There is a very clear contradiction of what the game mode offers and how the game works.
To begin with, it’s important to understand that this game works on a very strong and clear pattern of both input and output randomness. To understand what they are:
Output randomness is a factor that influences the game that you have no control of. (starting board)
and
Input randomness is a factor that involves chance, yet, you can count with it beforehand and partly or completely prepare for it (scouting enemy team, preparing cleanse against D.Marks, or impervious against devour, as well as matching gems in a way that new ones may fall into a cascade or another match).
And this was perfectly fine. It included a certain amount of fun in the game.
… Until Guild Wars.
Guild Wars were introduced as a competitive part of the game. That would still be fine, if we didn’t force us to limit our teams to certain colors. So we can’t really counter devours, nor we can counter Death Marks.
That being said - the most competitive mode of the game is more or less luck based, which I find a huge contradiction to what the mode proposed to bring into the game.
That being said, no.2 - what does the rest of the community think? Are you okay with how Devour and Death Marks tilt the results randomly, or have you probably already thought of a solution?
I like Gems of War in spite of Guild Wars, but it certainly has decreased my enthusiasm. While true that paying well does require some skill, the ultimate arbiter is luck. Does his devour trigger? Do you accidentally get a skull cascade that kills their deathknight before you can stun? Does he get a cascade off to fill Famine?
Best solution would be to eliminate the surviving troop point bonus at the end of battles, or drastically decrease it.
Then people could stop obsessing about mechanics that rarely factor in whether you actually win or lose a battle as long as your team is built around stability, but just let you end battles with one or two unanticipated troop losses.
@Gouki It already is quite low.
… But it still makes a difference for the highest guilds. Because everyone is trying for the most points. Even if the loss is 200 points or 2, it still is a difference that decides about the 1st place with random factor.
Eliminating it completely does sound like it might work. It might bring a new set of problems but would still help the issue discussed.
CB = color bonus from trophies
Nc = Number of troops you start battle with of matching color, as decimal. 50% = 0.5
Ne = Number of troops you end battle with
Added a 5th page to http://tinyurl.com/GoWEvents which shows point reward for every combination of color troops going in and troops remaining assuming a max bonus from statues.
more then the “random” character of fights, bothers me the “random character of rewards” - not knowing what we actually need to do to advance or stay in the bracket, makes the whole competition random in every aspect, which i find not cool