It is just as it is very often. The initial hype is fading. The question for me is, will it fade to a nothing like RealTime Ladder or is the niveau it is fading to still reasonable.

Edited 12/6/2021 14:01:50

Hey, weird MME game is fun!! But I honestly have no idea at all why this game hasn't been popular. It has everything a good game should have. Diversity-- you can play any maps, out of thousands --- even make one your own(sorry not a fan of map making :P) You can create your own templates and settings--- have sth that you own individually in the game, not from the creator of the game. Can play with friends-- in different mods-- FFA, Team, diplomacy, more to be listed. Do some maths-- train your brain while having fun (counting sometimes is fun lol, try the INSS settings(which I kinda hate :P)). Improving your gaming skills at the same time--- sounds too good to be true for a game. MASTER starts to find it boring because this clan war thing starts to lose diversity. We are bored of playing SE everyday, but have to because this might be the only slot we can play, repeated "ugly" template choice-- lets say com templates alone for three in a row. This has become more of like a duty than a place we could relax ourselves and have some fun with players are friends, which is basically why we favour 2v2s so much-- we want to have fun with friends in the game, not doing things we don't really enjoy, as players of WZ should (imo, "smart" guys play WZ, as unlikely a normal guy would show interest in it and is willing to figure out how MO, WR, SR, luck etc works) be smart enough to do the things that they think are right and is the best for them. Right now, CW obviously, isn't the thing that we should invest time and effort in.

Edited 12/6/2021 14:39:36

Maybe not the case when it comes to 2v2, or all of a sudden guiroma popped up and people wanna improve/test themselves/ get familiarize with the settings :D

I think the biggest problem with the game is advertising. Everyone here either got the game from hearing from a friend or stumbling into it (me). I wish fizzer would consider some youtube ads or something, put some of his ad revenue into adding :p

Rewards aren't the problem. Increasing the rewards would only mask the real problem and cause people who really want those rewards to persevere through the current system despite having a negative playing experience.

Make CW less frustrating to play, and the problem solves itself.

If the actual playing of CW is a good experience, people will play b/c it's fun, whereas now they play partly for the rewards, partly for the status of winning a competition. But when it (1) requires effort (fitting into timeslots), (2) generates disappointment (no good templates) & (3) has non-desirable rewards (non-Idle players don't care, coins won are too small [often less than 20] to even be noteworthy), people lose interest.

Fix 2 of those 3 problems listed above, and people will get interested again. Don't have to give away tons of additional rewards to garner interest, just make it easier (less effort) and a better experience (less disappointing) and it will be a fun way to casually compete within a clan context.

Ideally, CW should be inherently fun so that even without rewards, people would play it anyhow. Like the core WZC game itself. It's essentially just a fancy tournament that's based around clans. But the frustrating structure really hurts it.

I think a good side objective would be like a MVP player kinda thing with highlights such as:

Win ratio [unbeatable]
number played [always there]
number won [the carry]
fastest turn taker (avg of time taken to take a turn) [speedy gon salez]
meme one (slowest time to take a turn [called slowcoach or something], the extrovert (always talking in the match) or something similar

this will be displayed at end of season and will be able to go back and see them when looking back at previous seasons.

this way even if your clan dosnt get a high ranking you could maybe show your worth by being in the MVP list and the trolls now have the meme title to aim for. i would find it funny if you got an achievement for getting it (dunce hat img to go with it)

Edited 12/6/2021 15:09:36

The idea of an RT competition between clans was never a bad one. But creating a competition between clans without being at all competitive and almost entirely activity-based is essentially self-contradictory. That's before we even consider the absolutely poor choice of templates time and time again for each slot. You can't resurrect CW IMO. Making a few changes won't fix the core problem. You need to radically alter the format in a way that is honest to what exactly its purpose is. Making a "competition" that is not really competitive is borderline dishonest. I understand the goal of trying to engage casual players more but you also have to embrace the competitive aspect as well.

+1 PS

The games focus now it seems is for the app player who wants to come on, play QM and then leave. The community that was once here is in terminal decline, established players retiring, clans folding and general community activity dropping off. It should be of no surprise however, considering theres no incentive to look beyond the quick match tab.

Fizzer created a great game but consistently fails to listen to how the game should evolve. Without a community the game becomes throw away and eventually redundant. This, I believe is what's happening.

I forget how many times people asked for RTL templates to be changed only to be forced to play some crappy commanders templates. So eventually it died as will CWs. Fizzer has a ready made market research group here and they should provide him with all the feedback he needs but no, he forges ahead thinking he knows best only to see it fall flat.

Those of us who have been here a while can really see the decline, remember the era where The lost wolves were blowing up the forums. It was fun. Now, not so much.

Edited 12/6/2021 16:06:26

Fizzer has a ready made market research group here

When two guys criticize the status quo it can still be that they do not like the status quo for entirely contrary reasons.

All I can say is that the activity in my clan is at an all time high. We came in second a lot of times in CW despite our activity being the highest, so the statement that CW is not competitive is not completely true. We kept working on our mistakes and even have a clan internal automatic CW template ladder for quite some time. Clan league never really worked out for a real time focused clan like us. In order to be competitive we had to more or less force our heavy hitters to play and the average John Doe of our clan was not really involved in the clan league.

It was quite some work for us to get the CW train rolling. Apart from the clan ladder I also made tutorials on some of the templates. We have invented an alternative approach to how the bomb template should get played and I have heard from some of my clanmates that they enjoy the bomb template now so much that they have even introduced their partners through the bomb template to the game.

7 months ago, MH had 40 players. Now you are 80. Like 80% of your John Does at the moment, are players you recruited specifically for CW. So you can't really say that. First you increased your numbers on purpose and now you are "defending" the system, because of them.
And the fact that I know how you were treating CW, makes it even more fun to watch those kind of comments. Expressions like "participate even if you surrender instantly, so we can lower our Elo and avoid good matchups", "CW has nothing to do with skill but numbers" came out from your mouth back then.
From the very beginning you knew how you wanted to treat a broken system, yet now you are defending the system itself somehow.
Plus, you and I both know the reason MH started to play bomb templates. I was present at the time.
In conclusion, since you reached your required level, enjoy it, now that you are competing alone.

7 months ago, MH had 40 players.

We have been 70 players in the past also but we have used CW to refreshen our clans player base. My clanmates are super hyped for their CW games.

"CW has nothing to do with skill but numbers" came out from your mouth back then.

That was true in the past but with both M'Hunters and your new clan maxing out their players, skill has become the deciding factor. Also back as you were a part of our clan, we have discussed CW strategy in detail and the aim was always to improve. With our thousands of posts discussing in detail how to play out various board positions, apart from you and Shanmu, nobody was so out of their mind not to see that we were trying our best to help our players to improve. As you were part of our clan, you were appalled about us ganging up in templates to get lower rated matchups. Now in your new clan you are happy to take free 2v2 wins and you have no problem to also gang up in templates to get easier matchups.

Edit: That in a "perfect world", CW is not about skill but about numbers is just a plain mathematical necessity. I don't remember each and every thing you said back then and I might mix you up with Shanmu but if I remember right, one (or both?) of you were thinking that they were arguing with me but you were just arguing against basic math. Just because I have explained the math that (given there are sufficient clans above and below you), a loss has the same value as a victory, this has never implied that I wanted my clanmates to stop improving.

Edited 12/6/2021 18:37:49

+1 forsaken!

I find it hard to to see the Master's clan take the morale high ground when they continue to let a toxic individual represent their clan.

This was just from today:
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=29055991


As for the reason why MH started to play bomb comm games, does it really matter? One just needs to look up the QM leaderboard to see that it something our clan enjoys playing, and does quite well.

Edited 12/6/2021 19:05:00

toxic people are actually what define warzone, i am yet to see a normal person here

Edited 12/6/2021 19:16:33

Of course CW is both participation + skill. Neither outright trumps the other, although skill tends to take a slight lead, but overall you need both to actually get to the top of the leaderboard. And this imho is fine, that's the whole point of CW, the blending of the two. This isn't the problem CW has.

There's a reason why M & MH are always 1 & 2 (high skill, high-ish participation), TSFH was a solid 3 (medium-ish skill, medium-to-high-ish participation), and TLA/Excel/Sabers/Polish/TBA/etc were the next bunch in line (medium skill, low-to-medium participation), and why Python never ranked particularly high (high skill, low participation). And why Yolo couldn't get past 3rd place (high skill [me excluded], low participation). But the trend is that skill rises up, b/c you can play everyday, but if you just aren't winning, you're not going up in the rankings. Inclusion of SEAD adds some luck and randomness where eventually everyone tends to get a win, but that will only get you so far, and over a large number of games (ie: participation) this will even out, and in the end skill still wins.

Note however that we still haven't seen a truly high skill, high participation clan yet, where true "high participation" means all players play >75% of the games available in a given season. Even M & MH have 20-40% of players playing less than 50% of the games available. And I could be wrong on this, but the past couple seasons, it seemed as if Masters was coasting into 1st, and really only expending effort when their lead eroded, then they'd fired up the participation again to put a gap between them & MH, only putting in as much effort as required. And this season it just seems like they can't be bothered at all, and are happy to just coast into 2nd.

And that's the problem - that it's a chore to maintain the level of participation required without it becoming a chore (and imho, that sounds like a method to wean someone off something they like and eventually get them to quit it; by forcing them to play things when they don't want to, and throwing down obstacles to prevent them from playing when they do want to). If MH has achieved a method to maintain excitement for CW despite the effort, fantastic & hats off to you, and it shows in your results. I personally get pretty deflated when I go out of my way to make time to play in a slot and yet again get a template I don't like. And I think a lot of people fall into this category.

What I'm curious about is, could MH further increase your level of participation to become truly "high participation" if the need arises? If some other clan of medium-to-high skill but super high participation were to come along. Like TSFH of old but with higher average skill, or like Yolo (high skill) was last season but with higher participation).

And this is the true problem, that most clans end up finding it to be a chore, instead of it being fun and interesting. Fixing this aspect takes nothing away from the skill & participation factor, but would make it more enjoyable for more people to play. Making it easier to find a good timeslot with good (preferred) templates would be a good thing, and in the end increase CW activity. I suppose it would mean the high skill/low participation clans could become relevant again, so more competition, but only if they do have the participation to match.

Yet another failure, go Fizzer go!

Of course CW is both participation + skill. Neither outright trumps the other, although skill tends to take a slight lead, but overall you need both to actually get to the top of the leaderboard. And this imho is fine, that's the whole point of CW, the blending of the two. This isn't the problem CW has.

@krinid: Skill only matters if the system is unable to give your clan appropriate matchups. If you have a mid tier clan and enough opponents, the system will give the clan opponents at the clans skill level so that clan will win 50% of their games. If the clan then improves, they will get a higher rating and thus stronger opponents. What will stay constant is their 50% win rate. Since there is a finite number of players, it is possible to beat the 50% odds. You can do this by being the very best or by ganging up in a template to force lower ranked matchups. What I don't like regarding the CW system is that it is possible to construct a scenario where an increase in skill would lead to a decrease in win rate.

What I'm curious about is, could MH further increase your level of participation to become truly "high participation" if the need arises? If some other clan of medium-to-high skill but super high participation were to come along. Like TSFH of old but with higher average skill,

We are pretty much maxed out in terms of participation. On average days, we have something like 35 players joining. TSFH never had those activity levels btw ;) The problem in the previous few seasons was that the MASTER Clan almost matched our activity but they won roughly 75% of their games while we only won roughly 55%. Now with their 2v2 freebies being less of a thing and them not going deep in Strat 1v1 any longer to farm clans like Excel, they currently have dropped down to a 60% win rate which is below our own win rate of 62%.

Clan league never really worked out for a real time focused clan like us.

I think this thread got dropped. RT clans (not just M'H) need an RT competitive scene of some sort.

CW is a real time competition, and that makes it great for RT clans. But I don't know if it's much of a real time competition...

If there is reasonable activity (multiple high-activity clan), the win can only go to a clan that has not only high activity but can sustain an elevated win rate. While MASTER completed, this meant they were always destined to win CW. Now that they're out, the highest-skilled hyper-active clan (M'H) is destined to win as the MASTERs once did.

It's like a "tallest man" contest where the actions of the participation during the contest have very little bearing on the outcome. That's why it becomes such a grind as it drags on- like with a height contest, the process of determining the outcome is just finding out which clans have the organization to muster high activity and the skill to maintain above-even win rates. This is like just waiting for the participants to line up to see who is tallest.

Imagine if you had a contest where:
- participants would show up once a day
- participants get assigned points based on their height (say 1 cm = 1 point)
- after some period of time, the participants get ranked based on total points

That's essentially CW. Sure, the game could be totally changed if someone gets height-lengthening surgery (possible but unlikely- no one cares enough to do that) or if one of the tallest people gives up and stops showing up long enough for someone later on to catch up and beat them. But even then, it just goes to the next tallest guy (M'H after MASTERs), where height in this metaphor is just wins per day (a function of activity and average skill- although average skill is only a factor for clans that overwhelm or otherwise challenge CW matchmaking- Discovery increasing its CW rating by 100 would not affect its win rate significantly, so average skill only matters if you're at the boundary of breaking CW matchmaking).

And the longer it gets on, the more grueling it gets, because the bulk of the competition is increasingly unlikely to influence the final outcome. This is mainly due to the CW rating and matchmaking system, yet another arbitrary design decision that was never explained and likely thought about very poorly. (The official justification- "it's a clan competition"- screams an unwil

CW is eminently salvageable without having to rework the whole contest. The real difficulty is in having to convince one guy about everything.

#StopIndieGaming #IndieBad #CorporatePower

(or alternatively CW as a community-run community event- the fundamental issue is that everything relies on the decision-making and labor of one person with limited time, interest, and attention.)

Edited 12/6/2021 20:33:33

CW was created to attract players to Idle. Check Fizzer's blog posts to see what his priorities are. His next update after finally adding FB and Guiroma is titled "Tons of new content for Idle". It is safe to assume I think that Idle has been bringing in a lot of money for Fizzer, and that's ok. This game is how Fizzer makes his living, and it is understandable for him to want to gear it's design towards profit maximisation (as that is how literally every business works. We can debate the morality of this another day).
The very fact that he has to say that the 2v2 template "Requires two players from the same clan" to play, in my opinion shows that he is catering to people who are easily parted from their coins.

I think a lot of frustrations come from idealists who think Fizzer actually wanted to make it competitive. As stated above, it's purpose was to draw players to something new to spend their coins (and hopefully cash) on. This could not have been more obvious than the time people were discussing matchmaking issues. I couldn't find the screenshot, but there is one where Fizzer's response was so ridiculous that I don't know how stupid he must think us if he expected us to believe it. He just needed to find a way to give newbs a chance at winning.

And his plan worked, even some of our own players took the bait and started playing Idle too. I imagine a lot of the strat players have probably spent hours on it as well. I even had to take a break from Warlight because I could feel the burnout of having to log on every single day to play, and was starting to not enjoy this game anymore.

I feel that all these complaints are coming from people who actually think Fizzer wants to cater to the strat community. He's not, and as far as he is concerned, CW is fit for purpose. Although he is likely thinking about reversing the trend l4v.r0v shows in this post. Maybe he will cave in and make suggested changes, or maybe it will die like the RTL.

Something to bear in mind is that the strat community is (probably, I think) a small percentage of the people that play CW. If he had actually made CW competitive, it is possible that all the newbs (the majority, I think) would've left out of frustration and not enjoying the game. Sort of like Call of Duty: Warzone, casual play always has more players than ranked play. You wouldn't enjoy a game if you got hopelessly beaten, and that was something Fizzer had to consider.

Edited 12/7/2021 11:21:21