Guys, why do you think that it is CW that cannibalizes CL and not visa versa? (at least i think so, please, correct me if i am wrong)

They both cannibalize each other by competing for player energy and splitting the casual vs. competitive scenes.

Participation in CW in terms of playerbase is higher than in CL. If that's is due to the event format, then why do some suggestions still try to make CL out of CW.

Participation between CW and CL reflects a lot of things beyond their inherent appeal- CW, for one, is much better advertised to players.

Imo, neither should become the other. We just need a coherent clan-level competition that can accommodate both competitive and casual players, so both can benefit from depth and get enjoyable games. CW can become this with non-drastic changes- scrapping clan-level CW rating with player-level ratings would be a big step in this direction, by increasing match parity for virtually all players. We'd even get significant improvement with random matchmaking- because CW's current setup actively minimizes match parity for players whose skill level doesn't match the average skill level of their clan. CW does not need to fundamentally change to become more enjoyable & competitive (in the sense of having more contenders as a portion of participating clans). As a guiding principle, the games themselves should be fun rather than played as chores for Idle rewards or out of a sense of obligation to your clan. If we could just do that, then CW participation should explode.

If that's is due to the event format, then why do some suggestions still try to make CL out of CW.

No one is suggesting we imitate CL's format exactly (including the burdensome setup, which is responsible for the game cap per season). This is a bit of a strawman- people on this thread are suggesting changes to make CW more competitive, you've decided to label that as "making CL out of CW", and then your analysis above parses your own characterization as literally copying the CL format into CW. The thing you're critiquing isn't what the people you're responding to are talking about.

it is because of idle prizes

Bingo! Idle prizes + visibility/accessibility (like the announcements & glowing Community tab) probably explain CW participation more than anything else. Like I said earlier, there's no innate conflict between accommodating casual players motivated by fast games and Idle prizes and accommodating competitive players motivated by being the best/most skilled player and getting their clan to the top. Instead, I think the two work together and set off a virtuous cycle where people get a lot more value out of CW and are more motivated to play it.

My specific proposals:
- remove the 40 players/season cap
- V@n's & FiveSmith's suggestions around letting players play multiple times per day (but having only some games, say max of 40 per clan per day, count toward territories) so Idle rewards are more attainable
- guarantee Small Earth Auto Dist or Small Earth 1 wasteland in every slot
- guarantee a strategic template (from a rotating panel set by the community- similar to the Seasonal Ladder) for every slot with 3 or more templates [this is to get skilled players to participate consistently]
- matchmake either randomly or based on individual rating, not clan-level CW rating; this will result in most players getting opponents around their skill level, so newbies will not feel like they sign up just to lose and good players will not feel like they're just going through the motions of playing a game that was decided from the start. Match parity is a big predictor of retention- on the 1v1 ladder, the bulk of players who win or lose 4+ games in their first 5 leave, while the bulk of those who win 2-3 games in their first 5 stay.


With just these, you can create a real-time clan-level event that's motivating and enjoyable for:
- players who play for Idle rewards
- competitive players who want to improve their skill level; if we do random matchmaking, then your personal win% in CW will actually mean something and be a motivator for improvement
- "tall" players in "short" clans
- clan leaders who are motivated by the prospect of making their clan do really well in CW; there's a lot more paths to that if you just scrap CW-rating-based matchmaking
- players who just want fun real-time games (much more enjoyable if the matchmaking system isn't actively working against you)
- clans who are just starting out (much more enjoyable if you don't just get a bunch of voided games or free wins due to low rating)
- players who like Small Earth & casual fast games
- players who like serious games on the standard strategic templates

We can build a CW for everybody. Casual and competitive players don't need to be put in conflict with each other; they both benefit from working together, because both of them fundamentally gain enjoyment from just playing the game as part of a group with a goal, and both of them get more value out of the player base being bigger.

Edited 8/22/2022 21:17:09

I bow to this.

Excellent.

Edit: would it make sense to exclude LD templates from the panel? Or, at least, templates that have a substantial probability of leading to long games.

Not sure about the rest, but, while I don't mind playing LD on multi-day, it tends to be a strain when having to day LD on RT.

To be honest, I usually "squeeze in" CW games into my daily schedule and that doesn't work well when I end up in a 30+min game.

Granted, a good Strat can also take a while, but less likely than LD

Edited 8/22/2022 22:01:28

30+ min games are rather common in CW. At least for MME MA LD.

Edited 8/23/2022 01:32:00

"M'Hunters think they're on top of the world. In reality, they were the first and to date biggest victims of CW. We lost one of the biggest forces for creating player value and in turn got a CW-obsessed clan that has to defend CW because winning CW is the only thing it's got going for it."


Thanks for speaking for us. We have never claimed to be on top of the world due to CW victories, nor do I think any of us go out of our way to defend CW. I think most of MH would love to see changes to CW, and think a lower player cap, different templates etc, could all be improvements we would like to see. Most of MH enjoys playing CW, and in the time I have been with MH, I have seen it bring in a lot of talent into MH. It has made us a stronger clan, a lot of our players have become stronger more well rounded players because of it. It motivates players to play in a somewhat competitive game each day, and at least within our clan we provide feedback to help grow our players.


As for the player cap. I think 40 players is to many, we struggle to get 40, and I think over the 1.5 years the CW has been happening we only had all 40 players play once in day. I would like to see the roster size drop to 30. I also think that there should be break between seasons, perhaps a week, and that season should never start mid-day. The 1st day of the season should have all 6 slots so that clan doesn't win the season because they were able to get more players into that only slot for day 1.

Lowering the cap will just reduce the contender pool. To illustrate with an extreme, if the cap were 1 player, CW would only be won by the clan that had the best high-participation player- that player would only have to play half the season to shut out all average players from winning. The smaller the pool, the less opportunity for average-skill clans to keep up with matchmaking-breaking clans (i.e., ones with CW Ratings or skill so high that matchmaking can't bring their win rate down to 50% once it learns their rating, or ones transiently but significantly outperforming their rating for a whole season or more) through sheer organized participation... And the bigger the Ursus Problem for CW-interested high-skilled players in average-skill clans, the more we'll see average-skill clans struggle to develop their players since the odds of retention collapse. (Since CW, this site has already lost 2/3 of the big training clans.)

Lowering the cap can curb exhaustion but it should be accompanied with a change to the matchmaking (individualized) to not have CW's winner be nearly predetermined each season from among a short list of tall clans. Unless people don't care about that from an enjoyment aspect- it might be a moot point because one side effect of CW has been to shift players who care about CW into CW-oriented "tall" clans like MB and MH. So this may not be as bad from a player perspective but I think we should care because a reduced ability of clans to compete for players means reduced variety in clans means reduction in the types of value clans offer players means a weaker community overall.

Edited 8/24/2022 16:53:31

Something we haven't touched upon so far:

What about extending the required interval between back-to-back participations.

Now, a player can play 1 slot/day (day not being entirely correct, but you get what I mean.)

What if we increase the "between" interval to 2 or 3 days.

That would

1) make it easier for every clan to get a high participation rate per "slot";

2) alleviate the pressure on both players (because of the extended rest) and clan mgmt (to get the max number of people to play/slot);

3) increase the chance to play your favourite template, because now it would be "easier" to skip slots, the templates of which you don't like.

Edited 8/24/2022 17:16:50

Is the suggestion to restrict players to 1 slot every 2-3 days? It seems like that could hurt players who play CW because they enjoy the games themselves rather than the Idle reward or clan ranking metagame aspect. It also would run into the lowering-the-participation-cap issue I mentioned above, where higher participation caps (daily or per-season) allow average-skill clans multiple paths to contention instead of needing to solve the Ursus Problem.

Why can't you just introduce an energy system? Like the good old MMOs used to.

Good idea V@n. But rather rather limiting consecutive play, I'd rather see just a limit on # of games per week or something. Limiting on consecutive nature removes flexibility which is one of the Similar to one I recommend of having a limit of X games per week. Maybe it's 3, maybe it's 5, but not 7, not everyday. Helps make it a "nicer" event instead of a constant slog. But something is required to make it more appealing, less work to get games in.

LOL, initially missed the "top of the world" comment. Agree with Stone, MH would love to see changes to CW. Even the ones that would make it more difficult for us to remain on "top of the world". I certainly have weighed in with some ideas (and did again in response to V@n's idea), and most of them target making it easier for more clans to compete, for everyone to have a better experience.

ok my bad for misjudging (and generally judging) you. I just reflexively attribute any M'H denial of CW's design issues (like the Ursus Problem) to incumbent-winner brain-worms, like how people who do well at g*lf insist that g*lf is a real sport because otherwise they'd have to admit they're wasting much of their life on something rich fat people made to get out of physical education requirements. As a tangent, does M'H still work as a training clan? Imo, for serious players, it was the best training community in the game- but maybe M'H's decline in CL and rise to the top of CW hasn't messed with that.

back on topic: I'm wary of solving problems by adding further limits because that would necessarily shrink participation and enjoyment, especially for casuals who don't care as much about who wins CW or gets which rewards. IMHO, a lot of the limits introduced for clans in 5.08 and the CW update are not necessary. The 40-cap doesn't significantly mitigate participation advantages large clans have (since, as y'all pointed out, no one can consistently hit 40, meaning large clans weren't going to overwhelm small clans with numbers in the first place; anyways, large active clans still have an advantage when it comes to mustering 40 active players). And it introduces new problems by limiting the contender pool- if a clan with a 70% win rate plays just 29 games a day, they shut out all average clans (the vast majority of clans) from catching up to them no matter how much they participate; if you lift the 40-cap, then in the near term those average clans can muster high participation to become contenders (probably for 1-2 seasons), which will help them attract or retain high-skill players and sidestep the Ursus Problem while they work to improve their win rate.

I don't think it's possible to actually change CW, but purely as a thought exercise, what would be so bad if the cap were just removed entirely? In theory, people could feel compelled to participate endlessly... but we'd hit an equilibrium because no one will enjoy playing 6 slots a day. There'll be some steady state that's probably close to what we have now (since the present steady state doesn't bump into the 40 cap, meaning the cap already doesn't constrain players' participation). And players will feel less forced to participate because they'd no longer be eating up a valuable slot for their clan that season. If they disappear, so what? They can easily be replaced. If we just remove caps entirely, then CW becomes not only more competitive but also more enjoyment-driven rather than obligation-driven. Counterintuitively, removing the cap might increase participation by making CW more fun, flexible, and rewarding.

Edited 8/24/2022 19:28:05

Imo the cap also protects players against themselves.

Not for being compelled, but out of some sort of perceived moral obligation I would tend to play as many slots as possible.

God, I really can't imagine a CW with unlimited participation.

Just my feelings of course.

Where does the obligation come from, though? There's no cap, for example, on how much time per day people spend with their friends and loved ones (pretty high priority for most) but most don't take every opportunity to do so. Exhaustion and conflicting priorities, as well as expectations set by others, define an equilibrium. But if you add a cap, people will anchor to that cap and that will define the obligation. Imagine if you could only tell your parents you love them or hug your kids a maximum of seven times a week, at most once a day. Even though most do a lot less, if you add a cap, people will feel guilty/compelled to not pass up opportunities consistent with their obligations to others- they probably will not make the 7/week quota, but the loss aversion would make most feel guilty and exhausted by something that's not exhausting when internally motivated. Paradoxically, the exhaustion and unpleasantness of doing something because you'd feel guilty if you didn't might make people do that thing a lot less than otherwise by sucking the intrinsic value out of the activity.

If there's unlimited participation and you're not "taking up" a slot, I'd wager we'd all participate in CW in a healthier way where it's about what's fun for us and how we prioritize CW relative to other ways we can use our time (in the game or outside).

Edited 8/24/2022 22:19:09

It's a personal thing :-)
I'm a born leader and I tend to lead by example, so I feel an inherent pressure to play as much as I can.

But, having given it some thought: removing the cap and the number of times/day a player can play, could work, in combination with a only the best result of the day will be taken into account rule.

In other words, for instance, within a "day",
- if you record 3 losses and 1 win, than the 1 win will be taken into account;
- if you record multiple wins, only 1 win will be taken into account.

Something that I notice, among my clan, is that people get demotivated by recording consecutive losses and, because of that, give up on playing.
I think that, if they would have the option to play multiple times a day, that 1 loss might not be so demotivating, as there would be the option to try again (within the same day).

You can argue that they already have the try again option in the current framework, but, I'd say: no. Having to wait till the next "day", is a different thing than having to wait till the next slot. And, moreover, under my proposal, you get (a total of) 6 chances/day, versus just the 1 chance/day you have now.

And, as you mention, on top of it all, people would have the chance to play more (and have more fun and/or more training).

Edited 8/25/2022 13:32:01

people get demotivated by recording consecutive losses

+1. We can measure this by looking at people's likelihood of remaining on CW after consecutive losses or if they start their season with a loss. (Same for wins.)

That's also a casualty of clan-level matchmaking/rating. Individual-level would have most people win ~50% of the time, while random matchmaking would have them win based on how good they are relative to the overall player pool. With clan-level matchmaking, the matchmaking system actively works to put some players on win streaks and others on loss streaks since they're all matchmade using the clan rating, which considerably misrepresents most individuals' skill.

Troll me for this (and, yes, I know, this is nothing but a thought exercise), but... what about giving points for playing, regardless of the result.

I mean, obviously, there should also be points for winning, but if you would get points just for playing, people would have the feeling they contribute to the clan's performance, even when they (continuously) lose.

@l4v
I'm not sure what a 'good training clan' is, only what I'm seen in Corp (nothing was offered, I didn't ask), and then TSFH, Harmony, Yolo, Discovery, MH.

TSFH / Discovery / MH are the ones I'd say are good training clans, simply b/c of Ursus, Photonic & Stone+Nick Pugs+Emu Pub respectively, who actually provided useful feedback over a number of games, really trying to explain the how/why of the suggestions they're saying, really identifying areas of improvement.

From what I'm experienced, while many clans have skilled players, most clans only have 1-2 of these players (ie: who will spend time and provide actually meaningful feedback), so there doesn't really seem to be any real "training clans", but rather training players, and if you happen to get time with one, it's training, and the rest of what is called training often ends up as sparring matches which still might end up providing learning, but isn't really training.

So I guess since MH seems to have the highest # of training players that I've come across to date, I guess that it makes it work as a training clan? As long as these players and maybe a few more remain in MH.

"Troll me for this (and, yes, I know, this is nothing but a thought exercise), but... what about giving points for playing, regardless of the result."


@v@n - This is somewhat already built into the system. Its not as obvious however. When you lose your clan rating goes down and thus helping you teammates get easier matchups later on. Your loss now, may lead to a win or more.

Edited 8/26/2022 15:12:18

Fair enough.

But I was more reasoning in terms of the system my tennis federation put in place, a couple of years ago: you gets points (counting towards your ranking), for just participating to tournaments.

Evidently, the opponents you draw, depend on your current rating, which drops/increases when you lose/win.

So, it would be a combination of what CW already has + something more.

By the way, imo, this entire concept of a CW Clan rating is utter bs.

---

That being said: as l4v and others already mentioned, CW will probably not change (as it is apparently not a democracy).
However, I would be interested in implementing a CW 2.0, just for trial, to see how it would go.

This would be a manual job (kinda like the CL spreadsheet) and, likely, not as smooth as CW, but... f it.
If anyone is interested in participating (with their Clan) and/or helping me out a little, let me know.

Edited 8/26/2022 15:28:24

Couldn't agree more. That matchmaking needs a rework for sure. Older accounts get punished because they are "suppose" to be better then a younger account.

Giving (for example) +0.25 points for playing & +1.00 points (an additional 0.75 pts) for wins would be interesting, but then the concept of "participation wins over skill" gets even stronger. A clan with 75% WR playing 300 games = clan with 50% WR playing 390 games, and the weaker clan pulls ahead with 391 games.

So while interesting and solves 1 problem (gives players motivation), I think it amplifies the biggest complaint players already have with CW.

I personally like the idea, b/c imho CW should be about the whole team effort, not the overall WR. WR means nothing if you don't play lots of games and keep the WR high. Maybe 0.25 is too high, who knows. But make it too low and it becomes too little to be a motivator. If these additional points can't collectively add up to change a ranking, there's not really any motivation.

CW is like a building a loooooooooooong bridge in a race where longest bridge wins (most territories). It doesn't matter of you have an efficient team (high WR) that can build 75m per day but only work 3 days per week if other less efficient teams who may only build 50m per day but work every day (225m vs 350m per week), the more diligent team will build a longer bridge and win.

Removing the participation caps would be brutal imho. There are already rally cries and pushes from teams to get everyone to play everyday. If now everyone can play 6x per day, "play every day" could turn into "play at least 2 slots per day, 3 if you can", and maybe even "the score is close, pls play 4 slots for the next week if at all possible". The limits we're suggesting here are to remove the urgency of hitting a slot every day while (hopefully) still giving players flexibility to play when it makes sense for them in life.

The CW is implemented now causes players to plan their day around CW participation which imho is a terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible design. Especially when you plan your day around slot X, get there and it's less templates than expected and none of them are good, or you don't get a game b/c not enough opponents, etc.

Did I mention terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible design?