Guild Wars and sisters guilds

Guild Wars
370

My two cents on the topic:

I think that Alliances should be made illegal or at the least made non-viable. (The thing is called “guild wars” and not “guild cuddling” for a reason after all… ;)) I don’t quite care, if that is implemented right now, or in a month or two when we can properly assess how much of a problem that behaviour really is.

The biggest problem i see in it especially is, once the 10 best guilds figure out how alliancing is giving them a better shot at GWs, it is very likely to me that they will join together to make an alliance that would lodge itself tight inot the top bracket. since they then would all have perfect runs all the time, the top 10 spots would always be internly decicded between them, unless the guilds in the second bracket decide to do the same thing. then the top 20 are pretty much fixed to the same 20 guilds each week and so on…
In the End iw would likely create a chain reaction until every guild only sets low defenses and there won’t be a challenge in GWs anymore. As that is something that i want to avoid at all costs, i’m voting for illegalising alliances at all. Take out the evil at it’s roots, and stuff…

3 Likes
371

Perfect run - maybe not. But it can get pretty close. Last week, 4 days out of the 6, Anonymous had managed to get no more than 2 losses a day, getting an average of 172K points for each of these 4 days - and this is, mind you, while having only 29 GW players the whole week, yet we ended up having over 80K points more than the next competitor (with a potential pool of up to 37K more, had we been full). This is far more than any single alliance could accomplish, or overtake.

TL;DR: Yes, even in bracket 1 it is certainly possible for one guild to have such a good performance, that the opposition simply has no chance.

4 Likes
372

It has some affect on the lower brackets, though I will concede that it’s not as much as bracket 1. As someone from bracket 6, I would love to move up next week and get to bracket 5, which would give me the 25-50 rewards. Having an alliance and getting number 1 or 2 in my bracket could accomplish that.

EDIT: Is that the right affect (effect)?

4 Likes
373

Correct, which brings me back around to this:

374

You want “effect” there.

1 Like
375

With guild collusion being legal the rankings & brackets mean nothing because there’s no integrity that a guild is ranked where they are on their own merits. The point of a ranking system is that whatever rank you are, you got there because of YOUR efforts, YOUR work, YOUR performance. Not because someone else put you there.

If the winner of the super bowl won because their opponent’s defense just stood there & let the offense do anything they wanted to it would be s pretty boring game and would call into question if they deserved to be called champions.

Someone questioned comparing GW to sports but GW is a competition, not a game of risk. In a game of risk no one cares that you came in 2nd, all that matters is you came in 1st. In GW 2nd place matters, 3rd place matters, 100th place matters.

Again the comparison to a real war with alliances doesn’t make sense. In real war you have the winners and losers. There is no ranking. No reward for how well you did in the war just you won or lost.

At least with PvP ranks & guild leader boards because they are based on trophies earned the integrity is there that no one handed the leaders their rank - they had to put in the time to get there on their own. Granted bots & account sharing throw some of that into question but the ranks are still representative of the effort & time of the individual or guild.

In society we respect & idolize champions & leaders who get where they are and excel at whatever they’re good at because of their own merits. And we oust and cast down those who get there on other people’s efforts when we find out they are where they are not because they were good at something but because they were handed the rank.

Consider what your opinion is of the following people:

  • Someone who gets promoted over you because they know someone rather than can actually do the job
  • an athlete who wins because of performance enhancing drugs
  • a singer who lipsynces their way to the top of the charts

And if you can’t see how collusion in GW is very similar to each of those examples and reaching an achievement on your own merits doesn’t matter as long as you got there, well then…

9 Likes
376

I voted for it being legal, but my ideal solution would be the devs change the system so you can’t game the system at all. But, if they fail to change how it works, you can’t blame the people for taking advantage of it, IMO.

2 Likes
377

I can agree with you, but this situation is extreme and near impossible to realize because:

  • it required a huge organization
  • if every guild has the same number of points, we don’t know what happens. And it gives an opportunity to devs to block this possibility (ie sharing the rewards)
  • if they don’t have the same points, it will be a fight for the few points that will determine which guild is number 1 or number 10 so no more alliance attitude
  • this problem is not only a bracket 1 whose guilds want to stay there. Imagine that bracket 2 does it, the guilds can achieve high score and so on, jump to bracket 1.

It’s up to you to consider that making alliance is/isn’t also part of “YOUR efforts, YOUR work”.

Same for GW: your rewards are according to your win/loose ratio… and in real war, you get of course rewards (territory, golds, etc.).

Yeah you can say that it’s unfair but it just shows how relationship is important and rewarding in our world. If you don’t work on your network, you will have to compete (for a recruitement for example) with a big disadvantage.

The rules said that it’s cheating. And alliance was already told us by devs as allowed.

Making alliance will ask time and organization so I think it’s okay that these guilds receive a small advantage.

There are here some players who can imagine having an alliance and other that don’t want to. So for sure, for them alliance is an advantage that they will never get and so on, the only solution is to make it illegal to be sure that nobody will have this advantage.

Life is unfair. I am a steam player and cannot play on mobile. So my playtime is super limited compared to a mobile player. They can connect every hour in the day to take their tribute, not me. So for me, mobile players have an advantage compared to me and one solution could be to limit to 2-3 hours the possible playtime of every players so that mobile players loose their advantage. Of course, I don’t want that ;-).

As usual, I go back to the account sharing. Yes I know the rewards are totally different, etc. But it’s the same situation with the ones who share their account having an huge advantage: if the co-players are well-synchronized the possible play-time can go from 12 hours by day to 24 by day.
So do you consider account sharing unfair/cheating? There was already disucssion about that and the final point was that devs tolerate account sharing.

Last point, what is an easy team for you? And how devs will be able to detect them? Let’s be honest it’s impossible:

  • an easy team for us in Bracket 1 could be a tough one for Bracket 500 so it means devs should put special rules for the top brackets
  • what if today I was wrong with my defense team, I believe it was a tough one but it wasn’t
  • there is still the bug which defense teams are not saved
  • the weekly reset of the GW defense teams to your PVP defense team: one can forget about that
1 Like
378

Wow, 368 posts and I have no idea what this thread is about!
Still, thanx for the weekly forum read count! :grin:

4 Likes
379

It is mainly about finding the worst possible and most unfitting real life analogies to Guild Wars.
Winner gets bragging rights.

10 Likes
380

Yeah, bragging rights, just like the ones sports teams get when they win the big game. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

3 Likes
381

First off, you can stop calling it “making an alliance” because it’s not. It’s collusion to block out other guilds from being able to compete properly by manipulating scores and ranks, but I guess whatever makes you sleep better at night.

There’s no comparison between getting max points from colluding with other guilds vs winning max points by actually fighting and beating your opponents squarely.

I am saying it’s unfair and I’m saying it’s pretty darn close to what passes as ‘alliances’ in the current GW. It’s favoritism and/or nepotism possibly even discrimination in some contexts in real life. If the boss is going to promote his relative into a position solely because he’s a relative with no regard to the relative’s qualifications being fewer than someone more suitable for the job, it doesn’t matter how well you work on your ‘network’ because you’re not going to get the job. That’s not a ‘disadvantage’ that’s collusion to block someone out of a position they’re rightfully qualified for and may even deserve. But good to know if you were in that position you’d just accept it as a little unfair advantage they had over you and not be upset. But I guess in GW you’ll be right there colluding to ‘make alliances’ with the best of them because your precious ranking is more important than how you obtained it.

Well they weren’t against the rules until the governing bodies in sports and music decided the practices were against the spirit of competition and that those people doing it didn’t deserve to hold their titles as best of anything because they didn’t win on their own merits. Oh wait, I seem to remember a developer stating that ‘alliances’ were clearly not in the spirit of GW…

The current GW system has no ability whatsoever to accommodate actual alliances (i.e. guilds banding together to fight each other with the consequences of being able to be retaliated against by your ally’s opponents and their allies, not some collusion to rig points & ranks). I personally would love to see alliances become part of GW as it would create inter-guild relationships and cooperation, just like the current GW system has helped build intra-guild cooperation and coordination.

By definition of an alliance, if my guild allies with another, my guild takes the risk to be retaliated against by my ally’s opponent & their allies. As GW stands now, there’s no risk to my guild at all for allying with another. No downside. No worry of retaliation. No matter what spin anyone tries to put on the collusion masquerading as ‘alliances’, it’s not an alliance.

4 Likes
382

You’re right alliance is not the good word and I used/will use it because it was the one used by other users and it’s shorter than the good one which is a non-agression pact. It’s not a question to crush other guilds together, it’s a question of not fighting against together. Extra points are a bonus.

Another point of view is to make an alliance purely to obtain a small advantage. But for me, it’s strategy, not cheating. If someone build an alliance, it will have to work for that and I see the advantage obtained as a reward for his strategy.

Sorry, I think that’s a bad analogy with GW because your analogy is based on hierarchy. In your analogy, it will mean that devs (ie the boss) provides a bonus to one guild (ie his relative). Even that doesn’t fit correctly because devs don’t have any relationship with any guild… I hope :stuck_out_tongue: .

And what will you do? Punch your boss? Quit your job?

I thought that @Gouki’s post should be enough to stop the bad analogies (mine included). And in all cases, an anology will never proof anything. So waste your time to try to put a square in a circle if you want, none my business ;-).

Please find below a good way to do analogy/witchhunt (it’s a joke):

Yes they can change their mind and my point of view will surely change. But currently it’s allowed so I don’t see why the “alliance=cheating” should continue.

About your idea about guild alliances, it sounds nice, you should open a new topic.

383

My two cents of, why i think the gw point-alliances/cheat is/would be unfair:

Does maxing out points guarantees you a jump to a Bracket 1
NO

Does being in Bracket 1 and maxing out gw ponts guarantees you staying in Bracket 1?
We do not know but it is much MORE LIKELY.

we do not know the criteria for bracket matching but if current bracket has anything to do with it (a tendency to keep your current bracket at unclear cases) the fact ppl maxed their points and keep for continuous weeks would pretty much lock their position… - a very competitive guild could make just one mistake one or two weeks ago “and there it goes bye bye for more then one week”

for as long as we do not know bracket shuffling criteria this whole gw point-giving strategy has very fair reason to be suspicious of unfairness

im not gonna mention other, more obvious, ethical reasons that are accepted by many but not by everyone (not this time)

also there is the question:

do we want gw to be about “alliances” or about “actual hard fights and team building”?

i thought ppl wanted the harder fights and team building, the chellenge

but seems some just want a “behind the curtain” social deals and not an actual game :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

5 Likes
384

The question “will doing X guarantee you Y?” or “if you don’t do X will you able to get Y?” should not be a deciding factor to the question “does X = cheating?”

Take for example Discord (or any similar external chat tool):
It is no question that our success in GW has a lot to do with using Discord. Without it, we would probably be crushed by the competition (most of which probably also use it, or something similar). If no guild used an external tool for discussing, and one guild started using Discord, they will have a decent chance to come on top, even if otherwise they would finish at the bottom of their bracket.

Using Discord is almost a basic requirement in order to do well in bracket 1, Yet Discord is not an integral part of GW or the game at all. It is an external tool that people use and it helps them win, and its impact is much stronger than that of any single alliance. Rather, coordinating an alliance might net even be possible without the use of Discord.

Going by your logic above, using Discord should most definitely be considered cheating. Is it, though? Or do you think is should be?

385

using discord for team sharing/planning is an extension of already existing in game feature “guild chat”

the most basic gw concept was fight between the guilds, a guild fights another guild and so on
in this concept, a guild helping itself is a wanted feature while a guild helping another guild (instead of fighting it off) is controversial

if fight within a guild was the intention of guild wars discord would definitelly be a cheating, but from the very beginning devs stated their intention to be opposite

try a different analogy

5 Likes
386

The analogy is perfectly fitting to GW, the hierarchy being the ranking system. The ‘boss’ is the guild handing their colluding partner a pile of points that they didn’t earn on their own merit, thus promoting them into a rank they didn’t earn and shouldn’t be qualified above other guilds who won their points fair & square the hard way. [quote=“turintuor, post:382, topic:23674”]

And what will you do? Punch your boss? Quit your job?
[/quote]
No I wouldn’t punch him. I’d be damn sour about it to be sure (and so would you). I’d no longer feel welcome or wanted in that workplace and would constantly question the morality and business sense of management & the company as a whole that they would be petty enough to put someone in a position they weren’t qualified for and risk losing clients, revenue & competitive advantage. And no one in the office would have any respect for the person promoted because they know they got a free ride & didn’t have to prove themselves.

1 Like
387

That is a very strange thing to say.

The game has an option for two different battle animation speeds. Does that mean using any external tool that further speeds up the game animation is “an extension of already existing in game feature” and should be allowed? I don’t think so.

The fact that the game has some limited text-based communication option, does not mean anything external that has chat capabilities is an extension of it and intended by the devs to use.
Discord has capabilities that in game chat could never dream of. For example, sending images. someone in a pinch could send a picture of his battle screen and get help from his guildmates on what to do next, which could easily turn a defeat to a victory.

At the end of the day, Discord is an external tool that is not promoted by the devs for use in guild wars, not everyone can or want to use it (or even know it exists), and it does in fact affect scores greatly. My analogy works, your excuse does not. Try again.

‘dev intention’ should not matter to how we play the game (with the exception of what they clearly consider to be forbidden). Many people play the game in ways that the devs didn’t think of, this is why OP troops and combinations keep appearing, and troops end up getting nerfed.

When team bonuses were added, the devs did not think that people would use x3 or x4 Webspinners (back then still scaled by magic), it was clearly not their intention for any troop to be able to loop endlessly by itself, which is why they ended up nerfing it in 3 different ways. Same thing with x4 Kerberos right after the rework - had they thought of that, they would never release that trait as it was. Still, many people used these combinations when they were avaliable. Were they all ‘cheating’ by doing things in the game that the devs did not intend them to?

Same thing applies to more current examples: BD/courage before the nerf, everyone who could would use it on defense, and many for invade too. Even after his nerf was announced, people kept using it, even though the nerf announcement practically said he was not working as intended. were they all cheating? or is anyone using Deathmark now cheating, since he is announced to be nerfed? Or when absolutely everyone set their home kingdom to Whitehelm for the glory, and everyone got only yellow stones in pvp? clearly that was not the devs intention?

So in essence, the devs provide the game, we play it however we see fit, and as long as we don’t do things that are clearly said to be forbidden, whatever we do is completely fine. Dev intention? Sorry, I couldn’t care less, and neither should you. We could decide to be nice to others and set a non-meta defense (or a single troop or all-snotstones defense) or non-yellow home kingdom etc. but that is just being nice to others, it is not a necessity and for all we know it is not the devs’ intention either.

3 Likes
388

no but using an external tool for easier setting those two speeds would be allowed

guild chat already has limitless possibility for team sharing within the guild, the only 2 differences is discord makes it easier access

second diffference is it stores more of what it is accessing - storing more means ppl can access it despite the time difference whereas guild chat limits access concerning the time difference - so if you use external tool to change within those two speends despite the time difference it would also be allowed

with the excepion that discord doesnt interfer with the game client whereas the extension that changes game speed would be interfering so strictly that interference makes the program disallowed anyway

389

You completely ignored my image sending example. Sending images is clearly an additional feature not available in game and cannot be referred to as “just easier access”.

Or else, please explain to me how exactly would you manage to do what I described above using in game chat?

Besides, this is all still a poor excuse. “easier access” could make all the difference. In practice, because of the “harder access” you would never be able to use guild chat for the same effect, so Discord still enable you to do things you wouldn’t without it, including winning by a large margin. If to mimic you I could say “the game enables you to make GW points, an alliance is just ‘easier access’”. It’s the same thing.