Flawed GAC ranking system
Rewards are based on your ranking in your league. Ranking is determined by how many points you get. Assuming everyone completes the same feats and sets defence then your points are determined from your attack banners.
Herein lies the problem. Your ranking is now determined by how heavy your opponent went on defence. If they set double Revan + NS + GG + padme teams and you scrape a win 1400-1399 you get less rewards (due to lower overall points at the end of the gac) than if you both steam roll each others defences and win 1900-1899.
Each player can only beat what is put in front of them and therefore GAC rewards should only be based on wins. For players failing to get any wins then maybe split by points just so they get more than players that don't even participate.
Herein lies the problem. Your ranking is now determined by how heavy your opponent went on defence. If they set double Revan + NS + GG + padme teams and you scrape a win 1400-1399 you get less rewards (due to lower overall points at the end of the gac) than if you both steam roll each others defences and win 1900-1899.
Each player can only beat what is put in front of them and therefore GAC rewards should only be based on wins. For players failing to get any wins then maybe split by points just so they get more than players that don't even participate.
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that wouldn't work either due to some players not attacking at all.
I was thinking a possibility would be to convert the equivalent banners for the territories that held on Def into points at the end. And maybe for the teams that held, give them say 60 banners per team or calculate based on how many characters survived and how many times they survived etc. This way if you play defensively and dont lose to the Offense guy, he doesnt get the points because he lost, you get some Def points if your Def holds and you at least get to progress further into the league. The problem here is he also gets some extra points for the territories you cant defeat so I might be missing something here. I dont know how exactly this would play out to the fullest in our current system but I picture it this way:
Offense Guy Attacks:
In the first scenario, let’s assume he gets to defeat say 2 of your teams and thus one full territory. He gets the conquer points bonus and the points for defeating your two squads. Let’s assume he doesnt attack anything else. End of round comes and you get the not-conquered points yourself for the other 3 squares that held. He also gets his points. If you didnt do anything this round he will win with the points he got from Offense and the not-conquered bonus points he gets from his 4 territories. So essentially Offense is rewarded because he won the fights and Defense is rewarded for holding up and not just for being set.
In the second scenario, he attacks you but, instead of clearing your territory he losses to your Def, end of round comes and now you get the not-conquered bonuses for your 4 territories and some banners for the teams that held on Def. This time Offense lost and Def actually got rewarded. He gets his 4 territories not-conquered bonuses in case you didnt do anything and because of the extra banners from your teams holding up on Def you get to win over him.
We can see that the difference here in terms of Championship score than before is not that high between the two. But you both get to progress faster towards higher leagues or at least progress enough for it to be worth it to play Def as well instead of just Offense getting all the points.
In the third scenario, you play Def again and the Offense guy completely destroys your board. He gets all the conquer points bonuses and the bonuses for the teams he defeated. In this case, there’s a couple things that can happen:
a. He doesn’t win perfectly and you get some points for the teams he didnt defeat in one try + he gets the penalty for not winning the first time.
b. He wins perfectly with everything on his first try and even some undersized wins etc.
(This is not that unlikely if you go full Def for various reasons, maybe you are overmatched or the guys roster is strictly better or he plays his cards well.)
In this scenario, it all depends how you will do on Offense. If you clear all of his board as well then it’s down to who won it more efficiently. If you dont clear it all then he will likely win because he gets the not-conquered bonus for his territories and you get punished twice because you didnt get your conquer bonus as well. So this is the part that rounds up the whole change, because in this case since your Def lost the Offense guy is rewarded as it should be and you cant catch up to him for banking too much on Def and him doing perfectly against it. If he losses because he couldnt defeat your Def more efficiently, then he either didnt bank enough on Offense or your Def was strong enough to hold and you get rewarded because his Def was paper. I think this could work better than the current system. I might be wrong though and miss out on some key possibilities.
IKR? You can have 100% winrate as a Def player but a 100% Offense winrate = more score = higher league = access to more championship store currency and gear, so you win more by just not caring about Def and putting 59k GP Ewok teams on Def then as a certain popular FPS game players’ would say:
“Rush B”
Sure you could give some points for a defensive hold, but you've got to not make trying to clear a team with whatever you have left a cost to the attacker, which a stacking defence hold points system would. I like the idea of the "not conquered" banners being awarded to a defence team in some way though as an incentive as mentioned by nihilmus above - but post results (so just more points, not affecting the match).
Ok, so the “not conquered” points would be
strictly Championship Score, not actual banners. Those are the ones that would help the Defense player climb to higher ranks contrary to the Offense player who gets their Championship Score from the banners they would get from conquering a territory.
As for the stacking Defensive banners system, I think that can be optimized to have diminishing returns just like it does on Offense wins, where you lose points if you dont win on your first, second, third attempt and so forth. Maybe it’s a bit too much but it wouldn’t hurt to make it a bit more fair for Def. Since Offense get extra points for attacks, why not give Def points for holding as well? This would also encourage ultrawhales to think twice when attacking and not caring what the outcome will be because they just have the massive numbers to compensate and clean up.
I think the best competition happens and is most interesting, when both good Offense and Defense is rewarded, it’s about both sides of the coin and everything inbetween, not one dominating the other. Personally, I am all for the strategy that you mentioned: save good Offense teams, well for Offense, the teams that counter well their Defensive line-ups and then place good Defensive teams for Defense, instead of everything for Offense all day everyday.
In this GACE I will finish with triple wins, all ending with full clearing my opponents, but I do not think this is a justified healthy strategy for the rest of this game mode especially when it comes to the league system and the Championship Score. I really do think it was unfair for this playstyle that I adopted myself to dominate my Defensively oriented opponents. I didnt go light on Defense either, most of my teams on Def were exactly what could hold enough or slow down my opponent so in the end “I am more efficient” with my banners. But that’s only because the matchmaking is also broken and I am at the top of my division in terms of overall GP and effectively had around 400-500k more GP than those I got matched up with.
This GACE I am 3-0 with triple full board clears and my guild leader legit has about the same Championship score as I do with 2-1 because he cleared the board 3 times as well and he probably lost one of the matches by a small amount due to efficiency with the other guy and he still has waaay more Championship score to show for than anyone playing Def even if they went 3-0 as you said.
@Bulldog1205