dance210, on Feb 21 2015 - 14:08, said: Is the biggest issue with the format change the fact that you need to face teams at or around your level, or the gold?

The answer is neither. I shall use the team I was on as my example for this.

We lost far too many games, we simply didn't have what it took to truly compete this week, we even got stuck in the "death bracket" as people have called it.

We got in the top 10% because of this. If this was the normal setup, we'd have been lucky to land in the top 20%, but because every good team that should have placed above us got gimped, it gave us enough room to sweep our way right up to the top.

We should not have won 5k, plain and simple, but we did because this isn't 'skill based seeding' at all, skill is going all three nights without losing 1-3 games, not losing nearly half your games and being rewarded for it while a team that should have won all their games only gets thrown right to the bottom.

All I have to say is, doing this to the group stage completely contradicts the purpose of having the group stage to begin with, you'd be better off just changing it back to 5 or 6 days of playoffs like it was originally if competition is truly what you were after. 'This' isn't competition, this is punishment that has made at least half of the people I regularly play with decide they're not even going to bother with skirmishes until you change it. Driving away players is all you will accomplish if you go down this road any further.

(On the other hand, for the people that can make it, this move has made Weekday Warfare look more appealing, I wonder if some of the disgruntled skirmish players will switch over to that and abandon skirmishes altogether. After all, if they're going to get screwed for doing well anyway, they may as well go for the larger prize, right?)

Edit*: To clarify, the problem is not "the fact that you need to face teams at or around your level", it is that in Group Stage 2 we did not face teams at or above our level, in fact it is the exact opposite, we faced teams that we completely obliterated and were far below our level, and followed up by in Group Stage 3 the few victories we did get automatically knocked teams that should have been above us down in the standings, which opened the spots right for us to take for ourselves.

It wasn't our skill against other players of our caliber or higher that won us 5k gold, it was our failure to perform well in Group Stage 1 that won us 5k gold. You rewarded us for failing, and punished them (the Group Stage 3 Teams) for doing well.

Edited by The_Assassin711, Feb 22 2015 - 04:52.