Nexon can you help us understand your stance on war issues?

[Sletteer1987]

S_How, great post! I agree on all the points you made and feel that like you put many of these are gamebreaking to those who focus on WW and want to play a fair game and not have to worry about if they are going to get matched up against a harder team due to stacking or if they tie and los because of >100% glitch. Both of our alliances have seen the points you have made at one time or another and they need to be addressed. People can give all the excuses they want but it doesn't make the 1st point you made ethical or right. While I think your 5th point will solve some of the issues with base stacking I don't believe it will completely fix it as their main goal is to be on top. So maybe adding in a Team Medal Leaderboard again will fix it some but I feel disqualifying teams from Glory leaderboards for stacking can help fix some of the issues we are seeing with the Stacking of Iron and Classical Bases.

 

[Vixen]

Sletteer..... yes totally agree

"I feel disqualifying teams from Glory leaderboards for stacking can help fix some of the issues we are seeing with the Stacking of Iron and Classical Bases"

 

[S_How]

Sletteer..... yes totally agree

"I feel disqualifying teams from Glory leaderboards for stacking can help fix some of the issues we are seeing with the Stacking of Iron and Classical Bases"

This will never happen, we need to push for a solution not punishments (they are woefully incapable of handling manual punishments anyways lol). No matter how manipulative it is to make sure you get matchups that provide zero challenge or risk, it is allowable under the rule set right now. Nexon has to make an in game change, sooner rather than later, that both removes the low ages bases from matching formulas, and appropriately rewards teams for behaving normally. Everyday they wait to confront this problem is another chunk of the community lost, and more teams picking up on base stacking and glitching to break ties. Im seeing it in my team - we have survived the crash era, survived the no new members era, survived the reduced star glitch, made it through the demo 5* hacks, survived the crown hack debacles.....but nothing has hurt morale or basic willingness to play more than this has.

 

[ccfoo]

This will never happen, we need to push for a solution not punishments (they are woefully incapable of handling manual punishments anyways lol). No matter how manipulative it is to make sure you get matchups that provide zero challenge or risk, it is allowable under the rule set right now. Nexon has to make an in game change, sooner rather than later, that both removes the low ages bases from matching formulas, and appropriately rewards teams for behaving normally. Everyday they wait to confront this problem is another chunk of the community lost, and more teams picking up on base stacking and glitching to break ties. Im seeing it in my team - we have survived the crash era, survived the no new members era, survived the reduced star glitch, made it through the demo 5* hacks, survived the crown hack debacles.....but nothing has hurt morale or basic willingness to play more than this has.

I agree with you. It's demoralising to lose trophies to alliances which blatantly exploit this loophole and claim they are doing it legally. The irony is our greatest hope here, NB4, represented Nexon and glorified that top alliance exploiting it by giving the leader an exclusive interview and posting it on Facebook. What's even more sad is that some respected 10 bars active forum members here in another thread defended that alliance and their blatant exploit, saying that why should we care so much about leadership boards, glory or wars? They have the "rights" to do so within the boundary of the game. And another TOP alliance decided to follow in their footsteps cause they said that they have "no other choice".

Sometimes I wonder, why do I play on? It's bearable if the community goes through those bugs together, as we stand more or less on the same side urging nexon to fix the alliance gate, ww star glitches e.t.c Sadly, this issue has divided the community, with those power hungry alliances willing to sell their souls away by exploiting this loophole just to win, and Nexon standing on their side.

 

[Sletteer1987]

Oh I understand that just would be nice! I agree that something needs to be changed so that this is not an option for alliances anymore.

 

[Sletteer1987]

Well said! I play for my alliances and leave the stress out. I update my council with what is going on in the forums and leaderboards but continue playing and having fun for myself and my team. I am very passionate about this game and aren't about to let power hungry people take that away from me.

 

[Vixen]

We should start naming and shaming on forum....

 

[S_How]

We should start naming and shaming on forum....

As much as Id like to, it wont work. The first team that did it to manipulate the matchup algorithm, which led them to the top of the leaderboards, was universally ridiculed but still got an elaborate facebook interview for their amazing accomplishment. As was the first top team to adopt it en masse. But it is so effective people wont care what it says about them. Energy is better spent bringing it to Nexon's attention and being an advocate for change And, I dont want this thread to be derailed by finger pointing lol.

 

[Max_imus]

I agree. We have to have one goal as a community and thats the WW issues to be repaired immediately, esp the 102% glitch. Push that in front of nexon devs eyes.

 

[JuDomines]

I didn't even notice this weird interview

 

[Prodigal Clint]

Hope you are looking into this Nb4powerup ....?

 

[phil_dee]

No Title

The first team that did it to get on the leaderboards was universally ridiculed but still got an elaborate facebook interview for their amazing accomlishment.

Again, I find the need to point out that what we do was NOT for the purpose of exploiting this leaderboard--our strategy preceded the advent of this leaderboard by seven months or so.

Attached is an image from this forum (see https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexon...al-leaderboard), posted in mid-March. We didn't even try to exploit THAT leaderboard; read through the thread and find that we didn't know it had existed until it was two months old. This may seem like an insignificant detail, but so long as people continue to argue that our intent is to "manipulate the leaderboard," then continue to use this to argue that this intent needs to be punished, I will apparently need to continue showing otherwise.

 

[phil_dee]

In addition, I should point out again that none of our Iron Age and Classical Age members are secondary accounts created for the purpose of manipulating the leaderboard (by creating dead bases and such). In fact, only one of them is a secondary account at all--and he is both the strongest of these bases AND the most active.

 

[S_How]

Your implication seems to be that because you have been doing it for a long time, it is not manipulation of the system. Kind of funny. But, I do agree you had been doing this far before the leaderboard was introduced!

I will revise my previous post to say 'manipulate the war matchup algorithm' which is indisputable.

 

[phil_dee]

No doubt--however, constructing such a war roster by using actual players who arrive naturally (and then paring alliance membership accordingly in order to maximize the strategy, as we have) needs to be distinguished from the technique of creating various dead accounts and parking them on the roster permanently, no? The former helps Nexon by increasing war participation among new players, while the latter brings no such benefit.

 

[S_How]

To me, there is no distinguishable difference between the techniques, in fact the intentional pairing with max level players may be even worse. They are both done with one goal in mind, and the low level players serve only one purpose - to manipulate the matchup so that the top players have to fight bases so pitifully low relative to their own, that they can 5* without breaking a sweat, and that the participation of the iron age members simply doesnt matter. They are there to remove any risk whatsoever that you will face a team that could challenge the stacked team.

Im trying very hard to prevent this thread from becoming a flame war So, I will just speak objectively about 'team X' to address your point of 'naturally arriving iron age accounts'. If a team purposefully constructs their team to include 20 max global players and 20 iron age unwitting newbies, they are doing a tremendous disservice to the new people and the game. If Team X faces a more flat team, averaging EA perhaps but spanning from Gunpowder to early Global, these 'naturally arriving' iron age accounts will have a terrible experience in war and be able to contribute or earn virtually nothing on a regular basis because they would have very little chance of even defeating a base 3-4 ages higher than them.

So, in one case they are dead alts and meaningless. In the other case, they are new players being taken advantage of and exposed to a very bad perspective on the game.

 

[phil_dee]

Something for you guys to think about--what many of you are advocating for is nearly impossible, and it is nearly impossible for two reasons.

First, there is little evidence that there is even a "loophole" (as ccfoo calls it) to fix. Use of the term "loophole" implies that developer intent has always been to promote flat war rosters (i.e., rosters with a high degree of parity between members). However, there is too much evidence to the contrary to draw that assumption--not only have alliances been using our technique for a long time in this game, but it was a well-known technique in other games. The technique is well-known enough that its use was clearly foreseeable among the developers of this game, who then provided for its use anyway. We should be operating under the assumption that the technique was embraced from the moment that World War was introduced here.

Second, how would such a "fix" be enforceable? In alliances where the disparity between bases on a war roster is arbitrarily decided to be "bad" by the five to ten self-appointed arbiters in this forum, how would alliance intent be determined? Who decides whether this disparity arose from a desire to be manipulative? Who decides how much disparity is too much, and by what standard? Will very strong alliances find themselves flagged whenever a series of new players happen to waltz into their rosters? By what standard should those very strong alliances be compelled to reject those new members? Why should ANY alliance be compelled to reject new members--and then, if keeping new members, why should they be compelled to keep others just to avoid making their roster look TOO unbalanced (whatever that means)? What does "too unbalanced" look like, and how is this decided?

Think about these things carefully before arguing vaguely that "someone needs to fix this."

 

[phil_dee]

For illustration, imagine this hypothetical: Nexon introduces something that requires a war roster to have less than 40% difference between the levels of the strongest and weakest members on that roster. This would effectively eliminate our use of all Iron Age and Classical Age members altogether.

The levels of the top 30 players in my alliance are as follows: 198, 184, 179, 179, 176, 174, 169, 168, 163, 163, 162, 156, 154, 154, 153, 152, 151, 148, 148, 146, 146, 144, 141, 141, 137, 134, 133, 131, 130, 130. In our hypothetical, this 30-player roster would be compliant with the new rule (only 34% disparity). However, over several months, I would work to trim this roster so it is as close as possible to having fifteen players at level 198, and fifteen players at level 130--or even slightly lower than 130, as I would still have several percentage points to work with. What happens then? This roster would be just as dominant as the one we use now, while also severely limiting opportunities for people who are new to the game to get involved in wars.

 

[phil_dee]

The 'terrible experience' arising from facing a flat team should be quite rare, though, considering that it is already apparent that use of these types of rosters renders alliances uncompetitive. As alliances continue to embrace the technique in question, these Iron Age and Classical Age members will increasingly find themselves attacking their peers.

 

[S_How]

Come on Phil lol, your record of 100-3 or whatever it is now seems to not only show its not rare, but in fact the mismatching is horribly common. Your top are steamrolling, and your bottom half are doing virtually nothing productive. And Im not sure what to say about your argument that it will get better if we all 'embrace' the strategy, other than man I really hope that never happens haha, what an awful game it will have become.