrades onto their Lt., making a fair few matches completely one-sided.
• Round 5 Blitzkrieg Strategy and Guerrilla Tactics: The clear choice here was Guerrilla Tactics; opening hand RNG plays too large a part in matches for Blitzkrieg to be useful. An alternative to Blitzkrieg could be if you win 3-0, or win the first two games of your match, you gain some additional bonus on top of whatever salvage/discard you get.
• Round 6 Transdimensional Box and Desperate Times: Desperate Times made for some interesting strategy, but the forced random discards and the likely uselessness of random card restorations made it's usefulness outside trolling teams with weak Vaults rather questionable. For example life's three cards gained were a fire pendulum, a deflag and a crusader which had no place in our Life/Aether/Death vault. I didn't think about Transdimensional Box initially due to our absolute need to win every match we could, but it did make it possible to take a huge gamble, hide all of your relics and then attack ALL the things the next round. It'd be risky, and with the current offensive rules and one round delay on winning relics very tricky to pull off, but it's the sort of crazy event card strategy that could spice things up in a very interesting way. So I liked it, but it's a shame no team took that crazy risk.
• Round 7 Tactical Foresight: Really good card. 33 card deck mindgate indeed.
• Round 8 Virtuous Blade (at this point Life had been eliminated): Looks like a fairly balanced way of being able to add cards to your Vault, and help give a little more support to what might otherwise be a very tenuous situation. If Life was still around, we'd no doubt use it to try to squeeze a little more out of the off-element cards we had.
• Round 9+ To the Spoils Go the Victor: Looks like a good way to finish off War, but with very little knowledge of the upped game, I'll pass judgement on that to everyone else.
Auction and Support Teams
Onizuka suggested (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg512105.html#msg512105) a blind auction. Seems like it would be less exciting for those being auctioned and for the community in general, but could make for an interesting and arguably fairer spin on the current auction. The main problem I could see is how it might go horribly wrong for one or two generals who end up with teams they really don't want (too many veterans, too many new players etc.) because of how little direct control they have over who is picked for them. There is definitely an advantage to being on right when the auction starts, but I think that advantage is negligible.
I'm of the opinion that support teams should become part of the main team. Communication with support team members was difficult because it could only be done via PM or in chat if they were online at the same time as whoever needed to speak with them. Again, I have to agree with Onizuka (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg510524.html#msg510524) in that support members should be won in the auction, but have no actual card cost. Support teams would be best selected after the main auction to prevent generals with already-expensive teams poaching valuable and slightly cheaper players for free with their number 7 and 8 picks. Once their part of the main team it would be a logical extension for decks to be fixed by the team as a whole, like the main matches.
Support Battles
Before I start this section proper, I'll mention will's support teams and deckbuilding section (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg508944.html#msg508944). I agree with everything there wholeheartedly, and I'll be covering some of the same ground. To quote the notes I made when I was preparing this post (which was a while ago now, this has taken ages to write) "couldn't agree more [with will]. Dear god he's right here."
As a concept, support battles are pretty good. It was great trying to work within harsh restrictions we were given, but simultaneously being given freedom from our Vault. However, it was often a little too hard to come up with effective decks due to how few in-element cards one could use. The Mormegil pointed out (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg492073.html#msg492073) that Entropy had a hard time making entropy-based decks during their early attacks. Life had a similar problem during the round three support battles, where we suddenly had the opportunity to attack with quite a few extra players. Our available in-element cards are shown below:
The main problem this caused was trying to find a way to use all the life quanta we'd be producing. Without our Dragons, Fractal (which we had also used that round) or even Mitosis we were left with a range of mostly very cheap cards. Thorn Carapace and Emerald Shield would have helped alleviate the problem if they weren't primarily stalling cards, and thus the decks using them will already be producing above-average quantities of Life quanta. We were also missing two of Life's most versatile cards in Adrenaline and Mitosis. The process of deckbuilding almost became a matter of making half a complete deck, then shoehorning in 15 Life cards (including pendulums) and praying you could get the quanta to balance out somehow.
The next round, after having gone from five decks to two for our main team, our position was only slightly better - replace Horned Frog with Cockatrice and add Emphatic Bonds to the list above. We were still missing and still had problems dealing with quanta.
There was an additional problem in that later in War, as support teams and the number of defenders grew in size, teams were almost completely free from the support battle restrictions. This is mostly a matter of taste - I'm don't particularly like the unrestricted metagame. As early as round 4 it became very difficult to predict what the other teams might bring, three defenders being enough to bring almost any deck you want, and it removed that element of trying to work with the unexpected or less used cards.
Shantu's idea (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg508944.html#msg508944) doesn't sound too bad, and is definitely worth considering.
The Mormegil suggested (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg501930.html#msg501930) restrictions involving off-element cards. This sounds like a great idea. I would propose something along the lines of:
1. No rares or upgraded cards (like current support battles so any player can easily make the decks).
2. 50% in-element.
3. You may not use cards from any off-element your main team used that round. This means that because Life used a Frogtal in round 7, none of our decks may use any Aether cards during the next round of support battles.
I'm wondering if this system would need any additional restrictions. As it is, it certainly gives early matches the freedom they need to actually make viable decks, whilst still being present later in War. I haven't figured out a way to work this into an incentive to defend, but that brings me to the last problem with support battles.
Having only three days to prepare for and complete all our support battles wasn't enough (it was good to see this being acted upon in the last few rounds). Part of the problem is the sheer number of support battles, but if they were worked into the main schedule so that all dueling happens at the same time, or so that support battles can be played during the duel phase as well as the deckbuilding phase, this would be made a lot easier. I wouldn't want more than four support team battles, even with the extended deadline, so again some sort of way to prevent or discourage a team from sending out a large number of attackers would be needed.
Miscellaneous
• TorB mentioned (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg492456.html#msg492456) that it would be good to keep all announcements in the announcement thread after the General's Checklist (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,39479.0.html) was posted. This sort of basic organisation really is needed for an event the size and complexity of War, and it was good to see it being applied throughout the rest of the war thereafter.
• I'm happy with the way byes are, but I'm not sure what it was in the old system
• So far there has been no true suicides, the closest being aether's fatbow. This is a great development.
• I asked (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg495336.html#msg495336) earlier in this thread asking whether shards would be considered for the next War. Since then I've more or less changed my opinion and would be happy to see War remain free of them.
• Relics were a very nice way of handling upgrades throughout War. It allowed for a few extra modifiers in event cards to help change things up a bit.
• The propaganda discussion's already come and gone, but I'll have to agree that it's very much a popularity contest. I believe I voted for entropy last War simply because it was my favourite element. Additionally you can spend a fair bit of time trying to make a good banner when you could instead be working on the Vault, like I did. The main benefit as far as I could see was that it showed our where our focus would be for the War.
• As team Life, we had an unfortunate extra layer of difficulty in how few teams bring Life cards in their vaults (and use them). Air, Darkness, Earth, Gravity, Light and Water brought and played life cards, and of them only Darkness and Gravity brought more than Forest Spirits (for novabows). This means our salvage will on the whole be weaker compared to, for example, Aether's - we alone used more Aether cards than every other team combined used Life cards. I'm not sure how this could be addressed because it's primarily an in-game balance issue, but I'll be interested in looking at each team's starting vault once secret sections are opened up.
• Picking specific players for each match makes everything a lot easier. When everyone lives on the other side of the world compared to you (living in Australia, +10GMT makes things hard), you can automatically lose a day's worth of time just contacting your opponent, leaving you with two days to play at awkward hours. This would be handy extended to support battles too, if two people need to play each other they'll be a lot more motivated to organise something (even if there's no sub penalty). will's (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg510339.html#msg510339) section on duels is just about spot on, although I personally didn't notice that we never played Darkness.
• See my post above (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg515093.html#msg515093) for what I think can be done about sweet spots. Personally, I'm not against teams trying to get into them in the current Vault system as you can read here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg514806.html#msg514806), but it appears I'm in the minority here.
• War looks like it's dragging on a little now that we're down to the last three teams. dragonsdemesne suggested (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg514937.html#msg514937) a 30n + 30 Vault system that would probably solve the problem (which could be combined with my vault size/discards idea). kev replied (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg515002.html#msg515002) that it would be weird being eliminated with 59 cards and a solid deck that could pretty much win you the War, but it could be a necessary step to quicken up teams being eliminated whilst still allowing for flexibility down to the end. What's more, if you're at 89 cards with strong decks in your Vault the best way to avoid being eliminated in such an unfortunate situation is simple: don't lose.
e.g.
| Available | Unupped | Upped | |
| Emerald Pillar | 25 | 15 | 9 |
| Horned Frog | 6 | 4 | 2 |
| Available | Unupped | Upped | |
| Emerald Pillar | 24 | 15 | 9 |
| Life Pendulum | 1 | 4 | 2 |
| Horned Frog | 6 |
Nevertheless, thank you for an otherwise great Vault tool. Everyone else who's contribution I'm unaware of, thank you for the great event.
Roles
The flexibility to choose which role went to which match-up was a good idea, but the confusion and extra work of the combined assignment of both roles and players to each match felt like it was a little too much for what benefit was gained. Fixing the players to specific matches (as mentioned below) would help.
• Assassin: Random discards have to go. Although it discourages reliance upon one specific deck, it has the potential to be far too crippling. In round 3 we lost a fractal (to go from four to three) which could have easily turned a close match against us later in war (especially due to our final reliance on a Fractal deck). If that had been a life pendulum instead we wouldn't have cared in the slightest.
• Strategist: Feels a bit left out in this system. I was Life's designated Vault Manager, however we moved the strategist around to whoever wasn't playing or had the least chance of winning. Perhaps make the Vault Manager/Strategist an auxiliary role, and make a new role for duels?
• General: I understand why you prevented the General from playing offensive support matches, to force more participation by other members of the team, but I think this can be done in different ways. Naming players in every support match would certainly help. The inability to edit the Scout's and Lieutenant's posts seemed a bit unnecessary, too.
• Lieutenant: This role worked well.
• Salvager: Seemed to work well this War.
• Scout: Seemed a little weak, but I can't be sure as we never saw the effects.
I have to agree with will (section on duels) (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg510339.html#msg510339) in that the free floating roles isn't a good idea, but mainly for another reason (although teams tendency to choose the same opponent for specific roles wasn't fun). By having so many roles, none of them felt particularly special or interesting. They didn't really add that bit of flavour to War that it looks like they're meant to add, and just became a generic "which team do we get this bonus versus?". From the viewpoint of a newb spectator last war, the Lieutenant role had much more importance and feeling in War #4 than this one.
Event cards
I'm largely in agreement with will's post (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg510339.html#msg510339) on each of the support cards.
• Round 1 Fateful Day: One card discard at the very beginning of War isn't really a problem. Very slightly annoying, but if any vault can't handle something as small as that then the team probably has bigger problems than that event card. I knew when the deadline was, but never mentioned it to will because I assumed he'd seen it, but just goes to show how easy it is to overlook something.
• Round 2 Tactician, Reclaimer, Sniper, and Spy: Very well done. You can clearly see by the spread of choices that the cards were well balanced, despite there being four, with the only real issue being the extension of the assassin's discard (which isn't really a problem with the event card itself).
• Round 3 Full Support and Telepathic Gambit: Both good cards.
• Round 4 Feint and Voodoo Curse: Feint worked well enough, but the penalty to gain the extra relic seemed too great. The two parts to the card worked well together, but probably would've been better explained across two cards, although did explain it clearly enough in the notes. Voodoo curse had the problem of being completely random: you could try to prevent other teams from being protected by loading up your Lt. on upgrades, but there was nothing you could do to protect yourself. Unfortunately switching it so that if your Lt. wins you're protected could cause some issues with everyone putting a large amount of upgrades onto their Lt., making a fair few matches completely one-sided.
• Round 5 Blitzkrieg Strategy and Guerrilla Tactics: The clear choice here was Guerrilla Tactics; opening hand RNG plays too large a part in matches for Blitzkrieg to be useful. An alternative to Blitzkrieg could be if you win 3-0, or win the first two games of your match, you gain some additional bonus on top of whatever salvage/discard you get.
• Round 6 Transdimensional Box and Desperate Times: Desperate Times made for some interesting strategy, but the forced random discards and the likely uselessness of random card restorations made it's usefulness outside trolling teams with weak Vaults rather questionable. For example life's three cards gained were a fire pendulum, a deflag and a crusader which had no place in our Life/Aether/Death vault. I didn't think about Transdimensional Box initially due to our absolute need to win every match we could, but it did make it possible to take a huge gamble, hide all of your relics and then attack ALL the things the next round. It'd be risky, and with the current offensive rules and one round delay on winning relics very tricky to pull off, but it's the sort of crazy event card strategy that could spice things up in a very interesting way. So I liked it, but it's a shame no team took that crazy risk.
• Round 7 Tactical Foresight: Really good card. 33 card deck mindgate indeed.
• Round 8 Virtuous Blade (at this point Life had been eliminated): Looks like a fairly balanced way of being able to add cards to your Vault, and help give a little more support to what might otherwise be a very tenuous situation. If Life was still around, we'd no doubt use it to try to squeeze a little more out of the off-element cards we had.
• Round 9+ To the Spoils Go the Victor: Looks like a good way to finish off War, but with very little knowledge of the upped game, I'll pass judgement on that to everyone else.
Auction and Support Teams
Onizuka suggested (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg512105.html#msg512105) a blind auction. Seems like it would be less exciting for those being auctioned and for the community in general, but could make for an interesting and arguably fairer spin on the current auction. The main problem I could see is how it might go horribly wrong for one or two generals who end up with teams they really don't want (too many veterans, too many new players etc.) because of how little direct control they have over who is picked for them. There is definitely an advantage to being on right when the auction starts, but I think that advantage is negligible.
I'm of the opinion that support teams should become part of the main team. Communication with support team members was difficult because it could only be done via PM or in chat if they were online at the same time as whoever needed to speak with them. Again, I have to agree with Onizuka (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg510524.html#msg510524) in that support members should be won in the auction, but have no actual card cost. Support teams would be best selected after the main auction to prevent generals with already-expensive teams poaching valuable and slightly cheaper players for free with their number 7 and 8 picks. Once their part of the main team it would be a logical extension for decks to be fixed by the team as a whole, like the main matches.
Support Battles
Before I start this section proper, I'll mention will's support teams and deckbuilding section (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg508944.html#msg508944). I agree with everything there wholeheartedly, and I'll be covering some of the same ground. To quote the notes I made when I was preparing this post (which was a while ago now, this has taken ages to write) "couldn't agree more [with will]. Dear god he's right here."
As a concept, support battles are pretty good. It was great trying to work within harsh restrictions we were given, but simultaneously being given freedom from our Vault. However, it was often a little too hard to come up with effective decks due to how few in-element cards one could use. The Mormegil pointed out (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg492073.html#msg492073) that Entropy had a hard time making entropy-based decks during their early attacks. Life had a similar problem during the round three support battles, where we suddenly had the opportunity to attack with quite a few extra players. Our available in-element cards are shown below:
The main problem this caused was trying to find a way to use all the life quanta we'd be producing. Without our Dragons, Fractal (which we had also used that round) or even Mitosis we were left with a range of mostly very cheap cards. Thorn Carapace and Emerald Shield would have helped alleviate the problem if they weren't primarily stalling cards, and thus the decks using them will already be producing above-average quantities of Life quanta. We were also missing two of Life's most versatile cards in Adrenaline and Mitosis. The process of deckbuilding almost became a matter of making half a complete deck, then shoehorning in 15 Life cards (including pendulums) and praying you could get the quanta to balance out somehow.
The next round, after having gone from five decks to two for our main team, our position was only slightly better - replace Horned Frog with Cockatrice and add Emphatic Bonds to the list above. We were still missing and still had problems dealing with quanta.
There was an additional problem in that later in War, as support teams and the number of defenders grew in size, teams were almost completely free from the support battle restrictions. This is mostly a matter of taste - I'm don't particularly like the unrestricted metagame. As early as round 4 it became very difficult to predict what the other teams might bring, three defenders being enough to bring almost any deck you want, and it removed that element of trying to work with the unexpected or less used cards.
Shantu's idea (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg508944.html#msg508944) doesn't sound too bad, and is definitely worth considering.
The Mormegil suggested (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg501930.html#msg501930) restrictions involving off-element cards. This sounds like a great idea. I would propose something along the lines of:
1. No rares or upgraded cards (like current support battles so any player can easily make the decks).
2. 50% in-element.
3. You may not use cards from any off-element your main team used that round. This means that because Life used a Frogtal in round 7, none of our decks may use any Aether cards during the next round of support battles.
I'm wondering if this system would need any additional restrictions. As it is, it certainly gives early matches the freedom they need to actually make viable decks, whilst still being present later in War. I haven't figured out a way to work this into an incentive to defend, but that brings me to the last problem with support battles.
Having only three days to prepare for and complete all our support battles wasn't enough (it was good to see this being acted upon in the last few rounds). Part of the problem is the sheer number of support battles, but if they were worked into the main schedule so that all dueling happens at the same time, or so that support battles can be played during the duel phase as well as the deckbuilding phase, this would be made a lot easier. I wouldn't want more than four support team battles, even with the extended deadline, so again some sort of way to prevent or discourage a team from sending out a large number of attackers would be needed.
Miscellaneous
• TorB mentioned (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg492456.html#msg492456) that it would be good to keep all announcements in the announcement thread after the General's Checklist (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,39479.0.html) was posted. This sort of basic organisation really is needed for an event the size and complexity of War, and it was good to see it being applied throughout the rest of the war thereafter.
• I'm happy with the way byes are, but I'm not sure what it was in the old system
• So far there has been no true suicides, the closest being aether's fatbow. This is a great development.
• I asked (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg495336.html#msg495336) earlier in this thread asking whether shards would be considered for the next War. Since then I've more or less changed my opinion and would be happy to see War remain free of them.
• Relics were a very nice way of handling upgrades throughout War. It allowed for a few extra modifiers in event cards to help change things up a bit.
• The propaganda discussion's already come and gone, but I'll have to agree that it's very much a popularity contest. I believe I voted for entropy last War simply because it was my favourite element. Additionally you can spend a fair bit of time trying to make a good banner when you could instead be working on the Vault, like I did. The main benefit as far as I could see was that it showed our where our focus would be for the War.
• As team Life, we had an unfortunate extra layer of difficulty in how few teams bring Life cards in their vaults (and use them). Air, Darkness, Earth, Gravity, Light and Water brought and played life cards, and of them only Darkness and Gravity brought more than Forest Spirits (for novabows). This means our salvage will on the whole be weaker compared to, for example, Aether's - we alone used more Aether cards than every other team combined used Life cards. I'm not sure how this could be addressed because it's primarily an in-game balance issue, but I'll be interested in looking at each team's starting vault once secret sections are opened up.
• Picking specific players for each match makes everything a lot easier. When everyone lives on the other side of the world compared to you (living in Australia, +10GMT makes things hard), you can automatically lose a day's worth of time just contacting your opponent, leaving you with two days to play at awkward hours. This would be handy extended to support battles too, if two people need to play each other they'll be a lot more motivated to organise something (even if there's no sub penalty). will's (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg510339.html#msg510339) section on duels is just about spot on, although I personally didn't notice that we never played Darkness.
• See my post above (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg515093.html#msg515093) for what I think can be done about sweet spots. Personally, I'm not against teams trying to get into them in the current Vault system as you can read here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg514806.html#msg514806), but it appears I'm in the minority here.
• War looks like it's dragging on a little now that we're down to the last three teams. dragonsdemesne suggested (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg514937.html#msg514937) a 30n + 30 Vault system that would probably solve the problem (which could be combined with my vault size/discards idea). kev replied (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg515002.html#msg515002) that it would be weird being eliminated with 59 cards and a solid deck that could pretty much win you the War, but it could be a necessary step to quicken up teams being eliminated whilst still allowing for flexibility down to the end. What's more, if you're at 89 cards with strong decks in your Vault the best way to avoid being eliminated in such an unfortunate situation is simple: don't lose.
Lastly, something completely unrelated to the S&F, for the sake of simplicity in the Archives, should we unsticky all our threads (as suggested by Onizuka (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg473913.html#msg473913)?
Edit: Completed unfinished sentence just before Miscellaneous section.
Post by: hainkarga on July 13, 2012, 08:51:20 am
Post by: Avenger on July 13, 2012, 09:18:48 am
Or make it like this: subbing removes salvage for one random match in the NEXT round. Or subbing allows your opponent to choose whether you get to salvage or not.The second. It was already suggested by deuce earlier. And some others liked it too, including me.
I think this rule is the fairest possible (it could be used even in early game when there is no sweet spot in sight, to allow opponent get cards, because you are such a cool and fair opponent and you know your opponent subbed innocently).
Post by: deuce22 on July 15, 2012, 04:54:41 am
While the auction has generally been the same from war to war, I encountered a few problems that I think can be improved.
1. Minimum raise of 2 cards
2. Generals not being online when auction opens is a disadvantage
3. Initial bidding lasting 3+ days
Suggestions = min raise of 1, initial bidding lasting 1 or 2 days.
I was one of the generals that was not able to be online when bidding started. I had several 1-card bids that I wanted to make, but I unfortunately would have had to pay triple the cost to get that player because I had to work during the first 6 hrs of the auction. Had I been able to raise by 1, I may have bid on a few of those players.
Thank god bidding wasn’t a full week, but 3 days was still way too long, imo. I find it highly unlikely that one of the 12 generals would not be able to place bids within a 24 hour period. With the 3 day bidding period, I would estimate >75% of the bids were in the first 12 hrs. A couple generals waited 2 days to ninja bid. Shortening the bidding period to 24 hrs would eliminate a lot of the unnecessary dead time. To help facilitate this, WMs can try to coordinate auction to start on a day (probably a Saturday) where all generals will have some computer access to place bids.
I think there have been some suggestions about reform of the auction process. I’m open to any suggestions that may make the auction more fun and/or fair. But I have no suggestions at the moment.
1. Minimum raise of 2 cards
2. Generals not being online when auction opens is a disadvantage
3. Initial bidding lasting 3+ days
Suggestions = min raise of 1, initial bidding lasting 1 or 2 days.
I was one of the generals that was not able to be online when bidding started. I had several 1-card bids that I wanted to make, but I unfortunately would have had to pay triple the cost to get that player because I had to work during the first 6 hrs of the auction. Had I been able to raise by 1, I may have bid on a few of those players.
Thank god bidding wasn’t a full week, but 3 days was still way too long, imo. I find it highly unlikely that one of the 12 generals would not be able to place bids within a 24 hour period. With the 3 day bidding period, I would estimate >75% of the bids were in the first 12 hrs. A couple generals waited 2 days to ninja bid. Shortening the bidding period to 24 hrs would eliminate a lot of the unnecessary dead time. To help facilitate this, WMs can try to coordinate auction to start on a day (probably a Saturday) where all generals will have some computer access to place bids.
I think there have been some suggestions about reform of the auction process. I’m open to any suggestions that may make the auction more fun and/or fair. But I have no suggestions at the moment.
I can appreciate the idea to include almost every applicant, however, the execution of this goal failed miserably this war.
1. Many support players went inactive
2. Majority of support matches were “subbed”
3. Support matches created far more work for teams
Suggestions = eliminate support teams from all future wars
This was actually fairly reminiscent of war 2 where teams were forced to draft “rookies”, which was a failed idea as well from what I hear. Limiting participants in the auction is kind of a necessary evil as it actually helps war run smoother. If new applicants really want to be on a team, they will do more than just submit an app.
1. Many support players went inactive
2. Majority of support matches were “subbed”
3. Support matches created far more work for teams
Suggestions = eliminate support teams from all future wars
This was actually fairly reminiscent of war 2 where teams were forced to draft “rookies”, which was a failed idea as well from what I hear. Limiting participants in the auction is kind of a necessary evil as it actually helps war run smoother. If new applicants really want to be on a team, they will do more than just submit an app.
I liked the vault restriction changes given the smaller teams. Fewer grabbows is always a good thing. Although, propaganda needs fixing.
1. voting for propaganda is flawed
2. vault building during propaganda was hectic
3. conversions prior to round 1 was not made clear enough (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37505.msg489858.html#msg489858)
Suggestions = eliminate propaganda voting, move vault deadline to after propaganda
Propaganda has been pretty much beaten to death, so I won’t talk more about that. Regarding the pre-round 1 conversions, I had no idea this was an option until after the vault deadline. Mainly because this was posted as a general reply in the rules thread rather than being sent to the generals in a PM or notifying them in the War General Private Area. There were several cards I wanted to add to our vault but didn’t because I wanted to make sure we had enough pills/pends. I was very frustrated about this, but I guess it didn’t matter in the end ;)
1. voting for propaganda is flawed
2. vault building during propaganda was hectic
3. conversions prior to round 1 was not made clear enough (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37505.msg489858.html#msg489858)
Suggestions = eliminate propaganda voting, move vault deadline to after propaganda
Propaganda has been pretty much beaten to death, so I won’t talk more about that. Regarding the pre-round 1 conversions, I had no idea this was an option until after the vault deadline. Mainly because this was posted as a general reply in the rules thread rather than being sent to the generals in a PM or notifying them in the War General Private Area. There were several cards I wanted to add to our vault but didn’t because I wanted to make sure we had enough pills/pends. I was very frustrated about this, but I guess it didn’t matter in the end ;)
Fun addition to war 5, but still needs some tweaking
1. Assassinating random cards is awful
2. Strategist needs an ability
3. Scout’s ability too weak?
Suggestions = assassin causes nonrandom discard, strategist can have a 3-card sideboard, allow scout to copy a scouted card?
Random discards are always bad, so just make them nonrandom and everyone will be happy. Assigning a role to dealing with Gdocs is pointless when roles can change and when every other role has an ability. I think a sideboard fits with the idea of strategist, but this may be too OP. I am open to other ideas, but strategist needs an ability. For scouts, I did not find their ability all that useful, and it was drastically weaker than all other roles except strategist. I think limiting their ability to scouting 1 card and allowing them to copy that card makes them more useful. I just think that all the roles should be pretty balanced as each role may have a significance in mid war.
1. Assassinating random cards is awful
2. Strategist needs an ability
3. Scout’s ability too weak?
Suggestions = assassin causes nonrandom discard, strategist can have a 3-card sideboard, allow scout to copy a scouted card?
Random discards are always bad, so just make them nonrandom and everyone will be happy. Assigning a role to dealing with Gdocs is pointless when roles can change and when every other role has an ability. I think a sideboard fits with the idea of strategist, but this may be too OP. I am open to other ideas, but strategist needs an ability. For scouts, I did not find their ability all that useful, and it was drastically weaker than all other roles except strategist. I think limiting their ability to scouting 1 card and allowing them to copy that card makes them more useful. I just think that all the roles should be pretty balanced as each role may have a significance in mid war.
I like the idea of upgrades being determined by relics.
Suggestions = eliminate support teams
I love the idea of increasing upgrades as war progresses, but I’m not sure what the most balanced way of going about it is. Eliminating support teams is a must. But not sure if it is best to keep salvagers the way they are or give them a boost. Either way, this needs to remain simple.
Suggestions = eliminate support teams
I love the idea of increasing upgrades as war progresses, but I’m not sure what the most balanced way of going about it is. Eliminating support teams is a must. But not sure if it is best to keep salvagers the way they are or give them a boost. Either way, this needs to remain simple.
Discard/Salvage/Conversion were all pretty good. 30-card discards are always scary, but with smaller initial vaults and fewer matches I don’t think it was an issue.
1. matchups posted during duel phase
2. Matchup RNG needs improvement (or structure?)
Suggestions = post player matchups first and assign roles later (or have roles be permanent), make each round last 1 week
The old way of posting matchups was best, and we should just go back to that. As for matchup RNG, many teams never got to face certain elements (granted, there were fewer matches to be played). For aether, we played time, fire, entropy, and air almost every round (all top teams nonetheless -_-). Maybe through the first 2 rounds, you should be guaranteed to face each element once, then from there have RNG have you play half matches against top 50% teams and half against bottom 50% teams. No idea if anything like this is even possible, but maybe it’s something to look into. As for the length of each round, I recommend making each round last 1 week because I feel like the majority of testing occurs on the weekend. Going with this, I would have deckbuilding always end Sunday around 1600 GMT or so that teams will be likely be around to finalize vaults, and many duels can occur almost immediately.
1. matchups posted during duel phase
2. Matchup RNG needs improvement (or structure?)
Suggestions = post player matchups first and assign roles later (or have roles be permanent), make each round last 1 week
The old way of posting matchups was best, and we should just go back to that. As for matchup RNG, many teams never got to face certain elements (granted, there were fewer matches to be played). For aether, we played time, fire, entropy, and air almost every round (all top teams nonetheless -_-). Maybe through the first 2 rounds, you should be guaranteed to face each element once, then from there have RNG have you play half matches against top 50% teams and half against bottom 50% teams. No idea if anything like this is even possible, but maybe it’s something to look into. As for the length of each round, I recommend making each round last 1 week because I feel like the majority of testing occurs on the weekend. Going with this, I would have deckbuilding always end Sunday around 1600 GMT or so that teams will be likely be around to finalize vaults, and many duels can occur almost immediately.
Unresolved issue since the dawn of war :P
1. Sweet spot trolling
Suggestion: Have opponent (or WMs) determine salvage for subs
Subbing should always be a penalty. And penalties should never benefit a team. Ultimately, I think it is the WMs duty to ensure fairness, so it would probably be easiest to have them determine what kind of salvage would be considered a penalty.
1. Sweet spot trolling
Suggestion: Have opponent (or WMs) determine salvage for subs
Subbing should always be a penalty. And penalties should never benefit a team. Ultimately, I think it is the WMs duty to ensure fairness, so it would probably be easiest to have them determine what kind of salvage would be considered a penalty.
Round 1, Fateful Day: While this card really only affected team time (17-card bid, LMAO), forcing to discard is generally not well received. Instead of bidding cards, maybe teams can predict the outcomes of matches (like old war betting). Each team risks nothing, and 1 team gains a very small advantage.
Round 2, Tactician, Reclaimer, Sniper, and Spy: Agree with willu. Good EC, except for random discard by sniper. Each option was chosen at least twice.
Round 3, Full Support and Telepathic Gambit: Balanced.
Round 4, Feint and Voodoo Curse: Feint was ok since it was optional. Voodoo curse was horribly unbalanced. We had 5 relics after this round, and despite having a 4-1 round, we never faced an Lt and ended up losing 2 valuable relics. In general, each team should have an opportunity to utilize an EC. This one failed.
Round 5, Blitzkrieg Strategy and Guerrilla Tactics: Individually, both cards are acceptable. But both together in the same round is pointless since Guerrilla Tactics was the obvious choice.
Round 6, Transdimensional Box and Desperate Times: Transdimensional box was pointless. Desperate Times may as well have been “randomly discard a random # of cards” since the cards gained were generally useless. If this card allowed you to pick cards from your initial vault, then it would have been much more balanced.
Round 7, Tactical Foresight: This may have been the most fun event card because everyone is trying to mindgate everyone else. Naturally, aether mindgates better than anyone ;)
Round 8, Virtuous Blade: I’m indifferent on this one, but this late in war it could be potentially game changing. It really only helped time as it allowed them to recover some key cards that they lost from the previous 2 rounds. Air ended up losing anyway, and the cards we gained for aether were basically useless since our vault was pretty complete at the time. And fire naturally hid in their sweet spot.
Round 9-12, To the Spoils Go The Victor: In the context of support teams late in war, this card was kind of trolly, especially when used for 4 straight rounds. Without support teams, I think this card would be balanced and appropriate during any individual round. Also, not a fan of using the same event card for multiple rounds.
Round 2, Tactician, Reclaimer, Sniper, and Spy: Agree with willu. Good EC, except for random discard by sniper. Each option was chosen at least twice.
Round 3, Full Support and Telepathic Gambit: Balanced.
Round 4, Feint and Voodoo Curse: Feint was ok since it was optional. Voodoo curse was horribly unbalanced. We had 5 relics after this round, and despite having a 4-1 round, we never faced an Lt and ended up losing 2 valuable relics. In general, each team should have an opportunity to utilize an EC. This one failed.
Round 5, Blitzkrieg Strategy and Guerrilla Tactics: Individually, both cards are acceptable. But both together in the same round is pointless since Guerrilla Tactics was the obvious choice.
Round 6, Transdimensional Box and Desperate Times: Transdimensional box was pointless. Desperate Times may as well have been “randomly discard a random # of cards” since the cards gained were generally useless. If this card allowed you to pick cards from your initial vault, then it would have been much more balanced.
Round 7, Tactical Foresight: This may have been the most fun event card because everyone is trying to mindgate everyone else. Naturally, aether mindgates better than anyone ;)
Round 8, Virtuous Blade: I’m indifferent on this one, but this late in war it could be potentially game changing. It really only helped time as it allowed them to recover some key cards that they lost from the previous 2 rounds. Air ended up losing anyway, and the cards we gained for aether were basically useless since our vault was pretty complete at the time. And fire naturally hid in their sweet spot.
Round 9-12, To the Spoils Go The Victor: In the context of support teams late in war, this card was kind of trolly, especially when used for 4 straight rounds. Without support teams, I think this card would be balanced and appropriate during any individual round. Also, not a fan of using the same event card for multiple rounds.
Post by: hainkarga on July 15, 2012, 03:04:09 pm
How about this ?
Multiple generals can bid the same amount of cards for the same player. Whoever wins the player when the auction closes, can be sorted with a table much like the current one. The generals get the players they bid higher cost first, then the cheaper ones. If a general bids higher than others, he wins naturally. This should solve the timing problems of the auction.
Also i think the favorite elements should mean something solid. I think i suggested it before, a war applicant's favorite elements can give bonuses to the masters of his favorite elements in the auction.
If i declare my favorite elements like
1st :death, 2nd :gravity, 3rd :light
(1st element 3 card bonus, 2nd 2 card bonus, 3rd 1 card bonus in the auction)
During the auction phase, if general of :light bids 1 card on me then his bid is treated as 1+1=2 because it is my 3rd favorite element. If general of :gravity bids 1 on me, his bid is treated 1+2 = 3. And general of :death has 3 card bonus, 1+3 = 4. If :death general bids 1, say, general of :darkness should have to bid more than 4 on me. In the end, if :death wins me by 1 bid, he pays only 1 card even tho his bid was counted as 4 card bid.
Post by: Jocko on July 15, 2012, 04:35:58 pm
Post by: mrpaper on July 16, 2012, 02:55:07 am
Post by: dragonsdemesne on July 16, 2012, 03:35:37 am
My biggest concern though, is woulnd't that disadvantage unpopular teams like gravity and water? Since they are likely not to have 6 people that picked them as 1st choice, they might need to overspend while they are already considered weak by manys.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I think it would be really fun to be part of a team where all the players were really good but the element itself was weaker, just to prove what can be done with it. I put something to that extent in my war app, but if memory serves, only the stronger elements bid on me anyway :p For instance, in this war, while I didn't follow it too closely, I'd point to team Life as the unofficial winner; when you balance element power (or lack thereof) with actual war standing, I think they had the best performance of any team in war 5, and team Darkness was probably runner-up.
Post by: deuce22 on July 16, 2012, 04:34:57 am
My biggest concern though, is woulnd't that disadvantage unpopular teams like gravity and water? Since they are likely not to have 6 people that picked them as 1st choice, they might need to overspend while they are already considered weak by manys.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I think it would be really fun to be part of a team where all the players were really good but the element itself was weaker, just to prove what can be done with it. I put something to that extent in my war app, but if memory serves, only the stronger elements bid on me anyway :p For instance, in this war, while I didn't follow it too closely, I'd point to team Life as the unofficial winner; when you balance element power (or lack thereof) with actual war standing, I think they had the best performance of any team in war 5, and team Darkness was probably runner-up.
No love for the first-time war winners? :-[
Post by: ddevans96 on July 16, 2012, 05:17:16 am
I can't speak for anyone else, but I think it would be really fun to be part of a team where all the players were really good but the element itself was weaker, just to prove what can be done with it.
I'd love to see a team with powerhouse players on an element that generally doesn't fare well in war, too. In fact, this happened once - Team Gravity in War 3 was stacked, but unfortunately it collapsed. They could have gone a long way without inactivity.
Post by: kev on August 01, 2012, 05:01:41 pm
Support Teams were intended to solve a couple problems at once:
- Wildly uncertain level of community interest in War following the forum move made for difficult team sizing
- Team Underworld following a different rule-set than everyone else was a problem
The new rules were successful in solving those problems. They also attempted to:
- Include nearly everyone who wanted to participate in War and yet keep War feeling smaller and shorter
- Add another level of strategy to War
- Tweak War Rules that had gotten stale
- Use a deckbuilding dynamic that hadn't been seen before
- Make War bloodier
We've seen... I'll call it mixed reviews on how successful the changes were. But honestly as a first pass at a significant rule change I think they were mostly successful on most of the points. I'm looking forward to seeing whether the new WMs tweak Support Team rules, go back to Underworld, or do something completely different.
There was some discussion over Support Team deckbuilding in this thread. The Rules tried to create something that incorporated a new dynamic, gave an edge to defending teams without creating an insurmountable wall, and gave a gentle bump to teams that haven't performed as well in War. Let's see how we did:
Attacking team win percentages | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Not too bad. 26% is probably artificially low because few teams attacked early, resulting in more powerful defenders and a 12.5% winrate during the first three rounds. I'll also note (from this (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,41608.0.html) table) the top three teams throughout Wars (Fire, Entropy, and Aether) average 22% while the bottom three teams (Water, Gravity, and Life) average 43%. Small sample for sure.
So I think the inauguration of Support Teams achieved a lot of its goals and wasn't a colossal failure. One unfortunate consequence was a tremendous increase in complexity. Running Support Team matches during Main Team deckbuilding means around the clock battles and thinking about battles, but is that a good thing?. WMs did their best to make players aware of changes and be active to answer questions but with so many new rules some things were bound to fall through the cracks. I remember the chaos from War 1 and there were a host of similarities here. Did it eventually calm down this War or was it just too much?
I'm sure the new WMs would love more feedback on this topic. How would you craft the rules if it were your job?
Post by: kev on August 01, 2012, 06:06:05 pm
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 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg491448.html#msg491448).
- Revised subbing salvage rules. I posted two ideas here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg514922.html#msg514922)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.
Post by: Shantu on August 01, 2012, 06:58:32 pm
- 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).
Post by: Demagog on October 30, 2012, 11:13:16 pm
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.
Post by: Helston on November 20, 2012, 04:07:09 am
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
Post by: ~Napalm on November 20, 2012, 04:10:56 am
Post by: Cheesy111 on November 20, 2012, 04:15:36 am
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.
Post by: ~Napalm on November 20, 2012, 04:34:05 am
Post by: mesaprotector on November 20, 2012, 06:01:53 am
Post by: Acsabi44 on November 20, 2012, 08:57:38 am
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.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.
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, andWinterWar is coming...
Ontopic: Light penalties early on are good IMO to ge newbs into the ebb and flow of war without too much stress on them.
Post by: kev on November 20, 2012, 03:11:14 pm
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 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,23298.msg341259.html#msg341259)is Napalm's original post. willng3 added some comments shortly after (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,23298.msg341311.html#msg341311) and I commented on it when Nap asked me to one War later (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,31674.msg468259.html#msg468259). 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.
Post by: kev on November 20, 2012, 03:58:16 pm
Jenkar: #1 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg471666.html#msg471666), #2 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg491348.html#msg491348), #3 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg514921.html#msg514921)
Helston: #1 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg515093.html#msg515093), #2 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg517589.html#msg517589)
Feedback from the departing WM: #1 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg527949.html#msg527949), #2 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,37526.msg527973.html#msg527973)
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...
Post by: plastiqe on November 20, 2012, 04:56:53 pm
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.
Post by: Avenger on November 20, 2012, 05:50:11 pm
Post by: Elbirn on November 20, 2012, 05:54:26 pm
Post by: Avenger on November 20, 2012, 05:57:12 pm
I'm all for keeping propaganda, but remove bonuses from it. Having the prettiest pictures and winning the popularity contest should not equate to rewards in a skill based environment. However, I LOVE the idea, and there are a lot of people that enjoy having a creative outlet via this game.Sure, i didn't mean to remove all the trash talking, funny pics and cartoons :D
Post by: PlayerOa on November 20, 2012, 06:12:36 pm
Event Cards are much needed for keeping the spirit up, as long as they are not unbalanced or unfair *ahem* Chaos Lord.
And please, keep the Auction as it is. Maybe it is possible to make some changes according to fav element (e.g. an easier chance to join that element) or other small changes, but at least I enjoy pretty well how the Auction fares.
Post by: deuce22 on November 20, 2012, 06:17:11 pm
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.
I agree with this
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.
Kind of disagree, I think event cards make war unique and fun. Unbalanced event cards can drastically change a war (examples in war 3 and 4), but last war was more balanced with a couple exceptions. I think many people (including myself) already commented on those. I believe the event cards used in war are headed in the right direction, but always room for improvement.
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.
bans in war are bad...very bad.
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.
I just don't see this happening.
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.
I disagree to an extent. Lots of upgrades is not fun. But too few upgrades can really screw with deckbuilding. I really liked kev's relic/upgrade concept last war. I just really really hated support teams and how they influenced the upgrade count. I think making it more like the game Risk would be more balanced. Each team gains a relic for winning at least 1 match. Keep the rule of 1 upgrade per 2 relics.
Post by: kev on November 20, 2012, 06:45:06 pm
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.Doesn't that make vault tracking completely impossible?
Wouldn't losing cards in 60-card chunks hurt deck variety seen?
Do you still limit team-wide use of any one card?
What happens to sdpc?
Post by: majofa on November 20, 2012, 08:12:41 pm
Propaganda, but everyone gets equal amount of cards. (no vote)
Auction, the same, but find a way to make it fair for Generals who can't be on when the auction starts.
1 card per element ban, instead of 2.
Remove support teams... just have them be on the actual teams. (they felt so left out, and most of them disappeared)
Increase starting vault back to 500, since there will be 8 people on each team.
Either 24/12 or 18/9 max of each card.
Keep member roles.. eliminate assassin, since random removal of the vault is bad. Invent new fun roles.
For matchups have the players listed so people can set up times. Roles are later applied to each player (except General, maybe Lieutenant also)
Event cards add a little to rounds, but not too much... and no adding or automatic removal of cards from the vault.
No rounds that have no salvage.
Substitutions allowed with normal no salvage penalty. Role: Substitutor (or another name) that can sub one time per round for free.
Byes: Same as last War, EXCEPT, all teams that can field the highest amount of decks can get the bye, which is randomly selected from them. No team can have bye if there are other qualified teams that can get a bye.
Sharing of information is allowed ;) lol
Post by: plastiqe on November 20, 2012, 09:03:56 pm
bans in war are bad...very bad.
I would say that the inter element blandness is bad, or in laymans terms every team having a nova-grabby deck variation is bad. If Team Aether got to pick one of their Aether cards to franchise for the entire War, and every other team got to pick one of thier cards you'd have a strategic decision to make on which card you wanted to limit from the other teams during the pre-War vault building.
Maybe it's just an event card idea but like I said I don't like messing with vaults after they are made. I would have this as a starting rule as you are building your vault, not a reactive ability you use to screw other teams once you know their vault.
Doesn't that make vault tracking completely impossible?
Wouldn't losing cards in 60-card chunks hurt deck variety seen?
Do you still limit team-wide use of any one card?
What happens to sdpc?
If you're smart about your original vault building (which is my whole point really, War should be all about that) then you'll be ready to adapt when you lose a player.
Lemme try to explain it a bit more:
Pre-War Prep
Each team has 6 players.
Each player brings 60 unique cards with them to the vault.
Vault now consists of 360 cards that anyone can use for deckbuilding, as long as everyone stays alive.
You could still have some communal cards in addition to each players 60. The propoganda cards could be part of the vault but belong to no-one, or salvaged cards or the franchise card could go here.
So it's kinda like each player is coming into War with 60 cards not unlike the Sideboard event. Your cards can mingle with your team mates cards while they're still alive but you need playable decks of your own in case they die.
* Having player lives and players that die is more War like.
* It rewards individual success.
*It adds strategy when you're planning who gets which deck in a round to give someone on 1 life a really good deck to keep them (and their cards) alive.
* It adds strategy during vault building when you not only need a working 360 card vault, you also need working 60 cards sections for each player.
* It makes vault management really, really easy.
I would also add a rule for vault construction that every team has unlimited access to pillars but not pends. Pends you have to bring with you because they're more useful.
Another way to do event cards which would be fair is to have a full set of balanced cards made before War begins, like 12 different cards. Then give one copy of each event card to each team and let the teams decide in which round they use which event cards. More strategy, less RNG, cards are known beforehand so you can plan for and against them.
I would also give a handicap bonus of extra starting vault cards to teams that finished poorly in the last War. Something like 12 extra cards for last place, 9 for 2nd last, 6 for 3rd last and 3 for 4th last.
Post by: majofa on November 20, 2012, 09:08:46 pm
Post by: deuce22 on November 20, 2012, 09:21:12 pm
bans in war are bad...very bad.
I would say that the inter element blandness is bad, or in laymans terms every team having a nova-grabby deck variation is bad. If Team Aether got to pick one of their Aether cards to franchise for the entire War, and every other team got to pick one of thier cards you'd have a strategic decision to make on which card you wanted to limit from the other teams during the pre-War vault building.
Maybe it's just an event card idea but like I said I don't like messing with vaults after they are made. I would have this as a starting rule as you are building your vault, not a reactive ability you use to screw other teams once you know their vault.
Bans in war are still bad...very bad. Imagine this scenario, which is VERY likely. Aether bans dims, fire bans deflags, darkness bans steals. Gonna be honest, dims become very very OP. And given there are 9 other elements yet to make bans, they can become even more OP. Even as an event card, this can troll an entire round.
Let's say we flip the banning around. For aether, if either fractal or dims were banned for us due to event card, that's nearly half our decks that are basically dead. For other elements, I don't think it's quite as significant, but it still ruins many decks and makes the point of having a card vault pointless.
Post by: ddevans96 on November 20, 2012, 09:28:57 pm
There is one blatantly simple way to dampen the popularity contest, at least as far as players go: require propaganda to be finished prior to the end of the auction and not have player names or avatars as part of either the banner or the speech.
Also, tone the bonuses for propaganda down to two for completion, four for second place, and six for first place.
Post by: Acsabi44 on November 20, 2012, 10:13:22 pm
Propaganda:
Keep it. It is a fun way to do something non-vault related. As far as I can remember, most every team where I took place enjoyed making it. But don't give war-related rewards for it.
Auction:
I think most problems with the current system are behind-the-scenes machinations noticeable only to generals, so maybe I'm wrong here, but I would definitely keep the auction the way it is. I would max banned elements in maybe 2. +2 starting bid for each banned element is fine.
Starting vault:
Last war's vault felt to be small, even compared to the number of teammembers. I don't really mind it, cause it actually promotes clever vault design. The max number of cards is a much more serious problem. No matter how we adjust it, some teams will have a bigger advantage and some will be at a disadvantage, especially when it comes to off-element cards. I think I'd like to see a flexible system where the starting numbers are something like 16/8, and the teams are able to buy "extra copies" at the expense of maximum vault size, maybe -1 for in-element cards and -2 for off-element. You want that extra10th dimshield? sure, but you gonna pay for it.
Member roles:
IMO it is good to have distinct roles for every member. Help to keep newbies in pace. A few remarks: 1, give an interesting trait to strategist. MY suggestion was "strategist goes first" or such. 2, Definitely remove the random discard from assasin. 3, Allow everything to general. Edit any member's post, do any task etc.
Event cards:
During the unofficial PVP event I hosted, participiants semed to like that the event cards weren't mandatory. You could ignore them if you wanted to, but you could risk something (mostly, alternative (aka stricter) deckbuilding rules) for the promise of some benefit.
Duels:
Definitely post names at pairing. Also, I dislike swapping around member roles like mad. IMO if a teammember has a fix role throughout the war, it is more likely that s/he will carry out the assigned tasks with greater responsibility.
Subbing:
I like free subbing with a small penalty attached to it, but that doesn't mean I don't like the role of substitute (te advatage, obviously would be that the small penalty doesn't apply to substitute.) A few remarks: 1, No player should play more than 2 matches in any round. 2, In the case of a sub win, the defeated team should tell if the sub salvages 0 or 6 cards. That would eliminate (or lessen) strategic subbing.
SDPC:
- My opinion is that a very modest first round penalty is good for eveybody. The first round is a warmup anyways. But if we stick with slowly increasing discards, then the war will never be over. I think I would go with doubling each round, as follows: 6/12/24/30/full deck (in case of 30+ decks).
- Salvage is OK with 6 cards IMO. Another thing that may be interesting is to include a kind of "checkpoint" maybe after every 4 or 5 rounds, where teams are allowed to "trade" 2 off-element cards for one in-element, for a maximum of 6 in-element cards. That would serve 2 main functions: 1, reducing the dispariy between teams who "easily uses off-element cards" and teams who "has a hard time using most off-element cards", and 2, makes life easier for generally underused elements (for example, life has a very hard time to salvage in-element cards bc hardly anybody splashes life)
- Converting seems to be at a good balance right now; enough for minor corrections, but won't save any team it they failed at initial vault building. IMO this is exactly the role convert should cover.
- Penalties: I'm sure we won't need them this war :P
Post by: hainkarga on November 21, 2012, 01:33:04 am
1-) Simple solution to timing problems (and imo more fun); Any number of masters can bid the same amount of cards for a player. We are not selling a mindless vase on ebay; if the auction closes with multiple highest bids on the same player, the player can choose among the elements.
2-) Auction payment discount to masters who have their elements listed in player's favorite elements. 3 cards for 1st, 2 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd.
Propaganda: No card giveaways. Keep the voting tho, it can still give some rewards such as +1 up on first round.
Subbing: No penalty. Maybe small reward (+1 up?) if a team doesn't use any sub.
SDPC: I'm fan of this. Imo: Always salvage for every win & always discard for every loss every round. I dislike event cards / sub rules that prevent this.
Post by: Elbirn on November 21, 2012, 02:01:17 am
Auction:
1-) Simple solution to timing problems (and imo more fun); Any number of masters can bid the same amount of cards for a player. We are not selling a mindless vase on ebay; if the auction closes with multiple highest bids on the same player, the player can choose among the elements.
2-) Auction payment discount to masters who have their elements listed in player's favorite elements. 3 cards for 1st, 2 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd.
1. ...That's brilliant.
2. That's not so awesome. It's already pretty clear that, in the event of a tie, the top 3 favorite elements gain preferential treatment for bids. A discount would just make it more over powered.
Post by: Zso_Zso on November 21, 2012, 04:33:02 pm
Introduce a bribing system. Each player, who submits an application, has a certain number of cards, s/he can use to "bribe" generals for a bid. E.g. if we decide each player had 6 cards for bribes, then a player may post an allocation such as 3 for his #1 preferred element, 2 for his #2, 1 for his #3, or he could just allocate all 6 for his #1 (or any other combination).
If a general bids on a player who offers a bribe, then he needs to pay so many less cards if the bid is won. So bidding 5 cards on a player who offered 3 card bribe means, in case the general wins, he only needs to pay 2 cards for the player.
The bribes could also be kept secret, i.e. done via PMs to the generals + war-masters, to keep it more interesting.
This would have a similar efffect to hainkarga's #2 suggestion, but more flexible and more fun IMHO.
Post by: Elbirn on November 21, 2012, 04:40:51 pm
General #1 messages Player #2 that he intends to win them in auction. Player #2 then sets his "bribes" accordingly, to help his future team.
Post by: Avenger on November 21, 2012, 05:08:40 pm
Post by: Jen-i on November 21, 2012, 11:46:26 pm
Having propaganda posted after teams are decided seems anti-climactic to me. It makes much better sense to allow Generals the opportunity to sway recruits preferences before the auction opens. Instead of being a semi-humorous anti-climactic event that runs after teams are selected it could be used as an advertising opportunity before war begins. Instead of being part of war - I'd rather see Propaganda rolled into the Brawl Event. It could then be used in the lead up to war as either advertisement for War in general, or each element in particular.
Auction:
Simple solution to timing problems (and imo more fun); Any number of masters can bid the same amount of cards for a player. We are not selling a mindless vase on ebay; if the auction closes with multiple highest bids on the same player, the player can choose among the elements.I think Hainkarga's suggestion is nearly perfect - I'd offer one slight alteration - use a players preferred elements as an initial tie breaker, if there is a tie between other elements then give the player the option of which team to join. Although you'd probably have to put a 48 hour time limit for the player to make their selection after receiving a tied vote or risk holding up the whole auction.
Event Cards:
Event cards:I think this suggestion is brilliant - event cards that allow for more interesting choices are good - event cards that remove choices are bad. We'd have to be careful that the event cards are built in such a way as they offer actual choices and not merely perceived ones. (i.e. an Event Card that offers a huge reward for playing a 35 card deck, when only 3 teams have the cards to play one is not an actual choice.)
During the unofficial PVP event I hosted, participiants semed to like that the event cards weren't mandatory. You could ignore them if you wanted to, but you could risk something (mostly, alternative (aka stricter) deckbuilding rules) for the promise of some benefit.
Roles:
When I read the concept of roles in the rules last time I was excited by the possibilities. However it seems to be that the result is minor buffs and penalties from winning matches as opposed to more interesting strategic choices. I`d much rather have rules that add strategic choices as opposed to merely more housekeeping to handle extra bonuses and penalties.
Strategist:The Strategist should be allowed a small sideboard, perhaps allowing them to remove 5 cards from their deck before each game in a match.
Assassin:The Assassin could be allowed to choose one of the following within 24 hours of the matches being chosen:
- Upgrade all weapons in your deck
- Your opponent may not use shields that cost more than 4 quanta
- Your opponent may not use shields that cost less than 5 quanta
Scout: Within 24 hours of the matches being posted the Scout must choose to either: Choose Terrain or Gain Intelligence.
Choose Terrain = The scout declares the battle ground on which the battle is to be fought, he chooses a mark which both players must use, it cannot be from either player's element. (Two scouts that use this ability will effect only their opponent's mark not their own).
Gain Intelligence = If you win you may declare an element - you can see all cards in the opponent's vault from that element.
Salvager: Remove this role
Thief: Withint 24 hours of matches being posted the Thief must either choose to Hide or to Steal:
Hide = The opponent may not use any upgrades against the Thief this round.
Steal = If the Thief wins they may either steal a relic (if used this war) or Salvage 9 cards, which must be discarded from the opponent's deck.
Post by: mrpaper on November 22, 2012, 02:56:36 am
Propaganda:That cant work good, scout will be OP. Imagine scout of earth facing team air later then round 1, All I have to do ispick an element I know I can duo from while opponent can't. Unless he can do some sort of rainbow, he probably ends with a dead mark. Even in round 1, chances are he can't do a duo while I'm sure I do.
Scout:[/color] Within 24 hours of the matches being posted the Scout must choose to either: Choose Terrain or Gain Intelligence.
Choose Terrain = The scout declares the battle ground on which the battle is to be fought, he chooses a mark which both players must use, it cannot be from either player's element. (Two scouts that use this ability will effect only their opponent's mark not their own).
Post by: Jen-i on November 22, 2012, 03:23:33 am
Post by: bogtro on November 23, 2012, 12:35:17 am