Changes to PVP teams

Since I hit level 1000 I stopped seeing Firebomb teams in the 3 trophy slot. This would be going back about 2 1/2 months. PC must be different. Seeing Firebomb teams in ranked PvP isn’t the problem from what I’m hearing though. It’s mining them in casual PvP at Warlord IV with gold boost or soul boost teams. What I’m hearing, but do not agree with, is that farm in this way hurts the games economy aka too many legendary tasks are being completed. I translate this as because end gamers are too good we’re going to make the game harder for everyone.

If you’re an end gamer you may not notice it too much because you’ll have the troops to change your strategy. However, if you’re an early or mid gamer this can be an issue for you. Of, course people in the past were able to build gold reserves without farming Firebombs, but how many kingdoms were there back then? How many delves?

I play enough “real” PvP that it hasn’t affected me personally and it probably won’t. If it does, I’ll stop using delves. That’s the advice I would give anyone struggling to make gold. Avoid delves until you can make a surplus.

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Here’s “moaning”, in context.

I’m happy to get more variety in my matches. Even though it was “good” for me, the number of Fire Bomb teams made PvP feel more like Explore. Whatever changed is probably good, and has been a long time coming.

But “Fire Bomb Farming” was a niche activity some players loved. It was easy gold, and with cheap rerolls in casual PvP was more lucrative than it would be to take whatever comes. These teams were also a relief for people in that awkward, long phase of mid-game where you can’t reliably beat the PvP teams they face.

Those people are “moaning” because they feel like this game was better before the change, and that it will not be better after the change.

The problem is we have no clue what changed, how, and precisely why. This is why I’m moaning.

Suppose the devs said, “We never liked the Fire Bomb defense or that technique of farming. That is a bad play pattern, like changing your class more than once daily. So the new algorithm works to limit how often you will be matched with this team to make it less attractive for farming.” That would still cause moaning, but we’d have an argument. “I want the game to be this way” vs. “the devs just said they don’t want that” is a valid back-and-forth with a clear winner: the devs.

As respectfully as I can state it, I believe this thread is an example of mismanaging the game’s community via secrecy and obscurity. This is a common pain point in GoW and it’s as bad any game bug: I’ve seen complaints about transparency since my first day in the game. It should be addressed broadly because clear communication disqualifies many arguments as irrational. Opaque mechanics leave us in the dark about what is “right”, so everyone argues about “how I think it works” instead of “how it works”.

We knew nothing about matchmaking before. Now all we know is “it doesn’t work like before”. That leads every person to make dozens of different conclusions, and now we’re squabbling over which of those conclusions is best. But each set of conclusions represents “how I want matchmaking to be”, which is personal and subjective.

If we knew “what matchmaking is”, or at least “matchmaking’s goals”, we could eliminate at least half of this discussion. But we don’t, and we won’t, so I expect we’ll see “Bring back old matchmaking” as a routine topic for eternity.

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Good for you, not at all how it was for me though and judging by the posts here for many others aswell, maybe that is a console feature, i wouldn’t know.
Technically there was no reason for fully upgraded Firebombs to stop appearing in the 3 trophy slot at any point, as they would have the same teampower rating as fully upgraded Divines or whatever else.

On PC/mobile it was not uncommon to see them in all three options.

I don’t know what has motivated the Devs to implement these changes because they haven’t told us, so any guesses are just that - guesses. Whether it was gold farming at warlord IV, the monotony of the meta, or just the way that people could get to rank 1 by playing suicidal teams? We’ll never know unless they tell us

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Best post in thread! If you are scrolling through to catch up just read this one.

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I was around for the single Elspeth but being a 1 trophy option it wasn’t that great for gold. I was also one of the people that threw a fit as you call it when 1 troop Elspeth defences were removed but that was because setting a 1 troop defence gave more variety in pvp. The single suicidal Elspeth and now Firebombs are so boring to fight all the time and now that we have some variety I’m really happy they are gone.

I will sort of miss Elspeth and Firebombs I did enjoy trying to kill them before they killed themselves.

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I’m loving this change. I’ve done 31 battles this week and fought 4 divine teams last week that would have been 20 - 25 divine teams. Thank you devs for this change I can finally say for the first time in over a year that PvP is actually enjoyable.

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guys please help hard decisions are hard

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I agree they were not great for gold, other than you could beat them in about 10 seconds. I’m fine with the changes, other than it would be nice to get a reason what prompted it. I have saw a few teams I haven’t seen before in PvP today, but it seems like I’m facing lower team scores too now, which is cutting gold that way

Hey there could be some variety there!

Ishbaala/Infernus is going to be on every team, but I’ll bet no two are identical. There are a handful of Divine schools:

  • You might face Divine Protector or Dawnbringer as the hero weapon. Some other weapons pop up but these are the majority.
  • The last troop might be Mercy, Divinia, Ubastet, or Diviner. Each of these plays a little different.

It’s like how occasionally I’d find 3x Fire Bomb and a hero.

Yeah but it was getting to a point where I saw them most times in 2 trophy spots, and 3 occasionally. And the sheer speed of doing them allowed for a lot of gold.

They weren’t all identical. Just a little contextual humor to lighten things up around here. :grin:

I agree that a better reasoning would be ideal from the devs, where Sirrian or Nimhain expose the team’s perspective. But i don’t think it’s something so controversial. I feel like “It just happened.”

I mean, i didn’t mind grinding Firebombs or other silly/weak teams. I treated it as i saw fit. My goal was to earn Gold, Glory and Hero Talent XP, and the best/fast way is facing multiple teams like these and that’s it. It’s not a glorified activity, but it worked for my goals.

The improvementes to the matchmaking system couldn’t simply ignore these teams for the player’s sake of grinding resources. And it’s still possible to put bad teams fully upgraded with four different troops to maybe flood the 3 Trophies battles and the harder battles in Casual PVP to circunvent this change if we assume correctly that this system really tries to avoid showing you similar enemies based on the previous troops you faced.

I beat a team with four Treasures and four Gnomes recently… :stuck_out_tongue:

I am still seeing the same players with maybe 5 matches in between them.
I think the change was to just nerf the frequency of fire Bomb matches in the selection pool. Nothing of note otherwise.
Supposedly over 60k players play PvP weekly. I was hoping the change would allow me to see their Defenses. Instead of the same 60-90 players over a 7 day span of at least 300 matches.

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I see repeat names with just about the same frequency as before. But I see more variety in the three teams presented at one time, and I see a lot fewer Fire Bomb teams overall.

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I can agree with the miscommunication point. This thread has been a great example of a missed opportunity to really sell and explain an important and surely beneficial change to the game.

Some more detail on how it works would be nice I suppose. But as you cannot influence the opponents rolled for you, more knowledge just feeds a craving some of us have - or feeds bizarre frustrations about ‘I’m getting more/less randomness than I’d like’. Knowing how the matchmaking / team avoidance works, I assume wouldn’t change any behaviour or decisions.

This has been due for three years. Whenever there have been meta issues, concerns have been as much about variety / tedious repetition as about how hard / easy teams are to beat.

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Sometimes we’re a little busy and can’t always outline everything how we want too! I’ll keep that in mind for the future.

The PVP changes aren’t targeting anything specific. It’s not intended to remove Firebombs or Divine teams specifically, rather to help keep a variety of things presented to players even when a meta forms, so you will still be able to see these teams in PVP.

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Perhaps it would be be helpful to know exactly what’s supposed to happen. That way we can give feedback to whether or not it’s actually working. Whatever this change in PvP is. I’m still facing firebombs or divine in 1/5 matches. Mainly because I’m still facing the same players for 3 trophy matches.
If the change was that I wouldn’t see only firebomb or Divines for the 3 options in ranked PvP. Then yes it’s working as intended and working great in fact.
But the OP was pretty much “hey we changed something in PvP. Hope y’all enjoy it more”.
And at least I am, and maybe others, are just like “:person_shrugging:”.
I can’t remember any sort of complaint towards the devs lodged because TOO MANY details were given… Ever… Forever ever.

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I’ve noticed the change in PvP teams. Great change for gems. Thank you devs! Well done.

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My $0.02

Casual always had more variety, I’m not seeing that in ranked with the changes. I’m just seeing less firebombs and slightly more diversity per round.

I like playing against more diverse teams, but the effective changes to the gold economy when combined with the delve gold sink is extremely hostile towards guilds.

If you don’t want guilds remove them from the game. If you do, ease up on the guild farming hit. Our change the economic base of guilds somehow.