First off, I'm not getting into the whole shadow hansel debate, SH are a symptom of the problem, they are not the problem. The problem is one of incentive. Over the past year and a half, the amount of players who can find success in EE continues to shrink (by successs I mean at least a 33 percent win percentage, if you cant win more than one out of 3, the costs of warring exceed the benefits). The desire to win has driven a bunch of very smart people (kaw is full of smart folks, one of the reasons I love this game) to come up with ways to game the system to set the stage for a victory. This has made the learning curve so difficult, and the success rate for new entrants so low that the majority of kaw players don't participate or are very unhappy with ee as it stands. This isn't the first game where this has happened, in fact it happens in pretty much all competitive games, the most dedicated and inventive folks devise tactics that set them up to win, and often, the bulk of the community does not like the tactics and declares them cheap, or unfair or just generally hates on them. All you long term competitive gamers know what I am talking about. But to put it simply, you can categorize players into categories. Pro, veteran, and new/casual. The new players might become pro, the casuals are just going to kick it and do their thing. And players often move back and forth between pro and veteran depending on their time and motivation. Right now in EE, only the pro's have a chance to win. So you either make the sacrifices and learn the tactics to compete at the pro level, or you lose horribly. Lets say a group of casuals signs up for ee and they are lucky enough to get a match, they lose 20b to 4b, declare the thing broken and never do it again. A group of veterans either steps up their game to pro level, or makes the assessment that it is not worth their time and moves on. Most competitive games have tiers or ladder systems to separate the level of players, that way players can find a matchup at their level and have fun. EE does not offer this, basically, you are thrown into the deep end and have to sink or swim. Kaw could do this somewhat with prestige and a point system for your war team, but I don't want to get sidetracked. Tweaking matchups is only a bandaid, the real problem remains one of participation. So how do you fix your participation problem? Very simple, you reward participation. If a guy is willing to war 3 times a weak and lose, what's the harm of him earning 20 mith for being active in a loss, that way he makes a 4 mith profit each war and can grind out some better equiptment. Or rancor levels, how about you only gain rancor, never lose it. You can bump up the prize levels to account for this, say 75 rancor for all rewards, or leave it as is. The best players will still get the best rewards, but the casuals and veterans will have an incentive to compete. The participation rate would go way up. Your xstal sales would go way up. EE war would no longer be the object of derision, but something everyone could look forward to and participate in. A casual player who did 10 wars in a season earns maybe a hundred mith, gets 1-2 pieces of equiptment and maybe becomes a higher level player. You would have even more veteran and pro player competing. And Kaw would be more fun for everyone. That means people telling their friends, and that means new players, or at least less players leaving the game. And for you pro's who object, really? what's the issue? You will still get far greater rewards, you will still get far greater mith payouts with all your wins. And you will have far more people to play against. With a larger player base, new strats may emerge, an new meta may be born. And staying interesting is the real challenge for a game at this age. Anyway, for the top players, you could have a season ending tourney, or simply a clan achievement for your prestige points, or some other type of reward. The possibilities are endless. Increasing participation would make EE more fun and the way to increase participation is to reward it.
they key to making EE great isn't going to be done by giving casuals 4 bars of mith for profit when they lose. Getting your ass handed to you by a highly ordered team of professionals who have learned the most efficient roster stack simply isn't enticing to the newb, no matter what carrot you dangle out there. The way to get people to play EE in greater numbers is to make it accessable to the masses, which,min its cirrent form, it is not. Now do we do this? Well, that's a source of great debate. I am tired, so, I won't really get to technical here, but, fixing the problem means doing some very deep tweaks to the system, IMHO. Not offering small prizes to casual players who offer them selves up for crucifixion by pros
I hear you moose, but more players participating means more matchups, better win percentage chance for every team, and a better overall ee. So I'm not offering them 4 mith to die. I am offering them a chance to war against a wider variety of teams, and if they happen to get an unwinnable matchup, hey at least they get 4 mith. I am not saying don't work on fixing the SH issue. What I am saying is offer an incentive to war for the average vet, and allow all participants a small incentive for helping play test their game.
i'm fully agreeing with the OP on this one, give mith to the ppl willing to war. the newbs may get their asses handed to them at first, but in the long term some might turn pros. with the current pool a decent war clan knows who's gonna match 1 hour before match-ups , trust me they do. in a large pool casual war clans have a chance to get matched inbetween them. And to add a bit to the OP: indeed a player who dropped his build to a sh or a tank who filled his lands with towers invested in his war " career" deserves better rewards so make 1 or 2 items obtainable only if u aquire a certain numbers of victory: let's say u need 25 ee victories to be able to buy the sword or the armor or even both with mith . and now before u shot this idea down, think about this: why is a build that takes 2-3 weeks to botch up more enticed to the best equip than a 3-4 years vet.
I agree partially with 347M3. There should be lvl Of war, like any other sport. War for beginner, warexperienced n for pro lvl. U earn u lvl through wins n losses like ee lvl. Like in Boxing, which division u r in depend on wins n losses. Heavyweight vs Heavyweight , middleweight vs middleweight n lightweight vs lightweight n so on. Every player should have a war records that's show how many wars u participated. This will easily fix ee war mechanism. U don't have to have hit ratio to gain matchup. U have only to fill up u member to participate in war..
In part I agree and disagree. The agreement is rewarding regular participation with mith will long term help in slight to balance the ee dynamic. Not enough but it's better than a kick in the teeth which is what the current system does. Rewarding someone who is active and participating should be done. At least it would make it worth the losers time to participate and to try if they get something for it. As for the incentive overall of ee. Dead. Unless your in a top clan with the perfect build ( normally a dropped build or 2-3 month build ) why bother. The system is totally flawed. Mids are dead and buried. And the devs won't implement a 1v1 version to balance or a battlelist mith incentive. So the deal is this. If your in the elite club your sorted and the rewards are yours. If not, your a peasant and screwed And the devs are not implementing the changes the players have asked for because we can't think of the exploits they can. They know best after all. Well those who exploit anyway I guess must know best. So whatever is rolled out. Unless it sets a minimum reward system, tighter hit ratio and better incentive. Don't expect it to change. I'm pushing for battlelist and other pvp mith rewarding actions but they won't come. So what the hey. Have fun with the ee let me know how the pay to exploit era turns out.
If the devs changes of scaling bfe and payout adjusted for bfa bfe, the sh may become extinct. Obviously this is just supposition, we will have to test the changes. But at least the proposed changes do look like they may create a place for mids in ee.
Some interesting ideas in here, including ones we've actually considered ourselves. There is the issue with different leagues in that by separating players into even smaller pools of clans to be matched up the number and quality of matches would drop substantially. While this isn't something we're planning to do at this point it is something we've considered and remains an option (though one that would take a substantial amount of time and balancing). In regards to awarding mithril to the losing side in wars, there comes the issue with inactives. Someone could simply join EE and sit there doing nothing and still earn a reward. We do believe that there's more we can do with EE rewards though and this is why we've been working on a robust war rewards system that will let us distribute rewards based on each individual person's participation.
That devs is why people have since season one been saying base rewards off successful actions. And if you excluded scouts from that equation you would also reintroduce other builds as they would have a higher chance of reward than a scout bombing Sh or ps going for a ko and force a change in tactic.
Yeah like killing the static bonus from mith equip? Is that the kimd of thing you guys are planning in your "robust reward system? Hamstringing the very reason the vast majority of of people even do ee?
All equipment not just mith equip. Remember all equip will be useless which will mean that the first clan to go down is at a disadvantage trying to recover from pin for the rest if the war. Whitewash wars again.
Oh and byw with many clans now demanding 3.5m adt and 4 mil sdt who can hit who? Except lb. might as well call this kingdoms hiding behind towers. Certainly not at war. Best thing devs could do is scrap towers from the game. fully refund everyone for them and force people to open up and fight, if they want a war game that is.
You would certainly need a larger player base to support multiple divisions. But here is one way to do it. Scale the rewards to each league. Similar to what some other games do. Say u have a bronze silver and gold league. And those leagues offered higher mith payouts as u advance. U could do any prestige for bronze. Minimum 1100 prestige for silver and minimum 1400 for gold. That way the community sorts itself chasing the greater rewards. The inactive problem community refers to has a simple solution that has been mentioned multiple times....payouts tied to actions. By having clan prestige in play to advance you would also encourage clan loyalty. Mercing will always exist to some degree, but a good clan in the gold league would do well to take care of the members who got them there.
Any chance we could go back to the 4hr season 1 wars? Much more fun with much wider participation parameters. I.e it didn't matter what your build was cos we've over got 55 signed up!!
It's great that u Kaw_Com take league matter in to consideration. This will make newbee to war become more warexperienced as they engage in war n climb up the ladder of leagues. If everybody in da same league, the war will be fair. At least I hope. More will join war. As u gain war experiences u become better n better u be more resistances n stronger opponents u want to fight against. Yes I agree with u, mithril should be reward depend on u action n active in war. Inactive should not be rewarded at all.. When matchup is made plz fix that no one can hire u allies.. Thx for listening..
So you may ask, why bring this thread back to life? Well, I wanted to see how season 4 was going before I weighed in again. And while Primals are a good thing, and Individual wars are a good thing....hell I don't even mind the LB getting their free EE renewels....I mean round wars back (yeah I know it was fixed, but could not resist being a smartass). I think it's clear to everyone that participation remains an issue. I said it at the start of this thread and I will say it again. We need more incentives to war. Because right now what makes the most sense for me is to renew EE every two weeks and shine the whole thing on. Take a look at what it takes to war, you have to bank, you have to expend crystals, you have to have a WC n tracker in place, to join a top crew you have to sacrifice your build to the tower gods, and if you have done all that...you have to win 5 wars a week to get a decent piece of equiptment. Face it, nothing will ever beat percentage boots, and helms carry almost no stats. So you have to war daily to have a shot at 1 or 2 pieces of worthwhile gear. Many players who were planning to war this season changed their mind when they saw the reward structure, with participation way down, the war system on life support despite both primal and individual being overall good wars. I play a couple of other app games, I always participate in wars in those games, there is no reason not to. You get rewarded for participation, you get greater awards for success and highest possible awards for being top of the heap. Kaw wars reward the top of the heap, bascially make the guys with limited success question whether participation is worth it, and to those that just sign up and lose....there is nothing to bring them back in. It's time to give a medallion for a loss, increase mith payouts, and have pieces of gear earned during the season. Also random drops of BB, xstals, psion, inferno, mith etc for ko's etc. Basically convince the average player that not participating in wars is a mistake. Otherwise the EE war system will simply be for the few hardcore players who know how to win and the rest of the community will continue to give it a collective shrug.