Recommendation - allow players to "save" up to 3 participation eligibility windows. So if you miss playing on a given 24h period, you can redeem that play that slot in another window on a different day you've already played on. Can never play twice in the same window, of course.

Why do this? B/c tbh the time slots still suck. There's not enough time slots in a given day, and they happen to fall @ 00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00, 20:00 for me. 00:00, 04:00 are just terrible slots. Generally speaking, a lot of stuff happens @ 08:00, 12:00 & 16:00 in a typical day, especially on working days (start of work day/start of getting things done on a day off, 12:00 lunch, 16:00 finishing up the working day/pre-dinner prep/etc), so 20:00 tends to be my sweet spot, and that is actually 00:00 GMT which means it's already the start of a new slot, and if I miss that, I miss an entire day. And if I catch it on a day like today when I actually did have time @ 08:00 and 12:00, despite it being a "new day" for me, I've already played during this 24h GMT time period. I may well be available @ 20:00 yesterday, 08:00 this morning, 16:00 this afternoon but not then not again until tomorrow evening, which misses 1 entire day's worth of play despite being active on WZ.

Not sure what others think, but these time slots are really annoying. I'm not suggesting to let anyone play all their games straight in a row, but something with a bit more flexibility would be nice, so it's not a chore and we don't have to time life around CW time slots. Something that still encourages consistent participation throughout the season without being tied to awkward time slots.

Yep, when I'm working i can only play the last 2 slots of the day (18 and 22 o clock), but i usually miss the 18 o clock slot (dinner and stuff). That leaves me with just the last slot of the day left.

If I for some reason cant be online then, i just miss CW that day...

The slots all seem fairly filled these days (10+ per template), so adding a few more slots should be fine. 20 CET, 18 UCT for example would be a great time to play.

Agreed, making the day cycle start and end at an arbitrary time automatically gives some players an advantage. I don’t see the harm in making it a rolling 24 hour cycle rather than starting and stopping at 0 GMT

Well, with a 24 hour cycle, you could coordinate with other clans and try to match up with each other. (So one clan could feed another clan by coordinating the times). That’s much harder to do with the current way clan wars work.

The day system is fine as is, there just need to be more slots or slots at different time intervals.

Since human lives tend to be based around an 8 hour cycle (sleep work play), spacing out the slots every 4 hours leaves people with just 1 or 2 slots depending on where they live.

1 viable slot a day just isn't enough, so we need more slots.

I think it's a great idea. I only get to play cw around 3 times a week. Being on at those exact specific times, and wanting to play at that exact time, is scarce. Being able to play when I have the free time would make it way easier

@Ocean
Do you mean that modifying the system would enable clans to cheat to give 1 clan wins by the other intentionally throwing games? How does the time change aid this? Can't these same hypothetical cheaters still just meet up at some 4 hr time slot and cheat away all the same?

@JK, 4tog
Totally relate to what you've written ... I think the current CW system makes it difficult for many to participate despite being active on WZ, which is unfortunate and just wasted opportunities.

If Fizzer adds more slots, he would need to reduce templates available per slot. Are you sure you want that? I don't, but on the other hand the current 4h cycle works pretty well for me, unlike the previous 6h cycle.

Orannis what do you mean by rolling 24h cycle? If you mean that 24h would always start counting when you play, that would actually reduce rather than increase the flexibility (you would need to always play on same slot to get maximum amount of games).

Bigger problem for us is the way matches are allocated from highest rank to lowest. There was one slot this week where we had two templates with around 20 people in each slot, and 3 TLA members in each. We ended up with 2 games, 4 people left out and no free wins... This means that its not actually enough to join that one slot where you can play, but you might need to join multiple to get a game. We are fairly low rated currently and it seems most of the other clans with low ratings almost stopped playing CW, or at least reduced how much they play.

4 people got no games or free wins? Wow, that sucks . . . there should be a checkbox to "switch template if no matching game is available". Meaning you choose your desired template, but if there's no game available, you simply get no game, but if you check that box, it'll find another template for you to play on. And it defaults "down" to the simplest templates. So if you pick 2v2 and get no game, sends you to 1v1 MME, then ComBomb, then SE1W, then SE auto-distribution, etc.

RE: time slots ... yes of course 4 hrs is better than 6 hrs. 6 was outright terrible. 4 is passable but takes effort to align real life schedule to CW time slots, which is not good. Should not require players to adjust their daily routine to match a game start time. There should just be more slots available so that when players have time to play, they can.

Also, regarding reducing the # of templates if there were more time slots ... sure, why not? Every 4 hrs could be a full CW slots with all the templates (they already vary by slot, some have 3 templates, some have 5). If there were additional slots added every 2 hrs between the regular slots, even if they only have a single template SE1W or even SEAD, it would probably help a lot of players get more games in.

If you add slots, people spread out more. If slots are every 2h, there are half the people per slot compared to if slots are every 4h. That means that instead of 3-5 templates we now get, it would be 2-3 templates per slot. It might be possible to implement a system that puts people to other template if they dont get a game in one, but it would actually be easier (still not easy) to create a matchmaking that doesn't leave low rated clans out.

How it currently works is this (as far as I know):
For this example lets have 3 clans, A rated 300, B rated 200 and C rated 100 (could have also named them Masters, TSFH and TLA...), and a timeslot with just 1 template.

Scenario 1:
1 player for each clan joins. A gets matched with B and C gets a free win.

Scenario 2:
2 players from A, 1 player from B and 1 player from C join. Players from A get matched up against the other two.

Scenario 3:
1 player from A and B join, 2 players from C. A get matched up against B, matchmakes tries to match players from C against each other and neither get a free win.

Scenario 3 is the current problem. Scenario works just the same if there are 20 players from clans with higher rating. What actually happened last time was that there was 3 TLA players joining, 20 from clans with higher rating and 1 from clan with lower. The 20 players got matched against each other, one of our guys got matched against the one with lower rating and 2 got left out.

One could argue that its also unfair for the high ranked clans because they don't almost ever get free wins, unless they stack a template with 1 more their player than from the other clans combined, and this is a fair point as well. I'm sure there could be a way to implement the matchmaker in a way that assigns the games first to clans with more members joining, (perhaps randomizing whether it matches up or down?). I would personally not even mind if players with no game didn't get a free win, as long as that person wasn't always from the lowest ranked clan.

@Naviiso
Didn't realize that's what happens. Agree, that is terrible, and it must really drain the fun out of CW. Now it makes sense why I've never had a Free Win yet! Hopefully Fizz has something in mind to address that. As I've stated elsewhere, I think the matchmaking should be more round robin-ish, try pair up every clan vs every clan over the season, and focus on getting as many games as possible for everyone who is present for a time slot. Leverage the "no one left behind" & "everyone plays everyone" strategies (in that order) as best as possible rather than "assign the _best_ games" strategy, where _best_ means favouring clans closest in rank, even if it means stranding some players (which imho isn't "best" at all) & the same clans continually playing each other (as a TSFH player, I seem to go up against MH quite a bit, TLA only occasionally, and never Masters). If it is a participation based event (it is), the algorithm should favour giving everyone a game.

sorry for a tart reply
You're incorrect about the free wins in scenario 3.

In your A,B,C,C scenario 3
A v B
C v ?
C v ?
Result, no clan C has a game and gets one free win

Scenario 4 has A,B,C,C,C
A v B
C v ?
C v ?
C v ?
ONE free win to C again

Scenario 5 with A,B,B,C,C,C
A v B
B v C
C v
C v
C v
NO free win. Clan C has a game
---

Your clan can only get a free win IF nobody from your clan got a game.
One free win per template
-
For the 2v2 you need to have a team ready

If you're a lower ranking elo clan, having one player in every template every timeslot would be your best free win ploy.

Oh ok, you are right. I didn't realize that if your clan gets even one game you don't get a free win. I guess it is because otherwise we could trick the system to get free wins.

We have had timeslots with 6-8 players, where its impossible for everyone to go to different templates, plus the idea of CW is that you get to choose what you play.

Hoping a change to this soon, but on the other hand we are probably currently only clan with real problems with this (fair amount of players daily + low rating) and we do get free wins to balance it out a bit.

the issue with the slot was that 6 MH players got a game, and only 1/3 TLA players got a game.

MH made up half of the the players that template, so idealy it would give some of them a skip (since they were clearly the clan flooding that template), and allow an extra TLA player a game.

I get that the issue was TLAs low rating, but if 2/3rds of our players are kicked out, that rating isnt going up either...

What Mylo posted makes sense. I think it's Scenario 5 that likely affects TLA ... someone in the clan getting a game & then others not getting a game and also no Free Win.

Imho a better result for Scenario 5 with A,B,B,C,C,C would be:
A v C
B v C
B v C
All players have games.

Players shouldn't have to game the system (having one player in every template every timeslot to maximize chance of getting a game or Free Win), it's enough that they made time to be on WZ & in CW for the time slot, the algorithm should do the rest. Not getting a game and also no Free Win is a total bitch slap to players who have made time to be active to participate.

For future, it would be useful if TLA saved the links to timeslots where extremely bad matchmaking happens. It would make a case for a change more convincing.

Clan Wars rewards activity over win rate. Playing and losing is better than not playing at all.

If you play and win, then it contributes towards your next territory.
If you play and lose, then your clan's Clan War rating goes down, potentially giving your clan easier opponents in the future, as well as increasing your chances of a free win.
If you don't play at all, then neither of the above 2 happen.