SNAKES

+1
If you're into competition and try your best for higher rewards, the current system is tough as it makes you effectively fight a coalition of 20 players, rather than a ffa... rigged game...

So you want to spend more crystals for a lower reward.....

People complain about the gear crunch.. at least colluding helps people get to 1 without refreshing.

just learn to make friends guys...

EA need to upgrade their ai on defense before anything happens about collusion.

If we can all beat each other based on human skill collusion just eliminates the need to refresh the leader board a 1000 times.

I speak as someone that doesn't collude ( new shard) but my team gets beaten by someone running the exact same team with 25% less gp and I'm getting kittened off about it. I have to snipe rank because anyone can beat anyone no matter the squad or gp (at the moment).

"John_Matrix1985;c-1375635" wrote:
So you want to spend more crystals for a lower reward.....

People complain about the gear crunch.. at least colluding helps people get to 1 without refreshing.

This!

On my shard many players including me still usually need 1 refresh to get to 1. But nevertheless:
What would competition be about if noone communicated with other guys from their shard? Furiously sniping and locking out? People with the least Real-Life who can be around a few minutes before payout would be rewarded. The better timing for sniping/locking descides who gets the better rank. Wow what great fun! You are aware that in the top20 pretty much everyone can beat all other squads on offense? Even the biggest whales can be beat on offense there when you are on an older shard.

Moved to Feedback/Arena.

I used to feel the same way as the OP. I was like "I just wanna be the best at beating people and don't need all this collusion to make it happen". But, the complexity of this issue is more nuanced, and it I have since conformed - and I'll explain why.

Payout times - we've identified 7 different payout slots for those in our shard chat, which means that in the hour preceding these payouts, PVP happens, and the rest of the time, it's fairly quiet. If you start battling someone who is working towards their own payout time, and it's hours away from your own, you're harming the progression of other players with little or no gain to yourself. You might be OK with this on the purist premise of "this is PVP", but then, don't complain when people begin to collude against you.
Blocking mechanics - if you opt to not colllude, and work your way up to first place or say top five knowing your payout is shared by one or more other players, it becomes less of a game of skill (to the degree that beating an AI requires skill) and more of a game of who's best at timing blocks. I've played that game. It's a pretty miserable game. I've gotten myself into first place then sweated out picking the optimal moment to start a pointless battle purely to block out an opponent from sniping me. Equally, I've dropped myself into 4th or 5th place and picked my moment to pounce. I've won some and I've lost some this way. My conculsion is it's very little fun playing under this type of system

I sought out my shard chat after a prolonged war with another player who as it goes quit the game before I found them. And it's been far less stressful ever since - I now know who's on the climb at a given time of day, and to leave them be, but if I want to enjoy PVP for what it is.

But like I say it's not like I don't have sympathy for your position.

For me, the best change they could make to the game which I genuinely think would end the need for shard chats (and make the PVP forum actually useful for once) would be to remove the need to be in 1st place at your payout time.
My suggestion would be to count any moment you were in first place for the 12 hours preceding your payout.
That's a really wide berth during which most people should be able to get a good run of PVP done and see where they land. It mightn't work for everyone but for the bulk of all players, I think it'd mean they can do their PVP in their own time and as frequently as they so choose to.

There would be a number of consequences

• CG would end up payout out many, many more crystal rewards... I daresay anyone from our top 50 might fancy their chances at a run on first place. That could mean we're going from 7 payouts a day on our shard to maybe 50. That's a lot more crystals being given away!
  
• In spite of the above I do believe they'd see more expenditure on refreshes. The first time I made it into 1st place, it was nowhere near my payout time, and as you can well imagine, it didn't hold. For a while I was happy with top 20 because I figured, I'd never have the power or time to maintain 1st place when it counted. But if I were frequently in the top 20 now, but never finishing 1st, I'd be well up for it, and I'd make sure one way or another I'd get myself to 1st in the 12-hour run up to payout
  
• Generally I think this would increase PVP competition, reduce player stress, and make the game more fun
  

:

I daresay there are consequences I've yet to think of too. I suspect it's all a pipe dream anyway though :(

I am well aware of the fact that everyone can beat everyone.

But where is the fun in cheating - the fun for me is when you have the time take out 20minutes of your day and refresh at the right time to climb by the guy you are trying to out run. Maybe even refresh 2 or 3 times.

Although as it is now, it is really a good feeling when you snipe nr1 or 2 down to 5 or 6 when you know they cheat.

nope they wont for the past 6 months i have taken 1st place on my shard dailly with the occasional 1 person attacking me to take 1st when i know its not their payout. i have watched whos payout is when and make sure not to attack them on their climb, hence they dont attack me at mine fair enough.
with the exception of 1 person. he attacked me daily for no reason whatsoever as his payout it hours after mine but he still insisted so it came to the point i though fk it let him have it so for 4 weeks i stopped even doing arena, my rank dropped the only battle i done was for daily mission i went in and retreated them.
funny once he realised i wasnt climbing he then dropped and for almost 4 weeks he was out of the top he never even tried climbing, same as me he just hovered in the 30's.
4 days ago after watching him drop to prove a point i battled my way back up, day 1 i took 1st no problem day 2 guess who was back attacking me at my payout. its not my imagination either as i do speak to someone from my shard and he noticed it too asking me what was going on.
i dont know this person have never spoke with this person but safe to say he has a grudge of some sort and EA/CG will do nothing about it.
what makes it even worse is he has an underage account (default name)
so no nothing will be done about arena's whatsoever

"Wilftheman;c-1375730" wrote:
I am well aware of the fact that everyone can beat everyone.

But where is the fun in cheating - the fun for me is when you have the time take out 20minutes of your day and refresh at the right time to climb by the guy you are trying to out run. Maybe even refresh 2 or 3 times.

Although as it is now, it is really a good feeling when you snipe nr1 or 2 down to 5 or 6 when you know they cheat.

If someone is cheating then they should be reported to EA to take action.
I don't however accept that collusion is cheating, if that's what you're suggesting here.

Perhaps you misunderstand the premise of these shard chats.
No doubt there are variances but for me it's about understanding when other player's payouts occur and leaving them to it. For those you share a payout with, there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't agree to battle it out and may the best person win - thus in the spirit of PVP. In my experience you won't get ganged up on for fighting it out with people who share your same payout time. But it isn't cheating to agree to just not screw with other people's payouts, especially when they're hours away from your own.