War Reform

[TheonlyrealBeef]

War Reform

With each passing War, we have had fewer and fewer participants. In War #12, we were forced to create a Player 4 placeholder to fill in some of the 4-man teams. This is obviously less than desirable. Therefore, the Council has decided to explore ways to modify War for a smaller player count, while keeping the spirit of the event. We would like the community's input on methods to increase the number of players per team. The plan is to discuss and work out a few viable solutions, refine them into vote-able options, and then hire a War Planning Team to implement one of the popular options into War #13's ruleset.

For now we mostly just want to hear the community's input on the subject. Anything goes as long as it relates to increasing the number of players per team, whether it is merging teams, omitting teams, splitting war, or something else entirely. For ideas that do not directly relate to this (including market prices and the way teams are formed), please leave your feedback in the appropriate War #12 Suggestions and Feedback thread. Any constructive criticism on other peoples' ideas is also appreciated.

[serprex]

Optimizing discard/salvage/etc so that war only lasts 8 rounds might make it more compelling for less active players

Or: for players who sat out the event, what would've changed your mind?

I understand the player pool is dwindling, so the event needs to adapt to that fact, but we should also be considering how to increase participation, or at least slow the decrease thereof
Exclude elements which don't have a master or where the master isn't willing to general
Merging: Pair teams together, they share a vault, but players are still element specific. eg Team Light/Water would have half Light players half Water players, they'd salvage/discard into one vault. I've suggested never allowing teams to go below 4 matches, in which case they wouldn't be able to starve out one of their halves
Have players in auction vote on which team they don't want to exist

[asdw152]

I guess I can put the obligatory merge elements idea here, though there will be a lot of balancing issues.

[shockcannon]

Make a big push to have people advertise this game in other places such as forums/reddits/discords for other card games. Old people are going to leave eventually, you need new people cycling through to keep player counts steady.

If we need to eliminate teams, make new masters battle each other pretty soon after trials for which elements will make it. This can either be an round robin with every element playing every element, or to shorten it you could make groups. Like if we want a War with 8 elements than have two groups of 6 randomized elements battle with top 4 of each group making it through to War. Or, with 6 element war then you can have three groups of 4 with top 2 of each group making it to War.

If you want more players involve in this than just masters, have War teams assembled instantly after trials and do a very short "mini-war" sort of thing where the whole team battles in these preliminary group stages. Then losing teams can have their players reassembled into the other teams via another auction or draft. For this preliminary group stage though, there shouldn't be vaults or anything like that. Just have some rulesets about 50% in-element or something and then do the auction part only of normal war to assemble teams. Leftover points for vault building will be used if that element makes it past the preliminary stage.

But actually, just increase new players so we don't have to deal with this issue by actively going to other groups of people and inviting them here. No one is really finding this flash game on their own at this point.

[Submachine]

for players who sat out the event, what would've changed your mind?

If it was short and required leisurely commitment.

[InsignificantWeeaboo]

But actually, just increase new players so we don't have to deal with this issue by actively going to other groups of people and inviting them here. No one is really finding this flash game on their own at this point.

I'm not entirely sure how many people would be drawn to a nearly broken game. And I'm not really talking about balance issues either. (Not saying it's a bad idea, I'm just saying that some people might not want to be an active part of the community of a game where it's fairly easy to get a full kit of upgrades and rares.)

[Manuel]

Moderator Comment

Please critique the opinion, not the person

We would like the community's input on methods to increase the number of players per team.

maybe it should be "why players keep quitting a game where u are supposed to do zero with the actual game and just pvp"

there are more people with a staff position than normal users, nobody of them was able to come out with the idea of organizing a fun tournament(s) for tomorrow (the annual reunion day) , a community can't survive only with an hardcore event once a year and the rest of the year do nothing, that is the main problem that kills the playerbase during war

[DoubleCapitals]

I nominate Manuel for WM

[TheonlyrealBeef]

Merging: Pair teams together, they share a vault, but players are still element specific. eg Team Light/Water would have half Light players half Water players, they'd salvage/discard into one vault. I've suggested never allowing teams to go below 4 matches, in which case they wouldn't be able to starve out one of their halves

I guess I can put the obligatory merge elements idea here, though there will be a lot of balancing issues.

This seems a bit tricky, so instead of just raising the fact that balancing is an issue, I'd love to discuss the issues. For starters, what is the best way to merge elements? Wholly and completely? Only pairs of elements, group three together or even four? Whom will lead these teams? What elements will be paired up?
Alternatively, you could even have every player and general dedicated to their element of choice. But it's important to keep in mind how to ensure these teams will have versatile options available, for each of their players. Not playing until elimination or eliminating when you cannot field all players are viable ways to combat this.
Alternatively, one could even remove elemental constraints from war altogether, what part of war makes war war? Everyone is already playing Void Stalls, Grabows, RoL Hopes and Sanctuary Stalls.

Exclude elements which don't have a master or where the master isn't willing to general

I have thought about this myself, so I obviously like this idea. However, it is hard to predict how many teams you will get this way.

Though if you were to combine it with merging teams and somehow got exactly 3, 4 or 6, you could have interesting stuff like sacrificing part of your vault to get elements to join your vault (just like with players).

for players who sat out the event, what would've changed your mind?

If it was short and required leisurely commitment.

Optimizing discard/salvage/etc so that war only lasts 8 rounds might make it more compelling for less active players

I think reducing the amount of rounds in war is definitely something to look into, regardless. This can mean more discards, more matches per team or smaller starting vault. Alternatively we can change the win condition altogether to things like which team has the most won matches after x rounds? Games won being a tiebreaker. This would even solve the long standing problem people raise of war being about not losing.

I understand the player pool is dwindling, so the event needs to adapt to that fact, but we should also be considering how to increase participation, or at least slow the decrease thereof

Make a big push to have people advertise this game in other places such as forums/reddits/discords for other card games. Old people are going to leave eventually, you need new people cycling through to keep player counts steady.

If we need to eliminate teams, make new masters battle each other pretty soon after trials for which elements will make it. This can either be an round robin with every element playing every element, or to shorten it you could make groups. Like if we want a War with 8 elements than have two groups of 6 randomized elements battle with top 4 of each group making it through to War. Or, with 6 element war then you can have three groups of 4 with top 2 of each group making it to War.

But actually, just increase new players so we don't have to deal with this issue by actively going to other groups of people and inviting them here. No one is really finding this flash game on their own at this point.

I'm not entirely sure how many people would be drawn to a nearly broken game. And I'm not really talking about balance issues either. (Not saying it's a bad idea, I'm just saying that some people might not want to be an active part of the community of a game where it's fairly easy to get a full kit of upgrades and rares.)

There are people here, now, enjoying this game and war. You just need to make people see what you love about it to get them to play. If they just randomly run into it, they may well shun the broken parts. But to get people to understand and feel the joys of playing the game like we do is important.

If we need to eliminate teams, make new masters battle each other pretty soon after trials for which elements will make it. This can either be an round robin with every element playing every element, or to shorten it you could make groups. Like if we want a War with 8 elements than have two groups of 6 randomized elements battle with top 4 of each group making it through to War. Or, with 6 element war then you can have three groups of 4 with top 2 of each group making it to War.

That would require having a full complement of 12 Masters eager for war, which has not happened for some time (if ever?). Omitting teams based on Masters even willing to general seems to cover reducing teams just fine.

start by banning from every kind of staff position the wm who left after 2 days of war so maybe u will motivate people to not ask for staff positions only to have a cool avatar

I nominate Manuel for WM

I do not think these suggestions will help at all, please keep the discussion on topic and communicate these things through the appropriate channels.

[Manuel]

I do not think these suggestions will help at all, please keep the discussion on topic and communicate these things through the appropriate channels.

yes is very nice see a competition organized by someone who keep asking for staff positions/be general and quit after few days, this totally give me 100% more hype about the event and i will also call my friends to join it to have a lot of good time all together

all i said is public knowledge and it is related to war, this isn't 1984 by orwell where u can erase things that happened few months ago

[Jen-i]

I think there are a few things that we need to clarify to allow us to get an appropriate solution:

(1) We need to have a realistic expectation for the number of players that will participate in War 13
(2) We need to settle on a efficient team size

I think having those numbers in mind will give us some direction as we look for a solution.

Expected Players
At one point in time war brought in 72 players, frequently with prospective players left out after the auction, but for the last three wars we've lost roughly ten players per war (Wars 6 - 9: 72, War 10: 58, War 11: 48, War 12: 39). Given this trend I'd expect we may have thirty or so players interested in war next time around (a number of players stated that they only joined war to fill our the required numbers, it seems needlessly optimistic to expect that to continue).

If this number is acceptable that's fine. But if we want to increase the number of participants I suspect that creating a rule set that decreases the amount of work required may increase the participation (this question is probably worth polling to be sure about the assumption).

Team Size
When I've played with teams of six there have always been less active team members, teams of three seemed manageable this last war if everyone was active. In my opinion the ideal might be five players a team, this gives you room to gamble and try to find those active players as well as the potential to "carry" a newbie that wants to participate. But I think a conversation where we try to find an agreement on the ideal team size is worthwhile.

A Potential Solution
If we were aiming for teams of 5 and expecting 30 players, then the war rules should be written with the expectation of 6 teams, in that case I think it is entirely appropriate to set up a Round Robin Tournament with the Trials winners. Allowing the Top 6 Masters to advance to war (Top 6 could be determined by W-L Record, by total games won, by Strength of Schedule, or by a number of other systems [assuming that a robust set of tiebreakers is established]).

As a side benefit, if a Master of a Top 6 team chooses to not be a general it gives us a pre-made pool of potential General candidates from Master's not advancing to war.

[dragonsdemesne]

I can't speak for anyone else, but a big reason I've not been in War or any tourneys lately is simply time zone differences.