I think it gets magnified, but I can talk about it in terms of a problem I’m having in early/mid-game: The Dragon Soul PvP. Or a problem I’m having in Arena: Dawnbringer proliferation.
First, let’s be clear about something and disqualify some arguments: GoW has a lot of luck associated, so for some % of your games you’re just going to lose. We’ve all had rounds that seem to stick to JUST the colors we don’t need. No team should ever have an expected win rate of 100% on offense or defense because of this factor, no matter how skilled you are. So we always expect to lose some games to luck. Let’s pick 20% because we have to pick a number.
That said, very powerful teams can exacerbate the luck effect. “Having a bad board” isn’t always a loss, sometimes it means you’re slow to start. Good teams can dig themselves back out of holes. But this is why people don’t like excessive looping teams: they dig a hole so deep so fast “a slow start” is the same thing as “an unlucky board”. Now the “20%” we were OK with can expand to “50%” or more. That’s frustrating.
But that’s one argument, there are more.
It’s not completely broken, because there are teams you can build to counter it. The anti-Kraken team, when played properly, has the win rate you’d expect when we adjust for luck. But the anti-Kraken team is expensive to build, and it’s nowhere near as effective if you haven’t maxed it out. So there’s one complaint: “Kraken makes end-game harder”. I don’t think that’s a super good argument.
You can say similar things about TDS in PvP at mid-level. Whatever, the game’s about grinding so you have to grind out anti-“good things” teams. It’s hard to not have that happen. I do think Dawnbringer is an interesting point here because it’s both ridiculously expensive and you don’t get to “build an anti-Dawnbringer team” in Arena. You get what you’re given.
But whatever, in the context of Kraken I don’t think that argument holds water. (laugh track)
Probably the best argument is “it’s boring”, and I feel this about TDS teams. If I have 10 PvP matches, 8 of them are going to be vs. a TDS team. I think people argue this is a problem with Kraken at higher levels. If it’s “the best defense team”, you’re going to see it a very disproportionate amount.
I think a lot of people figure if they get 20+ team slots, there ought to be a mode of the game where you’re constantly switching between teams. They want 10 games to go like:
- True damage vs. this armor team.
- Tank vs. this very aggro team.
- Submerge vs. this AoE team.
- Anti-Kraken
- Anti-Mab
- Anti-Golem
- “LOL how is this guy my opponent?”
- “Shit. I don’t have a counter for this yet.”
- Anti-Kraken
- “Who the hell uses Ranger at this level?”
See how 8 of those 10 matches were unique and required shuffling the team around? I think people are complaining because their 10 PvP matches are going like this:
- Anti-Kraken
- Anti-Kraken vs. non-Kraken
- Anti-Kraken
- Anti-Kraken vs. non-Kraken
- Anti-Kraken
- Anti-Kraken vs. non-Kraken
- Anti-Kraken vs. non-Kraken
- Anti-Kraken vs. non-Kraken
- Anti-Kraken
- Anti-Kraken
I’m level 300. I only have about 2 “good” PvP teams. So all day long, I play those 2 teams. I’m bad at some matchups, but I’m still trying to build the hate teams for them. So I just have to play my “best” team and hope.
I sure as hell don’t want to reach level 1000 and say the same thing. “I’ve got 8 “good” teams, but anti-Kraken destroys everything so it’s not worth my time to switch. I’m not sure why I bothered traiting other troops.”
I think that is a valid complaint. Having a more diverse meta means you are constantly retooling your teams to try and adjust to what’s working. Having a meta where Kraken is the best defense means the only adjustments you make are “Eh, this team’s a little better for the oddball non-Kraken fight and still beats Kraken”.
The threads do spiral out of control, though, because some people want to grind PvP the same way they grind Explore. Those people don’t want a varied experience, they want a 75%+ win rate so they can play 100 matches with their brain turned off. I don’t think they’re “bad players” or “doing it wrong”. But they don’t want a game where they have to spend an extra 20-30s between matches contemplating their deck.
So every thread ends up as several parallel arguments:
- “I don’t want luck in the game.” vs. “I just think the RNG needs some ‘not random’ tweaks.” vs. “You can’t design a Match-3 without luck.” vs. “Git gud nub.”
- “I don’t think there are enough counters for Kraken.” vs. “I think you should be patient.” vs. “Git gud nub.”
- “I just think there should be more than 1 meta team.” vs. “I don’t want to think that hard about this game.” vs. “Git gud nub.”
The only people who are objectively wrong are the ones that populate every thread with 10-character “lol u suck” comments.
In short, “Yes, it’s that bad, but some players’ “bad” is what other players want out of the game.” This combined with, “At this point, I’m worried if the devs try to change Kraken, they’ll introduce a bug that deletes my GoW account.”
