Single Troop Defenses

Official News
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Hi Everyone,

We noticed last week that the number of players using single-troop defenses in PvP was growing.

While it was a reasonably rare occurrence, we were quite happy to indulge it as we considered some better solutions for PvP in the future. The plan was to eventually make some really neat updates, but only after we’d had a chance to fully think everything through… I’m not a fan of quick fixes (necessary though they may be sometimes).

Anyway, we noticed that there were some pockets in the game last week where players could neatly cycle around single-troop defenses without ever playing a real game of PvP against a properly constructed team. Needless to say, that’s not really the spirit of the game as we intended, and is probably harmful to the game experience in the long-term.

So for now we’ve opted for a quick fix, that should actually be reasonably harmless and barely noticeable to most players. Any single-troop defenses, will be replaced by another team in the defender’s collection for now, until we can investigate & test a more thorough way to solve the problem.

EDIT: We’re also aware that you can set EVERY SINGLE ONE of your teams to one troop when you’re not actively playing. I don’t think we’ll see a lot of this, but if we do, we’ll just be adding some code to the server to do something like saving the last full PvP team you won with, and using that (or, worst case, we’ll have the server construct a team for you)

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I like this. It is annoying when you get given 1 troop def in every battle slot. Nice easy 3 trophies though.

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Nice move. I see why it’s necessary. I wonder how many of those one troop defenses were Elspeth.

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Or a sacrifice. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

RIP single peasant.

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It seems like this change is specifically targeted against Elspeth, which is probably a good thing. Based on the description of the change, it sounds like you can still use a weak defense of 4 cards to have weaker opponents (or more defensive variety). Good interim fix, but looking forward to the full/proper match-making fixes that are coming “soon”.

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I always thought the one-troop defense manuever was kind of bogus; I made mine as difficult as possible to slow down other players in their attempt to make trophies. Good idea, I’m thinking.

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@Sirrian How about two or three defense troops? All will be replaced to 4?

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Yes - any team less than 4 will be replaced for now.

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Have you considered addressing the reason for the 1-troop defense: to lower your PVP rank because if you win too much you end-up fighting 90% Famine, Devour or IceLoop decks.
Maybe rework the pairing system would solve this.
Easy to do also. Make it that all 3 teams proposed must have no more than 1 troop in common.

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Eventually it would make sense to de-link a players PvP invade options from their defense team score. It’s strange that I can defend with a 4,000 point all common 4 Troglodyte team and attack with an 8,500 point fully traited legendary or mythic team, but my invade option are based on the 4,000 point score not the 8,500 point score.

I know it’s difficult to base invade options on the invading team score because you allow us to change our invade teams based on what we see on defense, but it seems there ought to be some penalty or bonus for the difference in points between our invade team and our defense team.

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First, regarding the topic… This is sad news to me. I liked seeing one troop defenses. I also liked how 1 troop defense allowed me to NOT have to fight devour/DM teams every time. There were only so many weeks I would actually use 1 troop D, though. I personally don’t think 1 troop D was/will be harmful to the game. I’m no hardcore game developer, but I am a gamer.

I’m with Venar. I used single troop defense because bogus stuff like beast buff week means most of my normal pvp games are Kerb/FG teams otherwise. I remember when it was mech week just a little while back and everyone was running DB/bombs/hero. Holy cow that was monotonous, but thankfully only one week.

I’m sure that a majority of us run 1 troop defense just to avoid seeing the same thing repeatedly.

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After chatting with some guildmates, I realize that my earlier comment about using 4 weak cards is only partially true. Depending on your VIP level, your cards might start at level 5 or level 10, which means your cards are too strong to field a weak team if it’s 4 cards. So while the goal makes sense, it seems in practice players who spent more will be penalized more severely. Players who spent nothing can still field 4 weak teams to avoid the strong/boring meta teams, but those who have invested more in the game will have no option. So in hindsight, I retract my opinion that this is probably a good thing. Instead, this is a good goal but a poor and premature implementation.

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@Sirrian

If you’re taking away the 1-troop defense can we assume you’re also going to take action against the never ending stream of Kerberos, Forest Guardian, and Famine teams?

PVP is getting really boring.

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4x peasant lol

Sometimes it takes just as long to kill 4 weak cards as it does 4 good ones

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I’m hoping that by having everybody with 4-troop teams there will be a larger pool of people to draw from at the higher point range, and with more people there should be fewer with the gimmick devour/dt builds.

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This might actually be a very good point.

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I will reserve passing judgment for now. But I will say that though I rarely fielded a single troop defense myself, I will miss seeing a lonely Elspeth pop up every now and again. It broke up the monotony and allowed me to sing the chorus to my parody!

:wink:

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I haven’t used a 1-troop defense in a long time but I’m not a fan of trying to fix symptoms instead of causes.

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On the other hand, if players are forced to interact only with top-end teams, they might decide “if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em” and start using a griefing defense themselves.

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[quote=“Sirrian, post:1, topic:24808”]
Anyway, we noticed that there were some pockets in the game last week where players could neatly cycle around single-troop defenses without ever playing a real game of PvP against a properly constructed team. Needless to say, that’s not really the spirit of the game as we intended, and is probably harmful to the game experience in the long-term.
[/quote] For casual PvP where each win is but one trophy, those Elspeth teams (she does add one other, or the troop who adds several?) have been heaven-sent for me. And even when I try to construct a relatively weak team of a single species for events to help other players, with my troops coming in at level 15, 3 is about the number I can safely set up so I am not inundated with those horrid meta teams just to earn my 1 trophy per in order to satisfy guild requirements.
Thus, this is not good news to me at all.

The “spirit” of the game as you have intended has evolved over the years, it would appear, and I did not see many instructions or explanations on game play or “spirit” to say with certainty I understand your specific intentions for the game to be able to agree with your reasoning for this measure.

My 2 cents. ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶

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