Beating a dead horse. Glory/Stacking ruining the game

[Riyad604]

As much as I have wanted to avoid chiming in on the most discussed topic since war replays, I feel like I have to add another voice to the throngs of displeased Dominations players. My alliance Vancity got as high as 22nd on the glory board but came up against 3 stackers in a row, the latest being Quebec Glory (9 stacker accounts, 4 being iron age). The sentiment amongst my alliance is very doom and gloom. These stackers as we all know are taking the fun out of a phenomenal game. Anyway, I keep reading that nb4 says they are looking into it but from what I have read and seen, time may not be on Nexons side if loyal (some even paying) customers start to search elsewhere for a new game. Let's hope this gets resolved ASAP.

 

[Vixen]

We hit QuébecGlory quite a few weeks ago - they have no right to be on that leaderboard using these tactics. They have no glory or kudos on this forum anymore - just shame.

Riyad604 ... I feel your pain. Don't give up but thanks for adding your voice to the growing number of alliances who are getting inpatient with Nexon's slow movement on this issue.

 

[TheOneLeggedOne]

I Totally agree, before the Glory days, Coalitions and UNI, Wars were enjoyable, and seemingly FAIR... And we Won our fair share of them, around 7/10...
But now we get Creamed a LOT, all this Crown hungry Buffing add-ons are a Crown Hackers DREAM Ticket too GLORY... So I am thinking of quitting wars altogether until this Dire situation is Rectified.

 

[Tower]

Add 1-2 Iron bases yourself and you will avoid the stackers I promise you, only 1 iron age base is enough in 30x30 or 25vs25 match ups - at least it is for us as we consist mostly of industrial age players.

We were like you, facing stacker after stacker so we dropped medal requirement to 200 and let in a few Iron Age Bases. Now we bring 1 or 2 into every war and we do not see any stackers in our match ups. We only meet alliance fairly close to our level, meaning 1/4 global, 1/2 Industrial and the rest EA to gunpowder.

Only "problem" we have now is that we feel that we put a lot of work into trying to train/improve our Iron Age players, who very often are players who are just trying out the game, and hence become inactive very fast. So we kick these players constantly to get in new ones... (Automatic kick if inactive for more than 3 days without giving a reason in the chat before going inactive).

The good thing about this "micro-stacking" is that if everyone does it, it means that it will be easy for new players to join an experienced alliance and learn from them, and in the end the serious stackers with 4-8 lv198 bases and 4-8 inactive Iron age bases will only face each other

Removing stacking completely is "impossible" because it will change the game and WW completely - making it hard for new players to get into a good alliance and grow... Because who of the top alliances would accept an Iron age base if they could have only Industrial and global? Very few that is... making the entry into the game that much harder and boring for new players.

Only possible solution to stacking is to divide the alliance match up into brackets. Matching e.g. the top 1/3, middle 1/3 and bottom 1/3, in stead of matching the whole alliance as they seem to be doing now.

 

[Isrem Ovani]

It is not true that nothing can be done. There are several things Nexon can do to address stacking:

1. Change the way a tie is resolved. Let it not count as a loss for both, but a half win. Both teams should simply share evenly the winning reward in loot and glory.
2. Attacks not taken need to be counted as 0% losses. That way letting the lower half not attack will not lead to a 100% win.
3. Change the matchmaking setup. Compare glory first, attack/defense last.

The first will eleminate the need for cheating the matchup for high level guilds, the second will punish sandbagging, amd the third will lead to a leaderboard where mainly high level guilds are in the top ranks in the long run.

 

[Tower]

Those three things changes absolutely nothing.

1) Letting a tie give half the glory will change nothing wrt stacking. It will help with glory loss though.

2) Punishing for attacks not done will not change anything either. Most of those stacked Iron Age bases are alts of the lv198s - very easy for them to log on with their Iron age account, send in an archer and have it counted as an attack. Solves nothing.

3) Comparing glory will not change anything wrt stacking either, only make it even harder for non-stackers to climb the leaderboard.

 

[Penambangliar]

We are on war 35 vs 35 VN Elite war, they bring 13 iron age, Classical & Medieval and the rest global (No 1-20) with high level lvl > 190. We bring global to gunpowder and all active players not for dummy.
FYI, our best industrial Age on No 9. LOL....Nexon, please do something before they ruin your game.

 

[Tower]

Just checked out VN ELite War - they are jokes.. Close to 10 lv198 and even more lv <30...

 

[Spaceboy]

Haha..it is getting worse every day.. but I do not understand how they are able to win stars with this..their 10 globals will do 20 5* attacks, so 100 points. But this is not enough to win a war of 30 players, so max 150 points. How can you win if you have more/equal low level players than top players ?

 

[Wendy]

because, after your first ten have smashed the 1-20 of the enemy, you will probably have enough IA players that can take the last ten without efforts, being the last ten usually EA/gunp in a balanced GA/IA/EA alliance. So you have the first 10 global age players taking care of everything that's global/industrial and IA players to take all the rest. Sometimes medieval!!

 

[QuébecGlory]

We have every right to be on the leaderboard, as much as you do would. We earned every point. We will take your points again. You keep whining, we'll keep winning.

 

[Hammer]

The problem with "doing something about stacking" is it could end up punishing totally innocent alliances and players.

My alliance has twenty five or so hard core members and usually around twenty newbies at any one time.

Are people saying I shouldn't include new players in wars? Because then how will the learn and progress?

New players will be frozen out by alliances if including them in wars is punished, then they will go off to some other game and DomiNations will wither and die..

 

[Green Master]

Just change war rules:
only 1 attack per person or
each base can be attacked twice by different guys and both attacks count

Should be easy changes for smart IT guys

 

[S_How]

The problem with "doing something about stacking" is it could end up punishing totally innocent alliances and players.

My alliance has twenty five or so hard core members and usually around twenty newbies at any one time.

Are people saying I shouldn't include new players in wars? Because then how will the learn and progress?

New players will be frozen out by alliances if including them in wars is punished, then they will go off to some other game and DomiNations will wither and die..

I hear this argument a lot, and it never ever makes sense to me.

1) If they dont fix stacking the game is over for many semi - competitive players. Just like if they dont fix stalemates the game is over for many top teams. I'd argue that the game will die 10x faster if they dont act on this than it will by not changing lol.

2) The accounts people are concerned about - are nearly zero development bases. How long were you in iron age, classical age? For me, it was a matter of days. Having many new people on your roster that you are developing is awesome. Keep doing that. Most teams employing the stacking/sandbagging strategy are using alt accounts, or accounts that never make war hits and never advance beyond the age. It happens in nearly 100% of wars 35+. We have had at least 15 stacked opponents in our last 20 wars. ZERO of them were legit, playing, learning members. 100% of them were put in a roster without exception for manipulating a matchup so that one team has a clearly dominant top half and has zero risk of losing or being challenged. I can remember 1-2 out of hundreds of these bases actually making hits.

3) What kind of solution are you worried about? None of the ones Ive seen suggested would hurt a normally built team that takes in a few new people on occasion and develops them. What did you do before 2 months ago before this was the norm, and for the first 10 months war existed?

I'll give you the benefit of doubt, even though your alliance slogan when I looked it up was "come on you irons" lol. I would never want to see teams that take in and develop new players punished. I dont think they would be, either. Suggestions like having each base received up to 2 5* hits, or excluding the bottom ~25% of a team from the matchmaking algorithm shouldnt hurt a team.

Everyone should know that fair matchups are important to a game, and hopefully should support solutions that help that cause.

 

[S_How]

Tower, I usually agree with you, but on this one I strongly disagree. The solution to matchup manipulation should not be forcing everyone else to do it. This is a very slippery slope. What requires 1-2 today, will require 3-4 next week, 6-8 next month, etc. Teams should not be forced to have iron age accounts to make matchups more fair. We've also seen a huge impact to the matchmaking calculation even with just a small (2) amount of iron bases - Chris from outlaws had a detailed spreadsheet that showed how just two iron age bases created a horrid mismatch for his team a week or so ago, only those two bases dropped the average level of his opposition by like 15, something crazy like that. Level isnt the only indicator of a teams strength, but its at least a guideline to the impact even just a few bases have.

Removing stacking is 100% possible, and can be done in a variety of ways. The matchmaking calculation could assign a lower weight to the bottom of rosters, or I loved Gail's idea of having each base be able to be hit twice for up to 10*, or the glory award formula could be changed to really reward teams bringing full weight to a war unlike it does now. There are many good solutions

 

[S_How]

Totally agree Vixen! There are top teams that stack that will still be top teams when its fixed, and then there are just laughable teams like this. Dont worry, they talk trash now but one of two outcomes will happen, without a doubt. 1) They will fix glory so that stacking/sandbagging doesnt work and these alliances will crumble within weeks, 2) They will not fix glory and they will literally only be playing against each other because everyone else will have quit lol.

 

[S_How]

@ the OP - its not a dead horse. Unfortunately, until Nexon takes a stance they are the ones keeping it alive and well

 

[Spaceboy]

We had the same problem and we spliited up the group sometimes in two to do a war for each group:
* 10 mercenaries war with only the top 10
* little chicken war with the bottom 10

These wars were huge fun for all groups and everyone got equal enemies. The chicks were perfming better in war than our top players and it was fun giving them good troops to fight in their chicks war..hehe

But this was months ago and now I'm sure that sandbagging is become the norm for many alliances, as all the others are doing it. Ok, you have your pride, glory, ethics, vsalues, etc.. but wasting time & resources in an unfair war is not fun for any player.

Our chicks now have become very good attackers and we have no chicks any more to train in our academy ;-)

I'm still convinced that Nexon has to decide on this and change the rules a bit. Any decision will be better than doing nothing like now...

 

[Mr Suplex]

The problem with "doing something about stacking" is it could end up punishing totally innocent alliances and players.

My alliance has twenty five or so hard core members and usually around twenty newbies at any one time.

Are people saying I shouldn't include new players in wars? Because then how will the learn and progress?

New players will be frozen out by alliances if including them in wars is punished, then they will go off to some other game and DomiNations will wither and die..

The action being requested is not to punish anyone, but to change how Glory and matchmaking are calculated. The current algorithm is the problem; players are just taking advantage of it.

 

[Penambangliar]

I am no 2 on war ranking with lvl 180 road lvl 7 and target recomended is no 18 with lvl 173 with road lvl 7. if he upgrade his road to max, maybe his lvl 180 up.
Even though i still beat their No 4, but how can Our Industrial Age fight with them?