5 years ago

Fleet Arena Shard with a Competitive Disadvantage (August 2020)

My fleet arena shard was migrated in 2018. This was due to a "one off policy change" by CG since it was an "outlier in terms of population" and "this single shard definitely an outlying case and needs to be addressed" according to https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/169265/state-of-the-galaxy-5-11-18. The original shard was closed and two new ones were created. This was concluded based on other members of the shard. We were at an incredible disadvantage and could go from ranking 200 to 400 overnight. CG improved this but did not compensate us for almost 2 years of lost crystals and zeta mats.
After the migration, the difficulty continues for most of our shard, dropping easily if not doing regular climbing. In addition, a group of approximately 35-40 whales/krakens controls the top of the arena in an exclusive shard chat that does not allow new members. I have confirmed with them that they do not allow new members because they are too crowded. To show the strength and $ power of the group, these 35 or so players have any average GP of 6.85M and over 7,000 fleet arena wins. They come from several of the top guilds. Most of them get 1st in both arenas daily. 13 of them have all 3 of the currently hardest to obtain toons: both GLs and Luke! Another 6 have both GLs. Yes, I know you can say that doesn't matter for fleet... But it will matter when those players work together, fight at all times of the day, don't mind spending tons of crystals to refresh battles and drop you out of the top 30 within seconds despite your multiple refreshes. The cost of refreshing to obtain top 20 or better will exceed the rewards. This eliminates the reward for competing.
In addition to this exclusive whale shard chat, there is actually a secondary shard chat for those trying to overthrow the main one. This currently contains another 40+ active players. Despite their efforts, this group still cannot compete with the main chat and players finish outside of the top 30.
I've looked into a group of the next top 50 players in our fleet shard (this doesn't contain any of the top 35 members from the main chat). These, lets call them: "Group B," players have a GP average of 5.9M and over 3,500 fleet wins. A majority of Group B come first in squad arena mode daily. All of these pIayers are active in our fleet arena because they would otherwise be easily dropped outside of the top 100. I believe if most of these players were placed into a different fleet arena shard, they would be getting at least top 20 rewards. While I only looked into the top 85 players at one day, the Group B players that regularly try to be competitive in fleet would likely end up being a group of 100-200 players but I don't have the time to get data on all of them (for now).
We can't really compare fleet team stats since most of the them are maxed Negotiator or decent Malevolence teams that have been meta for so long, the teams are fairly similar.
I don't blame the main chat for this issue. They are aware of the incredibly large group of competitive players and want to protect their rewards. It is a problem that CG admitted and partially corrected and needs to be addressed again. We are all still at a significant loss of crystals and zeta mats going on for almost 4 years now. Please fix this...

Note: My previous post on this topic included now irrelevant facts due to being outdated.

GifafiTho
4 years ago
I’m in an og ship shard iirc and I too would like an easier one. Tyty
NyKynoe
4 years ago
"niko4;c-2256473" wrote:
"Waqui;c-2251500" wrote:
"niko4;c-2251442" wrote:
That's not really a reasonable request @Waqui ...

If you want to support your case it is, but yes, I know it's practically impossible to provide that data.

I'm not sure why you bothered to ask then... Here is something more comparable for you:

You averaged approx 3 wins per day over the last 9 days and on average take 30th at PO. It also looks like you won't get bumped too far outside top 50 based on that level of activity.
Compared to my shard, there are at least another 100 people who do the same amount of battles or more than you and that's not counting the main group of 32 people... There are simply way more active people in my shard. For people in my shard that do a similar amount of battles as you, they hover around rank 80 at PO.
I completely agree with you that you are in a "normal" veteran shard. However, it still does not compare to my outlier shard.

But that doesnt matter, at least not without knowing when the shards were created. Roll out shards and non roll out shards are going to be different, there is no way around that.

Your shard doesnt need to compare to every roll out shard, and you can in no way declare your shard an outlier, without relevant information.
NyKynoe
4 years ago
"niko4;c-2256659" wrote:
I agree with you on a lot of those points Kyno. I only want to compare to day 1 fleet shards. If day 1 shards had a similar creation process, I would expect the top 50 in those shards to look fairly similar when reviewing GP and other stats. This would assume a similar level of players growing at a similar rate over this time. Obviously, there would be some differences as each shard is not a perfect sample of the overall population in this game and number of battles would vary based on how the shard was organized. If we did find my shard top 50 is still not similar enough compared to other day 1 shards, that is more reason for me to believe there is an issue with the larger population in my shard but won't be able to found out without more assistance. Thanks and have a good weekend!

Actually day 1 shards could be wildly different as far as GP and other stats go, that is why that is irrelevant. They are going to be a random assortment of players who were active at that time and over the level needed to open ships. They should be all over the place from that perspective, they will not have the baked in process grouping them by opening that later shards or arena shards have.
Jordylee24
5 years ago
This shard is nuts. I know all too well that it is still active in the 300 range with maxed out fleets. CG does not appear to care anymore if they ever really did besides a bandaid fix.
I have friends that sit in top 5, top 10 all day long and never get moved that spend less money that I do. Its frankly untenable. This shard should have been split into 4 at least. None of us were ever compensated for the years of low rewards we got.

I found one of your previous posts on this shard and a quote by @Kyno caught my eye.

"As they said in the post the split was due to population and no other factors. The 300-400 are still active from what we see of players who are in the chat but stopped caring as much about ships right now."

The entire reason they stopped caring about ships is because there was no point. Kyno was defending himself heavily but he has literally no clue how brutal this shard is or continues to be. I was hit 9 times in 4 hours recently and that same evening was hit 4 times in 3 hours. Of course I refreshed and hit back instantly but that costs a lot of crystals over a days time. And as I type this I got moved again for the 2nd time in 15 minutes. All top 50.
cutmenoslack
4 years ago
Quick Update to this disaster Fleet Shard for 3/2/21:
New pit raid and relic 8 materials have only been out for a few months so I thought I'd review my fleet shard for Relic 8 stats. Group A (the elite shard chat of about 33 members - that obtain ranks 1-3 daily) has 21 R8 capital ship toons (Mostly GK and a couple GGs). There's also about 5 Anakins at R8 as well in this group.
And Group B has another 12 R8 GKs. These are people that are very competitive in the shard (over 4,000 fleet wins logged on average) but not welcomed into main chat (due to overcrowding) and rarely finish in the top 30 at PO.
That's a total of at least 31 capital ships at Relic 8 currently running in my shard today...
Waquira
4 years ago
18 R8 fleet commanders currently in top-50 in my fleet shard. Unless you battle them with mirror fleets it doesn't make much difference, so...... don't use mirror fleets?
cutmenoslack
4 years ago
Thanks for checking into the details for your shard and showing that we have almost double the R8 fleet commanders. I guess another question would be how those in your shard with R8 fleets place overall at PO and how many fleet wins they have. Feel free to PM me your top 50 in your arena and I can do the dirty work :)
cutmenoslack
4 years ago
LARGE UPDATE FOR THIS FLEET SHARD:
I've reviewed the number of fleet wins from Group A (main shard chat) and Group B (not in main shard chat but very active) and calculated the average fleet wins and average fleet wins per day. This was done by taking the fleet shard wins for each player from my shard from 8/7/20 (as mentioned in my original post above) to 3/11/21 (random day I chose to grab all data), applying the number of days between those dates and averaging them for the respective groups. The numbers were surprising as I doubt any other shard can compare. Remember this is only fleet WINS, doesn't count losses, so number of actual battles per day would be higher.

GROUP A fleet wins average per day for about last 7 months: 6.5 WINS PER DAY!
GROUP A total fleet wins average: 7,900 TOTAL FLEET WINS on average.
This is for the 30 people in the main fleet shard chat, who typically rank 1-3 at payout daily.

GROUP B fleet wins average per day for about last 7 months: 4.5 WINS PER DAY!
GROUP B total fleet wins average: 5,630 TOTAL FLEET WINS on average
This is for the next 35 or so people that try to and usually fail to break top 30 at payout daily. This group seems to usually do all 5 of their battles each day and likely even refresh (I know I have) just to get the 50 crystal reward for rank 21-50.
NyKynoe
4 years ago
I am only referring to the line of:
I doubt any other shard can compare.

Our shard chat has 63 people in it (not counting those who regularly climb but are not in the chat). Players regularly drop past 30 each day. Anyone who drops past that point will have to average 5+ wins to take top spots.

Each hour has it's own rotation and what not, but many if not all take the top spots at PO every day. So yes other shards do compare on the needed win average to climb daily.

From my understanding the reason for this was activity of the group as a whole, not due to any group keeping others out of the top edge. The level of activity you are noting is not extreme by any means, but yes it is made worse by the the way it has been organized.
cutmenoslack
4 years ago
@Kyno Thanks for your response and info on your shard. I see you have a respectable 8900+ fleet wins. As of today when I checked, you are ranked #229 overall in fleet wins in the game. My shard has 18 people ranked higher than you. The other half of the migrated shard has at least 11 people higher than you. Simply looking at your rank and above (the top 229 ranked by fleet wins), the two migrated shards combined make up 13% of those players. That shouldn't be the case if the migrated shard was fixed properly years ago. Feel free to PM me your top 50 and I can do a more detailed comparison as well.

In addition, if 63 people in your shard mostly claim top rewards, they have something to work for. The people in my shard that are not in the main shard chat, do not. Keep in mind, the most active portion of the group that I provided stats for, basically put in all 5 battles every day for 7 MONTHS to get the 50 crystal reward. Imagine the endurance for that...

As I mentioned in my OP, I'm not sure how large this Group B could be due to my lack of ability to track data on the top 200-400 people and general complexities of my shard. I do know several players that don't play fleets in my shard purely due to the inability to crack top 50 easily and float around in the 300-400s so they will always be excluded from my data. In any normal fleet, these people would be active and able to hit top 10. Also, people in my shard seem to be active in waves at a time and then become unsatisfied/uninterested again. This is why I've captured the additional stats below to show how active the shard (or at least the top 90 people) is over a much smaller time period:

STATS UPDATE 3/23/21:
GROUP A fleet wins average per day for about last ~2 weeks: 7.8 WINS PER DAY
This is the 32 people in the main shard chat.

GROUP B fleet wins average per day for about last ~2 weeks: 4.8 WINS PER DAY!
This Group B was expanded to the contain the NEXT TOP 60 PLAYERS (after the 32 noted in Group A). None of these people break top 30 regularly.