Hello, in this thread I aim to bring up some points to the discussion, as I personally believe the current system is flawed, it should have been tested more, and there is plenty of room for improvement.
Disclaimer: I make this thread as a player who attended every crew war so far, and been consistently in the top 5. Most of these aren't just what I think, instead, it is the collective thoughts of many other players I've talked and played with. Please remember that this thread is only for constructive criticism and feedback, I don't mean to be disrespectful to anybody and I appreciate our devs putting in hard work. I encourage you to speak under this thread and complain about crew wars in a civilized manner on how can it be improved and what can be achieved. Another disclaimer that please don't see this as a cry for help because I most certainly don't need these changes, I am not here to incite drama, instead, this is about improving the CW for the less fortunate and crews that can't compete for top ranks. Therefore I won't name a single crew or player by their name as this isn't a callout post, but the scenarios that I have frequented in the war make perfect examples of what is wrong with the system. That being said,
1- The Timer Stalling
Base defense is the ultimate win condition of the crew wars. It's easy as that, the longer you hold the base, the more points you accumulate. Over the past two weeks, we have seen that various guilds have optimized their own relative strategies, in which one of them being is timer stalling including my own crew. It goes as such, since assaulters cant pass through defenders who are staying on a tile, it has been deemed that staying on that tile for the longest duration is one of the best defensive strategies. This is true for a good reason, that is there are absolutely no drawbacks of just timer stalling your opponents because as long as you have people to PVP for you, you are accumulating points in an incredible ratio along with the base.
The Problem
This happens because of one reason, there is no upper limit of the timer. You are allowed to delay as long as you are not out of Pokemon, which basically translates into one minute gain from 3-4 moves. Assuming defending party has sufficient PvP knowledge, battles going on for extensive durations such as 40+ turns can easily result in one single crew holding a base for more than 10+ minutes.
The Solution
- A Timer Bank
This means an upper limit to the timer so you cant drag the battles out for an excessive amount of time. Once you spend your entire time, you lose the battle which only encourages fast-paced PVP and actual coordination between defenders to organize their defending tiles more smoothly. This gives crews a better chance to capture bases and big crews are mostly unaffected by this. This could be implemented with and without a timer limit per turn, the latter has significant advantages of allowing users to think, develop alternate win paths, and even calculate damage on crucial turns.
- A Smart Timer
This timer works like this, you have a total bank that goes down during the time you don't play, but it is restored once you make a move. The catch is that dragging the timer for long and only restores a percentage of the total time and doesn't restore it completely, thus also preventing matches with excessive duration.
2- The Difficulty of PvE Aspects
I like to believe that crew wars should be a crew effort in every aspect and one cannot simply claim that the PvE aspect of crew wars is anything near "crew effort", because it is simply too easy. One can walk in, go to the boss, and KO it within seconds which creates a pretty chaotic scheme.
The Problem
Unfortunately, bosses themselves cannot be seen as properly functioning defensive tools due to how easy it is to get past them. Bosses are incredibly weak, it is possible to even one-shot them with a specific Pokemon, and even with Crew bonuses, it is STILL possible to take on the boss one on one. Bosses should be a part of the defense and should be able to put at least a half-decent effort against attackers.
The Solution
- Innate Stats & Abilities & Moves
Coding wise this should be possible, seeing how we actually have a thing called "Dynahax" making Dynamax Pokemon immune to stuff. What I am talking about here is giving bosses some enchantments with this, such as granting them Magic Guard to negate Life Orb damage, the very same Dynahax for bosses to make them immune to cheap strategies, and increased stats to make sure they don't actually die to a single Pokemon most of the time.
- Terrain & Weather Effects
Bosses could benefit extra from those two effects, for example, Palkia could use its Water-attacks far better under Rain, Dialga could have Electric Terrain to boost Thunderbolts maybe? and we can surely find something for Giratina as well. Hell, if the overall goal is to have a little bit of challenge in the game might as well create your own customized terrains and weathers that benefit the bosses greatly but harms the attackers.
3- The Difficulty of Proper Base Defense
It has been established by now that it is essential to launch a proper base defense in order to stay high in the rankings. Base defense is one of the most crucial parts of the crew war, and simply that can keep you high in the rankings even if you don't do PVP efficiently, and we have a few examples of that in the top 5 rankings. However, the current system only favors crews with big numbers and doesn't allow anyone else to contest for bases.
The Problem
In order to defend a base successfully, you need to have enough members by the base when the boss is taken down. If you cannot hold the minimum required amount of chokepoints, another crew will simply walk through, flip the base again and deny you from getting points. There are few issues regarding that, the most relevant one being it is hard to coordinate your guild to flip a base because there is always a risk of getting caught in the PVP. This happens for one reason. Crews who accepted the fact that they cannot compete for bases will aimlessly PVP anyone in their path and chances they'll eventually click one of your crewmates who was tasked to be a part of capture boss / defend it later squad. This results in not having anybody to defend the base when you eventually capture the base because your entire crew is stuck in PVP. This does not concern larger crews too much as they spare their members for this task specifically, but this simply prevents smaller crews from competing for the bases as people who try to PVP are much greater than people who try to contest for bosses.
The Solutions
- Grace Period
Prevent people from entering the map after it has been captured for like 30 seconds, this allows defending crew to establish a proper line of defense and have a chance of holding for at least a little bit to accumulate points.
- Teleportation
Automatically teleport the crew members to the boss once the base has been captured. This allows crews to set a defense at the best of their capabilities at full force, and more than the minimum required amount of chokepoints can be held, resulting in a much better defense and a higher level of competition.
DISCLAIMER REGARDING PROPER DEFENSE: I think that both of these are not feasible in the current system as long as we have timerstall issue persisting, last thing I want is to make defending more cancerous.
4- Prizes and Token Shop
Items are a fundamental part of any Pokemon game, let it be for competition or simply PvE leisure. Their capability of enhancing a single Pokemon is unmatched and has a direct impact on their viability. In a mode like Crew Wars, having access to those items will increase the gap heavily between the players, and in the long run, this prevents people from competing against top crews altogether.
The Problem
4.1. The items that make PvP better are locked behind PvP, this is counterproductive and only favors crews that are already big.
4.2. Not everyone who needs these items enjoys doing PvP, and having most of these crucial items locking behind PvP is forcing people to join an environment that they might not like. On top of that, there isn't another way to obtain these items as of now.
4.3. The pricing on the items is extremely high, it takes a very long time for someone who cannot perform well in PvP to have access to those items.
4.4. The gap between placement rewards is too big, while most certain crews can get one item in a month, crews below the top 10 will need approximately 4 months to get one item, which is also counterproductive and kills the whole game mode.
The Solution
There is more than one optimal solution to this, I don't feel like going into detail on what can be done but I'll list them below on what can be done.
- Change participation and PVP win rewards.
- Change shop prizes.
- Bring another content that isn't PVP-related for people to farm these items or tokens.
5- Wintrading
Scoring high on Crew Wars isn't just about a successful base defense, it also involves doing PVP at a fast pace. We have seen crews get ranked in the top 3 without base defense and only focusing on PVP, we have also seen crews not even doing PVP and just turtling a base. Recently crews started doing both of these together, as it is also possible to see crews both turtling the base and doing PVP as fast as possible. Their PvP is so fast that, by two minutes mark in the war, these crews can actually get about 15 wins without a single loss, while also initiating a base defense which I personally believe is completely unrealistic.
The Problem
It has been brought up by a few people that there are some players entering PVP maps with only one completely unviable Pokemon, immediately losing the battle which results in a token gain by someone. I too ran into one of such trainers which only had a single Rockruff and lost the battle in about 5 seconds and taking this one step ahead we all know someone that got #1 CW wins after one war because he noticed this pattern and decided to take advantage it and reported it afterwards. This has caused massive frustration in the community, especially after devs told us that battle records couldn't be tracked. There are very obvious visuals of this happening, as I said a crew can get 15 wins as soon as the war begins, obtain unrealistically crazy ratios of 180-20 (%90+ winrate) and somehow get more wins with fewer numbers compared to a crew that pretty much exclusively focuses on PvP. I'll also attach this visual here as I believe this is one of the win traders because I don't believe "They might not know the game well enough" is a valid excuse to defend this kind of stat. https://prnt.sc/12sq8nd
The Solution
The solution would be simply punishing the abusers of this, but I was told there are technical limitations to this. Match data is apparently not recorded and traceable, so it isn't possible to verify this after CW's end, so the only way to solve this is by catching people on the act. No matter what tho, this needs to stop as this is blatant cheating and promotes unfair gameplay.
Disclaimer: I make this thread as a player who attended every crew war so far, and been consistently in the top 5. Most of these aren't just what I think, instead, it is the collective thoughts of many other players I've talked and played with. Please remember that this thread is only for constructive criticism and feedback, I don't mean to be disrespectful to anybody and I appreciate our devs putting in hard work. I encourage you to speak under this thread and complain about crew wars in a civilized manner on how can it be improved and what can be achieved. Another disclaimer that please don't see this as a cry for help because I most certainly don't need these changes, I am not here to incite drama, instead, this is about improving the CW for the less fortunate and crews that can't compete for top ranks. Therefore I won't name a single crew or player by their name as this isn't a callout post, but the scenarios that I have frequented in the war make perfect examples of what is wrong with the system. That being said,
1- The Timer Stalling
Base defense is the ultimate win condition of the crew wars. It's easy as that, the longer you hold the base, the more points you accumulate. Over the past two weeks, we have seen that various guilds have optimized their own relative strategies, in which one of them being is timer stalling including my own crew. It goes as such, since assaulters cant pass through defenders who are staying on a tile, it has been deemed that staying on that tile for the longest duration is one of the best defensive strategies. This is true for a good reason, that is there are absolutely no drawbacks of just timer stalling your opponents because as long as you have people to PVP for you, you are accumulating points in an incredible ratio along with the base.
The Problem
This happens because of one reason, there is no upper limit of the timer. You are allowed to delay as long as you are not out of Pokemon, which basically translates into one minute gain from 3-4 moves. Assuming defending party has sufficient PvP knowledge, battles going on for extensive durations such as 40+ turns can easily result in one single crew holding a base for more than 10+ minutes.
The Solution
- A Timer Bank
This means an upper limit to the timer so you cant drag the battles out for an excessive amount of time. Once you spend your entire time, you lose the battle which only encourages fast-paced PVP and actual coordination between defenders to organize their defending tiles more smoothly. This gives crews a better chance to capture bases and big crews are mostly unaffected by this. This could be implemented with and without a timer limit per turn, the latter has significant advantages of allowing users to think, develop alternate win paths, and even calculate damage on crucial turns.
- A Smart Timer
This timer works like this, you have a total bank that goes down during the time you don't play, but it is restored once you make a move. The catch is that dragging the timer for long and only restores a percentage of the total time and doesn't restore it completely, thus also preventing matches with excessive duration.
2- The Difficulty of PvE Aspects
I like to believe that crew wars should be a crew effort in every aspect and one cannot simply claim that the PvE aspect of crew wars is anything near "crew effort", because it is simply too easy. One can walk in, go to the boss, and KO it within seconds which creates a pretty chaotic scheme.
The Problem
Unfortunately, bosses themselves cannot be seen as properly functioning defensive tools due to how easy it is to get past them. Bosses are incredibly weak, it is possible to even one-shot them with a specific Pokemon, and even with Crew bonuses, it is STILL possible to take on the boss one on one. Bosses should be a part of the defense and should be able to put at least a half-decent effort against attackers.
The Solution
- Innate Stats & Abilities & Moves
Coding wise this should be possible, seeing how we actually have a thing called "Dynahax" making Dynamax Pokemon immune to stuff. What I am talking about here is giving bosses some enchantments with this, such as granting them Magic Guard to negate Life Orb damage, the very same Dynahax for bosses to make them immune to cheap strategies, and increased stats to make sure they don't actually die to a single Pokemon most of the time.
- Terrain & Weather Effects
Bosses could benefit extra from those two effects, for example, Palkia could use its Water-attacks far better under Rain, Dialga could have Electric Terrain to boost Thunderbolts maybe? and we can surely find something for Giratina as well. Hell, if the overall goal is to have a little bit of challenge in the game might as well create your own customized terrains and weathers that benefit the bosses greatly but harms the attackers.
3- The Difficulty of Proper Base Defense
It has been established by now that it is essential to launch a proper base defense in order to stay high in the rankings. Base defense is one of the most crucial parts of the crew war, and simply that can keep you high in the rankings even if you don't do PVP efficiently, and we have a few examples of that in the top 5 rankings. However, the current system only favors crews with big numbers and doesn't allow anyone else to contest for bases.
The Problem
In order to defend a base successfully, you need to have enough members by the base when the boss is taken down. If you cannot hold the minimum required amount of chokepoints, another crew will simply walk through, flip the base again and deny you from getting points. There are few issues regarding that, the most relevant one being it is hard to coordinate your guild to flip a base because there is always a risk of getting caught in the PVP. This happens for one reason. Crews who accepted the fact that they cannot compete for bases will aimlessly PVP anyone in their path and chances they'll eventually click one of your crewmates who was tasked to be a part of capture boss / defend it later squad. This results in not having anybody to defend the base when you eventually capture the base because your entire crew is stuck in PVP. This does not concern larger crews too much as they spare their members for this task specifically, but this simply prevents smaller crews from competing for the bases as people who try to PVP are much greater than people who try to contest for bosses.
The Solutions
- Grace Period
Prevent people from entering the map after it has been captured for like 30 seconds, this allows defending crew to establish a proper line of defense and have a chance of holding for at least a little bit to accumulate points.
- Teleportation
Automatically teleport the crew members to the boss once the base has been captured. This allows crews to set a defense at the best of their capabilities at full force, and more than the minimum required amount of chokepoints can be held, resulting in a much better defense and a higher level of competition.
DISCLAIMER REGARDING PROPER DEFENSE: I think that both of these are not feasible in the current system as long as we have timerstall issue persisting, last thing I want is to make defending more cancerous.
4- Prizes and Token Shop
Items are a fundamental part of any Pokemon game, let it be for competition or simply PvE leisure. Their capability of enhancing a single Pokemon is unmatched and has a direct impact on their viability. In a mode like Crew Wars, having access to those items will increase the gap heavily between the players, and in the long run, this prevents people from competing against top crews altogether.
The Problem
4.1. The items that make PvP better are locked behind PvP, this is counterproductive and only favors crews that are already big.
4.2. Not everyone who needs these items enjoys doing PvP, and having most of these crucial items locking behind PvP is forcing people to join an environment that they might not like. On top of that, there isn't another way to obtain these items as of now.
4.3. The pricing on the items is extremely high, it takes a very long time for someone who cannot perform well in PvP to have access to those items.
4.4. The gap between placement rewards is too big, while most certain crews can get one item in a month, crews below the top 10 will need approximately 4 months to get one item, which is also counterproductive and kills the whole game mode.
The Solution
There is more than one optimal solution to this, I don't feel like going into detail on what can be done but I'll list them below on what can be done.
- Change participation and PVP win rewards.
- Change shop prizes.
- Bring another content that isn't PVP-related for people to farm these items or tokens.
5- Wintrading
Scoring high on Crew Wars isn't just about a successful base defense, it also involves doing PVP at a fast pace. We have seen crews get ranked in the top 3 without base defense and only focusing on PVP, we have also seen crews not even doing PVP and just turtling a base. Recently crews started doing both of these together, as it is also possible to see crews both turtling the base and doing PVP as fast as possible. Their PvP is so fast that, by two minutes mark in the war, these crews can actually get about 15 wins without a single loss, while also initiating a base defense which I personally believe is completely unrealistic.
The Problem
It has been brought up by a few people that there are some players entering PVP maps with only one completely unviable Pokemon, immediately losing the battle which results in a token gain by someone. I too ran into one of such trainers which only had a single Rockruff and lost the battle in about 5 seconds and taking this one step ahead we all know someone that got #1 CW wins after one war because he noticed this pattern and decided to take advantage it and reported it afterwards. This has caused massive frustration in the community, especially after devs told us that battle records couldn't be tracked. There are very obvious visuals of this happening, as I said a crew can get 15 wins as soon as the war begins, obtain unrealistically crazy ratios of 180-20 (%90+ winrate) and somehow get more wins with fewer numbers compared to a crew that pretty much exclusively focuses on PvP. I'll also attach this visual here as I believe this is one of the win traders because I don't believe "They might not know the game well enough" is a valid excuse to defend this kind of stat. https://prnt.sc/12sq8nd
The Solution
The solution would be simply punishing the abusers of this, but I was told there are technical limitations to this. Match data is apparently not recorded and traceable, so it isn't possible to verify this after CW's end, so the only way to solve this is by catching people on the act. No matter what tho, this needs to stop as this is blatant cheating and promotes unfair gameplay.
rayge:
