As many teams in the SPPD community already know and have known for quite some time the team wars ladder system is a bit hard to understand when first examined closely. Actually, that’s an understatement. It’s impossible to apply any kind of rational logic to its inner workings no matter which way you look at it.
[UPDATE 12-08-20: after writing this blog post the game developers changed the way the ladder works. 😉 ]
I’m going to try my best here to explain exactly how this ladder system is completely broken and at the end of reading this post you’ll know what most teams in the top 500 already do as well: That the team wars ladder is clearly dysfunctional, that your position on the ladder is irrelevant, and that you can be equally or better rewarded with a near empty, low shield team as you can be with high ranking, full 50 team of whales.
As you can see in the image below, our team on the bottom picture regularly break a 2000 score and the team on the top doesn’t regularly break 1000. Yet both teams are right next to each other on ladder.
That. Does not. Make sense.
I’ll first start out by depicting exactly how the team wars ladder is dysfunctional. There are several examples of this but I’ll go with the most obvious. There are 4 levels of the team wars ladder system (wood, bronze, silver, gold) and you’re supposed to be rewarded the more you advance through them.
The problem comes into play in the methodology that the game makers used to employ as a means of advancing teams up the ladder. It encompasses the team’s 5 team bracket they were placed in for battle days and the score relative to those other teams they were bracketed with.
This methodology allows for the players to control which brackets they end up in and ultimately the ranks of the other 5 teams they will be playing against each weekend (known as “bracket dodging” by many). The concept behind this is that the teams at the top 25 of the bracket don’t want to end up in the same 5 team bracket as the number 1 teams in the game.
What they do is manipulate the constructs of the bracketing process (team member count, bottle caps, card upgrades, shield rank averages) in hopes of never having to play the top teams all while still climbing the ladder. Here’s a picture of what you can accomplish by doing this:
The common sense thing about a team wars ladder or any ladder system is that you should have to climb it to get to the top. It’s the default assumption of many people who look at a first place team on a ladder of ranking and say, “Oh, wow, they’re first place because they can beat the second, third, and fourth place teams.”
Looks can be deceiving and many people who started playing team wars in this game when it came out were exactly that, deceived. The game had the appearance of working ladder system where you can only get to the top by being/beating the best, however, it only had the appearance of this. As you continue reading you will clearly see this is not the case.
Let’s look at a few more examples of where this is happening within the team wars ladder system:
How exactly can the number 182 ranked team score less, have less members, put up less runs every week, have lower shield rank members and still be ranked one spot higher than the 183 ranked team? I’ll explain how here in just a second.
These examples continue on and on and on throughout the team wars ladder and it’s a stark contrast to our team. Our team (team Apologize!) plays team wars according to “the default assumption” of common sense beholding people. We try to fill the team with as many members as possible, try to upgrade the deck as far as we possibly can, and we try to score as high as we can each week in team wars.
That. Does Not. Make Sense.
So even from just these pictures alone you can see how the teams are able to progress up the ladder regardless of how many points they score, how many members the team has or any of the things that count as being competitive. Your position within the ladder is irrelevant to how good or bad your team is. Obviously, none of the lower scoring/member teams could ever compete against team Apologie! or other high performance based teams in the same bracket (thus, unable to progress up the ladder and be sprinkled throughout it indiscriminately of their ability to perform as a team).
However good or bad your team is, the bracketing system will always put teams with lower total members, lower total bottle caps earned and lower performing teams with other similar teams, effectively creating a multitude of team wars ladders all interwoven together in one. The result is what you see, teams of all various calibers scattered indiscriminately throughout the top portion of the ladder system.
Quite possibly (for some people who have paid REAL money) the worst aspect of this is that it divides the team wars ladder into two basic types of teams: Performance based teams and rewards based teams. The performance based teams are like our team, team Apologize! – those are the “try hard” teams.
The rewards based teams are scattered all throughout the team wars ladder right along side the performance based teams and they only care about achieving the number one pack in their league as any team in any league receives the same rewards based on their position within their bracket.
A 40 member team of nothing but all # (hashtag) ranking shields will pull more bottle caps, have higher leveled cards, and will end up in a bracket of other 40 member teams of mostly silver level shields. The high ranked team knows that most 40 member teams consist of member ranked much lower in PvP than themselves.
The end result is that the 40 member team of all # (hashtag) ranking (top 1000) players can never be outscored by all of the other 40 member teams they could possibly be bracketed against, thus giving them the number one pack (rewards focused team) and the most crowns every week by simply not running a full team. They continue to climb the ladder without ever having to play against the top teams.
That. Does Not. Make Sense!
Perhaps the best example of this can be illustrated with the very top teams at the top of the team wars ladder. Here’s a before and after picture of the top of the team wars ladder for starters:
Ok. Big deal you say. What’s the significance here? – Well, the devil is in the details as always. Look at the rate of growth that T.M.I.3.5 (possibly the most notorious of bracket dodging teams behind Chef’s ECheats) exhibited between F2P whales 5956 crown count and their 13318 crown count with just a 36 member team of non-whale members.
You could be just a strong 36 member team of all high ranked players, be bracketed by the game against other 36 member teams (which T.M.I.3.5 already knows to be low caliber teams that can’t outscore their high ranking members) and never have to play against F2P whales – a full 50 team of nothing but the highest spenders in this game.
In fact, at this rate of growth T.M.I.3.5 is set to overtake F2P whales for the number one position without ever having to play against them! – simply because T.M.I.3.5 is a “rewards focused” team and F2P whales was trying to play team wars according to common sense.
Needless to say, after the game developers said they didn’t care and gave everyone the Chewbacca defense most of the top teams have now lowered their member counts in order to remain competitive on a broken ladder system (as seen in the before and after photos as well).
The conclusion: There’s currently two main types of SPPD teams in this multi-ladder system all mixed up into one ladder: Rewards focused teams and performance focused teams.
The rewards focused teams focus solely on what the game developers have classically conditioned them to do to receive easier brackets and number one team rewards every week. They dodge brackets, manipulate their member counts, bottle caps, shield averages, and give up their team wars wins all in the name of achieving the number 1 pack every week.
While on the other hand the performance based teams consistently achieve high leveled team wars decks, team wars scores, team wars stats and play the game it was designed to be played – in the process giving up their rewards by being bracketed against other competitive scoring top level teams and taking the #4 and #5 packs every week. (the same way we constantly did when we were running our performance based approach, always dropping back down in to silver in our “stuck in the tumble drier” post earlier this year on this site)
Rewards focused teams effectively give up their player stats (like team wars wins total count) in order to just get the biggest pack they can get each week while performance based teams often get all 3 wins for all their members but only end up with the 3rd or 4th place pack. Take DIRETIDE always bracketing against ILLUMANIATI and F2P WHALES as the best example of this. 3 teams who play the game correctly and 2 of them consistently end up with less rewards than teams who are bracket dodging and overtaking them on the ladder.
The goal for all teams in this current state of the game, if they care about their rewards AND their player’s stats/wins at the same time is to try to find the sweet spot. Run a team with a member count that performs the highest, get rid of your slackers and people who don’t get caps, and only run the highest ranked members you have in this team.
It’s not necessarily the approach team Apologize! is taking but it’s the way to go in the current weather conditions. It’s a balancing act between not ruining your bracket and not lowering your members/bottle caps so much that your team members can’t win a match in gold league anymore.
