WAR - Suggestions and Feedback

[Kuroaitou]

as we all know, Earth is currently sitting comfortably at 10 - 0. they no doubt have a stacked team, with legends like Azumi and PuppyChow.

to make the next was less lopsided, i more restrictions should be implemented in terms of team building. this war, the only restriction was that you had to have one member with less than 50 posts. for the next war, i think we should also have a score limit - the total score of a team cannot be over this number. kind of similar to a salary cap in professional sports, i think this would provide balancing between teams.

That's probably a much better idea - people with extremely high pvp scores (or with more 'cards') should be averaged between those who don't have much score/good cards at all. Newcomers would have to work/grind a little bit more to buy all the cards they need for the event, but the team would be much more well-rounded if there was an 'average' score that you can't bypass with all the members on your team (initially, at least).

Post count really does nothing; all it does it show who's active on the forums, which only means that people who are inactive on the forums may be less likely to play their games because of their lack of preparation for making decks/strategies with others (which does nothing since substitutes cure the 'loss battle' effect anyway).

That would suck because no one would take people like PuppyChow and jmizzle7 so I disapprove of this.

P.S. we're 11-0

You only disapprove because you'd be on the 'so-called' winning-team of stacked members if you had a choice in the next war. I chose because I wanted to support the element and be a warrior for it, not to just 'win' on a team with all the best pvp/deck-building members on one team.

[$$$man]

i asked terro wayyyyy before we were even allowed 6 players this is how it happened and i did not want to be on the STACKED team i just enjoy earth i was a newb when i joined and enjoyed the shrieker rush

1. i ask terro he says positions are full
2. sg says newbs are required i ask terro he says it's full
3. sg allows 6 players dema pm's me to ask terro i ask terro and i get in

the thing i don't like about your idea is that some high level(score) players would not be chosen at all simply due to the fact that they have a high score and the masters can't afford them.

Edit: just read my post and it sounded kind of mean im srry for that and don't mean it in any mean way

[PuppyChow]

You only disapprove because you'd be on the 'so-called' winning-team of stacked members if you had a choice in the next war. I chose because I wanted to support the element and be a warrior for it, not to just 'win' on a team with all the best pvp/deck-building members on one team.

Do I sense some animosity towards me right in dere? >_>. I like all the elements equally. I find great merits in all of them. I just happened to choose Earth because I know Terro, and he wasn't being overbearing trying to get me to join his element . The whole Earth being stacked was something I realized after-wards, but yes, part of the reason I choose Earth was because I wanted to win. Is that a bad thing?

That's probably a much better idea - people with extremely high pvp scores (or with more 'cards') should be averaged between those who don't have much score/good cards at all. Newcomers would have to work/grind a little bit more to buy all the cards they need for the event, but the team would be much more well-rounded if there was an 'average' score that you can't bypass with all the members on your team (initially, at least).

Post count really does nothing; all it does it show who's active on the forums, which only means that people who are inactive on the forums may be less likely to play their games because of their lack of preparation for making decks/strategies with others (which does nothing since substitutes cure the 'loss battle' effect anyway).

Disagree on two three counts:

1) Score cap keeps some with high scores like me, Pervepic, candle, jmdt, Jmizzle, and others out of the competition. Active people with high scores will be valued less than active people with lower scores, and inactive people (or ones that just don't post much, like candle or jmdt for instance) with high scores will almost never get to participate.

2) Post count signifies activity, and if you don't think that matters to the war, no wonder time isn't doing so hot (low blow, sorry). If you look at Earth's board (you won't), you would realize we actually do a lot of preparing for the war with predicting decks and have topics on many different aspects of other teams. Basically, we scout. If we weren't active, well, we wouldn't be nearly as prepared, and DEFINITELY wouldn't be winning so much. I don't think I gave away TOO much there, right? >_>.

3) Finally, score really shouldn't matter anyway. All that should matter is your activity and how good you are at the game. Score *may* signify the latter, but many good players have low scores too (like Azumi, and Terro doesn't have *that* high of a score... 90k maybe?). Since it's all unupped, having more upped cards shouldn't matter jack so long as you can buy some unupped cards.

[Kuroaitou]

i asked terro wayyyyy before we were even allowed 6 players this is how it happened and i did not want to be on the STACKED team i just enjoy earth i was a newb when i joined and enjoyed the shrieker rush
...
Edit: just read my post and it sounded kind of mean im srry for that and don't mean it in any mean way

Do I sense some animosity towards me right in dere? >_>. I like all the elements equally. I find great merits in all of them. I just happened to choose Earth because I know Terro, and he wasn't being overbearing trying to get me to join his element . The whole Earth being stacked was something I realized after-wards, but yes, part of the reason I choose Earth was because I wanted to win. Is that a bad thing?

Okay - I didn't mean to be so... acidic with my response, but it came off that way. Yes, I'm a little frustrated that is in "power-overwhelming" mode and steamrolling each competitor's decks, with a 11-0 perfect score. If you lost JUST once before this, I wouldn't be so antsy with how incredibly well is doing.

Disregarding my bitter tone with my last post, I realize that you guys do love (I've seen some other members/people in-chat admitting that they only joined a team or would only join one element team because they thought they had the best members, which irritates me to all hell). The pure coincidence that had received all-time veterans didn't feel coincidental in my mind, but I have to accept that Terroking grabbed some people I had no real idea about, and was shocked at their cohesive skills of deck-building, strategizing, and reverse psychology*.


* = Ya'll need to stop messing with people's heads in chat, saying that you can hack forums and look at other people's decks and whatnot. It got me confused and irritated, but I'm not going to post screen shots of sarcasm.   

Disagree on two three counts:

1) Score cap keeps some with high scores like me, Pervepic, candle, jmdt, Jmizzle, and others out of the competition. Active people with high scores will be valued less than active people with lower scores, and inactive people (or ones that just don't post much, like candle or jmdt for instance) with high scores will almost never get to participate.

2) Post count signifies activity, and if you don't think that matters to the war, no wonder time isn't doing so hot (low blow, sorry). If you look at Earth's board (you won't), you would realize we actually do a lot of preparing for the war with predicting decks and have topics on many different aspects of other teams. Basically, we scout. If we weren't active, well, we wouldn't be nearly as prepared, and DEFINITELY wouldn't be winning so much. I don't think I gave away TOO much there, right? >_>.

3) Finally, score really shouldn't matter anyway. All that should matter is your activity and how good you are at the game. Score *may* signify the latter, but many good players have low scores too (like Azumi, and Terro doesn't have *that* high of a score... 90k maybe?). Since it's all unupped, having more upped cards shouldn't matter jack so long as you can buy some unupped cards.

@1 & 3: ...okay, I suppose you're right. Then again, people with "higher-than-normal" scores tend to also post a lot on the forums (or at least are easily recognized in the community to provide farms, give strats, own you in T50/pvp leagues/tournaments, etc.), so I just made the correlation there, albeit it could be too superficial.

@2: On the contrary: look what happen to 's team after their master mysteriously disappeared, and unit had to frantically pick up for his members' slack - they had to build decks, but still got penalized for posting it late. They appeared to be completely disorganized, yet they still managed to do okay. I don't disbelieve you in your scouting and intensity in preparation, but activity can be still be turned-over and ignored by a good set of deck-builders who can create decks for their teammates to own others in.

All in all, I do think that there should be another requirement for having 6 members next round. 1 master, 3 'any members', 1 forum "newbie", and possibly 1 more special restriction-based member (if not score, something else then).

Again, sorry about my bitterness. <=)

[$$$man]

i asked terro wayyyyy before we were even allowed 6 players this is how it happened and i did not want to be on the STACKED team i just enjoy earth i was a newb when i joined and enjoyed the shrieker rush
...
Edit: just read my post and it sounded kind of mean im srry for that and don't mean it in any mean way

Do I sense some animosity towards me right in dere? >_>. I like all the elements equally. I find great merits in all of them. I just happened to choose Earth because I know Terro, and he wasn't being overbearing trying to get me to join his element . The whole Earth being stacked was something I realized after-wards, but yes, part of the reason I choose Earth was because I wanted to win. Is that a bad thing?

Okay - I didn't mean to be so... acidic with my response, but it came off that way. Yes, I'm a little frustrated that is in "power-overwhelming" mode and steamrolling each competitor's decks, with a 11-0 perfect score. If you lost JUST once before this, I wouldn't be so antsy with how incredibly well is doing.

Disregarding my bitter tone with my last post, I realize that you guys do love (I've seen some other members/people in-chat admitting that they only joined a team or would only join one element team because they thought they had the best members, which irritates me to all hell). The pure coincidence that had received all-time veterans didn't feel coincidental in my mind, but I have to accept that Terroking grabbed some people I had no real idea about, and was shocked at their cohesive skills of deck-building, strategizing, and reverse psychology*.


* = Ya'll need to stop messing with people's heads in chat, saying that you can hack forums and look at other people's decks and whatnot. It got me confused and irritated, but I'm not going to post screen shots of sarcasm.   

Disagree on two three counts:

1) Score cap keeps some with high scores like me, Pervepic, candle, jmdt, Jmizzle, and others out of the competition. Active people with high scores will be valued less than active people with lower scores, and inactive people (or ones that just don't post much, like candle or jmdt for instance) with high scores will almost never get to participate.

2) Post count signifies activity, and if you don't think that matters to the war, no wonder time isn't doing so hot (low blow, sorry). If you look at Earth's board (you won't), you would realize we actually do a lot of preparing for the war with predicting decks and have topics on many different aspects of other teams. Basically, we scout. If we weren't active, well, we wouldn't be nearly as prepared, and DEFINITELY wouldn't be winning so much. I don't think I gave away TOO much there, right? >_>.

3) Finally, score really shouldn't matter anyway. All that should matter is your activity and how good you are at the game. Score *may* signify the latter, but many good players have low scores too (like Azumi, and Terro doesn't have *that* high of a score... 90k maybe?). Since it's all unupped, having more upped cards shouldn't matter jack so long as you can buy some unupped cards.

@1 & 3: ...okay, I suppose you're right. Then again, people with "higher-than-normal" scores tend to also post a lot on the forums (or at least are easily recognized in the community to provide farms, give strats, own you in T50/pvp leagues/tournaments, etc.), so I just made the correlation there, albeit it could be too superficial.

@2: On the contrary: look what happen to 's team after their master mysteriously disappeared, and unit had to frantically pick up for his members' slack - they had to build decks, but still got penalized for posting it late. They appeared to be completely disorganized, yet they still managed to do okay. I don't disbelieve you in your scouting and intensity in preparation, but activity can be still be turned-over and ignored by a good set of deck-builders who can create decks for their teammates to own others in.

All in all, I do think that there should be another requirement for having 6 members next round. 1 master, 3 'any members', 1 forum "newbie", and possibly 1 more special restriction-based member (if not score, something else then).

Again, sorry about my bitterness. <=)

i like the last idea im srry about the whole animosity problems but i just dont like the idea of the score cap i do like your last idea of 2 restrictions

[didonko]

* = Ya'll need to stop messing with people's heads in chat, saying that you can hack forums and look at other people's decks and whatnot. It got me confused and irritated, but I'm not going to post screen shots of sarcasm.   

I am the main reason for that rumor. And yeah, it freaks people out. But that is part of the idea behind psychological wars  We don't hack. It's just some topics I came up with that are damn descriptive, summarative, element specific and damn good organized. It's only that I'm extremely slacking and have school work to do that I haven't finished them. You'll see them after War ends.

To be honest, Terroking was not the first master I PM'ed about joining the war. But in the end, he took me under his wing protection and I'm happy I joined team I was a late comer and have heard of PuppyChow, but not of the other teammates 
Heck, 2 people are under 200 posts, I still haven't hit 50. But that's not important. We have team cooperation. Round 1 - I couldn't build my deck. They helped me out and turned super-duper. Round 2 - We thought what we might encounter, I build a trio deck, they helped turn it into a duo with stone skins, I replaced them at the last minute with BBs - turned that saved my round. It's not about overstacked people, it's about thinking ahead. I'm in this game for about a month and a half but feel fully prepared. Why? Because the forums are there to be read, because my teammates are there to help. We don't have a "Terro-dictatorship" where "You take this and that's final. Take it or else" is the slogan. In fact, round one was "You guys take what you like. I'll think of something from the leftovers"



@Scaredgirl: Suggestion: Topic titles in battle results to include elements of players as well. Why? Cause it makes it more organized to look who's on which team and not wonder and all. (And it makes it easier for me with my topics  )

[Glitch]

Alright, seeing as there's officially no possible way life can win, it's time for me to rip this thing a new one.

Where the hell were the sideboards?!  Every match we went into, we knew everything our opponent could throw at us.  But life being as one-themed as it is, we really had no way to counter all of them at once.  Every match was like a giant game of rock-paper-scissors.  Do we take big creatures?  Do we spam small creatures?  Do we use adrenaline?

The only two exceptions to this were the entropy deck, and the flying staves.

And I'll be damned if we didn't pick the wrong one every bloody time.  But instead of being able to drop ten small creatures and play ten big ones, or being able to take the permanent control (YES!  We did have it!) we were stuck.  So instead of playing a guessing game, why not let us play well?

[Jumbalumba]

My point is different to Gl1tch's. I don't see the point of sideboards. You have a whole vault of "sideboard" to play with. Unless you want to change your deck after every game (not match) then there's no point. And if you can change your deck a bit so can your opponent so it's still a game of rps really.

I do agree that something needs to be done differently because the fact is elements are not balanced. Yes, a large part is based on the individuals, deckbuilding and luck but we don't start on an even footing in the first place and none of that balances it out. Basically these events penalise the worser elements and reward (if there are rewards) the better elements.

Perhaps there could be a handicap system in place but then that could encourage doing badly to be able to do better in the next war.



As for posts/activity/score, these aren't important. Number of posts is great of course because it means people will be active with discussions but this doesn't really affect the game/event fundamentally.
What would create a fairer distribution of teams, if this is so important, is for there to be a simple war sign up for anybody wanting to participate and then masters will choose anybody from that 1 at a time. This does create problems when people don't have the cards but the usual rares are easy enough to get and people really should have enough resources to get all the other unpped cards from the bazaar.

This along with a system that penalises masters, whose elements perform badly in the war, in the trials could ensure that nobody can actively do badly in order to do well in the next war because the master may not survive the trials to take advantage of the advantage during the war, and all the other members are chosen fairly so they can't definitely stay with the element they were in.

This would be complicated though and we would need to experiment with what levels of handicaps and penalties are adequate.

[unionruler]

My point is different to Gl1tch's. I don't see the point of sideboards. You have a whole vault of "sideboard" to play with. Unless you want to change your deck after every game (not match) then there's no point. And if you can change your deck a bit so can your opponent so it's still a game of rps really.

I do agree that something needs to be done differently because the fact is elements are not balanced. Yes, a large part is based on the individuals, deckbuilding and luck but we don't start on an even footing in the first place and none of that balances it out. Basically these events penalise the worser elements and reward (if there are rewards) the better elements.

Perhaps there could be a handicap system in place but then that could encourage doing badly to be able to do better in the next war.



As for posts/activity/score, these aren't important. Number of posts is great of course because it means people will be active with discussions but this doesn't really affect the game/event fundamentally.
What would create a fairer distribution of teams, if this is so important, is for there to be a simple war sign up for anybody wanting to participate and then masters will choose anybody from that 1 at a time. This does create problems when people don't have the cards but the usual rares are easy enough to get and people really should have enough resources to get all the other unpped cards from the bazaar.

I would only consider individual sideboards if war turned into some sort of round robin that had restrictions on board order (predetermined, substitutes cannot upset board order, people who have played NON-ELEMENTS team tournies should know what i mean) because it would be meaningful to have that as some kind of deck restriction rather than a mere 50% must be from own element rule.

As for handicaps, I don't think it's fair for handicaps to be placed on the teams themselves, which may be composed of totally different people than from the previous war. Maybe recruitment handicaps would work, ie something like 1st placed team can only recruit one person from all time T50--this is a last resort because of my earlier point. I strongly oppose the simple war signup idea because there's a high possibility of forcing people to play for elements they dislike and/or with comrades they dislike, which would ruin the whole war experience for them. At the end of the day, a lot of it lies in the deckbuilding, and I believe that tweaking the rules and encouraging people to participate actively is more important than anything to do with controlling who joins what team in the pursuit of fairness.

[Jumbalumba]

Again, I'm not concerned about the people. I'm concerned about the imbalance between elements. Handicaps tries to ensure some degree of fairness between the elements. As you stated people can change but the cards/prevailing strategies do not change.

I follow professional starcraft and what happens there is the mapmakers make maps that are biased towards the worst performing race in previous seasons/leagues. They could sometimes get it a good degree imbalanced but at least everybody gets a chance to not do badly rather than having one thing constantly outperforming. Perhaps starcraft isn't a good example but I feel it fits well because the competitors are very stuck in terms of the race they use.

[Dragoon]

I agree that in the current state, there is an imbalance in the abilities and inherent strengths of the individual elements.  I think the idea of allowing half your deck to be a different element was to help obviate that problem.  But I don't think it's good enough.  I know we have worked our butts off testing tons of decks against each other trying to find decks that could work because unupped Light really isn't all that great of a mono and Light has so few synergies with other elements.  That's why so few people put Light in the upper half of their war bets.  The main reason we're doing well so far is because we have worked like crazy finding and crafting proper counter decks against our opponents.

But what if we lowered the deck restriction from 50% of your own element to 33% or even 25%?  Of course you'd have to put a cap on how many cards you can get from other elements.  Maybe something like no more than 10% of your vault can be from any one element outside your own.  Basically this just takes the current idea behind the 50% other elements another step towards helping to correct the current imbalance in the different elements.

[Anothebrother]

Jumba I really liked your sort of "draft" idea...i may be getting too far ahead of myself but what if everyone who wanted to participate submitted some sort of registration/application like the example below.  Then each master could rank their top... 50? kind of like a draft board and send them to the Warmaster who would then execute the draft (live draft would be ideal but almost impossible with 12 masters in different time zones).  Below is an example application that I might submit (elements at the bottom are just examples).


Anothebrother

Electrum and Total Upped Cards	6171 and 88
Score	13830
PVP Experience	Winner May 29th Tournament, Member of beginner league.
Discord	8
Arsenic	7
Titan	6
Pulverizer	5
Druic Staff	6
Farenheit	7
Trident	7
Morning Star	5
Owl's Eye	10
Eternity	12
Vampire Stiletto	9
Lobotomizer	1
Arctic Squid	9
Miracle	6
Pharoah	11
Top 3 Elements
Bottom 3 Elements
Timezone	EST (U.S.)
Other Notes	Willing to buy any deck.  Willing to try hard no matter what element chooses me.  Willing to grind for lobos if needed.