Hi.
Just wanted to throw this quick before this game definitly dives into the oblivion the devs want it to go.
Not here to discuss items balance or things like this ,some people have already and will do it better than me.
What drives people to play? many things , roll credits.
But ever since the devs implemented build selection in Clan Wars , hence the capacity to adapt your builds for round 2 switched the goal of cw which is teamwork into a counter fest, raising the skill and item requirements beyond what most players could even dream to afford; let alone be able to play it.
I speak from the perspective of the old player who has everything, though skill wise i m on holidays.
We went to something that was kinda fun , because the fixed comps you faceed ,though unfunny most of the time could be countered with a specific setup.
Quick example on 1 build selection : you face many firedogs , ok you take a spider retcher tower which only works against dogs. You far m dogs , everything else farms you. Fair enough and fun.
Now : you face firedogs with your retcher tower , you farm them , the next round they take 2 firedogs 2 breakers .GG
I m not complaining about the situation , it sjust… less fun… .more brute force and inventory driven
Conclusion: yours , not my problem . My problem is actually we went from 1600 active cw clans (clans who had cw rating) in september 2022 (around when 3build selection was implemented) to less than 400 last week.
Cw is just an aspect of the game that was butchered to death ,while it should have been the leading drive for players to spend money if they wanted to be competitive.
Sad.
I think one positive step that direction would be to at least not show you the enemy’s build before any round. At least then you have to be on your toes and formulate a plan vs. look at the 4 builds and automatically know what the game is going to be for both sides.
That being siad, i’d be down for 1 round and done pike it was before. Not sure if youve considered it, but it cut profit margins way down, which may have been the devs entire objective. Imagine if every clan capped out. The game would be so far into its endgame that i feel as if it would kill the profitability of it and then eventually the game itself. As in now a game can take 17 or so minutes max. Before it could take 5:30 max, accounting for 30 seconds before-match timer/victory screens, etc.
i ve been playing in top 30 for almost 2 years straight.
We face always the same clans , we know exactly what they play depending on map and opposition.
we don t event need to be shown what they play at this point, especially when facing always the same 15 clans. lower clans can play what they want , will not change anything to the outcome. only comes relevant on actual top clans , who will invariably play the same setups.
Also the 40 secs 8 lance player rounds were fun , and needed to be … mitigated , but maybe there s some kind of in-between…
A big problem with Clan Wars right now is the lack of players. There’s not enough teams for the League system and MM to work properly.
On PC, you will face teams with relics in Rust. CW is unplayable if you’re a new player. In theory, rust should be populated with new players with low PS builds.
Like OP mentioned before, CW is very expensive. The 3 blueprint mode and Leviathans favor the whales.
I especially dislike leviathan CW. Making a CW worthy leviathan is ungodly expensive. If your Leviathan player isn’t online, don’t bother playing, because you’ll lose points. Unfortunately, because there is a limited amount of cw slots in a week.
Speaking of limited time slots, that is another flaw. The small window of opportunity to progress to a higher league. If you don’t make it to another higher league by the end of the week, you go all the way back to where you started.
The lack of players, exorbitant cost of entry, and small window of opportunity to progress are major issues, and they all feed into each other to amplify the problem.
A lot of people quit CW because they don’t think it’s worth it anymore.
CW has one and one downfall only : the 200 score threshold to get uranium. I think that strangely CW would be more alive if uranium didn’t exist (I don’t say it should though). I have played with a few clans and this uranium seem to be the goal everyone wants. And for good reason : uranium has an insane value. The problem with that system is that it’s soul crushing for teams that can’t reach 200. The result is that smaller teams lose interest, or their best players leave them for team that can make ura. This lead to a consolidated group of a few players that farm ura and lock the rest out of CW. And there is a negative loop: farming ura gives insane value in the game allowing things like fused relics (something 99.9% of players can only dream of) that give an extra edge.
The solution would be simple : Give an incensive for players to PLAY CW even at low level. I understand that you can’t give rewards just for launching cw or else people would throw, but lets just imagine the following :
Every 5 win in cw you gain 1 uranium regardless of the rank.
This is limited to 1(2) uranium between 0 and 50 rank (number in bracket is the premium value)
3 (5) uranium between 50 and 100
5 (8) uranium between 100 and 150
10 (15) uranium between 150 and 200
After that you win uranium every game and the cap is 30 (45).
That way players would still have an incentive to climb, and deranking would still hurt them, lowering the max they can gain, but players would gain a bit of uranium by just playing the mode and winning here. Even if most of their games end up in defeat they could at least gain 1 uranium a week.
This would help tremendously refill the numbers of a dying game mode. Why play it right now when the reward is just scrap ?
4 years ago… it was a lot easier to get to Bronze. Off-Meta builds piloted by somewhat good players could make it to Bronze to win Uranium. The growing wealth gap between players, Leviathans, 3-Blueprint builds, and the shrinking number of players made it impossible now.
Better rewards might help with incentives. At the very least players should be able to choose from Wires and Batteries from CW battles. They could also reward small amounts of Plastic or Electronics for Rust and Tin leagues respectively. Maybe give out some cool cosmetics after a certain amount of wins? Something is better than just some measly scrap.
I’m not sure about the reward of Uranium for Tin and Rust. Players at the top will be opposed to it . Even though a lot of them used tactics like (but not limited to) region locking to farm easy uranium long ago.
If enough uranium is in circulation, the price would go down. And I’m not sure how much use a new player would get from a devalued resource, especially when they still need to craft Legendary items to craft relics.
TL/DR: Clan Wars is suffering from several issues: Lack of players, Exorbitant cost, and limited time window. The game mode needs an overhaul.