Devs, sit down here a minute, we need to talk – Improve War Loot & War Chest Rewards

That is one scenario of gaming the system suggested above by @Little_Infinity. (About 15 posts up) I was just saying that if alliances did try to game the system to get easier wars, they would be losing out on a lot of titan loot rolls.

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I guess they thought you might use those items to go camping…

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Let’s put in my tuppence worth:

I think that a possible better matching system would be allowing players choose their opponents, in the same fashion the raid system works, i.e. A team can attack or reroll until it finds B team, that they consider that it is relatively on par with them (the criteria to choose the opponent is still a blur). As a consequence, people would stop moaning about mismatching, because they were the ones choosing the opponent.

This could have potential implications for the cases with dead alliances, but it is a two-edged sword situation; on one hand, they won’t choose any opponent, on the other hand, some alliances may choose a dead alliance in order to win a war. But I guess this can be resolved in the future.

Considering the new AW matching proposed above, the AW rewards can take the same approach that is implemented in the actual raid system (silver, gold, platinum, etc.), but guaranteeing the materials that the OP (and the others) have suggested.

Nonetheless, there will always be players that will try milking the system, and sometimes they can miss on many opportunities by doing so.

First of all, the top alliance already left us in the dust! Secondly, 2nd place is going to win more than 50%! 7DD already posted an 11-11 undefeated match. Besides being a collector, how do you continue “getting better” when you’re already at 30 5* heroes? Chest is a great idea! When 2nd finally can get revenge on 1st because they acquired enough mats to even the playing field. Also, everyone would be working their way to the top. Eventually, the Devs will have to open a new place for them anyway because we can’t all be kings. Bad economics!

@Little_Infinity

Because Elo’s math assumes a bell curve of wins/ loss/ tie between two players of exactly matching rating, it breaks down at the high end and low end of the rating system.

In my other F2P MMO “BoH” a lot of the 89k might ( think 20k power hero teams ) still play. Since it is live PvP ( similar to war if it lasted 5 minutes ), they seldom fight each other, but instead fight lower level teams and destroy them. One top player has a 80% win ratio. This 89k might players have public rating that fluctuate based on the strength of the opponents they can find.

War suffers from this timing problem. I have missed a War do to work, and our alliance narrowly lost. To be fair, my wife has missed a war and we doubled the enemy’s points. There is a lot of RL fluctuation with war.

This is one of the reasons I would love a Wanted War mission chest were each time you spent a war energy, you got a point. 12 points filled the chest.

@Brobb

Ranking systems usually have Elo’s math somewhere in there. The one I find interesting are handicapping systems where a more expert player, say in golf, will start he game at a disadvantage to give both player’s a 50/50 chance of winning.

The inverse to this in game boosts. A 1* 1.1 hero team cannot win against a 5* 4.80 team no matter how good the attacking player. You can see this in Zero’s public rating coming down as other players at the top end get good 5* heroes, good 4* troops and level them. Whenever Elo rating deflation happens ( adding the Barracks ) it is always a race to the top. But the rest of the players can eventually catch up.

The Devs don’t want you to shoot for a 50% win, they want you to shoot for an 80% win ( see “BoH” above ) which is only possible with the best 5* 4.80 team and 4* troops with a good synergy.

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Great idea! Really like the chest idea

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I have too much imagination what SG should do with those items

If a war chest was introduced I’m in agreement with the idea of rewards being based on participation - not success. You can win no raids and fill a wanted hero chest, theoretically you can finish no provinces/quests/events and fill a monster or elemental chest. You can hit 5 consecutive titans with a single alliance flag to fill the titan chest. This is why chest rewards aren’t extravagant, nor should they be.

It’s about playing the game for wanted missions, not about success. I don’t think it should be tied to war flag usage however though… I think it should be tied to points the alliance has earned. Most of us fill our titan chest because we work together to overcome the challenge. If a war chest was introduced whereby the alliance you are with has to net 10k points to fill it - the feature would see greater coordination amongst the player base to achieve this goal.

It would also help players concerned with participation and earning the rewards band together, allowing for those uninterested to join alliances aiming to opt out (rather than having a continuing need for individual players to have that option).

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That is true. However, escaped titans don’t count for a titan chest.

On the other hand, your reason regarding raid and monster chests makes sense. I’d say that AW chest can depend on a number of defeated defense teams. Say, 5 war rounds equal to 30*5=150 teams to defeat. Even if an Alliance didn’t win, they would kill some of teams. This will also demotivate those who set a single hero defense.

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Interesting post @Gryphonknight - thanks. (Then again, most your posts are.)
(I realised after I went to bed that I should have mentioned the bottom as well, but didn’t bother to go back and edit… safe in the knowledge that some kind soul would point it out :sweat_smile: )

Handicapping concept
Not sure I’d buy in to a handicapping system for matching. In Golf it makes sense because it is entirely skill based. With Handicap (theoretically) putting everyone on an even playing field as far as ability goes, it then boils down to ‘playing better than your handicap’ (i.e. with more than your average skill) to stand a chance to win.

I feel this would be too frustrating in AW where board layout has too much influence on the outcome. The luck element would actually have exaggerated emphasis for the better teams. Reasoning thus: You have risen to the top by having excellent depth in heroes and playing with good coordination, tactics and strategy. You are now handicapped when facing the lesser team. The only thing you can really do to ‘lift your performance’ in this case is to hope for better boards (essentially luck). You already have the team depth and you already play with good tactics and strategy, leaving the remaining variable (tile layout) to dominate.

The weaker team, however, will have more options to ‘lift their game’ (perhaps by a number of members having levelled good heroes since last war) and/or improving their coordination and strategy, as well as benefiting from good tile layout if it happens.

So this would ultimately prejudice against the best teams and I would see it as extremely frustrating for them as a result.

Prefer the self-balancing nature of a more conventional Elo system. The teams that fight their way to the top (or arb their way to the bottom) in such a system deserve to be there, and deserve to continue having their outcome. For the overwhelming majority, it remains entirely fair.

And on the Chest idea:
The more I think about it the more I prefer participation chest more than win chest. It’s consistent with the other chests and neatly avoids the issue of setting any further incentives to game the system. Participation is rewarded, end of.

The ideas mentioned by @NitrousOxide and @SuuriKoira while supporting participation, do have the danger of adding incentives to game. Just like people drop cups to to increase raid hero kill rate, there’d be similar incentive to face easier opponents to increase your point accrual or opposing team defeat rate. (Obviously only worth doing if the rewards are worth it… so not dead set against it, but does also imply a limit on the quality of loot you get in the chest if you then don’t want to incentivise gaming the system).

Pure flag count, however, is simple and elegant and does the job and allows you to have decent chest loot (if we want it) without adding unintended consequences. You want, you play. Simple.

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The way to fix this, is make the wanted chest equivalent to the current war rewards system. Wanted missions are about participation not the level of success you have.

Fight harder titans to get better titan loot - fight better alliance to get better war loot. There needs to be a ranking system for wars (like there are now tiers to raids) so that the outcome is more chances for ascension gear by beating an alliance from a higher ranked tier. If you drop your score for an easier match you get poorer loot as a result.

That’s at least how the system should work… The only reason that elemental challenge chests give better rewards is because it is a measure of how well a person can perform on their own. Everything that is tied to teamwork to complete a wanted chest only rewards on participation and it should stay that way.

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But we’re talking about alliances dropping titans to get better AW matches. Is that really a reasonable scenario?

Not saying a ranking system wouldnt be fun, just that titan score is a pretty decent ranking system already once the alliance is decently stable.

If they doing that, they totally idiots )))
Think about them with indulgence ))))

The thing that y’all forget is not everyone is a top 100 alliance. You have to get A+ rating on a 7* titan to have anything better than the same chances as someone getting a C score on a 3* titan.

There’s such a large gap there that it is much more feasible for alliances to choose manipulating their titan score if they don’t stand a chance at an 8* titan to begin with

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No I’m not forgetting that. You dont have to be top 100 alliance to a stable alliance with a fairly consistent titan scoore.

I do realize that # of player in the alliance is a huge factor that can cause a big problem. Like 5x fully 2* players can have roughly the same titan scoore as 30x 2* players get, but this is a corner case matchup.

Most low/mid level alliances have roughly the same kind of players. Some strong, some weak, some active, some not active.

Not saying match making is perfect, just that titan score is usually pretty good, and I dont have a good solution to how it could be made better.

And you’re assuming the chances of loot are the same for all loot tiers. Which most likely isnt the case.

Loot rolls play a huge factor, but loot tiers wouldnt exis if there wasnt any difference between 3C and 7A.

I honestly don’t even understand the point here… No one ever said a consistent score was hard to accomplish…

I agree. But we see the same thing very clearly with special skill increases when leveling up heroes. The difference between a 3C ascension roll having a 6% chance of a 3* or bigger ascension item drop in one of the two slots for ascension items - hardly seems much worse than a 20% chance for that same level item from one of the two slots for ascension items when killing a 7* and getting b rank.

If war chests are introduced, there will be people that choose chances over percentages and for good reason. This is why (trying to get back on topic now) if a chest is introduced the rewards should only be participation based - while a ranking system should be used to determine war rewards from the feature itself (whether or not that ever gets used for matchmaking).

Ps - I’m not even addressing the number of members in an alliance - because just like with titan loot that has absolutely no bearing on the rewards. This isn’t about matchmaking its about how best to implement additional rewards for the new feature.

With participation logic you could just as easily say “make overall loot (both winning and loosing) better” and skip the implementation of chests all together.

There are two arguments in this thread…

  1. Give us a war chest with absolutely amazing rewards so people who excel at the feature get the most chances to grow their higher level heroes and continue to dominate the field. (bet you can’t tell which I’m against)
  2. Give us a war chest with the current rewards - then implement a ranking system so that rewards from the war itself is scaled to the tier my alliance fights (and wins) against.

I’ve yet to understand what position you’re taking other than that of “everyone here just doesn’t understand”. Are you trying to contribute to the discussion, and if so would you please clarify?

There are atleast a 3rd and a 4th valid stand point as well.

3rd: Dont introduce a war chest at all. Leave everything as it is.

4th: Dont introduce a war chest at all. But make the rewards better.

(5th, optional one, just dissagree with everything you say, derail the conversation and wait for you to start with the veiled insults, aka. sunday morning trolling. Bet you can tell which one I’m doing)

I hadn’t seen anyone in the thread make point 3 until just now… And if that’s your stance cool. The rest of your replies make a lot more sense now.

Point 4 is actually discussed in many other threads. I’m not one of those that does all the linking though so feel free to search for it yourself.