Strongholds: War Games Testing

Gepard_PH:   It all boils down to a question: should players/clans be rewarded for simply being good, or for playing well. Currently we have (and probably always will) huge disparity in terms of skill between players and clans. If we were to reward only for being good, there would be no point in running a competition, as outcomes of most battles would be easy to predict. The idea behind the Elo-based Matchmaker is that every clan, no matter their rating, needs to do their best and try to improve when participating in all Skirmishes and Advances. We want to avoid players taking their first steps in SH having bad experience of knowing that they will most likely lose significant majority of their battles in SH, because it's simply not fun, discouraging, and preventing them from learning incrementally by facing opponents that are slightly harder, but not impossibly to beat. Similarly, facerolling weaker teams on regular basis is not exactly the most entertaining thing ever and is unlikely to stimulate any improvements.   For those of you seeking to capitalize on your skill level, I recommend participating in Global Map, where you are totally free to pick your opponents.