[2022] Wars are now 40v40, Discuss

I see the multiple pings on this thread and I’ve forwarded the thread over to the team to keep their eyes on as well. If you have time, please jump into the PTR to help us determine the best path forward. Everything in the PTR is being tested and may not be released in the March Release.

Thanks all!

Hello war enthusiasts,

Thanks for the feedback so far on the 40v40 war change. I wanted to discuss our goals for this change and also let you know this change is not set in stone. It’s an experiment we wanted to try, and I hope you all give it an honest shot. If we find the benefits don’t outweigh the negatives, we will revert the change.

There are two changes we are making simultaneously and want to test in the PTR - changing war to 40v40 and not allowing defenders to respawn at capture points. The intent of these changes are to:

• Give attackers a better chance in war. Currently defenders win around 80% of wars, and we would like to see this number be closer to 60%. We still want to give defenders an edge, but not have it feel so insurmountable.
  • Defenders not being able to spawn at capture points should give attackers a nice boost. It should make it easier to capture the 3 points to unlock attacking the gates.
  • It should be easier for attacking companies to gather a strong roster of 40 people to battle entrenched defenders.
• Improve the gameplay of war
  • While we love the epic-ness of 50v50, when we tested 40v40 internally, war still felt grand while playing better - felt a bit less chaotic, was easier to coordinate teams, and wars felt a bit more tactical.
  • Note that improving performance is not an explicit goal for this change. In some cases, going to 40v40 may provide a slight benefit, but we wouldn’t have tried this experiment if we didn’t feel the gameplay itself was better.

We understand that this will reduce the number of players that can participate in war, and that is a negative. If we find the benefits don’t outweigh this cost, we will go back to 50v50. We also agree with the feedback that providing an always available, instanced version of war that any player can play for fun and rewards, like OPR is a great idea. It’s something we are looking into, but it will be far in the future.

Zin

Based on the feedback we received, we’re going to hold off on the 40v40 change. We were hoping to get it tested in PTR to validate our view that it plays better. But that hasn’t happened yet, and we underestimated how important losing 20 people in war is. Even if it is slightly better for the 80 people, those 20 missing out are really hurt.

This will also allow us to focus on spawning change and see the results that has on war independent of any other changes.

Thanks for your feedback and clear reasoning, we may test this again in the future when there are more ways for people to participate in war.

Zin