Difficulty decrease according with joining co-op players

Recently I am losing great deal of XP from dying troops because of joining co-op battles with Newbies, this always happens when my troops are going to level and I would hardly level because of this.

They bring level R to level 2 Light infantries while you bring level 4 or above (Enemies would randomly have level 10 if you bring 6 stars or above) and they are just too new and weak to handle enemies with such high levels. This ends up all the lefting troops have to be handled by your own which put me in the stats with extremely high difficulties while you are tackling your own portion and "raided" by unintended large groups of enemies.

Would it be possible for decreasing the level of enemies troops when joining with Newbie co-ops which they can handle with ease?

On top of that, I would like the exp loss from death to be lessened. It takes about an hour for me to get 500 exp, and I lose it in one hit from a skeleton archer. I gain less than 100 exp every battle for each unit, and one death causes me to lose 500 exp, which translates to a loss of a lot of time spent leveling the troops. Grinding is hard enough having to repair and heal, so hopefully amount of experiences lost is reduced.

I don't die very often because I play smart, but enemy archers can get lucky hits and take out 1/5 of my retreating experienced(4 stars) human light infantry's HP in one shot even with +10 endurance and + 15 armor. Without the +10 endurance, enemy archers can take out about 1/4 of an HP of one of my archers in one shot.

i would say this is where tactics and team play come in to it. don't just let a newby do his/her own this try to guild them. get them to join your troop's in cover. by now you should know the basic tactics for winning a battle. it's not just about numbers and lvls. the right tactics can win against almost any enemy army.

Well said pug!

Latexlord wrote:

I should agree with Pug, if you die in PVE, it's a tactical issue (though the newbie co-op has to be looked at).

I don't find the loss of exp to be that punishing, and one of my unit's lost 700 exp in a fight once. You just have to outplay the AI, which is not that hard.

I'm much more concerned about the exp loss in PVP. It shouldn't be the same as in pve. You have to outplay a human player, and the use of heroes and morale item make retreat less liklely to happen (unless you retreat manually). That's the only reason why I don't engage pvp battle at all.

We want to encourage PVP, as it is where the game shines the most, so we will consider the facts and come up with something.

pug wrote:

i would say this is where tactics and team play come in to it. don't just let a newby do his/her own this try to guild them. get them to join your troop's in cover. by now you should know the basic tactics for winning a battle. it's not just about numbers and lvls. the right tactics can win against almost any enemy army.

I would like to express how hard I feel when I died 3 times when I going to level my troops (1k XP each, and XP losing is greater when nearly to level, wasting about my week and couldn't level) and they just keep dying because of facing tons of troops. I don't agree that you can possibly to guide Newbies as :

1. You have to face your own portion and think of tactics of your troops, which you don't have much time to give much command to other players.
2. Newbies may not listen to your words.
3. Positions and terrain may vary that if you bring heavy infantry then don't think they could get pass to the middle - way to join other teammate as enemies arrived.

This is a great penalty for myself as well as the Newbies and therefore I seek some suggestion here.

I totally agree win Yeenky. It happened to me yesterday again. I fell in a co-op with 2 newbies, with elves armies (I am human... at least in the game! ) I had 4 factions on the field, they had 3 each, me on on the left, the others at the center and right. The center and right player simply didn't move, and the enemy was getting closer with numerous big hords of slashers and archers. At one point I had to move forward because we were stuck at the bottom of the field, what led me to be confronted to most of the enemy's troops. When I started to fight, the center player didn't come in rescue, but took his troops on the the bottom left, far behind my position and waited. The right player - a newby too - was slaughtered in a few minutes and all the troops that attacked him came back to me right away after they finished with him. It's only at that point that the center player started to move!
Upon 4 of my factions 2 were totally killed (and their heroes too of course), and two survived with 2 or 3 warriors. We ended the battle on a victory, and this elf coward that hid behind my troops even got the MVP! because he could fight all the lasting enemies without being taken and blocked by overnumerous enemy troops.

Now if this is a "cooperation"... Maybe I didn't understand the meaning of this word.

pug wrote:

i would say this is where tactics and team play come in to it. don't just let a newby do his/her own this try to guild them. get them to join your troop's in cover. by now you should know the basic tactics for winning a battle. it's not just about numbers and lvls. the right tactics can win against almost any enemy army.

And you're going to tell me, Pug, that that's what you do? When the battle begins, I start to see (rolling the screen up to the top of the field) what are the troops that come toward us, what they are composed of, and what are their levels. Then I return back to see who my allies are, their troops and levels. At this point I have to think quickly and precisely in which way I'm going to move to attack, and send my troops. During all this time, enemy's troops approach and get fastly closer. I can't see - but maybe I'm too slow minded - how it is possible to start to write long sentences and advices and explanations to other players, whoever they are.

I think that the best way to avoid such situations is that a co-op should only be fixed according to the average of the level of the players' troops (since there can be different levels of troops in an army), or according to the players rankings.
Again the subject here is "co-op" battle, and when players are to weak in comparison of others, they get killed quickly or have to hide and let the others get killed. Then it's more an "everyone for himself" battle than a cooperation.

Here, it happened again, now with a higher ranked than me:
We were 3 allies. I was fighting factions of enemies and he sent one of his units to fight with my soldiers (I didn't need any help on that, I was already finishing them). Then there was a new and big wave of enemies that killed the second player, that came toward me, but he chose to put the big of his troops backward, awaiting. I wrote him on the screen "Fight! What are you waiting for?" Finally I had to finish my men on the new wave of attackers and on archers he could haved killed on the first place. He only entered in the battle at that point.

On 4 units, I had 2 killed and 1 that succeeded in fleeing. Only my archers could survive. And of course this player took the MVP and limited his losses.

This is not cooperation, this is taking advantage of allies killing. This player's level was even higher than mine (he had big star units, when mine are 3 stars.)

It's too bad, but I guess I'll keep playing only in PVE, alone. No more co-op battles. This is not a threat, it's a decision that I say I'm taking. At least I know who I'll be counting on, and I won't be set up by players that send others to butchery and stay back, waiting for the field to be cleaned before they enter in the battle. I could have the choice to do exactly what this kind of player is doing, but first it's totaly inelegant and mostly it's not in the spirit of the game. One has to fight his enemies, not his allies.

I can understand all the above points, but our concern is that if we divide CO-OPs according to the level of a player, the matchmaking will be a lot more difficult and not as fast as it is right now.

Allowing CO-OP with only guildmates could solve this issue, isn't it ?

This is already part of Guild Warfare though.

the quote that you scroll up is easily solved play in full screen. this makes it quicker to view the map. if i see players who are weak i see them doing nothing for a few second i tell them to take cover or move to me. this doesn't always work some times there ignorant or don't speak English. but most listen. i don't care about there unit's lvl's i'm trying to help them i know that if they listen to quick tip's or hint's they will win with few losses. if they do move to me they see what i'm doing and learn. we where all noobs when we started this game and we all made mistakes.
i don't win all my fight's cos i'm well equipped it's cos i use tactics and teach others how to do the same. some really appreciate this and say they would love to fight along side with me all the time.
here's a few tip's don't look at the enemy set your troop's to there position first, watch what the others are doing.
if someone have 3 or 4 unit's and isn't moving then tell them to take cover or move to you (tell them where you are).
some times i see a couple of weak player and a group of tree's or a lake in the middle i just type 'lake' usually most will listen this gives a strong point that just needs to be covered on 2 sided causing all enemy unit's to converge there. then using the right tactics you can easily push the enemy back.
buy staying in cover until the enemy actually hit your unit's neutralises the enemy archers for a long time and causes them to form behind there own troop's and kill there own troop's.
the new unit's that have and are being created right now (such as slashers) are faster but weaker. these are flanking unit's if used correctly.

this is just a sample of way's to win a battle in coop even if your playing with weak player's.

TACTICS AND COOPERATION ARE VITAL

pug wrote:

i would say this is where tactics and team play come in to it. don't just let a newby do his/her own this try to guild them. get them to join your troop's in cover. by now you should know the basic tactics for winning a battle. it's not just about numbers and lvls. the right tactics can win against almost any enemy army.

You're acting as if tactics and cooperation is magic.

Tactics and team-play don't work if you are partnered with a rookie or one star army and you have a big star or 4 star army. I have some battle-hardened units and my team mate got massacred by battle-hardened+level enemies. I in turn lost half of my army and lost 500+ exp because I was out numbered. Was that my fault for not having enough team-play? I even taught the guy to hide behind and spread his troops to attack, but that can only do so much and his whole army got slaughtered. I told him to stay behind objects, but he didn't know what I mean. While I am explaining, the enemies are already here.

It happened again today, barely won with my remaining units. I can explain things a hundred times, and I will still die.

Two times, 100 points from leveling, and already minus 1000+exp. That's about 3 hours worth of my time. It's absurd that you get punished this heavily when you're doing everything correct. I would have leveled up yesterday if I hadn't lost this much or paired with rookies and one stars.

If you don't want to change matchmaking, decrease the amount of exp lost or decrease difficulty; have the enemy levels reflect more of the levels of our side.

do you expect never to have unit's die ?
even i have unit's die, but it's a war game. i expect to lose unit's every now and then if you try some of the things i have suggested then you stand a better chance of not losing unit's and gaining the XP you crave for your unit's and the stronger they get the better chance again of not losing init's in battle. i've been gutted when a unit get's close and dies. i have a lvl 2 cav unit go up 1 lvl3 in a battle then die and went back down to lvl 2 in the same battle lol.
it happens. i've only been playing this game 3 weeks and i see it has problems but it's just over a month old and as it grows you will see great changes i'm sure. fight hard. if you want to do a couple of coop's with me mail me (if you are light that is lol) and i'll try to help you. this invitation isn't for everybody lol.

If things are as grim as some of the descriptions in this thread, it is very possible to move your troops near the edge of the map and ready them for retreat. You will save your XP then.

Indeed, Hegorn!... This way, instead of being a cooperative alliance fighting together against a common enemy, it'll turn out to be a "hide and seek" party where everyone will try to force the other to fight and get kill first. Great spirit of war!
A solution has to be found in order to make fighters fight, not to find how it's possible to limit losses because my real enemy is my ally.

@ pug

pug wrote:

the quote that you scroll up is easily solved play in full screen. this makes it quicker to view the map. if i see players who are weak i see them doing nothing for a few second i tell them to take cover or move to me. this doesn't always work some times there ignorant or don't speak English. but most listen. i don't care about there unit's lvl's i'm trying to help them i know that if they listen to quick tip's or hint's they will win with few losses. if they do move to me they see what i'm doing and learn. we where all noobs when we started this game and we all made mistakes.
i don't win all my fight's cos i'm well equipped it's cos i use tactics and teach others how to do the same. some really appreciate this and say they would love to fight along side with me all the time.
here's a few tip's don't look at the enemy set your troop's to there position first, watch what the others are doing.
if someone have 3 or 4 unit's and isn't moving then tell them to take cover or move to you (tell them where you are).
some times i see a couple of weak player and a group of tree's or a lake in the middle i just type 'lake' usually most will listen this gives a strong point that just needs to be covered on 2 sided causing all enemy unit's to converge there. then using the right tactics you can easily push the enemy back.
buy staying in cover until the enemy actually hit your unit's neutralises the enemy archers for a long time and causes them to form behind there own troop's and kill there own troop's.
the new unit's that have and are being created right now (such as slashers) are faster but weaker. these are flanking unit's if used correctly.

this is just a sample of way's to win a battle in coop even if your playing with weak player's.

Well all that is correct... when you have a 4700 fame points ranking (like I think it's yours at the moment) with the appropriate army units, and that your coop players are rookies or a little bit more. Because no matter what, you'll handle this war alone exactly as if you were alone on the the battle field. It doesn't make big difference.
But when you have a 780 points (like mine at the moment) and others have a lower or equal level, you have to count on them in your strategy, you can't handle the fight alone. Now when these allies of yours make tricks not to enter into the battle, first I don't think that telling them what to do will be of a big help (because all they want is to stay aside and wait) and secondly, again, the fight is not led anymore by a strategy and a war spirit, but becomes a stupid hide and seek game where one spends his time covering his ass instead of fighting. And why? Because the allies are disloyal and treacherous or affraid to fight.

That's why first of all, battles have to be set according to players levels or their units levels, or as it was said in this thread, co-op battles should only be in guilds where the loyalty and group spirit of fight is present. A random selection of coop players is too risky and unequal, and its results at the end of the battles is often unfair.

pug wrote:

TACTICS AND COOPERATION ARE VITAL

That's exactly what I'm trying to prove!

i agree and have stated before not all listen to advice. but most will and will fight cos they want to play and have a good battle. but to just blame them for your losses isn't always the best way. look at it this way, if you use the right tactics and try to guild them at least you tried your best and next time hopefully the noob player/s will have learned from his/her mistakes. but they won't learn if you just hope they will do the right thing.
yes i'm strong but i know that i can't win a battle just by myself when i only use 5 unit's against what could be around 20. it can easily go wrong.

I dunno... I cant remember having any Co-Op losses. We've had a few bad ones where newbies friendly fired heavily enough to make things messy and perhaps risk a loss, but a quick message usually stopped them from going overboard completely.

I agree, newbies dont always listen and that can be frustrating, but I learned a long time ago in multiplayer gaming to not get overly frustrated at my team's mistakes (or my own) and always look for ways to adapt towards the best outcome possible. Thats the real win - being able to produce the best possible outcome for any situation.

If other players in my co-op make unrecoverable mistakes, I need to be aware of that so I can adapt as needed. One option to adapt to that is to position my troops so they are not lost. In practice, that rarely happens. I cant remember the last time I've had to do that. Overall, Co-ops are pretty much guaranteed wins.

I dont want to say that there isnt room for improvement - but if there is a problem, simply reducing XP losses or the difficulty of Co-Op opponents wont solve the correct problem and may have downsides for other players.

For instance, for people farming XP, they want to see high level opponents on the field. There are a lot of players who carry newbies without problem and enjoy the extra XP / MVPs for it.

Also, the more you restrict who can play co-op, the less often they will occur. I find that there typically needs to be 150+ people in Kong chat for Lightside to have <2min wait times on Co-ops. Rough anecdotal numbers there, nothing scientific. I suspect Darkside has a somewhat harder time getting co-ops going.

About tactics --

I think a lot of it comes down to knowing yourself and knowing your enemy. With enough experience, you can know which units are going to win their fights before they even engage and act appropriately. This does mean that more experienced players are often forced into certain tactics because of new players, but I dont personally see that as a downside. I think managing weaknesses and strengths on the battlefield is just good strategy gaming.

Flanking is huge. Help the newbies.

For instance - I normally flank for my own heavies, but if I see a noob about to get hit by cav/light assault or anything more than he can handle, I almost always send my cav over to flank for them. A flanked enemy or reared enemy loses a lot of effectiveness. I've seen four badly injured LINF units completely surround a high star HINF and kill it with almost no losses.

I think many players want to build their armies to play to a certain strategy that they themselves enjoy. They dislike when they are forced to change from that strategy/playstyle due to someone else's mistakes. This is why playing with teammates is almost always favored - you dont get forced into those situations as often. Everyone will have their own tolerances for that sort of thing and should have options for gameplay that suits them. Guild warfare will have premade co-ops.

pug wrote:

... but to just blame them for your losses isn't always the best way.

Let's say that I blame them for not having the required spirit to enter into a battle on the first place, and yes, as a direct consequence, for taking me with them in an tricky adventure that costs me troops, healing price and level regression to my units and heroes.

pug wrote:

look at it this way, if you use the right tactics and try to guid them at least you tried your best and next time hopefully the noob player/s will have learned from his/her mistakes. but they won't learn if you just hope they will do the right thing.

Er... I'm sorry pug, but I never intended to play this game to be an instructor or a Mother Teresa. I try to do my best to play the right way, and I just expect others to do the same, or at least not to create me damages since they're supposed to be my allies. I'm perfectly aware though that my enemies could and should, which is their purpose. But don't get me wrong, I'm not playing the selfish idiot, and it's even quite my nature in games like in real life to help others. It's just that at this level of the game, I simply can't afford it. The work has to be done, and everyone has to know what he has to do and make his part of the deal.

pug wrote:

yes i'm strong but i know that i can't win a battle just by myself when i only use 5 unit's against what could be around 20. it can easily go wrong.

You still have much better chances... But you see pug, it's all about cohesion and leaning on each other. That's precisely and simply what I'm expecting, nothing more.

@ Hegorn

Hegorn wrote:

Flanking is huge. Help the newbies.

It's not necessarily ablout the newbies, I also fell in battles with higher leveled players than me. It's about players that don't enter into the battle. If they entered, I'd have been glad to help them, because it's what war is about. But if they don't, I can't, and the fact is that when this kind of players finally enter into the battle, they often don't try to help anyone, they just try to earn their points. They play co-op like PVE, alone and for themselves.

Sir Jakh wrote:

It's not necessarily ablout the newbies, I also fell in battles with higher leveled players than me. It's about players that don't enter into the battle. If they entered, I'd have been glad to help them, because it's what war is about. But if they don't, I can't, and the fact is that when this kind of players finally enter into the battle, they often don't try to help anyone, they just try to earn their points. They play co-op like PVE, alone and for themselves.

Thats true, though often I find they are trying to be efficient and wait for flanking position. What I try to do in that case is to lead the enemy / reposition so that both me and my allies are starting to surround the troops - when possible anyway.

About "just earning points" - I find that the players who are a little more aggressive tend to earn the most points. Even when they take heavy losses, they get quite a lot more kills too. Waiting for too long for perfect flanks or to be super efficient often means you dont get to the battle in time. Its all a balancing act.

Hegorn wrote:

If things are as grim as some of the descriptions in this thread, it is very possible to move your troops near the edge of the map and ready them for retreat. You will save your XP then.

Nope that won't work. The direction your troops retreat in is random. I ran to the edge and my archers went in the opposite direction. They tried to retreat to the other side of the screen and died. *facepalm*

This is another suggestion: Have your retreating units retreat to the closest edge.

I also got my units killed by allied friendly fire. Why should I lose experience for something I didn't do wrong? You can do "teamwork" all you want, but in the end, it's also up to the other guy. This can be solved by allowing us to choose who to cooperate with, or adding a black list to ban others from cooperating with you.

At least give negative experience to units who do friendly fire, so people don't abuse it. MVP doesn't give any benefits at the moment, so people can just friendly fire all they want.

Vaylemn wrote:

Hegorn wrote:

If things are as grim as some of the descriptions in this thread, it is very possible to move your troops near the edge of the map and ready them for retreat. You will save your XP then.

Nope that won't work. The direction your troops retreat in is random. I ran to the edge and my archers went in the opposite direction. They tried to retreat to the other side of the screen and died. *facepalm*

Its not random - they will always retreat away from the source of damage. If you have 4 sources of damage from multiple directions, it can feel random and would reduce the effectiveness of this tactic. Archers damaging your units will not allow you to retreat either.

That said, there is a bug I have noticed that if you attempt a retreat too quickly right after taking damage, it does retreat in a random direction. The workaround is to wait just about 1 full second after you are engaged.

I've also suggested forcing retreats towards the closest edge when within X distance from the edge. Maybe the retreat icon changes when near the edge to signify that it will be a full withdrawal from battle.

I dont think you can blame the full loss of your unit due to FF. That just means you didnt retreat your unit properly when they were engaged. There really is very little reason to allow units die in PvE. Even in a horrible worst case scenario, good tactics should allow you to save all but 1 unit. And if you suspect the battle will go badly, choosing to fight near an edge will give you much better chances of not losing any XP.

MVP gives quest rewards and achievement titles. I agree that it might not be enough to hinder FF from everyone. Its a bit tricky to balance well though. I've made the suggestion that losses from FF would not cost time or gold to heal. Another suggestion is to have FF over certain thresholds subtract from the gold earned per battle to penalize people who are intentionally FFing. Thresholds should scale with army size with logarithmic gold penalties.

Hegorn wrote:

Vaylemn wrote:

Hegorn wrote:

If things are as grim as some of the descriptions in this thread, it is very possible to move your troops near the edge of the map and ready them for retreat. You will save your XP then.

Nope that won't work. The direction your troops retreat in is random. I ran to the edge and my archers went in the opposite direction. They tried to retreat to the other side of the screen and died. *facepalm*

Its not random - they will always retreat away from the source of damage. If you have 4 sources of damage from multiple directions, it can feel random and would reduce the effectiveness of this tactic. Archers damaging your units will not allow you to retreat either.

That said, there is a bug I have noticed that if you attempt a retreat too quickly right after taking damage, it does retreat in a random direction. The workaround is to wait just about 1 full second after you are engaged.

I've also suggested forcing retreats towards the closest edge when within X distance from the edge. Maybe the retreat icon changes when near the edge to signify that it will be a full withdrawal from battle.

I dont think you can blame the full loss of your unit due to FF. That just means you didnt retreat your unit properly when they were engaged. There really is very little reason to allow units die in PvE. Even in a horrible worst case scenario, good tactics should allow you to save all but 1 unit. And if you suspect the battle will go badly, choosing to fight near an edge will give you much better chances of not losing any XP.

MVP gives quest rewards and achievement titles. I agree that it might not be enough to hinder FF from everyone. Its a bit tricky to balance well though. I've made the suggestion that losses from FF would not cost time or gold to heal. Another suggestion is to have FF over certain thresholds subtract from the gold earned per battle to penalize people who are intentionally FFing. Thresholds should scale with army size with logarithmic gold penalties.

Just ran to the edge last battle. Tried retreating at 1-5 hp left of all my units after my team mate abandoned the fight. Clicked the flag on the bottom right almost 100 times. This is because you can't retreat from archers. Ran around the edge of the entire map once while continuing to click the flag on the bottom right for my remaining units; nothing happens.

Lastly, unless you were in that battle, you're talking out of your ass.

I'm quitting the game today, and to think I almost spent some Kreds on this game. Bye.