Edit: Summary of ideas
A) Reward similar to task system. It could even be an extra (and constant) fifth daily task, ‘make a defence team that is unique from the previous 5 days’, and reward something different each day (10 gems, 10k gold, 30 glory, spin a wheel for a traitstone, 2 random cards).
B) Players over L200 to choose 3 different defense teams, duplicate troops would not be allowed. It is random which team will defend when you are being invaded. @eika
C) Everyone could get a randomly generated defense team to fight. It would scale up for kingdom level and player level. So you would not be able to pick your defense team, the game will. Similar to arena. You would still be able to scout and choose if you want to fight that team. @HKdirewolf
Original:
There seems to be an increasing displeasure on the forums about facing the same teams/troops while playing PvP. This is emphasised at the moment with end game players frustration with Manticore. At my level (approx 250) I have a lot of goblin or knight teams. Thus, I propose the following concept that I believe will introduce variety immediately:
Rewards for regularly changing your defence team!!
Now, the exact values and system that could introduce it is not important right now but discussion doesn’t harm. It could even be an extra (and constant) fifth daily task, ‘make a defence team that is unique from the previous 5 days’, and reward something different each day (10 gems, 10k gold, 30 glory, spin a wheel for a traitstone, 2 random cards).
I would appreciate other peoples opinion about the principle of introducing it. I believe it would be both simple and very effective in improving everybody’s experience - regardless of their current level.
I can see one immediate problem with it. Not that I don’t think it is an interesting and good idea.
If this were implemented as a task, all I would have to do is change my team, wait for a reward, and then change back.
Now, I don’t see why it can’t be one of the tasks if the devs end up giving mobile the possibility, which from what I’ve heard, most players hope for. I just don’t see it helping with the hamster wheel that PVP can feel like atm.
I think the biggest problem with an approach like this is that there’s a fairly significant amount of server infrastructure and load required to support it.
“Unique within the last five days” means the server now needs to track every defense composition for every player for the last five days. If the buffer is of unlimited size, a player could conceivably change his or her defense team over and over to increase load and storage requirements on the server. If the buffer is of fixed size, a player would only need to rotate between enough teams to drain it.
I’m not saying I dislike the idea, but it’s not a cheap one to implement, and could lead to bad or exploitative player behavior.
Personally I really liked the recent suggestion of getting traitstone drops in PVP limited to the colors used in the battle. That could also be extended to defense, perhaps, allowing a (much lower than invade) chance of getting a stone (of random rarity) limited to those that could be used by the troops in the defense.
Well they are being made and left uncha ged for weeks. How many people change their teams multiple times a day. Is tj6ere any need to?
Ideally it shouldnt be limited but in practice it wont matter. Expecting an arcane to drop from one of the few defence matches you get will take a long time too… unless yourr getting a lot more than I am.
It matters on that one day where you’re tweaking your defense.
The game simply doesn’t stop you from swapping troops in and out of any other team any other time. The only limitation is in the hero class picker, and that’s a totally separate UI.
I think losing the ability to change defence teams multiple times a day would be worth it. That one day you may need to do it can wait if it means tje majority are changing their teams daily instead of monthly.
Unfortunately I cant see the traitstone reward resulting in quite the same level of change that would be required.
It’s a guarantee that it would. The vast majority of gamers will exploit and cheat if given the chance. You wouldn’t believe how much resources development allocates for stopping it.
Instead of rewards for changing teams, why not go the opposite route and offer disincentives for playing with the same team for too long? But not just for teams–for whole characters.
What if, on defense, your characters could get “tired”? This means that for each troop, a fatigue counter is kept and checked. (This would be far nicer to the servers than trying to track unique teams.) After a defensive battle, the counter would go up by 1 for each troop used–but not cumulatively for multiple copies of a troop. Unused troops would see the value drop by 1.
Fatigue would have a threshold and a max; say 20 and 100 for example. Past the threshold, it would induce a chance of permanent stun for that troop (evaluated individually, if there are copies) at the beginning of each battle. The chance would be a percentage based on (fatigue-threshold) / (max-threshold). This doesn’t have to be stun, either; it could be a special new status effect that could be implemented in stages, first killing off traits and then causing stat penalties as it got more severe.
Now the main down side to this, and to the original suggestion as well, is that this would allow a user to simply select a couple of dominating teams and switch them out. To counter that, the fatigue reduction amount could be lowered, or it could be based on time rather than battles.
Very good. How about both? Doubles the impact of varying your team?
To avoid changing out two teans I suggested chabging your team daily to one that has not been used in the last 5 days - so you would need at least 5 teams to get all the rewards
How about all players over L200 has to choose 3 differently defense teams, and there is not allowed to use any duplicate troops. For example if you are using Valkyrie in defense team 1 you cant use her in defense team 2 or 3. It is random which team that will defend out of these 3 teams when being invaded. This could actually had been cool, and most importantly it would had increased the variety.
Look, I think this is a double-fisted issue. They have to give players incentive to change teams while also balancing troops. If a troop is considered “OP” people are still going to use them no matter what, unless there were penalties for doing so. I don’t know too many players that would be okay with spending so many materials including money, and then get penalized for using that troop. (This could be a legal issue) 100% diversity just isn’t going to happen, but let’s aim to get player usage down. I’m just wondering how long incentives will last when players see other people using “op” troops still.
Right now, I lose nothing when my defence team loses. Some people would argue that I lose out on the 2 extra glory, 4 souls, etc. that my team might collect if I won a match. I say that I’m better off getting a steady stream of revenge battles where I can work on the task when it comes up and, more importantly, collect the bonuses that accrue at every 5, 15 and 60 revenge wins.
Once we get the PvP update, I suspect the bait teams are going to mostly disappear, since we will lose PVP rank with every defence loss and gain PVP rank with every defence win. Maybe someone who has gone through the change on PC/Mobile could explain better, but I would bet that the ‘bait teams’, such as mine, largely disappear after the PVP update.
I think the PVP update changes the equation for “When do people want to lose”. Right now, for me, it is always. After the update, it might become “as little as possible”. We’ll have to wait and see.
See this thread for some discussion: Bless You Dear Friends It seems like there is a clear difference between the two versions.
@Boats I noticed that someone copied your defence team and named it in your honour. I think it was someone named “Santos” or something like that…
