War - Feedback

[TimerClock14]

by your point timer, theres absolutely no point having archival vault (i first thought nothing can touch it hence OP comment) since all you need to do right now without the Doctor is just post a deck, and mark it as 'protected'
like shantu said, its basically the same thing without all the hussle and tussle
my version is more like protecting certain cards which strategically can negate salvage bonus and it has nothing to do with keeping certain cards in vault

e.g.
let say Team Air doctor mark 2 Owl's Eyes (won their fight that round)
someone from Team Water defeats someone from Team Air and wanted to salvage 2 Owl's Eyes that was used but they cant so they have to salvage 2 other cards (or to have more impact, marked cards will negate the salvage, meaning they lost it instead of having the option to salvage other cards instead of marked ones...in this situation, Team Water can only salvage 4 cards from Team Air. if there happen to be 1 more Owl's Eyes, they can salvage that because the Doctor only marked 2 Owl's Eyes)

edit: wow 2 posts which basically saying what i've wanted to say before i get the chance to post my longtext example
damn you guys are quick this time of day
anyway yeah, useless role is useless

(pardon my tardiness on this reply)
Ya, this idea sounded way better in my head...

Just to make luck less of a factor, make matches best 3/5.

I like this idea, luck is too much of a factor right now and many teams are suffering from it. I believe War is a competition of Skill with a bit of luck, not Luck with a bit of skill.

[Malduk]

So... Why not just have every team discard X number of cards at the start of a round?  The easiest and cleanest way that keeps shrinking everyones vault, instead of lowering rewards for winners.

[Xinef]

Now that would certainly not work. So consider this scenario in round 13 with two teams left.

Team A = 117 cards
Team B = 30 cards

Team A can field 3 legal deck and team B can only field 1. If team B wins 1 match they would then win the whole war since Team A would lose 78 cards and only have 29 left.  For a event that long no way you should have a huge advantage like that and lose in 1 match.

EDIT:
Ninja'd

If war calls for drastic methods, we can always introduce Sudden Death. Every round beginning with eg. round 10, every team has to discard 6 cards (or 6 cards for every person playing from their team).
In other words, if everyone from your team wins and salvages 6 cards, your vault stays the same size. You simply salvage some cards and discard 6 most useless cards for your team (so you can still change your vault in a way to surprise opponents).

I guess that wouldn't bee too biased?

[TimerClock14]

So... Why not just have every team discard X number of cards at the start of a round?  The easiest and cleanest way that keeps shrinking everyones vault, instead of lowering rewards for winners.

I like this idea. So you're saying that once a round starts (when the matchups are posted), each team will discard X cards and then commence with deck building or the two can happen at the same time. Preferably the latter, but i think i've made my point.

[TheCrazyMango]

So... Why not just have every team discard X number of cards at the start of a round?  The easiest and cleanest way that keeps shrinking everyones vault, instead of lowering rewards for winners.

I like this idea. So you're saying that once a round starts (when the matchups are posted), each team will discard X cards and then commence with deck building or the two can happen at the same time. Preferably the latter, but i think i've made my point.

i agree with this idea. it keeps teams from getting like 500+ cards and hurts even more if you lose

[Skydaemon]

Now that would certainly not work. So consider this scenario in round 13 with two teams left.

Team A = 117 cards
Team B = 30 cards

Team A can field 3 legal deck and team B can only field 1. If team B wins 1 match they would then win the whole war since Team A would lose 78 cards and only have 29 left.  For a event that long no way you should have a huge advantage like that and lose in 1 match.

Ok, let's actually look at a few scenarios.

Scenario 1, 500 card vault, team goes 7-2 or approximately that ratio until the end:
500 7-2
round, vault changes, # players in the round, record for the round
1  500+42-12=530 9 7-2
2  530+42-24=548 9 7-2
3  548+42-36=556 9 7-2
4  548+42-48=550 9 7-2
5  550+42-60=532 9 7-2
6  532+42-72=502 9 7-2
7  502+42-84=460 9 7-2
8  460+42-96=406 9 7-2
9  406+42-108=340 9 7-2
10 340+42-120=262 9 7-2
11 262+36-132=166 9 7-2
12 166+24-72=118 5 4-1
13 118+12-78=52  3 2-1
14 52+0-84=0     1 0-1
Scenario 2, 500 card vault, team goes 5-4 or approximately that ratio until the end:
500 5-4
round, vault changes, # players in the round, record for the round
1 500+30-24=506 9 5-4
2 506+30-48=488 9 5-4
3 488+30-72=446 9 5-4
4 446+30-96=380 9 5-4
5 380+30-120=270 9 5-4
6 270+30-144=156 9 5-4
7 156+18-84=90   5 3-2
8 90+12-48=54    3 2-1
9 54+0-56=0      1 0-1
Scenario 3, 500 card vault, team goes 2-7 or approximately that ratio until the end:
500 2-7
round, vault changes, # players in the round, record for the round
1 500+12-42=470 9 2-7
2 470+12-84=398 9 2-7
3 398+12-126=284 9 2-7
4 284+12-168=128 9 2-7
5 128+6-90=44    4 1-3
6 44+0-36=8      1 0-1
* note - while this looks harsh, it's exactly the same as the current rules until the cap is breached in round 6

It should be fairly likely for the war to be over by round 13 or before.  What you will notice in the above, is the majority of the war involves a majority of the players.  The rounds on the end where the team's vault is destroyed and they're playing with only a few players tend to be brief, win or lose.  The war is unlikely to go beyond 3 months (12 rounds).

Regardless, let's walk through your particular example.  Other teams would be long gone by round 13 anyway.

In order for team B to have 30 cards in round 13, they must've had 90 cards the prior round and 3 players and won twice(+12), and lost once(-72).  You will note, that by above schedules, team B required a record of just slightly less than 7-2 every round up to round 12 to have a vault with 90 cards left in it in round 12.

Even in this case, team B must've dropped to 1 player from 3 in round 12, how is much different than team A dropping from 3 players to slightly under one (29 cards) in round 13?  The difference in performance between the two teams in the 12 rounds leading up to that point could be just 1 extra loss for team B in round 11 or close to it.  Either I don't see your point, or perhaps I don't agree that it's important.  These teams have both had amazing, nearly identical records to reach round 12 with those vault sizes.

And the point is to wrap up the war sooner, which is exactly what this does.  It seems worse to me to wait 3 weeks in real time for Team B to win 3 times in a row to take a victory.  104 players long gone, 2 on standby, and the last 2 guys battling for nearly an additional month by themselves.  Not to mention the extra rounds before that point.

I guess I find the more valuable part of the war the part where there are more than 2 people participating in it.  A schedule like the above wraps up the finishing rounds when there are less people quicker, making them higher stakes.

[Malduk]

So... Why not just have every team discard X number of cards at the start of a round?  The easiest and cleanest way that keeps shrinking everyones vault, instead of lowering rewards for winners.

I like this idea. So you're saying that once a round starts (when the matchups are posted), each team will discard X cards and then commence with deck building or the two can happen at the same time. Preferably the latter, but i think i've made my point.

Discarding is done at the same time as you are discarding cards from previous round losses (the same time while you are building decks for the next round, yes).

Its like that Suddent Death idea from Xinef (though IMO discard should be per team, not per player as in this event you dont really want to punish winning side), and its like the ante in poker. Lots of tournaments that want to "force" getting a winner in some reasonable time have similar system in place.

[Xinef]

I can see a few reasons why it could be 'per player' rather than 'per team':
- Larger team has the opportunity to salvage more cards (although it's true it also has opportunity to lose more)
- It's more realistic. During wars larger armies suffer more from plagues and similar deaths not caused by enemy fire, but rather cold, infections, radiation .
- It's the way it works in Worms
- If eg. only some of the team members fight due to byes, or eg. no opponents to match, less cards are discarded.



Although I guess 'per team' has the advantage that it is better.


Hmm... hard choice... which one should be used...

[Ryli]

- It's the way it works in Worms

OK, we've got our solution, because Worms is just awesome.

I'm joking, but I do seriously think the 'per player' method would be good for the other reasons.

[Kael Hate]

Two things

1. The cards per player playing should be either (vault/45) or (vault/30)-1 these options give enough cards to make a legitamate playable deck. Having to run 9 suicide decks cause you're on 270 cards is retarded and ruins the spirit of the game.

2. A team should be able to discard cards at anytime to blance the stockpool. Being foreced to salvage 6 unplayable cards is a penalty for wining.


Both these situations affect my team at the moment. Because we won without subbing a player I am forced to make illegal decks. Whereas a more valid and appropriate situation would be to allow me to choose how many valid decks I can front and discard down to that level. We're here to have fun and play proper duels not out maneuver each other on times to play and run jank decks and hope for a win.

[Scaredgirl]

Would it really be all that faster? Salvaging is the "reward" for all that deckbuilding and sweating; everyone loves to salvage and plan new possible decks from useless cards.
If its for the next war, I'd rather cut down number of players if possible. If its for this war... I dont know...

I agree 100%. I thought about decreasing salvaging only as a way to make the current War end faster and thus remove the possibility of having a boring endless War. The more I think about decreasing salvaging, the more I hate it. For future Wars it should definitely be 6 card salvage each round.

Now that would certainly not work. So consider this scenario in round 13 with two teams left.

Team A = 117 cards
Team B = 30 cards

Team A can field 3 legal deck and team B can only field 1. If team B wins 1 match they would then win the whole war since Team A would lose 78 cards and only have 29 left.  For a event that long no way you should have a huge advantage like that and lose in 1 match.

EDIT:
Ninja'd

If war calls for drastic methods, we can always introduce Sudden Death. Every round beginning with eg. round 10, every team has to discard 6 cards (or 6 cards for every person playing from their team).
In other words, if everyone from your team wins and salvages 6 cards, your vault stays the same size. You simply salvage some cards and discard 6 most useless cards for your team (so you can still change your vault in a way to surprise opponents).

I guess that wouldn't bee too biased?

I like this a lot. We could call it.. corruption (or something like that). It could start with 6 cards and increase it with 6 cards each round. Like this:

ROUND 1: discard 6, salvage 6
ROUND 2: discard 12, salvage 6
ROUND 3: discard 18, salvage 6
ROUND 4: discard 24, salvage 6
ROUND 5: discard 30, salvage 6
ROUND 6: discard 30, salvage 6, corruption 6
ROUND 7: discard 30, salvage 6, corruption 12
ROUND 8: discard 30, salvage 6, corruption 18
ROUND 9: discard 30, salvage 6, corruption 24
ROUND 10: discard 30, salvage 6, corruption 30
ROUND 11: discard 30, salvage 6, corruption 36
ROUND 12: discard 30, salvage 6, corruption 42
ROUND 13: discard 30, salvage 6, corruption 48
etc.

Although now that I think about it.. it should probably be capped at 6 cards. Otherwise a lone player who is fighting a full team and wins every single time, will still lose because corruption exceeds what he manages to salvage.

So... Why not just have every team discard X number of cards at the start of a round?  The easiest and cleanest way that keeps shrinking everyones vault, instead of lowering rewards for winners.

I like this idea. So you're saying that once a round starts (when the matchups are posted), each team will discard X cards and then commence with deck building or the two can happen at the same time. Preferably the latter, but i think i've made my point.

Discarding is done at the same time as you are discarding cards from previous round losses (the same time while you are building decks for the next round, yes).

Its like that Suddent Death idea from Xinef (though IMO discard should be per team, not per player as in this event you dont really want to punish winning side), and its like the ante in poker. Lots of tournaments that want to "force" getting a winner in some reasonable time have similar system in place.

Yeah, definitely. I hate the "rubber band effect" some games have where you penalize winners. Having each team discard same amount of cards is definitely a more fair solution.

[Xinef]

Two things

1. The cards per player playing should be either (vault/45) or (vault/30)-1 these options give enough cards to make a legitamate playable deck. Having to run 9 suicide decks cause you're on 270 cards is retarded and ruins the spirit of the game.

2. A team should be able to discard cards at anytime to blance the stockpool. Being foreced to salvage 6 unplayable cards is a penalty for wining.

I think unlimited card conversion solved the second problem and partially solved the first problem (with 270 cards, you could field 8 proper decks, and one legal suicide deck, for example, by converting the cards remaining after building 8 proper decks into pillars).

Of course my point of view is heavily biased due to our team suffering from not enough conversion, but I guess it doesn't hurt to express it anyway. You can call it bad planning on our side, I call it 'planning a vault designed to win, and suffering from taking heavy losses in the process of winning'.

I do think that cards per player should be changed a bit, for example one person playing per 36 cards, so that it doesn't make that much of a difference if a team has a number of cards divisible by 30 or a few cards in one way or the other.

But, I begin wondering if unlimited conversion was that much of a problem. It wasn't unbalanced, since every team could do it. It would allow for a more interesting first round, when everyone thinks they have the perfect counter against their opponents It would strengthen both winning teams (as they keep a large variety of cards in their vault, rather than tons of pillars), and the losing teams (since they can convert as many cards as they need after losing a lot of pillars).

The only possible problems I see with unlimited conversion is that some elements might benefit more from having a variety of cards instead of pillars because they have synergy with the majority of other elements (like Time), while some other elements have strong synergies with only a few other elements, so would benefit less from unlimited conversion. And maybe, just maybe, unlimited conversion would affect the vault building, strategy and other interesting parts of the war in a negative way... but I can't really predict that... I'd need a Golden Nymph for that.
One other problem would be that suicide decks could be on purpose filled with pillars only, so that the winner gains quite useless cards... well, in that case he can covert them into pendulums of his own element, or a different solution can be found.


If I'm totally wrong please explain why. I searched the forum for explanations why conversions were limited to 12 cards, and the only explanation I've found was Terroking and Scaredgirl calling it an exploit, but with no further explanation why is it wrong or harmful to the event. If it was discussed in chat, I don't know about it.