Quovatis & Europeos - You are speaking only from the perspective of the top 10. If looking at it from that angle, you are right there has been 0 measurable progress and the partial solution they've put in seems laughable. I have a lot of respect for 1D, I think you all have some of the smartest players and posters on this forum, and you've been able to help articulate to others what it is like in your alliances in the current system. We had one of your members visit us last week and he was great, we have a lot of friends there
But, the problem is for every 1D (and other 'top 10' teams) that are in a horrible situation of being forced to sandbag, there are literally 10 other teams that have absolutely no reason to do it other than to manipulate matchups. There are probably hundreds of these teams that have emulated this practice now, and for every 'non top 10' team that chooses not to have inactive irons in their war lineups, it has ruined the game. You are probably having an experience of 7/10 wars being stalemates, with the other being wins. Most of the normally built teams not in the top 10 have those same stalemate issues (we have had 6 in our last 10), and for most teams the rest of wars are instead losses to teams that have so effectively sandbagged that there was no chance to win.
Its crazy, in our alliance we are so badly outmatched almost every single war, we now look at stalemates as victories. We've faced a lot of the current top 25 glory teams, let me tell you a lot of them have no business being there lol. I cant even begin to count the number of people in those top 25 that have wiped out on our industrial/early global defenses. But it doesnt matter when they have 15-20 players stronger than our strongest.
Since the change in glory that reduces rewards for teams with sandbag accounts, here are the positive things we have experienced:
1) We faced W.A.R., a notorious top stacking team. They are top 10 now I believe, and had a 25 atomic/global and 15 iron age stack. They were really bad but still got a perfect score because outside our top 15 they only had to deal with EA level defenses, or lower. However, their upside was only 8 glory if they won (we stalemated) and I dont think they will sustain top 10 for much longer.
2) We faced Voodoo Nation 3x in the past 3 weeks. The first two times were before the change. One was a stalemate and one we lost, both times we could have lost 500-600 glory (they gained the same). They had about a 20% sandbag and came with easily 10-15 bases more advanced than our top 2. Then we met them a third time after the glory change. We had gone down a bit in glory, they had gone up a bit, but not too much.....however their upside was about 120 glory instead of the 500-600, and we could only lose that 120, a very significant change. We stalemated again. I would say they are an above average team, but certainly no where near the 1D/UA/true top team level. They've been successful because they sandbag.
3) We are currently in a war against a Chinese team that has about a 10% sandbag. Its a pretty even match, but we have beat this team before, and we are being rewarded with a higher glory win potential than we ordinarily would be because they are sandbagging and we arent. So, there is positive upside if we can prevent a stalemate.
4) Before our current war, we faced two teams in a row that didnt sandbag. This is probably the first time this has happened twice in a row in over 4 months. Usually its about 1 in 10-15 wars we get non-sanbagged teams. (One we stalemated bc they were very good, one we easily won)
So, to say nothing has changed is not accurate. For those highly active teams not in the top 10, of which there are hundreds, there has been change. Its changed sandbagging teams experiences (you can see many of them complaining on the forums with very ambiguous claims of 'my diverse team is being punished' lol), and its changed the experience for teams like mine who have no desire to be a top 10 glory team, but just want fun, reasonably matched wars where we dont have manipulated matchups. It was fun for us when we even broke the top 100 haha. I think the current top 5 on the leaderboards is pretty much where it should be. The rest of the top 50 though, with notable and impressive exceptions, are teams that are only there because they've manipulated matches better than others, and I hope the recent changes will make a little dent in that, from our experiences it may.
I say all of this for one reason though, just to give a different perspective. While there is some positive to the recent changes, I think it is woefully inadequate to solve the broader problems that impact many teams. Stalemates are just crazy awful. Even with depleted supply drop event inventories and increasing atomic defenses there is still a massive likelihood of stalemating, especially in above average age teams. The troop card problem is real, even one troop card played is often equivalent to 40-50 capacity, enough to easily throw off any balance. And then to make available and allow multiples of these is nuts. The matchmaking problem for top advancement alliances is awful, hearing about DW (a team I respect a lot) having to wait over a week for a full weight match really shows how big of a problem it is. Nexon has a lot of work to do, and any positives this recent glory change has brought, is still dwarfed by the monumental problem they have. The scary thing is, I dont even think they realize it....the promises of communication have been broken, no detail has been presented, and we hear things like 'we will continue to monitor' which just disheartens people experiencing the problem since its the same old BS we've always heard.