The issue is that some people were exploiting the design. It’s unfair to newer players/guilds to have an obscure exploit that enables elder players and top guilds to stay on top.
I don’t really understand why folks are confused/upset. It’s clearly not intended for people to be able to grind 2-trophy battles by deliberately losing battles, and they didn’t change the rewards such that elder players and top guilds get less trophies than newer players/guilds. It’s literally the same rewards as before except now you can’t use your superior knowledge to exploit the system.
Meanwhile, elder players still know you can close out the app and not lose your streak, which makes it easier to get to Rank 1.
I am definitely happy that the exploit was solved. We will see the next week results and how this changed the guild contributions. What I partially don’t like is the way how it was solved. I agree with Turintutor.
Honestly, this is how it should have been ages ago. You’re backing out of the fight, that’s surrendering, losing the fight, etc. Of course, there is still the more ultimate bail-out option of exiting the game completely, so it really should only hurt those who were exploiting the bug and be an inconvenience for others who have to run on occasion.
The only thing that confuses me is that there is one way to exit a fight that costs a trophy (retreating) and one that doesn’t (exiting the game)… although the retreat function will be fine for challenges and quests, most people will never use it again.
What the complaints highlight is the need for some kind of test bed or punching bag or something. Or some mode or switch to flip where there is no trophy interaction. Since obviously PVP is the only reliable way to get gold, and the only reliable way to practice against decent human-created teams (and learn from them).
Oh and I totally look forward to seeing a certain guild or two go back to getting half of the unrealistic numbers they have been getting. Not saying who I think that is. Nobody should say. Witch hunts are bad.
I think Challenges are a perfectly fine place for testing comps. You can encounter a wide array of teams throughout the various kingdoms.
But I could see two PvP modes, “ranked” and “unranked”. Ranked would be as we currently know PvP and Unranked would give no rewards and is just a place to try you teams against on-meta comps.
I will be thinking twice about trying out new teams (as I did trialling 4 different line ups with Ghiralee before I settled on the most successful) if I am going to lose a trophy each time.
That would have been 3 of my previously hard earned trophies down the pan just for experimenting with a new troop.
Currently* challenges are fairly crap. Limited to one kingdom’s troops, usually only 3-4 colors at best, usually no epics or legendaries, and so on. Not counting the various 3-of teams in there which just make it even more boring. And all with the traits sort of skewed randomly.
Although it must be said that they are repeatable and reliable, rather than ‘oh no I hope I can find a /specific legendary/ to test this team against’.
The way retreat works had always seemed a little odd to me but this change seems like a much needed one since there is an unintended exploit involved.
My only worry, as others have mentioned, is how to go about accurately testing team compositions without being penalized for doing so.
As Shimrra touched on above, there will now need to be either a “Test Mode” to set up an enemy team to fight against with no rewards or gains. That would be the ultimate fix but adding an unranked PvP section would also do in a pinch.
I would think an “Unranked” PvP mode would be easy to implement. No costs, no rewards, just for trying out teams. Only concern would be messaging for noobs who might be intimidated by “Ranked PvP” but don’t realize they’re getting nothing for Unranked.
We had a much better FRQ on that tack: allow to fight your own defense team. Would be perfect for all kind of testing and experimentation and close to zero dev effort.
Fighting your own defense team is a cool idea, but it’s not as user friendly as an unranked mode since it requires you to own the troops and have them upgraded, traited, etc. for it to work well. It would really only be useful for the top 1% that can simultaneously field multiple maxed out teams. With an unranked mode you get diversity of comps without having to invest all the resources (albeit with less predictability in match-ups, though I’m assuming you’d still see the same half dozen teams for the most part – which is what you probably want – and there could also be free skips).
Coming in the 2.0 PvP rework - you can battle your friends & guildmates to test stuff out (no gold/soul/trophy rewards on this one though, because it’s too open to exploitation otherwise)
Yes! We have a plan for that (not finalized yet though), which we will share with you all a little closer to 2.1 and the Guild update.
Testing teams is still easy to do. Just have to close game instead of retreating if you don’t want to lose trophy. Sometimes it is faster to close game anyway.
