An "exploit" of the new Guild Rivalry System...

The old Guild Rivalry system was deeply flawed.
However, the new Guild Rivalry system also has some weaknesses – some of which can be exploited.

In order to explain why/how, I want to build the logic from the ground-up.

Let’s start with the following two statements:
“No matter how strong you and your guildmates are, without effort, you won’t complete many quests.”
“No matter how weak you and your guildmates are, with enough effort, you can complete many quests.”

These statements allow us to deduce the following relationship:

QUESTS = STRENGTH * EFFORT

Let’s take a moment to clarify both Effort and Strength…

“EFFORT” represents # games played, and has two factors:
- Time spent
- Boost multiplier

It’s potentially possible for someone to play significantly more hours/week than they currently do.
It’s potentially possible for someone to purchase significantly more Boosts than they currently do.
Therefore, Effort is something players can significantly increase on-demand, but this is variable player-to-player.

“STRENGTH” has two factors:
- Item levels (ships/weapons)
- Skill (how well can you use those items effectively)

Players can increase Item levels, but this is a very slow process overall for basically everyone.
Players can increase Skill, maybe quickly at first, but eventually the skill improvement rate levels off.
Therefore, Strength is not something veteran players can significantly increase on-demand.

You may be wondering why I haven’t mentioned the word “Infamy” at all yet… well let me explain!
I intentionally did not list Infamy as any component or sub-component in the ability to complete Quests.

“INFAMY” itself has two factors:
- Strength (same as above – Items & Skill)
- Desire (to utilize your Strength to play your best each game, and never tank)

Note: “Desire” is NOT the same as “Effort”. Effort is # games you play, while Desire is how hard you try to win each of those games.

If it’s still not clear, here are two examples:
High desire, low effort – someone who always tries their hardest, but they just don’t get to play a lot.
Low desire, high effort – someone who tanks, but plays a ton.

Therefore, Effort is NOT a factor in determining Infamy.

To achieve high Infamy, you cannot tank and you must be appropriately high Strength (Item & Skill).
But low Infamy could mean low Strength, or it could mean high Strength w/ low Desire (i.e. tanking).

Infamy Conclusion
If no one tanks, Infamy is synonymous with Strength.
When players tank, Infamy is NOT synonymous with Strength.

Rolling all of this back up into a conclusion about the # of Quests a player or guild can complete…

Remember, the only way a guild can increase # Quests is by increasing Strength or Effort on-demand.
We showed that players do not have much ability to significantly increase Strength on-demand.
Thus…

Quest Conclusion
If a guild wants to significantly increase # Quests on-demand, this can only be done by increasing Effort.
(This is true regardless of Guild Rivalry Matching System.)

Okay, so now let’s talk about these Guild Rivalry Matching Systems. We’ll start with the old system…

Old System
The Old System paired guilds into Rivalries based on Infamy.
The thought was to pair guilds of comparable Strength, and let Effort decide the outcome.
And that would have been perfectly fair if not for the Infamy Conclusion (above).

To maximize Rivalry Tokens, a guild should want to be paired against:
(a) Guilds of higher Strength, lower Desire (i.e. Stronger players who are tanking)
(b) Guilds of equal Strength, equal Desire (i.e. Comparable players)
(c) Guilds of lower Strength, higher Desire (i.e. Weaker players who battle with inspiration)

The correct answer is (c), and the best way to guarantee that is to tank. In fact, the further you tank down your Infamy, the stronger you are by comparison to other guilds of similar Infamy, which means it’s easier and easier to get 1st place every Rivalry and rake in those sweet tokens.

Obviously, this was unfair for all our honorable weaklings out there, trying to maximize their Infamy, because it meant they weren’t fighting comparable guilds each week – they were constantly fighting much stronger guilds who could pound out multiple quest boards with ease (and then just make sure they tank back down before the next Rivalry).

Deeply flawed system? Absolutely! I’m glad it’s gone.

New System
The New System pairs guilds into Rivalries based on # Quests.
The thought was to pair guilds of similar Questing ability, and let… effort…? decide the outcome…?

I proved (in another thread) that if everyone was blindly just doing their best each week, the slight variabilities week-to-week would all basically wash everything away, and everyone would get an average of 3.5th place, for an average of 13.5k Rivalry-placement tokens/week. At 42 quests per week, that comes to a grand total average of 105 tokens/week.

The “Exploit”
It’s not technically an “exploit”, but rather a placement strategy…

Anyway, imagine a guild who routinely does ~42 quests. Sometimes a few more or less, but that’s where they average.

To maximize Rivalry Tokens, the best strategy is something like the following:
- Tank down # quests to 36 (whatever your guild can do very easily, but also surpass very easily).
- Get paired against other guilds who also did 36 last week.
- Hope that they weren’t tanking, so that maybe the best they can do is 36.
- Try to win by +1 (i.e. 37). But let’s say they push a little extra and force you to 39. You still get 1st.
- Next week, you’ll be matched against other 39’s.
- Hope that they weren’t tanking so that maybe the best they can do is 39.
- Try to win by +1 (i.e. 40). But let’s say they push a little extra and force you to 42. You still get 1st.
- Next week, you’ll be matched against other 42’s.
- Hope that they weren’t tanking so that maybe the best they can do is 42.
- Try to win by +1 (i.e. 43). But sheesh, that’s about the best you can do. Competition gets fierce, you grind extra, spend pearls on boosts, and you squeak out 45. You get 2nd…
- Next week, you’ll be matched against other 45’s.
- You know it’s hopeless to win this one, so you tank back down to 36.
- Rinse & Repeat.

By doing the above pattern, they have gotten 6th, 1st, 1st, 2nd, and then they repeat…
That’s an average of 2.7th place each week, for an average of 26.5k Rivalry-placement tokens/week. At 36, 39, 42, 45 quests during those weeks, that comes to a grand total average of 115 tokens/week.

An extra 10k tokens/week seems like it’s worth the effort!

(It’s actually even better if you decide to just repeat after 6, 1, 1, and not get that last 2nd place. And not just because the Rivalry-placement tokens/week are better this way, but because every 3rd week you can go all out, get a super high Quest score, and get all the extra tokens that brings with that effort.)

Some ways this could go even better… getting more than 2 1st places for every tank week.
Some ways this could go poorly… running into other guilds implementing this same strategy – and having to ramp up too fast, and getting less than 2 1st places for every tank week.
No matter who you are, you should mentally brace for those weeks where you will run into FAR STRONGER guilds stomping you during one of your weeks when you were trying to get 1st place… It’s going to sting…

Regardless, our guild will be trying and tracking our success with this strategy.

Did I just give our secrets away? Yeah I guess so… but whatever… maybe it won’t work at all…

Final Thoughts
So, Infamy-tanking is gone (hooray!), but it’s now replaced by this convoluted Quest-tanking cycle. I guess it’s an improvement overall because I personally despise Infamy-tanking, and now I will no longer feel punished for not tanking!

 

Wow. You really did your homework.
But Quests For the whole guild is like
Avg Strength x Avg Effort x amount of guild mates

 

For those who say TL;DR.... basically the new system tries to make you always one up yourself, which seems fun until you realize you can never sustain outdoing yourself and will eventually burn out.

Quest tanking is not as bad as it seems. I might feel some reduction of pressure on our off week! You know, do RL stuff, etc.

@Spinners71 No solutions or recommendations made? How about basing it off of average quests completed? Wondering if anyone else has picked up on this, and what they think about it. Like, dislike? Is this a problem or not? Can it be improved, and should it?

 

Separate guilds into leagues depending on number of quests they do, all guilds in the league get the same reward at the end of the season. Rivalries no longer give tokens but give something less desirable, say 5% battle/quest Bonus or 1 million gold or 500k sugar.

All guilds in their respective tiers get the same token bonuses at end of the rivalry.

Tier 1 (72 Quests+) 30,000 Tokens
Tier 2 (60 Quests+) 10,000 Tokens
Tier 3 (48 Quests+) 10,000 Tokens

 

I think you have alot of DESIRE while writing this

 

So what you're saying is that instead of superbooster whale guilds winning every single rivalry without question, now they'll only take every second one?
Sounds awful.

 

Rebellion is over 120 quests, superbooster guilds have the money, time and effort and are an exception to all of this stuff. They don't lose, period

 

Oh I forgot that Rebz are every whale guild..

 

Unless whale guilds all go against rebz they don't lose. Nightmare clan if not against rebz won't lose, likewise the other side and similar whale guilds won't lose unless pitted against each other which they are not. I would say apart from rebellion which has a 100% win certainty. All other whale guilds have a 90% of first unless pitted against each other or rebellion.

 

PROS:
- Eliminates cases where 6 evenly matched guilds (that finish, respectively, at say, 43, 43, 44, 44, 45, 45 quests) get wildly different rewards.
- Guilds that achieve more, get more. (more quests = more rewards)

CONS:
- The quest/board system already runs on a more quests = more rewards structure. So a simpler way of implementing your idea would be to just give incrementally more rewards for quests/boards, get rid of rivalries altogether, and just have each guild do their own quest board progression by themselves, with zero visibility to other guild's quest progress. Seems kinda boring imo...
- Honestly, I wouldn't want to eliminate the intimate competition between 6 guilds. It adds excitement and a real sense of "rivalry" each week. I especially like getting revenge on guilds that previously beat us!

 

So making the rewards less significant takes always the sense of rivalry? Lol if anything I'm aiming for rivalries to be as minimally rewarding as possible with in game items but significantly increase the merit behind it. Example, winners of rivalries will move to compete with other winners and every month the champions are recognized by having their name displayed on the main menu for everyone to see. Maybe even a Revere option so that people can check in everyday to Revere the champion and get some free sugar. Alot of MMO RPGs implement this.

 

The issue as I see it is that because of the diverse spread of placement reward tokens, it causes guilds to feel disgruntled or give up during the rivalry. Some competitions are not even close. We don't wan that to happen. I think if the reward system was revised to be more distributed, it can be improved. I suggest that the placement reward be tied into the number of quests completed.

So as a baseline, lets say that on average completing 42 quests will likely give you the win and 42,000 tokens. So one quest = 1000 tokens. For the end of a rivalry, adjust the token rewards to be # of quests x 1000 x placement factor. Placement factor will be based on your rank at the end of the rivalry. 1st place = 1.0, 2nd = 0.8, 3rd = 0.6, 4th = 0.4, and 5th = 0.2

Comparison of the old system to this new one:

Example of OLD
1st 42 quests - 42000 tokens
2nd 40 quests - 21000 tokens
3rd 36 quests - 10000 tokens
4th 35 quests - 5000 tokens
5th 30 quests - 1000 tokens

Example of NEW
1st 42 quests - 42x1000x1 = 42000 tokens
2nd 40 quests - 40x1000x0.8 = 32000 tokens
3rd 36 quests - 36x1000x0.6 = 21600 tokens
4th 35 quests - 35x1000x0.4 = 14000 tokens
5th 30 quests - 30x1000x0.2 = 6000 tokens

Which is much better than present. And would avoid close 5 way battles from being shafted:
Example of NEW
1st 45 quests - 45x1000x1 = 45000 tokens
2nd 44 quests - 44x1000x0.8 = 35200 tokens
3rd 43 quests - 43x1000x0.6 = 25800 tokens
4th 42 quests - 42x1000x0.4 = 16800 tokens
5th 41 quests - 41x1000x0.2 = 8200 tokens

First observation is that the guilds who cannot complete a lot of quests will get hurt by this. To fix that we would just need to adjust the tokens per quest. I suggest base it off of what board you make it up to. So board 1 (11 quests or less) would be 3500 tokens per quest, Board 2 (23 quests or less) is 1750 per quest, Board 3 = 1167 tokens per quest and Board 4 is 1000 tokens per quest. Anything above Board 4 is 1000 and gravy so super active teams can earn more than they do now. Don't forget that you would still have the placement factor in here.

I am sure I did not cover all possible angles of this. Feel free to add anything I missed.

 

I know a guild establish another new guild and all of the members change to the other guild every week, this way they may always match up opponents that do less than 10 quests.

 

Oops! I made a critical error and used a starting point at my guilds ability, but then when I ran numbers for lower guilds the formulas fell apart. Let's simplify it. What I want is for guilds to get their placement prize and then a bonus based on the number of quests they completed. As a starting number, rivalry winnings total would be placement prize + # of quests x 250 tokens. I think this accomplishes what I am looking for. Close ties between places will get more of a reward for doing a lot of quests. no one who completes 40 quests wants to walk away with 1000 tokens. The current difference between 1st and 5th is 42x the tokens. This bonus would reduce it to 11x down to 4x for lots of quests. More tokens = stronger guilds = more competition. See example calcs below. Number of tokens per quest can be increased to further reduce the gap between 1st and 5th (up to a point)

 

A few things...

What you got right
You have the right idea about bringing 1st and 6th place rewards closer together.
If they're too far apart, Rivalry placement becomes too important, and guilds will do anything imaginable (some good, some bad) to try to guarantee high placement.
If they're too close together, Rivalry placement becomes unimportant, and we lose all sense of meaningful competition.

So, the trick is to find the "sweet spot" where the rewards are far enough apart to drive competition (and pearl-boost revenue for Rovio), but not so far apart that we see quest-tanking (either intentional or as a result of burnout), or worse (such as guilds getting cutthroat with membership to try to eek out a few extra trophies each week), as a result.

What I would change
It turns out that your suggestion is an overall net increase in rewards handed out at the end of each Rivalry.
You're basically asking Rovio to give out more free stuff than they were already.
If players get too strong (with all these added rewards) too quickly, they will purchase less.
That's bad for Rovio as a business (which in the long run is bad for us as players).
So, while I like bringing 1st and 6th place rewards closer together, you need to find a way to do it where the net total rewards is not increased.

For example:
- 1st place = 21,000
- 2nd place = 18,000
- 3rd place = 15,000
- 4th place = 12,000
- 5th place = 9,000
- 6th place = 6,000

To me, this still achieves your initial purpose of bringing the placement rewards closer together, it achieves my "sweet spot" (imo) of keeping them distinct enough to keep competition alive, all while maintaining the average reward = 13.5k (what it is now).

Actually, if it were up to me, I would actually go even a step further and say...
The average reward should be reduced below 13.5k (the whole table should drop).
The reason is because I think the placement rewards are weighted too heavily above quest/board rewards (for most guilds).
If, for most guilds, the rivalry reward is such a significant chunk of their weekly tokens, or significantly not a chunk if they fail to get a high placement, then there is great potential for that guild to feel awful because getting a slightly lower placement than expected can wipe out their income.
This "feels bad", and rather than inspire a tougher fight next week, many players will despair and leave.
That's bad for Rovio as a business, which means it's bad for me as a player.
So, if we funnel some of those Rivalry rewards into quest/board rewards, there is still a chance for low placing guilds to not have their token income wiped out.

For example:
- 1st place = 18,000
- 2nd place = 15,000
- 3rd place = 12,000
- 4th place = 9,000
- 5th place = 6,000
- 6th place = 3,000

This drops the average reward to 10.5k, which means they can afford to give an extra, say, 1000 tokens for each board bonus.

This achieves every gain I can think of:
- Competition is still alive (because the rivalry rewards are not too close together)
- The incentive to manipulate rivalry placement is lower (i.e. healthier balance) compared to the incentive to complete more boards/quests
- Getting a low placement is no longer quite as soul-crushing
- Rovio isn't giving away more overall tokens each week than they were before

The only possible downside is the following:
- This does re-direct some tokens from the highest earners of the past to some of the lowest earners of the past.
- Actually, if this makes it a little easier for new players to get resources to get stronger a little faster, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. The new player experience is (reportedly) pretty grim... so if this helps those guys stay with the game while they're creating/joining/growing new guilds... then that's better for Rovio as a business, which means it's better for me as a player.

 

Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot to talk about your "extra bonus" for doing more quests.
Why tie that into Rivalry placement rewards?
Why not just add those directly to the quest or board rewards themselves?

And, as I just wrote, if you're going to tell Rovio they need to give away more tokens in one place, where are you taking them away (somewhere else)? Or how does that benefit Rovio?

 

I agree for almost all points. What will cause a stir in the community is that your adjustment is lowering the grand prize at the cost of bumping the lower prizes. I understand that it is just redistributing the wealth, but many will see it as a nerf. So Rovio might have to pony up some more tokens and buff things a little to balance it out. I would never want to go backwards.

On the plus sides, more tokens mean level faster which means more playing which is only good for Rovio in the end. People are not going to want to spend money if things progress too slowly and they lose interest. I always want to feel like I am one step away from the next level. 42k feels like a great win and I get a lot out of it. 10k and lower just feels like an insult when I get 12k as a bonus for completing a board.

Rivalry raffles have done nothing but add to the free stuff Rovio has given us. So for that I am grateful. I dont think that having a bonus tied to quests would be asking that much. I would also be happy with revising the payouts for placement as you suggested but that does not give a "if i play more i get more" feel which I think is key. Just...one...more...quest! There is already a bonus given at the end of each board, so while this would be a duplicate of sorts, the goal again is to just reduce the gap between 1st and 5th places.

Maybe the whole thing is moot. If I add all the tokens I get from quests, and completing boards, the prize at the end is really a small part of all of it. I think that it just seems off. What if winning the rivalry just gave you a flat multiplier against your total tokens earned in that rivalry? Like 1st would give you 1.5, 2md would give you 1.4 etc down to 1.1 for 5th? So a 50% bonus for 1st, and a 10% for last. Completing board 3 gives 81k tokens and so 1.5 bonus is another 40k tokens, which is on par with the 42k you get now.

 

@benguin8
Hey man, I want to say something.
I love that you are thinking critically, and applying reason > emotion.
I love that you're clearly expressing your thoughts.
To me, this is a fruitful discussion that is very enjoyable.

While I may not agree with everything you (or anyone) writes...
I still really appreciate your input.
And I always try for constructive criticism - I encourage everyone to hold me (and each other) to this standard.

<3

 

Perhaps you're right. Perhaps they only had one shot to get the balance right, and that was when they first introduced Rivalries...
But I actually think that a lot can be accomplished with healthy company-player communication. Rovio could mitigate the negative impact of an "unpopular" change with a clear explanation of the logic behind it, and how it will actually improve the health of the game. Then, players who may be like "hey, they're taking my 1st place tokens from me!" will be able to calm down and realize "oh, but they're making the game healthier overall, which is actually better for me in the long run."

Yes, Rivalries and this massive influx of tokens/resources has increased player progress.
This was an intentional injection into the game economy.
I could argue that perhaps it was too great overall, but I'll have to defer to Rovio that they knew what they were doing.
So, I wouldn't want to rock the boat too much and tell them to inject even more resources. Let's let them do the balancing, and our feedback should be primarily focused on how they can rebalance those to healthier areas while keeping the NET about the same.

But it didn't "reduce the gap". It's still 41k difference between 1st and 6th. (There are 6 places, btw... not sure why you keep talking about 5...)
Yes, it's a smaller % difference, but not a smaller net difference.
But that's only because you are adding rewards for quests/boards, but just waiting to deliver those rewards until rivalry end...

That's an interesting suggestion. My first reaction is that it makes the rich richer, and the poor poorer. An extra 50% rewards for some guild that did 8 boards is HUGE. An extra 50% rewards for a guild that does 1 board is TINY... I kinda like the flat placement rewards as a way of at least giving something meaningful to guilds who may not do a lot of quests, but still manage to win the rivalry competition.

 

This is a really good discussion mirroring suggestions I've made myself about building actual incentives into the rivalry system.

• Rivalry win rewards should be scaled based on quests completed, so that a 50-quest rivalry win is worth more than a 10-quest rivalry win. 1k per quest for first place is a nice number.
• Scaling down 2nd-6th place rewards to incentivize effort is ok, but I do think the current system is too drastic as 5th and 6th don't even get a raffle draw for their efforts.

My guild consistently completes 45 quests which used to get us 1st-3rd place each week, but after the update we are 3rd-5th place, which is a combined total reward of 17k (vs 73k prior) because more than half of our rivals are significantly exceeding the rivalry baseline. It's a huge disincentive for our guild who is at our max effort, and may force us to purge nice guild members for what, a couple extra raffle draws? For the guilds stretching for those 50+ weeks, they will be rewarded with 5 rivals at 50+... good luck with that. This 4th rivalry it appears our competition is now less than 45 on average, which is different than the prior pattern.