My initial reaction to the OP was that this was a great idea. Then I read @kahree’s excellent response, to the effect that such a system would vastly advantage the top alliance. It’s a great point and one that I had not thought of.
But after pondering on this for a little longer, I came back to liking the originL idea. @Kahree is right to a large extent - the top alliance will get a big advantage over time. But I think they would sort of earn that. And while other alliances would win some of their wars and lose some of their wars, I don’t think win-loss records would converge to 50%. Some alliances are better at war than their peers; some are worse.
Overall, I think the advantages of the proposed War Chest outweigh the disadvantages. I’m voting for it.
I like the idea… but I think for it to be ‘fair’ you need a matching system that is actually based on your war performance.
(To groans of “there he goes again”… and “what’s that got to do with anything”?)
It largely addresses @kahree’s concern, which I think is legitimate. If matching is on Titans, you can easily be in a situation where you are doing excellently on Titans for the number of players in your alliance, but as a result be constantly out-matched in the wars. This means you are constantly needing to fight many more campaigns in AW to earn your 6 chests - effectively being punished in wars for good performance elsewhere.
Now… if matching were done on your AW strength and performance, then it’s a self-correcting thing. If you hit a losing streak, you start getting matched against easier alliances and start winning again. So it’s ultimately fair on all alliances. Only exception is the top alliance, but hey, if you are good enough to make it to the top and stay there, you deserve a few extra trainer heroes and Epic tokens
Oh… and there’s also the law of unintended consequences. Start giving meaningul rewards for war wins and alliances WILL start gaming the matching system (if they perceive AW rewards as being superior on average to higher Titan rewards, say).
Now… coming up with a good matching system based on AW performance rather than something unrelated like Titans? That’s the tricky part.
Certainly I think the rewards idea by the OP is still good - more appropriate matching just makes it more fair.
Oh yeah! Great idea a war chest with elemental chest rewards! Even without ascension items but with epic tokens and trainer heroes guaranteed!
Who gives a damn if one alliance wins all, if I lose 5 and win 1, after I win 6 I’ll have something! We won our last war and got no more than 10 nonfarmable items for all 28 players… killing one titan is better than that. Unfortunately it still has no value, I’d rather level up the hero I use to fight titans than increase my roster for wars
There really is no system that could be put into place that won’t disproportionately benefit the top alliances. That’s just kind of a fact of life. But knowing that chest will pay off with elemental-level loot? It will be very motivating. And from what we’ve come across, the vast majority of alliances are playing on the level and not trying to manipulate the matchups. Are some of them? Sure. But I firmly believe that’s the exception and not the rule.
I’m reasonably sure if there’s increase in motivation or benefit to game the system, it will happen more. At the moment the only motivation is for ego, and to manipulate your matching you need to sacrifice chance of loot (drop to lower tier titans to win more wars)… so it’s self-limiting and will therefore not be widely practiced.
But if it’s reasonably guaranteed that you’ll get better loot in a AW chest than the improvement in loot you get between 9* titan and 7* titan, say, I’ll be willing to bet that a fair amount of Titan level dropping will go on. It was so obvious in Raids. When the tiers were introduced, there was a sudden reshuffling as players started taking raids seriously to climb to the highest tier they could. Then they found the rewards at higher tiers weren’t worth the effort, so now you can observe them dropping to lower tiers, and clustering around the transition points between tiers.
I’d like to hope that the manipulation would be limited to only a few, but I think it may be a naive hope given what I’ve observed so far.
I have to say I do see how Little Infinity’s point is a legitimate concern, as is Kahree’s. However I still also believe that a war chest would be acceptable for the time placed in wars as the original posters has stated. The only thing I would consider changing is to not give guranteed elemental level loot. While it is true that some players may shoot themselves in the foot collectively I think those are more of an unfortunate minority that we can only deal with as best as we possibly can. It is my firm belief that wars do need better rewards, rather or not the war chest is the best solution is a question that needs to be pondered and either implemented or introduced in a different form which may simply include more loot roles for wars.
If the main concern is whether or not alliances would try to game the system in order to win more and fill their chest faster, or manipulating titan scores to face weaker teams, just remove the win part of the chest and make it purely participation based.
If you needed 36 “points” to fill your war chest, and you got a “point” every time you used an alliance war energy, everyone would have equal chances to fill their chest after 6 wars.
I love the idea of the war chest but as soon as you make something win based, people will always try to find a way to cheat. Participation based rewards appeal to the casual gamer in me.
@Averagejoe Agree that the OP has a good idea, and don’t feel the matching system is a show-stopper on it. I’m not arguing to not implement… but I am pointing out that it is likely to have some unpleasant side-effects if matching is not addressed.
I’m actually kinda with @Onion on this. Until such time that there is a matching system that is based on AW performance instead of some other manipulatable criteria, I think participation rewards would be better. Maybe something of the nature of a monster/hero chest where all members who participated get the count of enemy teams the alliance as a whole killed added to their chest, and rewards given after a tolerance (like maybe 150 defeated enemy teams). This would reward/incentivise participation (i.e. need to attack to qualify for the enemy team count) but without the win aspect setting the wrong incentives.
Ultimately I’d prefer to see better rewards for winning, but then feel the AW performance matching becomes more important for this.
With better matching the alliances ranked #2 and below will win pretty close to 50% of the wars. It’s only the imperfect matching that allows some of them to have a higher win/lose ratio. With the introduction of a war chest the top alliance would fill it in N days, while the other alliances would fill it 2 * N days.
Another reason to not increase the war rewards: at the moment they’re (probably) really great for most players. There are (rumored to be) 1 million players and judging by the monthly events, beginner stage, most don’t have a team of maxed 3* heroes. Most players don’t obtain even the 3* mats from the rare quests because they can’t defeat the monsters. These wars where everyone can win about once a week and have a 30% chance (or whatever) at a 3* unfarmable material have pretty great rewards already.
Agree with your reasoning, but don’t feel that it’s worth scuppering for all because we don’t want to advantage the 1 alliance that is at the top (who earned their right to be there and to stay there). And… there’s no saying the top alliance would naturally win all their wars… it’s pretty competitive up there.
Then again, the participation rewards mentioned don’t suffer this issue.
Your point about chance a decent loot through wars is valid… but seriously doubt the percentage is anywhere near 30%. We seldom have reports from members of notable rewards. I think the return rate is a bit mean as it is and think a chest would be a worthy introduction.
I must register a protest at @Kahree’s assertion. Would ‘better’ matching mean that alliances will win about half their wars (#1 excepted)? If this is what the matching achieves then I would suggest it is not ‘better’ at all.
I hope I’m not flogging a dead horse to observe that matching should not primarily aim to generate close wars; it ought to pair alliances that are similar on some arbitrary scale (Titans, just now) to see who is better at wars. Alliances that are good at wars (relative to their peers) should still rack up wins, while alliances that are bad at wars (relative to their peers) should rack up losses. That would be a good matching system.
This might be less true if some sort of league or war ranking ladder was introduced. Convergence to a 50-50 record would still be undesirable, but huge streaks could be rendered unlikely. In that case the War Chest could be juiced up based on an alliance’s league or ladder position.
@Kahree’s last point - that war rewards are actually pretty darn good for the vast majority of players - is another good one that I hadn’t thought of. That seems like a good reason for any War Chest rewards to be scaled based on the strength of the warring alliances.
If the matching were on something more ‘war related’ such as team power, then yes, you can have the situation you describe in which some teams would continually win the majority of their wars.
If matching were Elo style then you’d converge on 50% (eventually… except if you are consistently the top in AW).
I’m generally agnostic to which (but probably prefer Elo)… but do in general principles prefer a matching system on AW criteria and not some other non-AW-related potentially manipulatable criteria.
I’m not entirely on board with @Kahree’s last point… the rewards are pretty much what you can farm, and would earn more of them faster by farming. I see the intent of the OP as referring to essentially non-farmable stuff, but may want to make it ‘chance of’ instead of ‘guaranteed’.)
I don’t think results would quite converge to 50% with al Elo system, but I do take your point. I always sort of assume a ranking ladder comes along with an Elo system.
I think @Kahree is right about rewards, though. Someone earlier today complained that only 10 of 28 of their alliance members received a non-farmable ascension item in their war loot. That seems pretty consistent with what we’re experiencing - maybe a bit higher than us. If noob alliances are generating that many ascension items from wars, they’re doing pretty well, don’t you think?
It might be high, yes. But it seems like the drop rate for non-farmable is at least 10% for winners, and greater than 0% for losers. (I don’t have hard data to back that up (apart from the losing drop rate being greater than zero), just experience and anecdotes, so I might be proved wrong.)
Could not agree more. We can hold on to the current percentage of rare ascension items but I really liked the idea of the war chest with tokens and trainer heroes. It is a war loot, for war you need to train a lot, so trainer heroes shall be the top item here. I can even see a four star hero here and there for the best war players. Why not. I still don’t get why the 4* trainer hero is the rarest hero in the whole game. These are above the legendary heroes in rarity.
War chest to be filled after 5 victories, not 6. I would like to stick to the system of 5.
What is the connection between war and titan? I do not see any.
War is a tactical battle which costs you training resources - heroes and food.
Titan is a tactical battle which costs you batlle items - ingredients. Crafting costs food and iron.
You can do both effectively. The food consumption maybe a little problem, ok, but with good planning…
I know but who cares about the matching. You still can’t tell beforehand even if you do the math. Dropping down the alliance score by skipping titan is absolutely not worth anything.
