TL;DR Rewards for last position in bracket 1 MUST be better than 1st position in bracket 2, since every other ‘reward’ (daily wins - bonus seals & xp, wins overall) is worse, and penalizes moving up to bracket 1. (reverted to how it was at the beginning of Guild Wars)
Moving up a tier HAS to be rewarding. about 3 weeks ago, the weekly rewards levels changed. The most noticeable is for placing 10th, and 20th. The rewards levels USED to be:
1
2
3
4-6
7-10
11-20
The 10th place team (last in bracket 1) earned slightly better rewards than 1st in bracket 2
Now the weird:
1
2
3
4+
7+
10+
20+
Now the 10th place team earns the same as 11-19 - all in a lower and easier (WAY easier on console) bracket).
The problem lies in the guilds that move up and down brackets each week. Let’s take an example of a guild that finishes 11th/12th overall and then 10th the next week. They’ve moved up a bracket for having a great week. Get the 200 gems and gold and during the week, they won 4-6 of their days earning seals (on console might be enough for this guild to get 40k seals once every month or so), and earned their daily xp bonus.
Now they’ve been moved up to Bracket 1, and are faced with losing every single day’s worth of battles (unless perhaps they fight the other team that moved up with them). They get 0 rewards for the ‘daily’ wins during the week. They lose more which is part of the cause of so much angst, and they drop back to Bracket 2. Oh, and the rewards for the week are…the exact same if they’d finished 11th through 19th.
There is absolutely no reward to moving up, just purely negative.
The rewards for last place in any bracket, still has to be better than first place in the bracket below. This really only affects guilds placing 9-12, and perhaps 19-22 as after that the rewards become not only minimal, but exactly the same.
Bracket 1 - Guild sentinels remain unchanged, the top guilds will max everything out and still net tons of gems for filling up their mythics.
Bracket 2 - Guild sentinels cost decreased to a set level Perhaps lv 5 sentinel cost in bracket 2 would cap at 25 gems, and glory/gold/souls cost decreased by 10% resulting in more players in more Guilds spending resources and still gaining +40 gems at the end of the week, enough for almost 3 gem keys!!!
Bracket 3-xx - Guild sentinels cost decreased again with a cap of 15 gems for lvl 5 and resource cost dropped by 10%+ 4% per bracket level.
The key to this complexity is that
a) Guild wars fights will be differentiated from PVP fights in all bracket levels, not just the top couple of bracket since troops will have higher stats on offense, and defense, which changes up gameplay pretty significantly.
b) it doesn’t affect anything except the bracket you are in since the rewards for the upper brackets minimize any possible benefits in other brackets.
c) lower and mid-level players can actually fight 30 fights for the week with slightly better stats, and still be able to contribute to their guild finishing 1 or 2 statues a week in the lower brackets, and also keep souls and gold to level kingdoms and a troop or 3
TL;DR since it doesn’t affect the gameplay or rewards of anyone else in any other bracket, make Guild sentinel costs scale downwards with brackets.
First and foremost, rewards need rebalancing. As it stands there is little to no incentive to try and be 54th over 96th. For that matter the difference between 54th and 396th is laughable. Even if you wind up reducing the gems given out or change it to gem keys the rewards for players from one bracket to the next need to be an increase in some way. In the same way that PvP gives rewards for reaching 1900 points each week something of the same manner needs to be implemented into guild wars.
Second, get rid of summoned creatures counting towards the point totals. As it stands right now guild wars is basically split between the people who have every card and can make a team of the daily colour with a summoner so they can get max points, everyone who can make a team with the daily colour but don’t have a summoner, and everyone else.
While I think the colour is important to keep, at the very least if you remove the summoning ability it makes it so there is less of a gap between the top players and the majority of the player base.
Having reviewed most of the suggestions already submitted, there are quite a few I’d like to second, as well as several of my own. I’m not suggesting all of these be implemented together because some might not mix well. I am suggesting that they are all good ideas.
In no particular order:
A GW-specific defense Win/Loss log.
Points for defensive wins that increase based on certain criteria (color, non-duplicated troops, erc.).
A sliding “complete all” feature to guild sentinels.
A high-stakes, locked loadout mode where you must select your troops, can’t change them, and then fight your wars. There is a bonus multiplier to doing this to offset the risk.
Up to a certain bracket (top 10 brackets perhaps?), only the best 25 scores are counted with the remaining 5 being an average of the 25. More and more player scores are counted as you advance brackets, with all scores counted in the top 1 or 2 brackets.
6a) GW as a 2-week event where you fight everyone in your bracket, and rest days are Mondays and Sundays, with a bonus day where we fight the devs.
6b) Alternatively, 5 battles per week, with the unused 6th color being the buffed color that week.
Gain a copy of the week’s troop in each victory (or every 2 victories).
GW being seasonal (ecample: 4 weeks on, 2 off) with an epic season-end reward based on placement.
Reverse sentinel stat bonus for attacking (as many have suggested).
Auto-complete option where a player can select an attack team for the day/week and let the AI run the battle.
Tier unlocking but not mandatory tier advancement (i.e., a weaker player can choose to just fight soldiers).
Overall, I have been pretty satisfied with what is required for points (color + troops left alive). The offense seems like it works, but something definitely needs to be done with the defense. I know people have suggested guilds having to use the color based system for defense as well, but if we are being honest eventually we will just see a bunch of the same teams again. It won’t be Famine/Psion or Kerberos/Guardian (which will be nice), but it will be Mab/Justice on Blue days and Gorgotha/Famine on Yellow (or Brown) days. In other words, eventually it would get monotonous all over again.
My suggestion would be to have weekly (or even daily, if possible) challenges to garner extra points. So you don’t have to do it, but it will give you extra points if you do. For instance, use Jarl on your defense for this day, or use 2 Wildfolk troops on this day, and so on. That way, it makes people have to rethink troops and actually puts some strategy into the game.
I know this is probably hard, and definitely not a 100% fix, but I think tinkering with this idea (or something similar) could really add some oomph to the monotony.
Maybe heroes should be involved in guild wars instead of troops. I know its radical, but that’s what makes it different from the usual PvP modes which use troops with or without the hero involved. Not sure how the other three hero slots will be determined. Could be a random thing from your guild’s roster which I think is cool. Or, it could be up to you to decide for yourself. Either way, its locked in for the week.
Afterwards, you choose a different weapon, hero trait, and clothing from your own inventory. I mean if you want one of them to look like a Dwarf, why not? So long as you bought the thing, then you can. To me that would be fun to do. And I think if that member’s likeness [because that’s all it is anyway] is recruited, then I think they should earn a little something in return when they collect their usual tribute. Call it the Guild Wars Tribute or something to that effect.
Then again, just do away with the bracket system. lol
Lots of suggestions about not being stopped after failing to beat a lower battle.
I like this.
I know the devs made comments stating that they felt like a loss should prevent you from facing a higher tier but perhaps it’s in the thinking. I see the GW Daily battle like a gauntlet. You have entered the enemy camp and you WILL face their Paragon. The question is will you be standing their victorious when you face him or will you be a 0/4 bloody pulp?
Each battle should count individually instead of progressively. With the programed “bad luck” and randomness of AI 15+ cascades, an unlucky battle 1 means you can’t come back.
This is a great idea… As it is now, if you get that unlucky battle 1, not only did you lose those points, but you also lost the possibility of getting battle 5 points… A double-whammy. It seems it should just move on and you lost those points, not make you replay the battle also.
No no no no 100000000 times no! This makes the first 2 or 3 battles (out of 5 mind you) MEANINGLESS! The first 3 battles are worth 1500 points combined and the last 2 are worth 4800 combined… Doesnt make sense to win 40% of the battles bit get 75% of the points!
I’m just going to quote this whole thing b/c I think it’s the most insightful thing I’ve read here. I’m not sure your solution is correct, but I think you nailed the problem.
I don’t think that would work at all. I have 2-3 teams for each color of day, one that counters famine would do badly against a Kraken/Kerberus. My anti-famine team will have no chance against a devour team.
But as it is, lose any one battle means you lose the points for battle 5. You don’t lose the points for battle 1 unless you lose all 5. If it was changed where you fight battle 1-5 no matter if one is lost will result in closer daily/week battles which in turn makes every point more valuable.
This is the same way game shows are run to keep them exciting.
Look… Everyone wants to scream for fairness. So in the interest of fairness lets say this…
Player a loses battles 1 and 2 but wins 3, 4, and 5
Player b wins all 5 battles
Player b ends with 6300 points
Player a ends with 5600 points
How is it fair that player lost 2 battles but scored almost as many points? Why would i put in the effort to win all 5 battles when i can lose 2 and still get almost full score…
If this gets implemented i will boycott GW entirely which will possibly result in me quitting GoW…
Come to think of it, why is the Paragon the person who had the best offensive score? Shouldn’t it really be the person who had the best defense team the week before? I mean, they’re the one doing most of the defending…