Voting Gauntlet: Battle on the Beach!

[Vaximillian]

Team Corrin this round is a perfect place to test weird theories. Multipliers are for weaklings.

[HK Motendra]

31 minutes ago, Bartozio said:

Never surrender!

but honestly, if you want to win every match you can just use lvl 1 units and let your friend unit carry you every match.

If you don't like that, you can pick a certain color (preferebly the same as the character you're supporting) and only send out units of that color. You can then tell people on your friend list to not put units of that color as their leader and delete evryone who doesnt listen.

right, I forgot that was a thing.

See thats the thing, whichever color unit I put out, I oft get two of the same color from others, and it more oft than to my disadvatage. A good amount of the friends I have were from the arena, who I admitttedly only added/accepted if their lead was a unit I didnt have.

[kcirrot]

9 hours ago, Sentinel07 said:

Man...this is just an absolute slaughter.

Gaius has had more bonus hours than I care to count and he's still super far behind. Imagine if this didn't even have bonuses.

Hence why they need to get rid of the multiplier and set up legitimate brackets.  The finals were last round, this is a way to farm feathers.

[DraceEmpressa]

15 minutes ago, kcirrot said:

Hence why they need to get rid of the multiplier and set up legitimate brackets.  The finals were last round, this is a way to farm feathers.

Or decrease the activator percentage once the differences reached certain amount 

[DLNarshen]

Still sitting at 2/5 reds on team Corrin.  What the hell?

[Alkaid]

I've watched my cumulative rank drop from in the top 1000 to 9,700 since joining team Corrin. Plus I'm unranked in Corrin itself (with 900 flags left to spend) No multipliers is really just true suffering.

[Bartozio]

31 minutes ago, DLNarshen said:

Still sitting at 2/5 reds on team Corrin.  What the hell?

This might be the time to start fielding your own red units...

2 minutes ago, Alkaid said:

I've watched my cumulative rank drop from in the top 1000 to 9,700 since joining team Corrin. Plus I'm unranked in Corrin itself (with 900 flags left to spend) No multipliers is really just true suffering.

Going through a similar experience. I'm hoping a lot of people have already used their flags and the situation will become a bit better after I'm done using mine...

[Rezzy]

41 minutes ago, DLNarshen said:

Still sitting at 2/5 reds on team Corrin.  What the hell?

I was getting nothing but Blues with the occasional Red.  I had to use my own Bridelia to fill the Gray Quest, since I had done like 20 battles and was still sitting at 1/5.

[Dark Holy Elf]

10 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

That's because Voting Gauntlet is a game mode first and a popularity contest second. If it fails to function as a game mode, then there's no point in putting it in the game.

If this were first and foremost a popularity contest instead of a game mode, you shouldn't need to complete a map to gain the right to vote, you shouldn't need to play other parts of the game to give yourself more votes, and you shouldn't be allowed more votes in the first place anyways.

I suspect if we were able to poll everyone participating in this, you'd find you're in a minority (evidence: people tend to choose their favourite even when it would often be more beneficial to side with a weaker team to rank high within it), but it doesn't matter. The problem is that this isn't much of a game mode, for reasons I and others have already mentioned.

-It grossly favours people who are awake/not at work/etc. at certain hours.

-The gameplay itself is dead easy. Have friends running Level 40 units, deploy a Level <30 unit. You win. Even if you play fair there's none of the interesting map design of the story maps/chain challenges/etc., nor the player-crafted teams of the arena, nor even the inflated stats of 10th stratum/tempest.

[DefyingFates]

Re. the testing: I've been using S!Corrin almost exclusively and I've often been paired up with a Lv 40 Ike. The third (random, I assume) is usually another red but can be another colour (or colourless) too - just now I got normal Camilla. Have you guys noticed any trends in the colour of your friend units too?

[Rezzy]

57 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I suspect if we were able to poll everyone participating in this, you'd find you're in a minority (evidence: people tend to choose their favourite even when it would often be more beneficial to side with a weaker team to rank high within it), but it doesn't matter. The problem is that this isn't much of a game mode, for reasons I and others have already mentioned.

-It grossly favours people who are awake/not at work/etc. at certain hours.

-The gameplay itself is dead easy. Have friends running Level 40 units, deploy a Level <30 unit. You win. Even if you play fair there's none of the interesting map design of the story maps/chain challenges/etc., nor the player-crafted teams of the arena, nor even the inflated stats of 10th stratum/tempest.

The Gauntlet as it exists now makes more people mad than it helps.  People in North America have the first few hours where the majority of the multipliers happen occur in the middle of the night.

 

The Gauntlet can either be a straight popularity contest or it should have been in the first place, or they can try to make the most convoluted rules possible to make someone with half the votes have a chance at upset, which makes the favorites feel cheated.  They should just embrace the Gauntlet as a Popularity Contest or scrap the mode altogether.

[Bartozio]

3 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Re. the testing: I've been using S!Corrin almost exclusively and I've often been paired up with a Lv 40 Ike. The third (random, I assume) is usually another red but can be another colour (or colourless) too - just now I got normal Camilla. Have you guys noticed any trends in the colour of your friend units too?

For the last eight battles I've been using Clair the enitre time, and I've got  a Minerva and a Chrom both three times, and a Bridelia and a Hector both once. I haven't kept track of the third unit.

No real trends so far it seems, but maybe further testing will give different results.

[Rezzy]

16 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Re. the testing: I've been using S!Corrin almost exclusively and I've often been paired up with a Lv 40 Ike. The third (random, I assume) is usually another red but can be another colour (or colourless) too - just now I got normal Camilla. Have you guys noticed any trends in the colour of your friend units too?

For Randos got Blues 80% of the time, for my Ally mostly Ephraim, Lucina, and Minerva.  I got a Gray Rando or Ally only once so far.  I had to use my own Bridelia to finish the quest.

[Tybrosion]

17 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Re. the testing: I've been using S!Corrin almost exclusively and I've often been paired up with a Lv 40 Ike. The third (random, I assume) is usually another red but can be another colour (or colourless) too - just now I got normal Camilla. Have you guys noticed any trends in the colour of your friend units too?

The three friend units I've mostly been getting this round are Rezzy's Bridelia, Ice Dragon's now Minerva (he also had Young!Tiki and Tharja as his lead) and a Japanese friend's Reinhardt when I've been using nothing but my Summer!Corrin. Obviously, none of those units share the same color but they do have something else in common. All of them have at least a couple of merged levels with Reinhardt being +2, Bridelia +4 and all of Ice Dragon's units +10.

As far as the third unit goes, it doesn't seem to stick with one color for me. I've gotten everything from Chrom to Mae to Spring!Camilla to Jeorge.

[Rezzy]

2 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

All of them have at least a couple of merged levels with Reinhardt being +2, Bridelia +4 and all of Ice Dragon's units +10.

As far as the third unit goes, it doesn't seem to stick with one color for me. I've gotten everything from Chrom to Mae to Spring!Camilla to Jeorge.

That comparison makes me feel more inadequate than Cordelia's cup size.

[Kiran]

Gauis's multipler comes so often that it doesn't matter if I miss a couple. Still have 305 flags. I'm hoping to make it into top 10k cumulative. Top 1k on team Gauis doesn't seem possible for me.

[Vaximillian]

Already fell down beyond 30k cumulative and will definitely fall down beyond 5k on Team Corrin by the morning.

The loss of potential feathers will hurt. Me missing our only multiplier in the first round took its toll.

[Bartozio]

15 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

Already fell down beyond 30k cumulative and will definitely fall down beyond 5k on Team Corrin by the morning.

The loss of potential feathers will hurt. Me missing our only multiplier in the first round took its toll.

What multiplier? I'm pretty sure team Corrin never got one this round...

[Tybrosion]

4 minutes ago, Bartozio said:

What multiplier? I'm pretty sure team Corrin never got one this round...

He meant the one time Team Corrin had the multiplier in Round 1.

[Bartozio]

Just now, Tybrosion said:

He meant the one time Team Corrin had the multiplier in Round 1.

Ah, okay. My bad then.

I was getting worried I missed something...

[Johann]

Wasn't sure I'd be able to get a decent score on Gaius since I don't have him, but it seems a lot of people used their flags early, probably not expecting to get so many late multipliers (fair enough since that hasn't happened til Corrin showed up).

2 hours ago, Rezzy said:

The Gauntlet as it exists now makes more people mad than it helps.  People in North America have the first few hours where the majority of the multipliers happen occur in the middle of the night.

The Gauntlet can either be a straight popularity contest or it should have been in the first place, or they can try to make the most convoluted rules possible to make someone with half the votes have a chance at upset, which makes the favorites feel cheated.  They should just embrace the Gauntlet as a Popularity Contest or scrap the mode altogether.

Only two things that bother me about the Gauntlet are that the multiplier bonuses are too time-sensitive, and that the individual battles don't have much significance or arguably, challenge. Those are two areas where they need to keep rethinking. Embracing it as a straight popularity contest would be even more banal than it is, by gutting the "game" aspect of it. Upsets are a good thing because it makes the event more interesting. People would rather be mad over a loss than bored.

[Tybrosion]

Just now, Johann said:

Only two things that bother me about the Gauntlet are that the multiplier bonuses are too time-sensitive, and that the individual battles don't have much significance or arguably, challenge. Those are two areas where they need to keep rethinking. Embracing it as a straight popularity contest would be even more banal than it is, by gutting the "game" aspect of it. Upsets are a good thing because it makes the event more interesting. People would rather be mad over a loss than bored.

As far as I'm concerned, it's not a real upset when removing one thing (the multiplier) completely alters the result. Take the multiplier away, and Gaius would've lost to Leo like he deserved to. Call me salty all you will, but it's not "exciting" at all to watch a character who is clearly more popular than their opponent lose thanks to a damn scrappy mechanic. Also, I would still be saying this even if it was a character that I loathe (like Takumi) who lost to Gaius instead.

[Johann]

7 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

As far as I'm concerned, it's not a real upset when removing one thing (the multiplier) completely alters the result. Take the multiplier away, and Gaius would've lost to Leo like he deserved to. Call me salty all you will, but it's not "exciting" at all to watch a character who is clearly more popular than their opponent lose thanks to a damn scrappy mechanic. Also, I would still be saying this even if it was a character that I loathe (like Takumi) who lost to Gaius instead.

Well I, for one, think popularity is a joke and I support anything that mocks it or the people who take it seriously.

[YotsuMaboroshi]

3 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I suspect if we were able to poll everyone participating in this, you'd find you're in a minority (evidence: people tend to choose their favourite even when it would often be more beneficial to side with a weaker team to rank high within it), but it doesn't matter. The problem is that this isn't much of a game mode, for reasons I and others have already mentioned.

-It grossly favours people who are awake/not at work/etc. at certain hours.

-The gameplay itself is dead easy. Have friends running Level 40 units, deploy a Level <30 unit. You win. Even if you play fair there's none of the interesting map design of the story maps/chain challenges/etc., nor the player-crafted teams of the arena, nor even the inflated stats of 10th stratum/tempest.

Of course if you poll players they'd prefer popularity winning.  From a design perspective though, a straight popularity contest is not a 'fair' mode.  If it's always overwhelmingly popular units that win and the winner gets additional rewards for winning, eventually fans of the other units are going to be demoralized and start siding with the most popular character instead of their favorite, leading gauntlets to be more and more lopsided.  What happens if everyone sides with a single character right at the start?

From a player perspective, it would have been better if instead of implementing the multiplier, IS had removed all rewards for winning, so that the only rewards were ranking feathers (similar to how TT works).  IS seems to think that it's better to give less popular characters a chance to win if their fans manage to rally at the right time though.

[Tybrosion]

13 minutes ago, Johann said:

Well I, for one, think popularity is a joke and I support anything that mocks it or the people who take it seriously.

The fact the voting gauntlet is at least partly a popularity contest doesn't make a damn bit of difference. Like the Patriots deserved to beat the Falcons because the former was the better team, Team Leo deserved to beat Team Gaius because the former was the stronger (better) team. Instead, Team Leo lost entirely thanks to the multiplier's presence. Also, this is all pretty damn easy for you to say when you didn't have to watch one of your favorites get screwed out of a rightful win.

Edited August 6, 2017 by Tybrosion