Stripping is it cheating

[Concerned player]

You can't plan who will be next top 10, & right now there are very few guilds who won't strip for almost any other guilds.

But you guys sure do try to control the top ten, don't you.

[busteroaf]

But you guys sure do try to control the top ten, don't you.

We can't control what ALL the other guilds do. Hell, can't always control what the guilds inside your own alliance does.

But at the same time, if you control the top 10, it makes it much less expensive for everyone across the board. No one wants to be the 11th place finisher that spends way too much for a non epic reward.

You'd be a fool not to want a piece of that.

[EljayK]

Have to agree with Buster on this. No one can be blamed for taking advantage of it. At least not in the top 10/12. Our guild didn't, that I'm aware of. But we finished 21st. Not too shabby considering that only 50% was into it with the holidays and all. We scored 2m without stripping, and I feel like if we had 75% participation and stripped with every guild, we would have ended with 3m. Not enough for top 10, for sure, but a fair chunk higher.

Honestly the only way, I see, to fix the equality of guild wars is to make it so that each guild member in a war can be defeated 3 times before being considered, "dead." When all members are, "dead," then the whole guild is attackable again and it restarts. "Dead" members can attack, but can't be attacked.

That and make it so if you are beaten in an attack, the opposing guild member gets the points you would have gotten if you won. This would make paying attention and switching out armors fun and beneficial.

Both these ideas would favor a guild that has significantly better gear, (like all GW+ epics), but it's still a nice start towards balance.

This isn't a pay to play game though, so that level of skill isn't exactly financially beneficial.

[Hildigam]

When the gap between 11th and 12th is 9MILLION POINTS points, reducing the number of guilds shooting for t10 definently benefits the top 400players.

[Amesbhe]

It's just another strategy. Not cheating, just cheap.

[AlbertEvolve]

Here is your alliance:
RR, RP, R rug, R flamers, R drug, R clay, 3 stars and a Sun, aye ready aye, chrono trigger, flaming matter, ham slamwich, Italian job, Kaos, Kaos Reigns, KOB, Legendary Sages, Over level 100, OtSS, Pale Rider, Sauce, Secret Ninjas, SNL, The Shadows, TSS, Unleashed, Unova, Veni Vidi Vici, War.

They talk to each other through the war. Strip armor for one another. Plan who will be the next top ten. Rouge guilds beware. You will be targeted if you are not part of their alliances and try to be top ten.

Looking at that list there are 4 guilds not on the list who were top 10 (dpa, bad touch, konoha and godz). 5 if you count centurions who missed out. In any monopoly/ oligopoly situation, innovation eventually suffers. The non alliance guilds stop trying to break the stranglehold on the top 10. Gree starts to make less money and moves on to the next game and players get tired and move on to the next game.

Look back before the last war and there were 2 more no alliance guilds - untouchables and evolve. After this war DPA is gone. I guess the writing is on the war (intended).

Even the trolling gets a little less fun - no king mark, ziplock,sparkle heh

[busteroaf]

It's just another strategy. Not cheating, just cheap.

Define cheap. Stripping has made the points continue to skyrocket. More points means more gems used. More gems is not cheap. Cheap in the way it makes things about who strips for who, kinda. If you aren't in the "in" crowd, it can suck. But see below.

Looking at that list there are 4 guilds not on the list who were top 10 (dpa, bad touch, konoha and godz). 5 if you count centurions who missed out. In any monopoly/ oligopoly situation, innovation eventually suffers. The non alliance guilds stop trying to break the stranglehold on the top 10. Gree starts to make less money and moves on to the next game and players get tired and move on to the next game.

Look back before the last war and there were 2 more no alliance guilds - untouchables and evolve. After this war DPA is gone. I guess the writing is on the war (intended).

Even the trolling gets a little less fun - no king mark, ziplock,sparkle heh

Competition is welcome, and clearly still there.

But so far, no one has even taken into account certain situations where even two non-allied guilds can both lose out by not stripping. Here is an example:

Say for instance a guild is ranked #3, with #4 on their heels. They pair up against #8 (your guild), with #9-11 knocking on the door. #3 and #8 aren't in the same alliance. If its the 11th hour and you could potentially get bumped down 3 places by meeting a guild that isn't a mutual ally, (and note that they're geared a bit better, and have more people active when you battle them)... what do you do? You have a few options.

A) You rotate armors. You make it harder for #3 to beat you. You try and beat them, but they have more active, so it will be hard to find someone to farm, especially since they outgear you. This means you will likely lose, and not gain that many points since you are spending time rotating. You potentially give up your top 10 spot if 9-11 get good matchups and get a win.

B) You say "I want to secure my top 10 spot. Lets do a mutual strip." #3 gets more points to try and keep their spot, extra fusion boosts, extra gems, whatever the reward difference is between Silver and Bronze. You also get to keep your lead on the others below you rounding out the top 10. Again, no one wants the expensive 10th place. But, you could also anger your fellow alliance members by stripping for an "enemy" that isn't in the alliance, potentially keeping one of your own teams out?

Again, the matchmaking part of mutual stripping isn't always an exact science and you can't always be assured of a friendly.

Which option do you take?

If you eliminate stripping, then the guild wars goes back to being about having the better elemental matchups between armors and finding GM/GS/GC/HC's to farm, as opposed to who is allied with who etc. I find it hard to imagine that high ranked people within guilds would be willing to be farmed the entire war, since the only real way to allow stripping is to lock armors.

[cafedecoy]

Just my two cents..

First, stripping will not go away.. not for awhile. Stripping drives up the competition, and makes GREE more money and fast. The only way that stripping will go away is when people get so sick of the "lack of game strategy" that comes with it (for those who think that stripping itself is not exactly a strategy, which is debated, but also understandable from the viewpoint that it's just not really fun to be engaging fights mindlessly as fast as you can) and so much that they end up quitting or leaving the game.

A lot of people have already voiced strong opinions that they feel like slaves and they are not having fun. The problem is, the numbers so far show otherwise. Since stripping, the scores have gone up, game activity has gone up, and spending has gone up. I say this often and it's almost a cliche now, but numbers don't lie... and right now, the opinion that stripping is hurting the game play isn't aligned with reality. So until your opinions and feelings are actually supported with solid facts, I don't think GREE has much incentive to change the game.

That said, let's just say that there comes a point when stripping gets so mundane that people do actually start to quit and something has to happen to make the game fun again. What do you do?

Now, the idea about making players lock their 6 top armors prior to the game as an attempt to discourage stripping - I don't think it works for these reasons:

1. Locking in armors takes away a HUGE fundamental strategy to the game which is that players get rewarded for collecting as many power armors with a variety of elemental combinations as possible. A part of the game strategy is figuring out the ideal element combinations. There's a reason why it is possible to destroy you opponent's epic armor with your legendary as long as you pick the armor with the correct combinations. Limiting a player to 6 armors will take that "cleverness" out of the game and/or an incentive for the player to continue playing the game after they have a handful of power weapons, for the sake of collecting the armors with different element combinations.

2. Locking in 6 armors also DOES NOT prevent stripping. I could, for example, line up my knights with 5 power epics and one fusion boost, and then use the single knight with fusion boost when stripping is required. Sure, maybe having 5 power weapons stings a little, but it's not a huge huge detriment from having 6 weapons.

I think the only way to fix stripping is to make stripping not worth it.... which means you need to tweak the way scores are rewarded. For instance, let's say that fighting a non-stripped GM takes me 60 seconds to fight, and I end up earning 400 points. Fix the scoring so that if that same GM is stripped, and he reduces the battle time from 60 seconds to 15 seconds, make sure that I cannot score more than 100 points. At some point, some wheels will turn in my head, and I will decide not to engage in stripping. In fact, this might make the game even more interesting, as guilds might decide to collectively strip as a counter strategy. In other words, they don't score points, but they also prevent you from scoring points.... and how this all fits into the entire guild war in the midst of other competing guilds scoring as many points as quickly possible would throw another curve ball and twist into how guilds plan and strategize during the war.

[toogoodformyowngood]

Woah. No wonder IOS is able to rake up points so fast. Hmm, no lag + stripping = crazy ass points.

Would be interesting if GREE introduced stripping and additional points into Android might encourage spending.

[busteroaf]

Pretty sure stripping is around on Android side. If not... wtf?

[Eunuchorn]

Stripping was used by the top Android guilds, I know this for a fact from members of DKs alliance. There's a lot of drama on android right now over stripping for certain guilds & not others.
---

As to Gree making more money off stripping, I don't really agree. The majority of players have a max # of gems they can use per war. If they use all these up on day 1 on a stripped GM, they're bored for 2 days & barely log in. A simple change in points awarded would help prevent it. Right now ppl are only losing about 1000pt/80 gems on a 1knight vs 3knight strip @ 10 pt per knight / win.

Why is it even allowed to use less than 3 knights in War or Arena for that matter?

As to controlling the top 10, once stripping is removed, Rainbow will be able to do it even better. RR has always taken losses to other Rainbow guilds, now we strip for them also. Once it's gone no other guild will be able or want to help other guilds. Rainbow Coalition will still be growing strong & rotating players in & out of RR from all the Rainbow guilds to make the community stronger as a whole.

[toogoodformyowngood]

Stripping was used by the top Android guilds, I know this for a fact from members of DKs alliance. There's a lot of drama on android right now over stripping for certain guilds & not others.
---

As to Gree making more money off stripping, I don't really agree. The majority of players have a max # of gems they can use per war. If they use all these up on day 1 on a stripped GM, they're bored for 2 days & barely log in. A simple change in points awarded would help prevent it. Right now ppl are only losing about 1000pt/80 gems on a 1knight vs 3knight strip @ 10 pt per knight / win.

Why is it even allowed to use less than 3 knights in War or Arena for that matter?

As to controlling the top 10, once stripping is removed, Rainbow will be able to do it even better. RR has always taken losses to other Rainbow guilds, now we strip for them also. Once it's gone no other guild will be able or want to help other guilds. Rainbow Coalition will still be growing strong & rotating players in & out of RR from all the Rainbow guilds to make the community stronger as a whole.

Hihi,

Stripping does not have much impact on Android because we don't obtain rank bonuses.

And in top guilds stripping is done to help their associate/sister guilds to advance, especially if the top guild is already secured a top 10 finish.

Conclusion: No bonus points is obtain from stripping, it only helps a guild to win another guild if they could not win before. I.e: DK/Forsaken/OTB might strip for their allied/sister guilds so that they are able to get top 10 if they ever go up against one another. So the impact of stripping in android is far lesser as compared to IOS. Stripping is more for the secured win bonus rather than the bonus points.

But I would prefer to have a IOS point system, makes things more interesting

[cafedecoy]

As to Gree making more money off stripping, I don't really agree. The majority of players have a max # of gems they can use per war. If they use all these up on day 1 on a stripped GM, they're bored for 2 days & barely log in.

I disagree with you. Ever since the stripping got implemented, total scores have gone up. The rate of point gain has gone up. And the final scores for the cut lines for the top places have gone up. Although people may have a fixed budget when it comes to gems, where they psychologically adjust to that "fix" is flexible. Players are told that if they want to make their spending worth it (ie. place in xx th in a war, etc) then they need to spend more, so more are being pushed and more are being squeezed. I'm also pretty certain that more players decided to increase their gem budget, either while planning for the war (relative to their stance a few months ago) or during the last 16 hours of the war (for those that struggled to maintain their xx th place status). I understand that people do get bored, but so far, the pressure to score more overwhelms the loss of motivation to play due to boredom. I never said that this trend will continue forever, but at the moment, I think the balance tilts towards greater spending, not greater game abandonment as a result of boredom.

Also commenting on how the players get bored on day #2 or #3 is just looking at a small part of the big picture. With stripped GM, it is possible to spend gems faster, so it doesn't exactly compare a player's total spending. It does highlight that a player does not perform to his/her full maximum scoring potential, but don't forget that the GM stripping has greatly increased this theoretical potential... It does give a player the luxury of becoming lazier by two or three fold, and still manage to score higher with stripping than while as a 100% dedicated soldier with no stripping.

A simple change in points awarded would help prevent it. Right now ppl are only losing about 1000pt/80 gems on a 1knight vs 3knight strip @ 10 pt per knight / win.

My point exactly. If you want to get rid of stripping, you have to take away the incentive. Just an idea - make the players earn just 80 points when they attack a single stripped GM - the same rate as attacking a gate. But again, I think for now GREE likes it that the players are stripping, so I don't think much will happen until the collective war results show definitively that players are getting sick and tired of GM stripping.

[Zyntree]

I've got to agree with Cafe here. We were poised to score a top 10 spot and had the gems to do so, but that was based on calculations from previous guild wars. This most recent war was far and above the most expensive ever, which is a combination of not only stripping, but of the RR coalition pushing for control of top 10. Had there not been that 11th guild pushing up from the bottom, the incentive and requirement to spend more for spot 10 would have been gone. Clearly the point difference between 11 and 12 was huge.

Contrary to making wars cheaper, the RRC has made things more expensive for everyone. It will be interesting to see how things change for future wars. stripping for the win is extremely valuable when looking at it from a points perspective, and the desire to win makes it viable and fun... for the moment. Perhaps the numbers will continue to support stripping, as they clearly have so far, but I hope not. Stripping for the win is not fun for me.

Albeit it has its moments, and it's a great way to help out allies. It is still a serious detriment to the game imo

[NR Gnomig]

Android doesn't nearly have much of a problem with it.

Like DK Melancholic stated, Our top 10 guilds are pretty fair in the way they handle things.

Especially with affiliated guilds. The thing here, is that guilds under around 11-13 have a significant drop in points.

This doesn't have a lot to do with gem spending, because frankly, at around 10th place...guilds don't spend a whole lot.

Sure it happens once in a while, but that only makes the rest of us find more competent and active players to fight for spots in top 10.

Because as we know Melancholic, you guys are rediculas

Gnomig,
N1GHT RA1D3RZ