Update 5.30: Clan Wars refresh

Warzone has just been updated to version 5.30.0! This update brings the biggest refresh to Clan Wars since its launch! These changes are now going live with Season 56, which will begin at midnight GMT. This blog post describes what’s changed.

The update is live now on the website and standalone clients. The update will go live on Android and iOS in the coming weeks.

Please Suggest new Clan War Templates

Soon, we’ll hold a poll to see what templates players would like to see added to Clan Wars. If you’d like to suggest a template to be included on the poll, please post it in this thread.

As part of this 5.30 update, Warzone now supports a ranked-choice polling system, so once the official poll is created players will be able to rank the templates in the order they most prefer them. Once poll results are in, we’ll use an instant-runoff voting style to choose which templates to add. I’ll create the poll once the iOS and Android apps are released, so that app users can vote too.

New Clan Wars UI

The user interface to clan wars has been simplified and received new features!
– The leading clans are now shown directly on the clan wars main page. You’ll always know who’s winning without having to dig into the map page.
– A new “recent games” button lets you view all the games that happened in clan wars recently, regardless of which clan they belonged to.
– A new “view all timeslots” button lets you view all of the timeslots that went into a season, so you can easily see what templates players are matching for or what templates were available.
– Each clan can easily now be viewed right off the main page, allowing you to see their recent games and list of players without having to dig into the map page.
– All of the new calculations, like win strength (described below), are clearly shown on a clan’s games list for each day’s worth of games.

Matchmaking Change

The algorithm that Warzone uses to match players within a timeslot is improving. Previously, Warzone used a top-down matchmaking system which would always match the clans with the highest war rating first. Now, Warzone will start by matching clans with the most players queued to that timeslot first, and match them to the clan with the closest rated opponent available.

Based on my experiments, this decreases the likelihood that players will end up without a game by about 20%. Further, the match quality improved slightly, making this algorithm a solid improvement.

Thanks to Doctor K for suggesting this new algorithm, and to FiveSmith for helping me find a bug in my experiments.

Clan Size Increases to 50

All clans that were previously limited to 40 players can now hold up to 50 players! This also applies to new clans created from this point forward. Any clan seeking new players can use the Open Clans feature to bring themselves up to 50 if they’d like to.

Removed Clan Wars Cap

Prior to this update, clans were limited to a 40-player roster for each clan war season. This cap is gone, and now any clanned player can always participate in a clan war game every day.

End-of-day Processing

At midnight GMT, clan wars processes the previous day’s worth of games. During this end-of-day processing, several things happen:
– Rewards are given out, based on the number of wins each clan got. See the rewards screen for details.
– Each clan’s win strength is calculated (see below)
– Each clan’s points are calculated. Points = number of wins * win strength
– Territories on the clan war map are awarded based on the number of points scored
– If all territories on the map are conquered, the season ends and a new season begins

You’ll be able to see which day each clan war game finished in, as the new UI shows off in a clan’s games where the day ended with all the details about the calculations that went into that day.

Seasons now always end at midnight

Clan war seasons will now always end at midnight in the GMT timezone. This is important for fairness. Prior to this update, seasons ended immediately when the last territory was given out on the clan war map. This had notable downsides, such as the later timeslots in a day could be a new season, which players could miss out on if they weren’t awake during the hours of that last timeslot. Having the season aligned with the day schedule eliminates this issue.

Win Strength

Prior to this update, clans who were competing for maximum clan war wins were encouraged to get 40 players playing every day. Some clans found this difficult, so to make that easier, that number is now being reduced to 25. Further, since clans aren’t locked into a roster, it doesn’t even have to be the same 25 players each day like before. This drastically increases the flexibility for clans who are competing for the top ranks.

All clans, regardless of size, can earn up to a theoretical 25 points each day.

Here’s how the win strength is calculated for a single day:
For a clan with 25 or fewer players, the win strength will always be 100%, meaning each win will always be worth 1 point.
For a clan with 25-50 players, where 25 or fewer players participate in clan wars in a day, the win strength will always be 100%.
For a clan with 25-50 players, where more than 25 players participate in a day, the win strength will be calculated as: 25 / NumberOfParticipators
For a legacy uncapped clan with more than 50 players, where (ClanSize – 25) or fewer players participate in a day, win strength is calculated as 25 / (ClanSize – 25). This means that they want (ClanSize – 25) players in their clan to compete to achieve the maximum daily score of 25.

(Note: Just like prior to this update, a “win” in a 2v2 template is actually two wins, since two players won a game that day, but I’m leaving that part out of the above calculations for simplicity)

Estimated points

The official win strength of each clan won’t be known until the end-of-day processing. However, to help show more accurate rankings, the clan wars ranking page will estimate the current day’s win strength and points and add these points into their displayed total. This prevents having to wait until the end of the day to see where your clan stands.

Clicking into a clan’s page will make it clear how many points its showing are real and how many are part of the estimate.

In-season rewards

Previously, rewards were earned mid-season based on the number of territories you conquered on the clan war map. Now, mid-season rewards are earned simply by the number of wins your clan achieves. This makes it easier to understand, and also ensures you can still earn rewards even after all territories on the map are awarded to clans near the end of a season.

The rewards now last 3 weeks instead of 2, and also have increased effects.

Make sure to claim your rewards in a timely fashion, as if you don’t claim them, they’ll expire a month after the season ends.

Monday AMA

This Monday, October 28th at 11am PDT, Fizzer will be doing an Ask-Me-Anything session live on twitch! Feel free to drop in and ask any questions you have, or if you can’t make it, you can post your questions to this thread and view the recording containing your answer after it’s over.

Other Changes

• Classic: Removed the export-to-youtube-is-new balloon.
• Classic: Fixed a bug when watching deploys/attacks that could cause them to appear at the wrong scale for 1 frame in some circumstances.