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.