Ah, now reading the rest of the responses, I want to help detail out some logic that may give clarity to Roytchai's (and my) position...
- Roytchai's main point is that EVERY guild (hard-working and lazy guild alike) will all now tend toward an average rivalry finish rank of 3.5. If a guild works hard to complete quests, they may win first place that week, but then they'll just face even tougher competition next week, and then perhaps get last place the next week.
- What you can almost 100% guarantee now is that no guild will ever get first week after week after week. Because, after a few weeks, to get 1st again means you'll have to defeat guilds who have been just as active as you.
- We can also almost 100% guarantee that no guild will ever get last week after week after week. Because, after a few weeks, to get 6th again means you'll have to not defeat guilds who have been doing just as few quests as you have.
- This means two things: Hard-working guilds will NOT be as well-rewarded as they have been in the past. And Lazy guilds will be BETTER rewarded than they have been in the past.
Now, I saw someone's response was basically "Yeah, well, isn't that how all competition works now? Including our infamy ranking?"
If by that you mean "when you improve, you face tougher competition", then yes, you're not wrong............... but you're only half not wrong...............
But here's the other half.............
In our infamy structure, the higher infamy you are, you get higher periodic and seasonal rewards. Players strive for Nightmare because there are worthwhile rewards! (Now, arguably, the incentives for climbing in infamy have diminished in favor of gaming the guild quest system for more tokens -- but that's kind of a separate issue -- actually it's not, but let me just continue...)
Roytchai's point was, if you push guilds into this sort of competition, you have to first acknowledge that there are ZERO PERIODIC REWARDS for being a "high-achieving" guild week after week. There's not even a "leaderboard" for bragging rights for being a guild that completes X quests per week. The ONLY rewards are whatever you can win within a single Rivalry matchup. (A guild that completes 10 quests per week and a guild that completes 50 quests per week each get the same periodic reward of nothing.)
And now, in this system, there isn't even anything a guild can do do push themselves above that 3.5 average rivalry rank. In fact, there's also not much they can do to push themselves below it either. The only way to do either would be to "game it" by doing very little one week then doing a whole lot the next week (or visa versa) --- but that would only affect a single week, even if they did that over many weeks, their average wouldn't change from 3.5 very much.
So, we are now in a situation where your efforts to try to do well in a Rivalry matchup may be effective for your given week, but unless you can sustain that extra effort -- no, let me correct myself -- unless you can continuously increase your effort week over week over week, whatever you think you've gained by doing a few extra quests to do well one week will automatically put your guild in a really tough spot next week and guarantee that you'll place low.
Maybe you make a great motivational speech, everyone buys boosts, and everyone puts in extra hours, and by some miracle you do 50 quests (which is 10 more than your usual 40) to earn first place!!! .......... well, congratulations, you just guaranteed your guild to face a set of other guilds who also did 50 quests (perhaps without breaking a sweat because they're all in Nightmare league). What are you going to do, give another motivational speech? buy even more boosts? put in even more hours? Heck, are you even going to merely repeat your performance from last week (which we already called a miracle)?
Roytchai is right......... effort is no longer useful in Rivalries. Not over time at least. In fact, being lazy isn't even detrimental anymore. Because the worse you do, the easier time you'll have "accidentally" getting 1st or 2nd next week.
And Roytchai is right, again, when he says it is NOT in Rovio's best interest to so strongly discourage effort.
In conclusion, a proper guild-matchup system should:
(1) - match guilds of similar "strength" (meaning, if they all played the same amount of time, they should completely approximately the same number of quests) -- and I think total Infamy is about as good a way of measuring this as I can think of
(2) - reward guilds who can OUT-EFFORT other guilds that are, at least on paper (i.e. infamy), "just as strong" as they are, and by extension, not reward guilds who CANNOT out-effort similar strength guilds.
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