A Summarization Of Why The War Is Rigged.

[Xylia]

As the thread title says, this is a concise summary of why the event is rigged, and why the Corpus had no chance to win the battle from the start.

 

Reason #1: Clan Leaderboards. So your entire clan is forced to all go for the same side, regardless of what each individual player might want. I'm pretty sure the people at DE thinks that this "encourages" clans to "coordinate", but as we saw some threads at the beginning of the event, players were either forced to give up their "choice", or leave their clan because of it. Or they resisted and got kicked. Not to mention the fact that there's no changing your mind, there's no anything. Gotta go 100% all the way or you don't stand a chance at Leaderboards. I feel this is the #1 biggest mistake as far as the event goes. They should have just had straight up # of missions done, either side and be done with it.

 

Reason #2: Rewards.. Reason #1 leads straight into Reason #2 -- because any Clan wanting to try for Leaderboards are locked into whatever they start with.... offering such hugely unbalanced rewards at the very beginning doomed the Corpus from the start. Any clan wanting Leaderboards weren't going to pass up potatoes in the first few battles for measly credits. They weren't going to pass up Mutagen Masses right after a MASSIVE nerf to Mutagen Sample drops, right after DE introduced several new Mutagen Sample Clantech items. Doesn't matter what the Corpus offer up now, as evidenced by Spear, the Grineer are still going to win because the clans wanting leaderboards are like "we're just gonna have to give up the reward if we want a one-time statue".

 

Reason #3: Difficulty. As I've said in many other threads... fighting Corpus is a LOT easier than fighting Grineer. There is absolutely NOTHING balanced about Grineer vs Corpus -- Corpus die easier, Corpus has a lot less CC/Stuns/Staggers, Corpus has next-to-no AoE, Corpus have lousy accuracy at range, unlike the Grineer who can do all of these things in spades. Grineer are simply not fun to fight, and are very frustrating. To introduce an event like this WITHOUT fixing the ridiculousness of Napalms, Scorches, Eviscerators, etc was poorly timed. To implement this event BEFORE fixing the ridiculous armor scaling (yanno, one side has armor, the other doesn't? lol!) was poorly timed. Many of the MIDDLE battles did not have Napalms, but the first several did. And again, because of Reason #1... once you do a few, you're locked in your decision if your Clan wants to try for Leaderboards.

 

Reason #4: Unbalanced/Weak Lore. The whole premise behind helping the Grineer are "Free Tenno sleeping in Cryopods that the Corpus are experimenting on!". That's a reason every player understands, and understands well. However.... on the Corpus side... "OMG Grineer are getting too powerful, and are enslaving "colonists", we must kill them so they don't get too powerful!" ........what colonists, again? I've never seen colonies, or civilians in the game-world (other than Rescue targets.... but then I avoid Rescue missions like the plague). Who exactly are the Grineer enslaving? I've never seen these people. I've never even heard of these people. You expect players to care about something that only exists in passing mention? Really? You wanted players to choose between Tenno Cryopods and .....some colonists we never heard of until now?

 

Reason #5: Warbros. This is more or less re-iterating #1, but this deserves its own mention. You know the biggest Clans are going to go for Leaderboards, and you locked each clan into doing 100% for a side. Surely you should have known that these mega-clan-alliance-whatevers were going to decide the entire War for the rest of the playerbase. Do you really think your average joe (or even several hundred of them) are going to put a dent in the efforts of 17k+ no-lifers who routinely win every stinking competition to date? Seriously? This is another reason why we should have just nixed the individual side competitions (and made the competition for just the event in general, without the individual side requirements). So, once Warbros chooses who wins.......that's it. Everybody else might as well go home.

 

I feel that this event was a very good example of questionable design and game balance (or lack thereof). This event needed some serious tweaks, and the outcome we're seeing pretty much makes this very apparent. So, after all of these things... "Where's the Feedback"? Well....

 

RE: Reason #1: DE should have Gotten rid of the Corpus and Grineer competitions, and made the competition event-wide, regardless of which side was chosen.

 

RE: Reason #2: The rewards should have been balanced in the first several missions to give players a real choice.

 

RE: Reason #3: Corpus and Grineer need serious balancing tweaks -- Corpus are too weak, Grineer too powerful. If you ever hope to have a balanced "War", then these guys need balancing. Napalms and Eviscerators need nerfed, Crewmen are far too weak. This event should have at the very least waited until after Armor 2.0.

 

RE: Reason #4: We needed a better reason to help the Corpus. "The Grineer will be too poweful!" ......vague, much? "The Grineer are enslaving colonists!" .....what colonists? What colonies? Maybe if we got to SEE these colonists in-game before the event, we might have cared about them more. DE needed to give the Grineer more 'bad', or give the Corpus a good side, maybe the Corpus promising the support the Tenno against the Grineer once the War's over, or something. Anything.

 

RE: Reason #5: Not sure what anything can be done about these ridiculous Mega-Clans. Steve once said "we should have put a cap on them earlier" .... so I won't rail on him now for Hindsight always being 20/20, but sheesh. Maybe some sort of Balance Incentive should have been offered, for players who tried to Balance the War? Players who have less than 10% deviance from either side get a special reward for weakening both sides equally? That would have gone a long way towards making this "War" feel like a Real "War" and not a CurbStompBattle (tvtropes).

 

EDIT: BEFORE ANY OF YOU TRIP OVER YOURSELVES REACHING FOR THE REPLY BUTTON, I HAD WARBROS CONFUSED WITH BROFRAME when I wrote the post originally.

Edited October 28, 2013 by Xylia

[Aniron]

Most of it is so true

[Lunaticked]

I like my coffee to be Xylia levels of bitter it seems.

[Lumireaver]

If you're playing to the story instead of playing to the rewards, a lot of things make a lot more sense. (And are a lot more enjoyable.)

[Xylia]

If you're playing to the story instead of playing to the rewards, a lot of things make a lot more sense. (And are a lot more enjoyable.)

 

 

Howso?

 

Did you read Reason #4 in my OP?

 

And if people were REALLY playing to the story, then we'd have people trying to balance the war out. Think about it -- if the Tenno help the Grineer Curbstomp the Corpus, then the Grineer will literally turn right around and bring their full might to bear against the Tenno which does not help us in the long run.

 

HOWEVER....

 

If the Tenno made the Grineer pay for every inch of their victory (or if they did the same to the Corpus), then both sides would be weakened very heavily and it would have been a Pyrrhic Victory of epic proportions and both sides would be very heavily weakened and forced to back off and recoup their losses.

 

But sadly, the game mechanics don't support this (lack of 'balance' rewards) and the playerbase doesn't seem to understand (more like they probably simply don't care) about the actual lore behind this.

 

I like my coffee to be Xylia levels of bitter it seems.

 

Okay so you're going to call me "Bitter" because I'm disappointed that DE pitched a "Power Struggle" to us and instead gave us a Curbstomp Battle that was decided at the very beginning?

 

Ok, fine, I'm bitter then.

 

Nobody enjoys a war movie where there's no question in who's going to win or how they're going to win. Everybody knew Rambo was gonna win and come out alive, the exciting part was more of "HOW is he gonna beat all of those guys?". What we have here is a "Yup, Grineer are gonna win, nothing to see here. *yawn*" type thing, unless DE pulls something weird at the very end to suddenly tip the scales over... but then if they do that, then we'd have the hordes of Grineer supporters whining about it, that'd probably hurt the game as a whole if they didn't let them win.

Edited October 27, 2013 by Xylia

[Spiritofpower]

I wouldn't say the war is rigged; That implies DE deliberately tried to make one side win. They may as well have done that, yes, but I highly doubt any actual intent to unbalance things.

 

#1: Agreed. This isn't helping clans coordinate, it's forcing clans who want to be competitive to purge all dissenters.

 

#2: Agreed. Another problem with this is that the huge amount of misinformation going around means several players think they're locked into a single side after fighting one battle, so many players who jumped on those stupidly unbalanced rewards at the beginning think they don't have any choice but to keep fighting for the Grineer. Honestly, DE should've just made all the battle pay rewards identical (by that I mean both sides have the same reward, not every mission has the same reward. Like both sides reward Mutagen on one mission and Fieldron on another).

 

#3: Also agreed, but I don't find Corpus at this level that much easier than Grineer. Grineer are noticeably harder, yes, but that's mainly because I have to use a semblance of strategy, not because they're actually a feasible threat.

 

#4: I'm sort of conflicted on this one. Yes, more lore would be amazing, but would having more details about the colonists really get enough sympathy points to make a difference? And where would we even see these colonists?

 

#5: 17,000+ players barely even registers when you consider the size of the entire playerbase. Now, yes, the entire playerbase probably isn't participating in this event, but until we get some hard numbers on this I'm hesitant to finger any one clan as a major deciding factor. Though I do like the idea of balance, as there really is no reason why the Tenno would be forced into this binary choice. We've got the firepower, why can't we just flip off both sides and go to town? Save our Tenno buddies AND the colonists? Neither side can stop us, since they've got each other to worry about in addition to an army of Space Ninjas with superpowers.

[Xylia]

#5: 17,000+ players barely even registers when you consider the size of the entire playerbase. Now, yes, the entire playerbase probably isn't participating in this event, but until we get some hard numbers on this I'm hesitant to finger any one clan as a major deciding factor. Though I do like the idea of balance, as there really is no reason why the Tenno would be forced into this binary choice. We've got the firepower, why can't we just flip off both sides and go to town? Save our Tenno buddies AND the colonists? Neither side can stop us, since they've got each other to worry about in addition to an army of Space Ninjas with superpowers.

 

A HUGE portion of the playerbase aren't even trying for Leaderboards in most events. They do enough to get their rewards, and then they move on. Who keeps hacking at them even after their rewards are earned?

 

Clans trying for Leaderboards.

 

Warbros, and the other large clans who are locked into 1 choice, which was most likely Grineer due to the other reasons. Which earns more points? The masses of players doing "5 and then stop" or the few-thousand no-lifers doing hundreds of missions to keep their place on leaderboards?

[alocrius]

Whether it was rigged or not, the event was perceived to be rigged because of the early no brainer reward bias.  It is really hard to see it any other way.  One must not just avoid impropriety, one must also avoid the appearance of impropriety.  Pretty poor execution DE.

[theammostore]

Howso?

 

Did you read Reason #4 in my OP?

 

And if people were REALLY playing to the story, then we'd have people trying to balance the war out. Think about it -- if the Tenno help the Grineer Curbstomp the Corpus, then the Grineer will literally turn right around and bring their full might to bear against the Tenno which does not help us in the long run.

 

HOWEVER....

 

If the Tenno made the Grineer pay for every inch of their victory (or if they did the same to the Corpus), then both sides would be weakened very heavily and it would have been a Pyrrhic Victory of epic proportions and both sides would be very heavily weakened and forced to back off and recoup their losses.

 

But sadly, the game mechanics don't support this (lack of 'balance' rewards) and the playerbase doesn't seem to understand (more like they probably simply don't care) about the actual lore behind this.

 

How do you know it won't support it? DE has control over everything in the game, I'm sure they could make something happen. If it lasts long enough, Grineer forces and Corpus forces could be spawning less, or even have reduced health and damage in future missions.

 

Also, nowadays, most people never care about the lore in any game unless the game is heavily story driven. I rarely ever saw anyone complaining about the plot in BF3, mostly that the singe-player area plain existed. But really, that's more a problem with newer gamers than the game.

[OblivionNecroninja]

Here's what to do about the mega-clans: Since they've already been broken up into alliances, just make each individual clan in the alliance score seperatly on the leaderboards, instead of as an alliance.

In other words, reduce the alliance system to a token band-aid for the hurt fee-fees of the megaclans and remove any actual impact it might have on the game.

 

EDIT: I don't think DE actually expected the event to go this way, though. In fact, between the already-blabbed lore for the Berserker (escaped corpus science project) and the fact that the Corpus seem to have MUCH better ally AI, I suspect DE was expecting this event to go the other way.

Which just goes to show how badly they need to get the Lore that already exists in thier heads into the game, even if it's in textdump format. Now.

Edited October 27, 2013 by OblivionNecroninja

[Meatuchu]

F*** this clan stuff. Outright ruins this event from the start. The VERY NEXT node should have had a corpus biased reward that was too good to pass up.

 

All in all, Like EVERYTHING DE does, It was a good Idea on paper.

 

Or perhaps I would play the event more If I could feel like I wasn't just a drop in the ocean for these things. 

[crivers]

Honestly this is poorly thought out and rushed and overly hyped. They could have waited to sort things out, this is another example of bad decision making not to mention the double negative if the side your fighting for loses. You wont be able to get the wraith or vandal weapon if your side loses, so there goes that exclusive item thats never going to comeback, you don't even get a blueprint for it. Oh you get the blueprint for the pistol of the other faction at least, even though you clearly wanted the one you were fighting for. Oh not to mention no pre catalyst, you have to make it yourself, use a slot, and by the time you make and use a catalyst (assuming you've used the catalysts from the event on other weapons) it might not even be that great of a weapon.

[Nagisawa]

I agree with the call of 'shoulda waited for Damage 2.0 first'.  I did Martialis once.  Just once, and for the fun of it I picked Corpus.  I died, three times, in a decently modded for toughness Rhino.

 

After that, I realized, Lore wise for myself (and my clan mate followed) that as Tenno, picking a side would simply be wrong, as neither side, again lore wise, would benefit the solar system in any way.

 

Also, I personally hate the Long Sword animation set, so I don't feel the need to get anything in terms of melee.

[Liminal]

I agree with everything but #3. After they removed napalms and scorches I find the Grineer to be a walk in the park. (And I'm playing 50%-50%).

Everything else seems about right to me!

[SilentCynic]

I couldn't agree more, Xylia. Bad implementation, bad execution. I don't know if DE has purposefully canted this event to one side, or if it occurred through sheer ignorance of their playerbase. That said, the invasion game mode is actually quite a lot of fun, and I'd like to see more of it in the future.

 

 

I agree with everything but #3. After they removed napalms and scorches I find the Grineer to be a walk in the park. (And I'm playing 50%-50%).

Everything else seems about right to me!

 

They're back, just by the way, at least in the mission I've just finished.

[Aggh]

I agree with everything but #3. After they removed napalms and scorches I find the Grineer to be a walk in the park. (And I'm playing 50%-50%).

Everything else seems about right to me!

Too little too late, Big clans were already locked into grineer by the time that change came and had a whole lot of time where pugs didn't have a snow flakes chance in hell at competing because of the added difficulty.

[xGryphus]

Well, clans are supposed to resemble military structure which means that high command decides and everyone else supposed to follow orders - no individualism in big clans.

The event is rather a big spectacle then an actual competition and battle pays are here to help direct this spectacle. 

[Roflchoptreh]

How do you know it won't support it? DE has control over everything in the game, I'm sure they could make something happen. If it lasts long enough, Grineer forces and Corpus forces could be spawning less, or even have reduced health and damage in future missions.

 

Also, nowadays, most people never care about the lore in any game unless the game is heavily story driven. I rarely ever saw anyone complaining about the plot in BF3, mostly that the singe-player area plain existed. But really, that's more a problem with newer gamers than the game.

 

I would like to say something about this...

 

One major problem, "DE has control over everything in game." This event, at its core, wasn't determined by the playerbase. Even DE Steve stated on his Twitter, that the first invasion rewards were set on purpose, quoting loosely, "in order to give the Grineer the initial push". One major problem with this train of thought, with the way the leaderboards are set up and how switching sides during any part of the event actually hurts your score... well, the event was over as soon as it started. DE has already predetermined who will win, as the majority of people will either be 'mercenaries' who go for the best reward (i.e. Grineer), Grineer loyalists, or Corpus loyalists. This is what is wrong with the event, the fact that DE is who is holding the reigns on who wins and loses, and how badly. 

[Otaiken]

Corpus started with the entire system captured, remember that win condition is map dominance NOT number of wins. In light of that I can see why DE could've decided to give Grineer little edge.

[Keltik0ne]

If it makes you feel any better, Broframes was supposed to go Grineer at well, but have over 1/3 of our points as Corpus.

 

Oh yea, we do like shooting ourselves in the foot :P

 

Edit, 18k Grineer, 7k Corpus.

Edited October 27, 2013 by Keltik0ne

[Azote]

+1 to all of it. 
Especially the part about big clans, they should do something, they are taking the whole event, it's really sad...

[Malchezzar]

Think of it like this, if a small clan dedicates itself to helping Corpus, then their time is wasted and they dont get a payout because they backed the wrong pony.

 

If a clan is good enough to single handedly turn the tide in whichever favour they choose, then good on them. Back Grineer and get on the winning team so you can get the supercharged item rather than just a blueprint. Don't complain that a clan is too good and imbalances an event, thats called competition. A Highjumper doesn't lower the bar because he can't jump as high and expect to be treated the same

[Sakatox]

Think of it like this, if a small clan dedicates itself to helping Corpus, then their time is wasted and they dont get a payout because they backed the wrong pony.

 

If a clan is good enough to single handedly turn the tide in whichever favour they choose, then good on them. Back Grineer and get on the winning team so you can get the supercharged item rather than just a blueprint. Don't complain that a clan is too good and imbalances an event, thats called competition. A Highjumper doesn't lower the bar because he can't jump as high and expect to be treated the same

Oh surely you don't mean that a game with comptetitive elements is competitive!

That's outrageous, heresy!

The competition is too good, DE really should "help" the event "in the favor of the" "poor, helpless, hopeless minority", whoever that is at the moment.

As in, we're not having enough people, we're crumbling behind the competition and we want bandaids for out sore bums!

 

I posted this in another thread, but GRIND CORPUS.

[Xylia]

Think of it like this, if a small clan dedicates itself to helping Corpus, then their time is wasted and they dont get a payout because they backed the wrong pony.

 

If a clan is good enough to single handedly turn the tide in whichever favour they choose, then good on them. Back Grineer and get on the winning team so you can get the supercharged item rather than just a blueprint. Don't complain that a clan is too good and imbalances an event, thats called competition. A Highjumper doesn't lower the bar because he can't jump as high and expect to be treated the same

 

Problem with this mentality is that Broframe/Warbros/whatever bro they are called are only single-handedly pushing the war in the Grineer's favor because, I dunno, they have Seventeen Farking Thousand Members.

 

This isn't about skill.

 

This is about a mega-clan with ridiculous numbers of people pushing numbers on a data sheet. My clan of 5 people ain't going to touch that, no matter how good we are, even if we played 24/7. This is only a competition of "Who has the biggest clan(s) on which side". This isn't a competition of skill.

 

And "just go to the winning side" ... *rolls eyes* What if I don't want to help the Grineer, mmm? I shouldn't have some stupid big clan deciding the whole war for me (and everybody else). Sorry, I just don't think that's fair.

[Sakatox]

Problem with this mentality is that Broframe/Warbros/whatever bro they are called are only single-handedly pushing the war in the Grineer's favor because, I dunno, they have Seventeen Farking Thousand Members.

 

This isn't about skill.

 

This is about a mega-clan with ridiculous numbers of people pushing numbers on a data sheet. My clan of 5 people ain't going to touch that, no matter how good we are, even if we played 24/7. This is only a competition of "Who has the biggest clan(s) on which side". This isn't a competition of skill.

 

And "just go to the winning side" ... *rolls eyes* What if I don't want to help the Grineer, mmm? I shouldn't have some stupid big clan deciding the whole war for me (and everybody else). Sorry, I just don't think that's fair.

Warbros is under a 1000, i believe. Anything above that is the highest tier, moon tier i believe. If anything's ridiculous, it's that we, warbros almost "single-handedly" turned this thing into a grineer steamroll competition.

 

We, warbros, are dedicated. Take AceViper as an example - he wanted to have fun, and he had/has his fun.

A lot of the old, dedicated members quit. We're just... okay, i'll say it, but i don't want to sound arrogant: "good".

 

Dedicate yourself more, try harder, i really want good competition. However, your "whining" isn't really helping your case. You are here, posting about how the corpus are too underpowered and losing - when you could play the game and have fun.

 

EDIT: The summarized leaderboard is just a thing for trophies. It's an epitome of our dedication, our number, and our "hard work".

There's a reason tiers were implemented. To make stuff fair for others too.

Edited October 27, 2013 by Sakatox