War - Feedback

[QuantumT]

No way do i believe that Xinef and Terro chose to suicide against team Death due to popularity.

I'm not saying that's what happened here (although 3 to a single team is a bit much), I'm just saying that the potential is there.

My logic was really simple - last round I gave the suicide deck to the missing person, since otherwise we would have to substitute and winning would be less worthy.
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That makes sense.

My recommendation is just to limit so that you can't suicide against the same team more than once unless you have to (ie if you've already suicided to everyone else).

[Skydaemon]

Problem with that is that i don't think you can automatically tell if a team will necessarily suicide or not. Earth didn't have to suicide 4 times but they CHOSE to this round. They also chose to suicide against teams they probably thought they had the lowest win percentage against. Also due to suicides being viable by all teams earth could have made a legal suicide deck (with no pillars) in the hopes of the other team making an illegal/suicide deck.

This would also slow down the whole process in making pairings.

I don't think teams suicide depending on whether they "like" a certain team or not. The choose it depending on whether or not they have a better chance of winning vs certain teams. No way do i believe that Xinef and Terro chose to suicide against team Death due to popularity.

For this round Earth just chose to suicide against the #3 team and the #2 team. Nothing really seems shady about that.

This conversation would be easier post war, when details can be known.  Suffice to say, the choices of suicides were tactical in nature, and designed to leave earth with the strongest chance of wins, both in round 5, and, just as important, with viable decks for round 6.

Yes, earth had 144 earth cards for round 5, we could've fielded 9 legal decks if we were forced to, but nearly all would've been destroyed in combat by being too thinned out.  Even worse, by fielding 9 weak legal decks in round 5, we would've been forced into a repeat suicide scenario in round 6 as well, as whatever we scraped out of round 5 with would've still been weak, and the options to strengthen them would now be gone.  As it is, hopefully round 5 will be the last we deal with this suicide nonsense, regardless of win or lose.

Let's put it this way, we viewed forfeiting 120 cards out of 272 as the preferrable option to being forced to field what we would've had to do to make 9 legal decks and I feel relatively good about the choice.  I still think it would've sealed our fate in round 6 as well, even if we'd won the same amount (since the surviving decks would all be weak).

The 30 card brackets also struck earth particularly hard.  As you can see from our suicide salvages we've been handing out, we had a lot of stall decks.  Stalls were half of our remaining deck concepts.  Off the top of my head, we had a functional antimatter stall, a thorn carapace stall, a miracle/morningstar stall, a trident/water stall, a straight earth stall, and a poison stall.  All but one of which needed to be pitched out in suicides because most don't really work that well in 30 cards and we had to field our entire vault one way or another.  You can see pieces of these all over the salvage. 

Bad planning?  Half of this was salvage pickups.  Walking in, earth needed stall decks as options and some of these were quite good.  Is it our fault that these things vaporize as viable options when we find ourselves with 272 cards - the same moment we are required to field the entire vault in formats of 8x30 decks and 1x32?  Even if it is poor planning, if you're going to have a shot at doing well, you can't just discard your strong suits to 'prepare for down the road'.  Regardless, we had a lot of better conversion candidates from unusable salvages so there were few ways to get rid of them.  Take a look for yourself, awesome salvage right?  That was the worst stuff anywhere in our vault - all of it.  The cobweb junk.

Our vault building isn't blameless, but the 30 card brackets really drove spikes into the coffin.  As soon as we touch the 270 limit earth largely loses its stall decks, which is one of earth's supposed strong points.  Not to go into it too much, but the inability to field stall decks had a lot to do with choosing death to give salvage too.  Simply put, we were better prepared to fight elsewhere with 30 cards, it was not really an option to fight death in three 30 card battles and win.  Using all the key cards to even attempt that would've sabotaged most of the other matchups we had.  It takes a lot of stuff to break down wings and bonewall combos, esp when they know you have to.  It's much easier to field a stall against decks like that and not try to drive through the opponent's strengths, but that was removed as an option for us by the tight brackets, while simultaneously making us discard all our stall decks.

Sometimes you lose more by fighting the wrong battles.

Fire was a larger possibility for a fight.  If we were able to field another deck it would've been there.  But we weren't able, so it never came to that.

[kobisjeruk]

well put skydaemon
i think you have said everything that need to be said about tactical suicide decks (in regards to team earth)
now all you guys need to do is backing up your tactic by winning the rest of your matches or all of this will be for nothing

[QuantumT]

@Skydaemon 2 different things.

1) The 30-card brackets are an issue that needs to be resolved. The elimination of stalls as a viable strategy is bad.

2) You chose to suicide and that's fine. The rules and your vault being what they are, you didn't really have much choice.

However, I don't like that death receiving 3 of your suicides is really fair to the other teams that are trying to compete. I'd rather you be forced to spread them around to other teams instead of giving 3 of them to death. Currently the rules say that is fine, so you aren't at fault in any way but I think one team receiving too many of them just throws the balance (similar to the byes last war). I think the you should be forced to spread the suicides around. That would mean that you would have to suicide against weaker teams, but that's just tough luck.

Overall my stance on the issue is that suicides are punishment for poor vault building (I could even argue earth didn't build their vault well because you should have known you would eventually be at the point where stalls weren't usable). Being forced to spread them around is just further punishment.

Everyone can choose to agree or disagree if they would like, but that's just my stance on the issue. It's unforgiving, but it's how I feel.

[MrBlonde]

Thanks for posting SkyDaemon. Good writeup and i hope you guys do well in your upcoming matchups.

[Dragoon]

Overall my stance on the issue is that suicides are punishment for poor vault building (I could even argue earth didn't build their vault well because you should have known you would eventually be at the point where stalls weren't usable). Being forced to spread them around is just further punishment.

It may not be that they did not plan on the eventuality of not being able to play stall decks.  It may be that the other decks they planned to use at that point were lost earlier.  You can't really know what decks you will have available in the future because you don't know which decks will lose.

[QuantumT]

It may not be that they did not plan on the eventuality of not being able to play stall decks.  It may be that the other decks they planned to use at that point were lost earlier.  You can't really know what decks you will have available in the future because you don't know which decks will lose.

If you're vault is built such that you have to win certain matches, then that's a flaw in it's design, as it's possible to build a vault such that regardless of what wins, you'll still have viable decks left.

[Scaredgirl]

I haven't looked into this suicide deck situation much, but a few days ago I did visit one teams secret section to see what was going on. To me it looked like this team discarded a lot of non-Pillar cards from their own element early in War, while keeping off-element cards for later use.

Now what happens when you discard the non-Pillar cards from your own element, while keep salvaging cards from other elements? That's right, the balance between cards from your own element and other elements shifts. And when you keep doing that, round after round, at some point you will be in a situation where you have to build a suicide deck because you don't have enough non-Pillar cards from your own element.

Non-Pillar cards from your own element are very important because once you lose them, it's difficult to get them back. You can always convert, but that's only Pillars, which are useless unless you have damage dealers as well. You can always salvage cards, but your opponents rarely lets you salvage cards from your own element.

The way I see it, this particular team could have avoided having to do suicide decks, but they chose to discard the wrong cards. By planning their Vault so that they could keep those off-element cards they felt were more important, they at the same time gave themselves a guaranteed suicide deck loss during later rounds.

This is the problem that will exists even if teams can convert 10000 cards each turn, unless we somehow change converting so that you can convert to non-Pillar cards as well.

[Malduk]

However, I don't like that death receiving 3 of your suicides is really fair to the other teams that are trying to compete. I'd rather you be forced to spread them around to other teams instead of giving 3 of them to death.

If we start building rules like that, war becomes less tactical, less like a war, and more like the dice roll. If you dont want to see multiple suicides against the same team, then prevent fighting the same team multiple times in the first place.
In a big picture, what you are suggesting is terrible. Roll of dice gives you opponents, RNG and rock/paper/scissors play a solid part on the outcome of those matches, more so when you are paired multiple times against the same team in the same round as you simply cannot prepare rounded counters in all those fights, and when salvaging/discarding plays funny stuff with your vault, you get suckish matchups, again by the roll of dice, you still dont get to do what you think its best for your team, but again you are regulated by the rules what you can and what you cannot do.
Sorry but no. Again, if you think suicide decks are unfair, find a way to cut them down.

And to answer what you wrote earlier:

If you are willing to look at the elements cards (which we did in the first war and what you were against in that other thread where we basically discussed the very same issue) to determine how many games team can play, then why not just look at the element cards and determine how many games team can play? Fun sentence, right?
In other words, seed only so many names that team can field LEGAL decks for. Just like we did in the first war. Put rules on discarding/converting instead, so you dont get discards of main element cards, and voila - no illegal decks. The only "suicide" decks from that point would be huge decks that hurt deckbuilding of other decks.

Like I told you in the other thread, those rules are horribly abusable. I just get rid of all of my on-element cards down to 29, then with those and the remaining off-element cards, I just stall forever. Starting with 240 of each, I lose all of the off-element cards in 3 rounds, and have 264 cards left. With those cards, I just build decks such that I can convert any on element losses back into the deck, which can be done for another 8 rounds at least. So I've now managed to last for 11 rounds, and I never won a single match.

If you make rules about what I can discard, you only slow the process down a little bit, until you get to the point where I have no choice about what I discard (which is generally where you would start to get limited in your own elements cards anyway). To avoid this, you would also have to add rules about what decks I was allowed to field in the first place, which doesn't sound at all desirable.

Yeah, that will happen. If any master decides he wants to get rid of all his teammates as fast as possible, and then try to exploit the rules in a manner to not fight to win, but rather to sit back to survive, he would lose all respect and be regarded as a complete moron and lose his title, if not by simply revoking it by SG, then by gaining zero votes in the next trials, and will have issues getting anyone on his team in the next war even if he by some miracle keeps his title. Personally, I'd remove him from any PvP events, as ya know, there is no way to prevent intentional timeouts on bad draws, and its still foul play.

As per your example, the only fix you need is to say that salvaging/discarding must be done in the manner to be able to field as many players as possible. Over the time, tactical discards can save you from 1 or maximum 2 fights, which is perfectly fine, and any extreme attempt to manipulate the rules could be easily punished by whatever penalty you want.

[Malduk]

Now what happens when you discard the non-Pillar cards from your own element, while keep salvaging cards from other elements? That's right, the balance between cards from your own element and other elements shifts. And when you keep doing that, round after round, at some point you will be in a situation where you have to build a suicide deck because you don't have enough non-Pillar cards from your own element.

Thats only partly true. As seen in multiple fights this war, pendulums + 3-4 (say drakes) cards from your element is enough to make legal viable deck. It kinda tricks the rules, but lets you build duo that relies more on off-element cards than in-element cards.

Imbalance between total number of in element cards and off element cards is bound to happen sooner or later anyway, especially to elements that practically never get to salvage their element cards.

[QuantumT]

However, I don't like that death receiving 3 of your suicides is really fair to the other teams that are trying to compete. I'd rather you be forced to spread them around to other teams instead of giving 3 of them to death.

If we start building rules like that, war becomes less tactical, less like a war, and more like the dice roll. If you dont want to see multiple suicides against the same team, then prevent fighting the same team multiple times in the first place.
In a big picture, what you are suggesting is terrible. Roll of dice gives you opponents, RNG and rock/paper/scissors play a solid part on the outcome of those matches, more so when you are paired multiple times against the same team in the same round as you simply cannot prepare rounded counters in all those fights, and when salvaging/discarding plays funny stuff with your vault, you get suckish matchups, again by the roll of dice, you still dont get to do what you think its best for your team, but again you are regulated by the rules what you can and what you cannot do.
Sorry but no. Again, if you think suicide decks are unfair, find a way to cut them down.

You mean a bigger role then the RNG played in giving death 3 matchups against earth the round earth is going to field 4 suicide decks to the highest ranked teams?

Again, if you don't want to be forced to field suicide decks against weak teams, then build a better vault. What I'm suggesting would only really come into play when you are fielding 4+ suicide decks anyway, and if you're fielding that many, then you clearly made a mistake in vault building, basically by virtue of the fact that you're fielding 4+ suicide decks.

My other suggestion to eliminate this is that teams have to declare how many suicide decks they're fielding before pairings are made, so that they can be dropped from the pairings. If you're going to build suicide decks, especially if they're by choice, you shouldn't be allowed to see who you get to play before you decide. Suicide decks aren't supposed to be some sort of reward.

And the rules are always going to regulate what you can and cannot do. After all they're rules, that's their function.

And to answer what you wrote earlier:

If you are willing to look at the elements cards (which we did in the first war and what you were against in that other thread where we basically discussed the very same issue) to determine how many games team can play, then why not just look at the element cards and determine how many games team can play? Fun sentence, right?
In other words, seed only so many names that team can field LEGAL decks for. Just like we did in the first war. Put rules on discarding/converting instead, so you dont get discards of main element cards, and voila - no illegal decks. The only "suicide" decks from that point would be huge decks that hurt deckbuilding of other decks.

Like I told you in the other thread, those rules are horribly abusable. I just get rid of all of my on-element cards down to 29, then with those and the remaining off-element cards, I just stall forever. Starting with 240 of each, I lose all of the off-element cards in 3 rounds, and have 264 cards left. With those cards, I just build decks such that I can convert any on element losses back into the deck, which can be done for another 8 rounds at least. So I've now managed to last for 11 rounds, and I never won a single match.

If you make rules about what I can discard, you only slow the process down a little bit, until you get to the point where I have no choice about what I discard (which is generally where you would start to get limited in your own elements cards anyway). To avoid this, you would also have to add rules about what decks I was allowed to field in the first place, which doesn't sound at all desirable.

Yeah, that will happen. If any master decides he wants to get rid of all his teammates as fast as possible, and then try to exploit the rules in a manner to not fight to win, but rather to sit back to survive, he would lose all respect and be regarded as a complete moron and lose his title, if not by simply revoking it by SG, then by gaining zero votes in the next trials, and will have issues getting anyone on his team in the next war even if he by some miracle keeps his title. Personally, I'd remove him from any PvP events, as ya know, there is no way to prevent intentional timeouts on bad draws, and its still foul play.

As per your example, the only fix you need is to say that salvaging/discarding must be done in the manner to be able to field as many players as possible. Over the time, tactical discards can save you from 1 or maximum 2 fights, which is perfectly fine, and any extreme attempt to manipulate the rules could be easily punished by whatever penalty you want.

He's not just playing to survive, he's still playing to win. Winning is much easier if only 30 of my cards are at risk every round, and I can bide my time while the other teams eliminate each other.

He might not gain any votes (I think he still might if his superior strategy allowed him to win), but he can still become master just fine without them. And I don't really see it being very hard to get players either. You just bid on a whole bunch of slaves that no one else wants and voila, you have a team.

So basically, they will be punished even though they broke no rules, just because they used the rules to their full advantage? Just because we don't "like it?" What happened to this?

you still dont get to do what you think its best for your team, but again you are regulated by the rules what you can and what you cannot do.

Imbalance between total number of in element cards and off element cards is bound to happen sooner or later anyway, especially to elements that practically never get to salvage their element cards.

You can avoid it for the entire war if you didn't short yourself on your own element's cards to begin with.

[Malduk]

You started arguing for the sake of arguing, so I'll just put out couple of pointers.

1) Yes, roll of a dice by your rules would play bigger part in the event than it is now. Pretty obvious to see since you are trying to limit yet another decision team can make.

2) I already wrote numerous examples over couple of threads where Vaults are not to blame for suicide decks. You're trying to make this a Vault building event rather than War fighting event.

3) There are rules that limit you more and rules that limit you less. Your rules are trying to limit teams more.

4) I already wrote how going to extremes is going against the rules, but yet again you choose not to read that part. And yes, using a retard tactic should be punishable by removing the player from all PvP events.

5) I would hate to play in your war.