Clan War Burnout Issue and Possible Solutions

deathTouch, on Sep 07 2011 - 02:07, said: This is a re-post of a thread that was started in the Clan Diplomacy/Rivalry thread. I wanted to bring this issue to the attention of the greater general public so that they are able to comment/discuss this very important issue. Stemming burnout from CWs is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed, or the game risks losing a good deal of its competitive playerbase over the long term.
Original Post (http://forum.worldof...es/page__st__60):
To understand the burnout situation, it is important to realize the underlying role of games in people's lives. Some people play games to relax, some because they like an intellectual challenge, still others play to escape their world and experience one that is not limited by real world laws of physics. The bottom line is that (most) people play games for amusement, since playing a game is coming at the expense of something else in their lives (spending time with significant others, going fishing, going to the bar, to name a few).
Fundamentally, burnout occurs when whatever game someone is playing no longer satisfies their "amusement" goals. For example, for someone who enjoys competition, this can occur when competitors leave the game, thus decreasing the pool of "adversaries" that they would otherwise play against. For someone who enjoys exploring new worlds, their burnout can occur when they have explored all that is possible in a game and feel as if the rules by which that game is governed are as stale as the physical rules of real life. For someone who seeks power, burnout can occur when they realize they will not obtain their ability to obtain it in the current game they play, and decide to move on to another.
The issue with burnout is the reasons for burnout are as varied as the preferences of the player population, and are oftentimes multi-factorial. Yet the developers can still stave off attrition rate by implementing a number of things:
Remember, these are what I believe is contributing to high burnout rates, but is undoubtedly biased by what I consider to be my own burnout factors.
1) FORM A COMMUNITY CONSULTING COMMITTEE: Take the most experienced players in the game (with a mix of competitive and casual gamers) and have them come up with what the US needs in terms of balancing changes, new content, general feedback, etc. We've played thousands of games. We have huge amounts of experience. Some of us have balanced games in the past. PLEASE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS. Form a committee that meets regularly with a DEVELOPER and reports directly to the dev team on what is working and what is not working in the game. Riot does this for League of Legends, CCP did it for EVE, it's time for WG to do it with WoT.
2) New content that is IMPLEMENTED INTO CLAN WARS: New pub maps are great, why not implement them into CWs? One of the major issues with the CW map right now is there are huge, unbroken chunks of territory that have the same set of maps (ensk/campinovka in Russia, Ruinberg/Himmelsdorf in Europe, Karelia for Norway region, El Halluf/Sand River for Africa). I know they want to keep regions of the map with maps that have similar environments, but in practice this means if you want to assault a clan, you have to fight them on the same map, over and over and over again. This makes long-term campaigns against clans tedious for both the attacker and defender. Break up the huge chunks of same-map territories by actually implementing the new maps into the place of some of the originals. Also, even out the map distribution. There's no reason why there has to be 10,000 Ruinberg or Ensk maps, yet 5 mountain passes, all in the same sub-sub-region of the CW map.
3) New NON-CAMPING maps and game modes: CW battles basically come down to Hardcamp vs. Attackers as it currently stands. It makes taking land incredibly hard on some maps, such as Cliff, Karelia and Ruinberg. The more cover that a map has, the worse this problem is. The map defender can simply hide all their tanks behind cover and wait for the enemy to come to them. This is ineffectual on maps where arty coverage is good, but on maps like Karelia where you can sit tanks or entire platoons behind rocks completely protected from enemy arty while forcing your opponent to cross an open field where they can get tracked and blasted by your own arty, or turn a corner and face 10 Mauses in an unflankable location with their front armor to you is a bit silly. This is not to say strategies can not be developed to break these camps, but it usually requires an absurd amount of coordination in "all-out" strategies that are formulated based on assumptions of where the enemy will camp, while the defending team can compete with having almost no strategy or coordination, besides their initial tank line-up and tank "camping" locations. Fix this issue by coming up with something (anything) that requires territory defenders to actually leave their base/camp locations to win the game.
EDIT: ActionJoe contributes:I will disagree with non-camping maps. Seems to be the one constant back and forth in games that require shooting something. Most people hate campers because you can rarely hit them and they can kill you. However, strategically, it is the best way to defend. Getting rid of maps where you can camp does not solve much. If they came up with non camping maps then those battles would just devolve into mass pushes and whoever has the most hit points and coordination wins. Would be a lot of fun the first couple times but very stale and annoying after a while.
Instead of non-camping maps you need special features to deter or break people from camping one location. One way would be to have an option of aerial recon that could last for a certain period of time. This way you can pick a point of attack to possibly break the camp. Another option would be to have aerial or naval bombardment options that could spam a block or two of the map with heavy artillery. This would be a great punishment for teams that want to put 4 maus defending one corner. These options could require gold and can be optional. One last fix would be to have all houses be destructible or the ability to shoot through them. Why should an arty shell that can decimate a group of tanks not be able to obliterate a house that a tank is hiding behind? (Obviously, I mean the houses that can not just be knocked over by tanks)
EDIT: deathTouch's response: Those are also creative solutions to the problem. Another I think might work would be having some type of objective that is located somewhere other than their spawn, or providing the best cover somewhere other than the spawn zone. I don't mind having tactically-significant areas on a map that teams should fight for (in fact I think it's a healthy aspect of any good map), but what I do think encourages too much camping is when the most tactically-advantageous point of the map is located at or near the spawn of the defending team.
PS: One +1 rep to the person who can identify the character that is my new profile avatar.
4) More CW map depth: Having territory with just gold as a reward gets stale pretty quickly. Have there be other objectives as well. Maybe certain territories have different resources that you can obtain to make different tanks, which you can then field in matches. For example, certain territories have a component that makes armor that allows you to field more or less of a certain, or some maps have resources that allow you to use different ammo with different effects. Would require some significant overall game overhaul.
5) Introduce loot for winning CW battles and holding territory: I know this sounds strange, but random loot drop is one of the most addicting aspects of most RPGs. Never knowing what cool stuff you might get from accomplishing something really hard is a huge part of the fun. Perhaps for every CW battle you win, some cool item drops (with different rarities) that can be attached to your tank for some effects. For every amount of certain territory that you own too, maybe you get some loot on a daily or weekly basis. Maybe a new skin will drop that can be viewed by everyone else in-game when playing? Maybe you'll get a slightly more powerful experimental gun or tracks, or the option to modify your tank model in game? Never knowing what you might get from your next victory would make fighting and winning on the CW map a lot more fun. Would have to think through the details to make sure loot couldn't be obtained through padding victories with other clans.
6) Tournaments with real prizes and tank line-ups: Seriously WG? A 7v7 tournament on maps balanced for 15v15 play, coupled with tier 8 tank restrictions with a 10,000 gold 1st price? That's the best you can do? 10,000 gold translates to a market value of $40. Based on a rough calculation I did assuming practicing 2 hours a day from the day the tourney was announced, plus time spent playing tournament matches (which is actually a very small time commitment for professional gaming), that would equate to winnings of about $1.50/hour. And that's not even cash. It's an insult to competitive gaming to host a tournament with such measly prizes and a sure-fire way to lose the most competitive base of gamers you have invested in WoT.
7) Implementing world of planes and warships: Implementing world of planes and warships with WoT will help, but you need to implement new content to support CWs and competitive gaming in the meantime before you lose most of your competitive playerbase to other games.
This is just a start to some of the ideas that I had with regards to how to improve the current situation.
tl;dr
1) Form a consulting committee that is composed of the most experienced players and reports directly to the dev team (i.e. Overlord) concerning improvements, tournaments, balancing, etc. Riot Gaming does this for League of Legends, CCP did it for EVE, it's time for WG to do it with WoT;
2) Implement the new maps into the clan war map. Break up current blocks of identical maps in areas;
3) New maps that aren't horrendously camp-driven for the defenders;
4) New game modes;
5) More CW depth, possibly to include resources that need to be captured to produce (i.e. field in CWs) certain tanks. Possibly include "loot drops" for winning CWs/holding territory;
6) Better tournament prizes. Drop ESL format (this isn't counterstrike) and remain with 15v15. We also need more frequent tournaments, and prizes need to be better.


Quote 1) FORM A COMMUNITY CONSULTING COMMITTEE: Take the most experienced players in the game (with a mix of competitive and casual gamers) and have them come up with what the US needs in terms of balancing changes, new content, general feedback, etc. We've played thousands of games. We have huge amounts of experience. Some of us have balanced games in the past. PLEASE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS. Form a committee that meets regularly with a DEVELOPER and reports directly to the dev team on what is working and what is not working in the game. Riot does this for League of Legends, CCP did it for EVE, it's time for WG to do it with WoT.