Maybe in a frustrating manner, I don’t have a single, clear, strong recommendation. But let’s talk about the spirit of what guild leaders had, how Raids/Invasions changed it, and what they (probably) want. I like to try and summarize for everyone with a GIANT WALL OF WORDS. If players disagree with my assessment, they can write their own GIANT WALL OF WORDS.
Guild leaders want very clear, visible indicators that a player is “paying their rent”, so to speak. Guilds tend to use some combination of these metrics as minimums:
- Amount of gold donated to tasks per week.
- Number of seals collected.
- Number of trophies collected.
- Level of GW Sentinels purchased.
- Number of GW matches played.
It’s no coincidence all of that is what I’ll call “guild-public” information. You have to be in a player’s guild to see any of it. The guild roster shows the first three, and the GW interface shows the other two.
Anyway, guild leaders try to set minimums in one or more of these categories to ensure even the biggest slackers in the guild help maintain some minimum position for the clan. How a guild sets these minimums has a lot to do with where it falls on the “casual” or “competitive” spectrum and let’s deal with some naysayers right now: it’s fine to be anywhere along that spectrum.
Now a problem with those minimums is keeping in mind that a player has only so many hours per week they can play. People tend to be in a guild with the minimums they can meet, so anything that disrupts their play pattern can threaten to cause them to be kicked out of their guild. This tends to make people passionate!
Raids and Invasions disrupted minimums because the individual matches give fewer rewards than a PvP match and the higher levels take significantly more time per match due to increased stakes and strategy. People have complained about this. A competitive player might be able to earn 20k gold, ~25 seals, and ~12 trophies in the time it takes to do one Raid Boss or Invasion match, but that match will only yield a few hundred gold, 4 seals, and 0 trophies. So if the player was doing fine playing 2 hours daily and meeting minimums, but Raid/Invasion takes up 30 minutes of their day, they might be in danger of failing their clan minimums. So they’re passionate about it! Lots of guilds are trying to decide if Raid/Invasion weeks are weeks where gold/trophy requirements are relaxed, and by how much. Lots of guilds are also pointing out if Raid/Invasion matches awarded trophies/gold in line with their scaling stats, the issue might disappear. These are potential things the devs could do to help.
Now, what is missing that guilds want? We only have this guild-visible information about players:
- Current Boss level.
- Total towers killed/damage done.
Neither of these is a good measure of participation. Let’s say a guild lets a very new player join. That player may have a very poor set of troops for an event, and start losing matches around boss level 80 or something else sort of low. Their total towers killed or boss damage will be piddling, but they still worked very hard! Now let’s say an experienced player slacks off. They don’t play half their sigils, and end up with the same boss level/score as the newbie. There’s not an objective way to tell the difference, other than saying, “Well, a level 1,000 player SHOULD get further than a level 80 player.” Guild leaders and players HATE subjective criteria.
There are some aspects of what a player’s done in the event that are NOT visible, to some extent even the player can’t see some of these:
- Number of sigils spent.
- Level of tier purchased.
- Win-loss record.
- A fancy-schmancy very detailed readout of every match and its results.
Sigil count is a mostly agreed-upon good measure of effort. We know how many minimum sigils a player should get in a week. If the guild can see how many sigils were spent, that’s a good indicator of “an effort was made”. Going back to our ambiguous situation above, if we see the newbie spent all of thier sigils we can assume they “did their best”. If a higher-level player only uses half the sigils, it’s clear their score isn’t “bad luck” but “poor participation”. And high-level players with lots of sigils spent but low scores can warrant “What the heck happened?” This is more objective!
I don’t think the tier level is valuable, but many guilds see it as a sign of “putting skin in the game”. Theoretically a guild NEEDS to buy up to a certain tier, so that’s often brought up. If someone has to spend a significant amount of gems by default, it should follow they might be compelled to play those sigils out. I think most people think this is a weak indicator of effort. Spending a sigil usually gets at least SOMETHING for the guild in terms of progress. Buying tiers doesn’t. But currently it’s only possible to guess tier levels by calculating theoretical maximums for each sigil count, so it’s hidden information.
Win-loss record isn’t brought up a lot but is a good indicator for finding, “You spent all your sigils but didn’t attempt to win.” Our helpless newbie from above will show “all sigils spent, but many losses” and well, you expect that when you invest in a newbie. A veteran who has some bad luck can point to losses as an explanation for a low score. There’s some subjectivity here, but I think it’s agreeable.
The last option is something there’s no way the devs will ever do because it’s a ton of effort for something low-value. I’d describe it but just like, imagine “so much information people complain it’s hard to check minimums” and there you go.
I see some discussion about privacy here. We do have a bit more visibility in these leaderboards than we do in GW. In GW, only guildmates get detailed information about how an individual performed. Since Raids/Invasions have a global leaderboard, some information about a player’s progress is visible to everyone. I think since it is what it is, we shouldn’t change what’s visible on the global leaderboards. That’s the easiest way to deal with privacy: don’t expose more than has already been exposed.
“Level of tier purchased” is the next-most-private bit of information and I understand why some people may not want it visible. I feel like the discussion above shows it’s also a bit less valuable in terms of judging effort, so let’s just keep it private.
I think the guild leaderboard should display a Win-Loss record. That will implicitly display “sigils spent”, but gives more explanation for how the player is performing. Sigils spent is an objective indicator of “effort”. Win ratio is a good bit more subjective, but IMO it’s about as hard to “try to win” as it is to “fake bad luck convincingly”.
There are a few other metrics like “valravens defeated” that could be displayed, but I think the sigil count and/or win-loss record are the most strongly supported metrics.
So.
TL;DR; for busy devs:
I’m confident most players would be happy if you add a Win-Loss record to JUST the guild leaderboard. This exposes no extra information outside the guild and provides an indicator of effort for guild leaders.
It would also be appreciated by players if match rewards in Raids/Invasions:
- Included trophies, which are a very common guild minimum.
- Scaled with boss level to make up for taking longer than PvP matches.
We understand portal rewards are meant to make up for the low per-match rewards, but the lack of trophies is a major burden to many guilds.
We also would like to see a kingdom oriented around popular fast food treats with lovable troops such as “Burrito Golem”, “King Burger”, and “The Sandwichhighwayman”.