Secondly the scores…
They have been evoked a lot as everyone has assumed that they were the only goal of the collusion and that they had been greatly influenced, although Salty has said and repeated that the devs don’t have noticed any significant impact, which is true.
Much nonsense has been said. But it doesn’t seem that many people have really paid attention to the scores and have a realistic idea of what is really at stake.
So I think it could be interesting to give a few facts and a few data.
My purpose is not to apologize or to justify what we have done, but simply to share my experience.
I am aware that many people are not going to believe me. But there have been some rational people who have posted on this thread or who have PMed me. And I hope that the people who know me hold me for an honest person. So I think it is worth trying to explain things bluntly.
Some preliminary information…
-
For those who would be scrutinizing our scores this week, we have only had 28 people playing until today and we will probably be only 29 until a few hours before the reset.
And objectively we have been pretty bad since 3.1 has been released with a few of our best GW players quitting the game and the others getting disheartened and discouraged. We are currently working hard on finding solutions to come back to our previous level without losing more people.
-
I am going to talk only about the scores of Anon. I follow closely MG’s trophies to provide them with stats, but I don’t have any data on their GW results. And I want to talk only about what I know.
-
You will find in this spreadsheet the weekly scores of the 20 first weeks of GW.
Scores_GW.xlsx - Google Sheets
How many weeks have we been opposed to MG?
I haven’t got any screenshots of the weekly schedules because I don’t need them for my spreadsheets, so I am not 100% sure. However by looking at the schedules and at the rankings of each week, I think that we have been opposed to them only 7 weeks out of the 20 of GW.
How many points can be potentially gained from collusion?
By reading the thread, you would think that we have been gaining 100K points or more each week… Seriously!
We have been opposed to MG only 1 day each of these 7 weeks. Not every day.
And except for the week 19 for which we have finished 3rd even if we had had MG among our opponents, we have always been #1 or #2. How could we have achieved that if we weren’t getting reasonably good scores every day?
So how many points? Difficult to answer. Of course the potential gain has varied with the changes in the scoring system. If I refer to what the points we usually get against similar opponents, and considering that it is impossible to get a perfect score, I would assess it roughly to 20-30K points each week.
Is that potential gain sufficient to have an impact on the rankings?
Last week probably. And I hope that Tyrant are going to win this week because they have always been very good at GW and they deserve it.
All the other weeks clearly, no. For the simple reason that the gap between the guilds of the top 3 was much bigger than that potential gain.
Is that potential gain what we have really gained during the weeks of collusion?
Then again I can’t be 100% sure of the answer. However what I can say is this.
We do have gained points thanks to it in September. That many, I don’t think so. And before that, again, clearly, no. If I had screenshots to share here, I would be ready to bet that none of you would have noticed anything suspicious because the impact was really insignificant.
First, although most of the members of the 2 guilds didn’t have any moral issue with colluding and were in favour of it, a few people were sharing the feeling often expressed on the forum that it wasn’t fair play. As we considered that their opinion was perfectly valid and respectable, we had decided that everyone was free to set up whatever defense team they wished, easy or normal.
Secondly, ironically it has only started to work after those SS have started to be shared.
It makes me laugh when some people recommend that the 8 other guilds of the bracket should collude against us or when people are fantasizing about a collusion between all the guilds of bracket 1. It is just not possible. Colluding requires a lot of work and doesn’t work well. Why?
-
Communication is not easy, even between 60 people who have been sharing a Discord server for about a year.
When you want to coordinate everyone in your guilds, make them do something or simply share some information, is it always easy and fast? Are you not rather often tearing your hair out and despairing?
Even if our all members are on our server, not everyone reads it regularly. And not everyone even reads the in game chat.
To give you an example, last week I sent a PM to one of our 2 champions who had set a meta team against MG to know if it was intentional (which would have been Ok) or a mistake. He read my PM and answered me…. only yesterday!
Not all the members of MG are on Discord and I have often seen them trying to get in touch with someone to know why that person didn’t play and if they would play that week.
-
Because of a bug it occurs regularly that the GW defense teams reset by itself At a result it often happens that someone who intended to set up an easy team has a meta defense team instead eventually.
Getting in touch with the people who have tough teams requires at least a few hours most of the time, so our members preferred to go and fight them rather than inquiring.
I would like to end up by reminding that the GW scores anyway are not accurate and fair. I will leave aside this time the question of cheating, but there are many other reasons for that.
-
The schedules are fixed and their difficulties are very unequal. The guild #2 has the toughest schedule of the bracket. The guilds #1 and #3 have the easiest ones. It has often been pointed out by the guilds on the consoles.
I am not complaining, just stating facts.
Intrim and us have often had our worst scores of the week against each other.
We have been opposed so far this week to I1, Tyrant and BD. It is obvious that the scores that we have made against them are not the same than we could have made against Power Gems who seem to be only about 20 this week.
-
There are still many crashes causing losses and victories counting as losses. It is obvious that all the guilds are affected by it. To what extent? In equal proportions? We have no way to tell.
-
Other bugs are impacting the issues of some battles. Only today 2 of our members who were in a very good position in a GW battle have seen their battle ruined because matching 4 gems hasn’t given them an extra turn. These bugs are certainly also affecting all the guilds. Equally? We have no way to know.
-
I had complained on several occasions during the first weeks of GW that the scores were wrong. It has been happening again during weeks 19 and 20 and nothing has been done to fix it so far.
Concretely when the servers are having hiccups one day, we get more battles and, as a consequence, more points than we really have gained. For week 19, there has been one day for which our score indicated that we had played 154 battles and we ended up with 5K more points than we should have had. For week 20, on one day, after a server hiccup, we have had 1 battle and 1600 points too many.
I have submitted a ticket for the score of week 19 and understood from the standard answer I have received that nothing would be done. So I haven’t bothered submitting one for week 20.
Once again I am sure that if all the guilds were checking theirs scores each day, most of them would see that they are impacted. Does it have an impact on the rankings? It is quite possible when the scores are close. But it is impossible to know.