I don’t think most players just want a vibrant meta, they want a vibrant competitive meta. Right now it’s an either/or, the tools aren’t there to do both. If the players did change the defenses to easily beatable non-meta, the complaints wouldn’t lessen, they’d just change focus.
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It’s not a binary choice between “easily beatable” and “obnoxious Famine/Kerb teams”. People copycat and bandwagon a lot. There’s a lot of laziness involved. But there’s also a choice to go with a slightly less annoying team that still takes thought to beat.
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Somebody gets it…
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Basic behavioral economics suggests that people respond to incentives. An entrenched meta is the result based on the current cards + rewards + mechanics. Asking people to forgo rewards flies in the face of basic human behavior.
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Sure, I understand that as well. But it’s important to recognize that the people complaining also are using those defenses. They’re making a choice to perpetuate the problem. The players have a solution in their hands that they are choosing not to exercise.
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guild war is fun is you choose it to be. guild war is optional. big part why it feel like a chore is probably because it became a requirement for many good guild. you feel responsible to win with the best score possible and feel like shit when you lose.
i am lucky to be in a guild with gw optional. to be honest, i’m looking forward to gw everyday. i can go in with different gamble team each time without the burden of losing. if i lost, i lost. no hard feeling.
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Agree about the bandwagon being part of the issue. But I haven’t seen these other “tough to beat” teams, or been able to create them myself (or with my guild). Annoying and drawn out battles sure, but not teams that might actually win. Hopefully I discover them soon.
I currently go with a Valk/Mab variant, it seems to perform okish.
I also don’t believe that GFE is an overall exceptional defense, not bad but not really that great, and it is only overused that much because it got so much hype on this forum and people jumped on the waggon. Judging by my win% on Beast week a while ago, there are several options being better overall.
? (sorry, I feel dumb, but couldn’t figure this out)
I feel the exact same way. When we dropped from Bracket 5-6 to Bracket 7-8 there was a pretty big difference in terms of the variety of defenses. I find it to be just the right amount of challenge and fun. I think it’s working very well for everyone but the top 1%. And the 99% aren’t really on the forums…
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Forest Guardian Entourage, FG,Kerb,GSpider variants. I dispise writing out all the troops everytime 
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It seems to me that the point of a game where there are hundreds of creatures and nearly infinite combinations is not to single out two sets of 4 that everyone uses. I personally enjoy fielding new teams. I max out the new cards almost every week just to see how they mesh with other potential setups and bonuses for the week.
However, there is no incentive to be creative on defense. That is what we need. Some suggestions have been made in plenty of other places, as well as here, about how to handle that. I would like to see added points for using the weekly bonus troops, for example. Then people would be forced to think through their defenses at least weekly. Others have suggested points for using the daily color. I think those are good places to start.
I field a new team every week, so that’s not true of ME. However, as previously noted, I’m in bracket 50, not bracket 1.
During Whitehelm/Divine week, I cleaned up. Other weeks are hit and miss, but we don’t aspire to be a top 10 guild. None of us want that kind of obligation.
I don’t particularly care if we move up or down a bracket or 10. Maybe when I get to brackets 39/40 I’ll care a little more, but right now, the incentives for Guild Wars are pretty minimal for my guild. Therefore, GW is boring AF, and provides little value, so … total chore.
There are about 20 active players in the guild, so we do GW because we get something out of it, but the reward is paltry for the effort/tedium. For those competing at the top, it is at least worth the chore (or it seems to me). But given that there are many guilds aspiring to that top bracket, they re-use teams they run into from those brackets which are effective.
Another way to solve it would be this: Count the number of teams using that exact card combo. Beating the top card combo for defense provides a bonus - maybe 3x point total. Top 10 card combo would be 2x point total. Top 100 would be 1.5. Giving your opposing guild more points because you are all copy-catting would be enough incentive for variety.
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I put up a Frozen/entangle team since I doubt most change their team that is built to counter devour/famine to one that counters frozen and entangle.
At least when everyone uses the same defense, I don’t have to edit my attack team each battle. 
Quoting myself, here, but the more I’ve thought about this set of changes, the more I like it. If copy-catting is the problem, target the copy cats. After reading through a lot of good ideas in this thread and elsewhere, I actually have some workable ideas (if some Dev is reading):
- We don’t want to change it where defending teams get points. I like the idea that only attacks count and how successful an attack is begets more points. It gives more incentive to lower-ranking guild members to at least TRY, even if they can’t win most of their games. They can still contribute if they win 1/5 games (beyond the top 10 brackets, at least). Incentives/bonuses are therefore still applied to the ATTACKER, not the defender.
- Scan every defending team once/hour.
Count the number times a particular 4-card team is in use for defense.
Δ = number of combinations
R = rank of unique team where 1 = most copied team and Δ = unique combination
Meta Attack bonus = 50% / R - Scan the guild you are fighting at the time of the fight.
C = Count of team you are fighting
Guild Attack bonus = Meta Attack bonus X C
Example 1:
2x Kerberos/Forest Guardian/Giant Spider is the most common combo for a given week. Beating this team gives a 50% “meta attack bonus.” Because a loss is still worth more than the 50% metric, this won’t “force” people not to field that team. They still might get RNG-based losses with it as Devour is kind of nutty right now. However, every person in the guild now also fields that same team. So, 30 times a 50% bonus = 15X points for beating that team. That means there is a significant reward to the attacker for beating it; much greater than depending on RNG loss via Devour.
Example 2:
Another guild’s Paragon is fielding Death Knight/Famine/Death/Famine. However, this player has consulted with their guild to make sure none of the other players are fielding that same team. A Champion is fielding the Kerb/FG combo. Everyone else has to make something up. Now, when you play against their guild, you get two unique teams, a team based on “bonus of the week,” a Kerb team and a Famine team. At least there is SOME variety, and they are not giving away too many points.
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How would you visualize the “meta-ness” of a given combination to the person building their defense? Would they just have to “know?”
Lyya,
I think the dev’s could program something that says “this team is currently being used X times in your guild” kinda notice when people set the teams.
I worked on the math a bit more and posted it in the Feature Request area. (See link below.)
As to visualizing it, that would be necessary. There could be a uniqueness scale showing the count of that combo in PVP as well as guild.
This is something that’s been proposed already.
The incentive to not putting up the meta defense is that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
So if the fight is over quickly, do you even notice what troops were fielded??
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Each troops power level should be adapting automatically based on use, and then reflected in team score.
When team scores were introduced, we were told they would adjust to reflect more powerful units, yet they are almost 100% static based on Level, Rarity, and Traits. Hydra and Famine should be dramatically different in the points they bring to a team.
So while you won’t have a way to say the “Meta” team is 2K, GS, FG, the fact that they are all being used far, far more than Sacrificial Priest and Hydra, will have the team score be much higher. This would have also had Bone Dragon, 2x Courage, Wraith adjust to a much higher score. Troops that are showing up more, and winning more, become worth more points. Beating them gives away more PvP points and gold, because of the effort.
These dynamic scores would allow people to field 4 troop, creative teams, and face more interesting match making, or build straight meta to slug it out at the top.
The loop hole could be building really terrible teams with a high team score by mixing and matching incompatible troops or by using 4x the most popular troop, but I don’t see that as a major problem.
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