Please lock all war ratings in the off season from now on

I haven’t spent a lot of thought on this, I can’t even see two sides to the debate, now that matchmaking is back to predominantly war rating, i can’t see any benefit of not locking it, as a mid level alliance we knew we had to tank every off season because everybody seemed to win in the season if they did it. Big guys will still shell I’m aware of that, and I’ve seen suggestions to have this investigated, any alliance that changes over 25 members between seasons needs to be looked at by a real person and maybe have their war rating dropped if obviously doing it.
This thread i would like to see if we have consensus on locking, can we just lock them off season?

Comments

Thedancingkid

Tanking in the off-season never made sense for mid-level alliances, or anyone outside the top really. The multipliers are so low that you’re unlikely to end up more than one tier of rewards above what you would otherwise get, if that. And the rewards in that one bracket above don’t make up for all the lost wars.
You’re better off using the off-season to try and climb a tier, and continue on that streak when season starts.

Speeds80

You are correct in the previous system, we did that, tried to jump up a tier, but now that matchmaking is on war rating tanking will make sense again, like it did ten seasons ago, because wins in season will be everything once alliances are levelled out to facing similar overall strengths

Speeds80

When we were in this system ten seasons ago it was the tanking strong alliances that brought about the previous Prestige based matchmaking system. If you won during the off season you would catch much stronger opponents who had tanked off season at the start of the season.

GroundedWisdom

The bottom line is, it's still being done, and after all we had to go through in response to it, it should be locked.

Speeds80

Agreed, is there actually any argument against locking all tiers? Just that brand new alliances won’t have a chance off season to find their place?

Demonzfyre

Agreed, is there actually any argument against locking all tiers? Just that brand new alliances won’t have a chance off season to find their place?

Not just new but any alliance tier 6 and below who are trying to move up won't be able to. Locking ratings for everyone isn't the solution. You'll be happy but those who want to move up in off season won't be. But hey, I'm sure their opinion doesn't matter as much right?

GroundedWisdom

Agreed, is there actually any argument against locking all tiers? Just that brand new alliances won’t have a chance off season to find their place?
Not just new but any alliance tier 6 and below who are trying to move up won't be able to. Locking ratings for everyone isn't the solution. You'll be happy but those who want to move up in off season won't be. But hey, I'm sure their opinion doesn't matter as much right?

The problem is, 6 and below is still affected by manipulation, and it exists. Only locking 1-5 sends the message that only 1-5 is worth preventing. Reducing the movement by 50% still allows it to happen. It's not hard to allow a certain allowance for new Allies to start out during the off. Say 200 War rating perhaps. As it is now, it's a double-standard.

unknown

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Speeds80

I’ve never played higher than tier 4, we hovered in tiers 7-5 for the first ten seasons, and when tanking was becoming the norm
We saw the effects of it in tiers 6 and 7. I have a feeling there will be a big pool of alliances in these tiers now as there must be a lot more people with a few 5/65s in the game these days, capable of killing all war nodes without deaths in a good day. so maybe it won’t be a big deal if they don’t lock them. From my perspective off season was always a nice time to run one or two bgs/ use my b team, so we could focus on getting some content done
Not having to strategise in the off season seems a win win for me but I see the point you make

Speeds80

Yeah I’m open to feedback on this one as well, we came across shell alliances in the off season the last few times who had all moved their alliance to a shell so they could just win and not have to worry about their parked alliance which they all switched back to pre season. The locking the lower tiers wasn’t a factor to this exploit as they were just there for the shards. So locking the top tiers just encouraged shells,
Shells need a different fix, I’m not too sure on what locking and unlocking does To the mid level really since shells is an acceptable exploit at the moment.

Demonzfyre

Agreed, is there actually any argument against locking all tiers? Just that brand new alliances won’t have a chance off season to find their place?
Not just new but any alliance tier 6 and below who are trying to move up won't be able to. Locking ratings for everyone isn't the solution. You'll be happy but those who want to move up in off season won't be. But hey, I'm sure their opinion doesn't matter as much right?
The problem is, 6 and below is still affected by manipulation, and it exists. Only locking 1-5 sends the message that only 1-5 is worth preventing. Reducing the movement by 50% still allows it to happen. It's not hard to allow a certain allowance for new Allies to start out during the off. Say 200 War rating perhaps. As it is now, it's a double-standard.

Im not saying they aren't affected. I'm saying that locking war rating hurts those trying to move up in ranks. So now you have to decide who is more important, those who don't want to see tanking or those who are trying to better position themselves when season starts. Then again there are so many alliances who are casual war participants with larger rosters who probably look like they are tanking but don't take war seriously. There's no real solution to tanking as it stands. No matter what they do, some group is going to be upset.

GroundedWisdom

Agreed, is there actually any argument against locking all tiers? Just that brand new alliances won’t have a chance off season to find their place?
Not just new but any alliance tier 6 and below who are trying to move up won't be able to. Locking ratings for everyone isn't the solution. You'll be happy but those who want to move up in off season won't be. But hey, I'm sure their opinion doesn't matter as much right?
The problem is, 6 and below is still affected by manipulation, and it exists. Only locking 1-5 sends the message that only 1-5 is worth preventing. Reducing the movement by 50% still allows it to happen. It's not hard to allow a certain allowance for new Allies to start out during the off. Say 200 War rating perhaps. As it is now, it's a double-standard.
Im not saying they aren't affected. I'm saying that locking war rating hurts those trying to move up in ranks. So now you have to decide who is more important, those who don't want to see tanking or those who are trying to better position themselves when season starts. Then again there are so many alliances who are casual war participants with larger rosters who probably look like they are tanking but don't take war seriously. There's no real solution to tanking as it stands. No matter what they do, some group is going to be upset.

It's been my view that Seasons progress should be isolated to Seasons only ever since the day I suggested it. Even before it was a matter of security. The point is to be measured by what you do from beginning to end. The problems that arose just pretty much reaffirmed that.

Thedancingkid

I would love to see the data on how prevalent this issue is in the lower tiers. I was far off when it came to the prrstige mm issue, so before I make a final decision that is something I would need to see.

But I think locking all tiers would only prevent people from climbing, not falling. If people wanted to drop a tier, they could always use shell alliances. Do we have a solution for those alliances?

Tier 5 alliance I was with last year (before whenever the lock was) or so had people saying they wanted to tank in the off-season, none of the proponents were able to justify it with anything but “they do it at the top”, and very quickly doing the math showed pretty clearly we’d end up in the same rewards bracket at best, only difference would have been losing the rewards for all the wars intentionally lost.

It always seemed like a way to lock yourself in lower rewards brackets while watching lower prestige alliances climb above you.