Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Post Holy War Thoughts

This posting will be a little different than other ones. It will be done in more of a rant. Primarily because certain things about this Holy War really irked me.

Many people may have heard about certain strategies/things that occurred or experienced them but maybe don't understand them. So here they are.

1) The One Man Offense:

This strategy involved having all but one member of the order do nothing. Since a player in an order can only be attacked 100 times before they can no longer be attacked, the order would attack the non aggressive player. These players were worth fewer and fewer points and since they weren't attacking, wouldn't replenish their point value. So, in many cases, the order being attacked would only allow something like 30-40k points against them from a highly active order vs the points that they would accumulate.

This method, is very effective for an order who may have more inactive players, but I found most people doing it that I saw were a main account and several dummy accounts. This way all their level 20 accounts would each accumulate the minimum qualifying points for their prize, and the player could redeem that prize on his other accounts.

I do not hate this strategy as much as I should. The player would still be using such a large amount of HP it's absurd. In the end, this is to me the type of player who was sick of carrying his order just to get little reward. Yes, he would be abusing the win loss mechanic and causing himself to get more instances of double points during Ragnarok. The player doing this, probably would have achieved his rank, as well as his order would have, even if he didn't abuse the mechanic, simply based on the amount of HP he'd need to spend to be effective at this strategy.

Punishment: None would be my preferred if the activity didn't harm other orders playing properly. Because it does, I'd say people who engage in this practice get no rewards. That way the individual who was doing it with all his accounts, loses all that HP for nothing. And the people who were in small groups doing it, get the same thing.

How to Prevent: I don't know. I do not know a system that could effectively prevent it from occurring without punishing people who legitimately carry their order. That's why I say, just don't give rewards, then there's no incentive to do it.

2) Defense Lead Takedown:

I had previously posted in one of my strategies for everybody in an order to attack with a 50AP deck rapidly to take down a defense leader. The reason it has a 50AP minimum is because it's the only way the defense leader loses defense points.

Lo and behold! By some sort of douchebaggery magic, somebody managed to come up with what I find to be the most distasteful strategy ever created. When you attack somebody from an account not in Holy War with that person, their defense stats act as they normally would. The 50AP rule goes out the window. A level 10 account attacks the defense leader with a goblin, defense leader loses defense points.

The sick part of this strategy, and why I hope these people get the worst punishments imaginable, is that the developers actually put something in to prevent this type of thing from happening. They have the 50AP rule because they anticipated people attacking with a goblin. There is no way, any player who was doing this, didn't realize that what they were doing was wrong.

Punishment: Permaban. These types of attacks required great organization, and a complete disregard for the game developers and other players. The fact that developers put up a safeguard and people just found a way around it makes it worse. Ever order involved in this activity should be banned.

How to Prevent: A person in HW cannot be attacked by somebody outside the order. Done.

3) Purchasing your way into an order:

I'm sure many people saw the posts the last day, "my order has 50 wins, for 50HP you can join it!" This one made me laugh at anybody who took the offer. Mostly because I had always been under the assumption that we couldn't add/remove members during a Holy War. I believe the game designers set it up that way so things like this wouldn't happen.

If people want to do it, it's up to them, but they are pretty pathetic.

Punishment: None. It's an orders right to add or subtract people as they see fit and I see this as no difference than orders that 'tax' their members.

Overall Thoughts:

This Holy War was an overall disappointment for me. Mainly because a Holy War that is going to effect tons of other players who legitimately worked hard is going to reward a bunch of people who found workarounds. If the workaround only effected the player using it, that would be fine, but their workarounds are the beginning of a big problem if not remedied. If the problems aren't fixed by the next Holy War I could see a large portion of the player base heading to other games.


17 comments:

  1. The two same exploits were used in our order as well D: .. i sent a complaint to the devs but all they said was that it didn't breach terms of services etc. =/

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    1. Pfft. If having a def leader attacked from outside the order to get past HW mechanics isn't a ToS breach, I don't know what is.

      I can tell you this much, if the developers don't realize the damage this causes to their game and lets it go unpunished, they are idiots. All it does is promote a vile community and tells everybody the developers will allow it.

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  2. Also, what's the deal with this "another holy-war business" that they posted on the HOME page of the game. =/
    I think all orders that spent a decent amount of HP are outraged and confused at the moment. What do you think? Are they going to discard this war entirely or just going to give the rewards after the next one?

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    1. From the way the post is phrased it seems like the rewards for this holy war will be given after the next in addition to rewards from the next holy war, but that doesn't exactly make sense.

      I don't see why they would hold off on giving out current rewards instead of just giving them out and having another immediate HW. It makes no sense unless something deeper is going on.

      It could be they are aware of things going on during this holy war that they didn't like and are arguing about how to go about it internally and are holding off on rewards to buy time before a decision. It could be that they really aren't giving out rewards for this HW.

      I really wish they would be more transparent on stuff though.

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  3. I can't say for sure what the issue is but I know my order was unable to declare war from 6 pm Friday through sometime Saturday morning. Kind of annoying since we were a couple wins shy of 30 and wasted a lot of hp at the end trying to compete with a couple 1 man shows who looked like they were just going for individual rank.

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    1. Yes, the gem aspect. That issue would be able to be corrected by giving the reward to any order within 5 wins of the tier for gems. It would be an acceptable apology to most. Instead they do an entirely new HW for it?

      Technically all the issues of this HW would be able to be corrected without doing an entirely new HW.

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  4. I thought it was Durer to the lack of entering a holly war, we were one win away from thirty and I filled a complaint, spent over two hours trying to get one more in. it seems as if they are giving us that time back so those that got screwed can try and make it up. They said only affected orders will get compensation so who knows. I just wish they would hurry up.

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    1. That is currently what they said but it makes no sense when you think about it.

      They still intend to give rewards for the previous HW, they are just doing an additional one. That being the case, why not pay out the rewards and treat the next one as a new one?

      Also, they are giving the orders who experienced the bug compensation in ADDITION to the new Holy War and the rewards they did win.

      No matter what, delaying the prizes makes no sense when you think about it and accomplishes nothing unless something different is under investigation. They would know delaying the prizes would make their player base irate, so why do that unless something else was going on?

      So, either they have complete morons working at their office or something deeper is going on.

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    2. I think... Delaying the prizes is supposed to discourage players from switching to better orders since they won't be able to claim the previous HW's prizes if they do. I myself want to switch to a higher ranked order to prepare for the coming HW but I want to claim my prizes first. Although most of the top members in our order did leave without claiming the prizes of 10-20k individual points.

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    3. I have several people who have joined my current order who are still retaining prizes from their previous order according to rankings charts.

      I believe they still get the rewards.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. I could see holding prizes to try and keep people on as much the same footing as they were for the previous holy war instead of handing out prizes to the orders that one who could then immediately turn around and use those prizes in a new holy war.

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    1. It wouldn't be the same footing no matter what since the difference in doing well isn't in cards, it's in HP.

      Many people depleted their reserves and weren't able to replenish them as a result.

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  7. Hey Lucarda,

    I've got a question stuck in my head for several days now, might be handy for the upcoming holy wars;

    Would it be recommendable to give wallbreakers (if any) an Attack Leader position? As in, do they benefit from the atk bonus?

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    1. Not enough to warrant it. Some Orders take HP fees though that they give to their attack leaders during HW so they can break the walls for the players though so it makes sense when you look at it that way.

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  8. Lucarda, is the one man offense still doable?

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    1. Yes it is. Generally though it doesn't work well unless trying to accumulate wins. Once you get to matches with teams who can gain lots of points, they can just blow up on you in the last 10 minutes and you can't keep up with them.

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