Avatar decks – the joy of some, the bane of others – how to play against it

The Nod Avatar has become the most divisive unit in the game, even after it's health was nerfed by ~11% in the recent balance patch. In this post, I want to explore the controversy, and the big question whether the Avatar is overpowered or not.

How is the Avatar used?

42% of the decks of Top 50 Nod players I recently looked at play the avatar. How do these decks look like?

• Usually lean on cheap units in the early game: Nearly always, Wheels and Lasers are played, and half of the decks also have the Militant. Militant / Laser / Wheel allows for a very cost-efficient way to deal with a variety of early-game situations both to deflect rushes and contest pads (to stall the nuke if possible)
• Scorpion Tanks are also in nearly all Avatar decks (as in nearly all Nod decks in general)
• Can play an aggressive early game if needed with the all-round combination of Laser-Wheel-Tank plus either Militant or Flame
• Half of the Avatar decks also sport the Stealth Tank, which is all-rounder against light and heavy air units, can support tank battles, can finish off damaged harvesters, and – very importantly – can deal with counter units trying to kill the first Avatar (e.g. Orca, Mohawk, Banshee, Basilisk, ..)
• Decks usually aim to get a second harvester, but can make the decision to delay that significantly if the situation calls for it. Nearly all Avatar decks have a "Nod aggro core" to fall back on that allows to play against many decks without big leaks

How do Avatar games often go?

Let's go through the flow of typical Avatar games, mostly on the perspective of playing against standard Nod/GDI aggro decks.

• The Avatar player gauges whether they can go for a second harvester safely, scouting with Wheels or Militants
• If they feels they cannot, they might opt to play a normal single harvester game for a while
• In such a situation, they knows time is on his side. This brings a key advantage: The option to let the other player win first nuke  – a luxury the player playing against the Avatar deck can afford much less
• The Avatar player can use the higher need of the opposing player to get the first nuke quick to e.g. try to get a harvester kill, and get better Tiberium trades (because the player needing the nuke often must be willing to sacrifice a unit against a hard-counter – both help getting the Avatar earlier
• Often a bit before the 2nd nuke, the Avatar comes out – the factors that help A get it out are:
• second harvester, where possible
• a disadvantaged (5 unit vs 6) close Aggro-vs-Aggro fight that delayed one or both nukes significantly
• a sneaky harvester kill (potentially around the nuke)
• The Avatar will then usually try to go for a harvester kill – to quickly fund additional harvesters in case his first harvester gets destroyed
• The need to prevent the harvester kill often means the defending player needs to sacrifice units to try to block, reducing the "2nd nuke" pressure / presence on pads

Screenshot from Captain Benzie's first Avatar video

What are the issues?

Things that make it very challenging to deal with the Avatar decks:

• Not entirely dependent on Avatar: A key part is the fact that most Avatar decks are a pretty solid 5-unit aggro deck means that can fight many decks heads-on at least for a while, which at the very least delays the 2nd nuke
• Delaying is absolutely realistic: Thus, with players of similar skill, it can be very hard to win the first two nukes quickly without delays, with the only real advantage being one additional counter unit in the early and mid game. (As always, this is especially true if the Avatar player has higher units on their units, as this compensates for the lack of a 6th card easily, as less hard counters are needed – but let's ignore this issue for the rest of the post.)
• A bit of delay can be enough: Tiberium income gets faster over the game, which means that in a delayed 2nd nuke, the Avatar often becomes affordable without – plus, the Avatar player has the option to spam some more of his units in this phase to compensate for his lack of a 6th counter unit, i.e. afford to trade a bit inefficiently for a while to further delay the nuke
• Harvester snowball: The Avatar cleans up a path quickly when he comes out (especially with Oxanna) and very quickly threatens the harvester (which is a key threat, as with a harvester kill it becomes ever harder to stop the Avatar player, as it funds his subsequent Avatars)
• Counters getting countered: Behind this "cleaned up" path that the Avatar left, especially the Stealth Tank can quickly follow and take out the counter units the opponent throws at the Avatar (esp Banshee, Orca, Mohawk who frantically focus on taking out the Avatar)

How to play against the Avatar?

If you have trouble dealing with Avatar decks, consider the following options:

• Deck building: I feel that the Avatar means you either need to be very confident your deck counters the 5-unit composition of your opponent, or you need at least a decent counter for the Avatar in your deck, such as Banshee, Orca, Mohawk etc. – you can also make the choice to have a dedicated Avatar counter, such as the Basilisk in the "Naggrolisk" deck that e.g. 13lade and StrikerVX tested
• Do your best to keep the game fast – the standard advice for playing against tech decks, I won't go into more detail on stuff like keeping the nuke charging, keep the opponent spending Tiberium through trading and possible threats on harvester etc.
• Scout: 2nd harvester timing is key; if it comes, you really cannot afford any delays on the nuke  – whereas if it doesn't come, you need to be prepared for a tougher fight for the pad control as the other player has a good toolset to contest the first nuke
• Timing: You need to learn when the Avatar comes out – this is not easy, but possible if you keep a rough tab on Tiberium trades, on time the opponent had 2 harvesters, on possible harvester kills and on your own Tiberium bank
• Preparing: You need to gauge if you can win the 2nd nuke without the Avatar making it's impact. If not, you need to change your mindset and prepare for the Avatar more than keep the standard game for the pads going on (of course, ideally both). 
• Check your Tiberium and Pop Cap to see if you will be able to quickly churn out 2-3 of your counter units
• Check the timing of the nuke – is it far enough away that you must deal with the Avatar, or can you
• Think about how to protect your harvester, as often your counter units might not be able to kill the Avatar that fast
• If you play Orca, Banshee, Mohawk think about whether there's already Stealth Tanks on the field, and how to react once they appear
• If you play an MLRS deck, think about how you can maybe get 2 in position so that they can shoot the Oxanna'd Avatar when it takes on your harvester
• Engage: 
• Use your Jackson/Oxanna boost on your counter units if possible
• Focus on getting your counter units to shoot at the Avatar as fast as possible. E.g. microing 2 banshees against the fast Avatar sliding past your desparate blocker and to your harvester is not that easy if you didn't set it up properly
• If you have a big bank, consider moving your harvester to safety – a different Tiberium patch, the back pad, or even just far away – if the Avatar doesn't find it, or needs to go further, it can help you either prevent the harvester kill or allow you to get the 2nd nuke because the Avatar is too far away
• If you lose your first harvester, and still have a big bank, consider not rebuilding it, so the Avatar player cannot kill it repeatedly
• Keep an eye on the nuke and your chances for a last-second steal – Air of course is an obvious choice, but the Avatar player knows that of course, so will prepare by getting anti-Air to the pads usually

Should the Avatar be further nerfed?

I believe yes. In my view, it's too much of an all-round unit:

• Very fast, esp. with Oxanna
• Cleans up smaller vehicles and infantry super-quickly, which allows counters to it's counters to often have a relatively easy time (e.g. the Stealth Tank)
• Has raider, so can pursue it's goal (often the harvester) very fast

Units like the Mammoth Tank at least have slow speed, which is a huge difference, as it means they have a hard time killing harvesters (the snowball..), quickly threaten the base, and certainly not do these things and quickly get back to clean pads. Lower speed means both the super unit cannot wreak their havoc as fast, and give the other player time to react and counter the unit.

Yes, it's expensive to get the Avatar out – but especially due to the accelerated Tiberium income throughout the game, Avatar players ultimately get it out if they just delay the 2nd nuke a bit. And if both players have equal skill, the 5-card Aggro deck before the Avatar can absolutely delay the nuke, and sometimes even get one.

An additional issue is that the counter play against Avatar is not really an interesting player-to-player interaction. I think that strong super-units should allow counter play with micro, e.g. blocking the path, abusing slow speed etc.pp. – with the Avatar and it's threat to get the harvester snowball.

My suggestions to fix the issue would be (not necessarily all at the same time, but a wider array of options):

• Reduce the Avatar's speed
• Remove Avatar's raider ability – and if just against one of the unit types (e.g. vehicles or infantry) to allow for more blocking counter play
• Reduce the damage of Avatar on harvesters and the base a lot (to the degree it might seem un-intuitive if you come from the "lore and logic" of the units and their weapons)
• Reduce the effect of Oxanna on expensive units (generally a good idea for Oxanna/Jackson in my view)

All hail Kain – he'd probably be upset about this article

Which GDI decks are played by the Top 50 near the end of March Season?

18 days have passed since my last look at the top GDI decks. A lot has happend since then: The Grenadier was introduced, and a larger balance patch had a large impact on the meta*. Time for a renewed look at what the high-ranked players bring to the battlefield!

*: Wikipedia on "meta": "the metagame consists of the deck types that are currently popular and expected to show up in large numbers"

How to read the table:

• Frequency is how often a unit / commander appears in a deck
• "Low Lvl / High WR" is the average of (a) 12 players with low levels (10-11) and (b) the 17 decks with 80%+ winrate. The idea is that both is indicative of "good decks", so the mix of both can be an interesting subset of players to look at:
• Low level users probably have decent skill (and need good deck selection) to still be in the Top 50
• High Winrates indicate that these players know what they are doing and have a strong deck
• Δ vs Mar 12 is the change in frequency to the previous analysis, given in percentage points (example for the Militant: this time, 40% of decks contain it, this is 20 percentage points higher than last time, when it was just 20%)
• Δ vs average shows how the winrate and unit levels of decks with these cards deviated from the average; for example, decks with Bikes had a 2% lower winrate and and 0.1 lower levels than the average for the Top 50 decks

The data of all 50 decks, sorted by winrate, can be found here

Observations on Infantry:

• With the Sniper buff, Machine Gun buff and Grenadier introduction, GDI infantry play has become highly diverse, which I'd generally consider a good thing. 
• Winrates seem balanced between the units. The higher Grenadier winrate is very likely due to it being played by a couple of strong players in the Grenadier event, which props up it's winrate (strong players rerunning their 9-1/10-0 runs)
• Rifle usage grew, albeit not as much as the Nod Militant – explanations might include:
• Nod playing more Militants means they play less Flame Troopers, so the respective need
• Sniper making the expensive Shock/less attractive
• MG popularity might make people feel they need a Rifle opener and then rather Talon as secondary anti-Infantry
• GDI also wanting to save Tiberium in early game for their own tech (e.g. Sandstorm)
• Jumpjets (slightly nerfed vs harvesters) and Shock Troopers are less used; both had been ocre units and now you see way more Rifle/Missile
• I was a bit surprised that MG usage was not higher, as many people seem to complain on Reddit and Discord about them

Observations on Vehicles:

• The Pitbull stays highly popular as GDI's highly micro-able allrounder vs light vehicles and air
• Predator Tank usage is slightly down after the nerf; the cost nerf might have hit it harder than it's counterpart due to it's lower speed (early timing attacks now are much more easy to defend)
• The APC has grown a bit in popularity; it was indirectly buffed with nerfs on Tanks and MLRS

Observations on GDI Air:

• With the exception of drones, all units see a good amount of usage; winrates are also in line
• Hammerhead usage went down a good bit, possibly because there were fewer Nod air decks around due to the popularity of the Avatar

Observations on GDI Tech:

• All Tech units outside of the Disruptor see play with this selection of decks
• The Sandstorm was buffed and increased in popularity accordingly; as a relatively cheap multi-purpose tech unit, it's both playing the role as the sole tech unit in an otherwise Aggro deck, or as part of some Tech combo 
• Juggernaut decks see play in some variants (e.g. with Zone Troopers, or even with Wolverine and Kodiak); from my experience, they are hard to get out (harder than Avatar, partly because you need to protect the Juggernaut with other units), but once the Jugger player gets their desired setup, it can be hard to break

Observation on Commanders:

• Unsurprisingly, Jackson is the most used commander; it's very versatile and can help Aggro decks, Air decks and Tech decks
• Liang usage has grown significantly (albeit the data does not show this). In the past, it was mostly seen with the (rare) dual harvester tech decks, but now it's also used for MG decks and even for an Orca deck (player: TonyCasto)!

Observations on Deck composition:

• Notation: X-X-X-X as in # infantry, # vehicle, # air, # tech; -0 at end is omitted
• Half of decks (12 each) are 2-2-2 or 2-3-1
• Next in line is 2-3-0-1 with 4 decks
• No other "pattern" is used by more than 3 decks, so the diversity is very high
• The patterns with 3 decks each are 
• 3-0-0-3
• 3-0-2-1
• 3-1-2
• 2-0-3-1

Is it an issue if a certain unit appears in many decks? Not necssarily. High usage rates not always indicative of a unit being overpowered. It can be good for a game to have a number of core units that are often played. Broodwar, the most established and best-balanced RTS out there, certainly has core units that are played every single game and others that only see fringe use. As long as the gameplay around the core units is diverse (both in playstyles and deck composition), I do not see an issue with e.g. 96% of Nod decks containing Laser Troopers.

Unit Levels & Winrates

In the chart below, you can see the distribution of deck win levels (rounded to .5) and their winrates. As you can see, the most common deck in the Top 50 is an L12 deck. And winrates don't deviate that much, which is of course because the medal count is already an indicator of strength (so the lower level players in Top 50 partly compensate their lack of unit levels with their skill).

Algorithmically generated deck

I compared the unit usage rates between all, and the "low level or high winrate" players. If you then take the units that are more popular with the possibly stronger group of players, you get to the following deck:

• Missile, Sniper
• Dog, Pitbull, Tank
• Orca Bomber
• Strongarm or Jackson

The "anti deck", which is less played by the supposedly stronger players would be:

• MG, Shock
• MLRS, APC
• Mohawk
• Juggernaut
• Liang

Yes, this indeed looks awkward... Wonder what winrate Bikerush might achieve with it on ladder? ;)

How I selected the decks of players:

• Ideally, it's the recently played deck with a large sample size and high or representative winrate for the player
• If there are multiple decks with large sample sizes played this season by the player, I'll chose the one with the higher winrate
• If winrates are similar, I chose the more recent one

What issues can you have with this analysis?

• I don't analyse all decks of the top 50, but just one per player (see above)
• Champions & Blitz might mean certain specific decks are played a lot (e.g. for repeated reruns), which can have high winrates. In some cases, I thus might select such a deck over the most appropriate ladder deck of the player
• High winrates for a unit is not necessarily conclusive of a unit being "overpowereed", it can also be indicative of strong players liking to play with the unit
• But directionally, I feel this data is pretty good to get a picture on which units and which deck compositions are seen as viable / strong

Related links:

• Spreadsheet with the data of all 50 decks, incl nicknames, winrates etc.
• Top 50 Nod analysis from March 28
• GDI Top 25 analysis from March 11

Nod Top 50 Deck Analysis – March 28 2019

Note: This is a monthly analysis. You can find the latest version here.

If you're new to Rivals, also check out my "Basics" category for a number of useful beginner resources.

Update: The GDI analysis is now out as well!

Just a couple of weeks ago, I published the last analysis of the top Nod decks. But Rivals is a young game, so we still have frequent meta shifts due to balance patches like the recent one, new units being introduced, and players experimenting & learning.

That's why within these two weeks we see some big shifts. Let's get right into the data. This time, I looked at the Top 50 Nod decks. Many players played multiple decks this season, and I chose the decks for each player in a combination of sample size, winrate and recency. I.e. if a player played two decks a lot and they had similar winrates, I'd take the latest one. But if a player had a good sample size and bigger winrate with a different deck, I took that one – after all, we do this to learn what works & what is strong.

How to read the table:

• Frequency is how often a unit / commander appears in a deck
• Low Level (10-11) is the 12 players with decks of level ~10-11 to check what these players chose to still be so successful
• Δ vs Mar 12 is the change in frequency to the previous analysis, given in percentage points (example for the Militant: this time, 40% of decks contain it, this is 20 percentage points higher than last time, when it was just 20%)
• Δ vs average shows how the winrate and unit levels of decks with these cards deviated from the average; for example, decks with Bikes had a 2% lower winrate and and 0.1 lower levels than the average for the Top 50 decks

What can we learn from the basic stats?

Still popular & winners

• The Scorpion Tank stayed extremely popular, with still 88% of decks containing it
• Wheels got even more popular
• A lot of decks dropped Flame Troopers for Militants, which is closely connected to the rise of the Avatar, which was seen in an incredible 42% of the decks – also read my article on how to play against the Avatar, and whether it's too strong
• The Stealth Tank also quadrupled in usage to 40% after it was buffed
• Specifically, there were 16 decks (of 21 Avatar decks) which had the four core units Laser, Wheels, Bike, Stealth Tank, Avatar – usually with Militant or Flame, and Tank or Bike added
• The Basilisk also quadrupled in popularity, albeit on a much lower level – and if you follow the official discord, you might know that it was a reaction to the Avatar's popularity (keyword: Naggrolisk)
• Oxanna saw a further increase in popularity, mostly because it's the standard for Avatar. 

Losers

• Bikes & Banshees saw a decline in popularity; they are still a core part of popular decks like the Aggro 2-3-1 Banshee deck, which still is highly successful, so the decline rather seems a side effect of the popularity of Avatar decks rather than any issues with these units
• Flame Troopers were much less used, because Militants are more and more seen as an alternative; the primary driver again are Avatar decks, who try to save money in the early game – besides that, Sniper buffs and the prevalence of wheels might contribute to more players not seeing Flame Troopers as a must-run unit anymore
• My theory on the decline in Jade and Seth is that it's driven by Avatar popularity:
• People playing Jade often wanted to play an alternative to the Nod aggro decks, and this season, Avatar was the flavor of the month
• People playing Seth are often playing the standard 2-3-1 Banshee deck, where both Oxanna and Seth are very viable options
• Same counts for Inferno / Phantom; some high-profile users of them switched to Avatar decks; with only Bikerush running a combination of both
• The Buggy is even used less now – unsurprisingly with the ubiquity of Wheels and the strange nerf of it's vision from 3 to 2
• Tech usage outside of Avatar and Basilisk basically vanished from an already low level 

Unit Levels and Winrate

Below, find a chart that illustrates the distribution of Unit Levels, and how the respective average Winrates look like. I was not scientifically precise in tracking unit levels, I rounded them to .5 levels when tracking the decks. 

Some of you might be surprised by the low deviation of winrates – but remember that this is Top 50 by medals, not skill. Medals are a measure of strength, which is a compound of skill and unit levels. So on average, the players with low unit levels that still make it to the Top 50 will be more skilled, allowing them to still have impressive winrates, e.g.:

• Magni with 96% winrate on a L11.5 Avatar deck
• 13lade with 95% winrate on an L11 Naggrolisk deck
• StrikerVX with 91% winrate on an L10 Naggrolisk deck (incredible feat in my view)
• Benedikt Ernst with 85% winrate on an L10.5 2-3-1 Banshee deck

Unusual Decks

This time, there were not so many unusual decks. Boring Avatar meta. Honorable mentions go to:

• AliciaDestiny holding up the flag for the Buggy
• spritc & Chuckylate seeing success with Chem Troopers and Jade
• car1986 for the resilience to stick to his no infantry deck for such a long time
• SoliDeiGlora for the deck with 4 air units

→ You can find a full list of the decks here.

And keep your eyes open for the GDI version that I want to publish before the season ends!

Casual Mode – why it could make sense and how it could work

There's a repeated debated to add a casual mode to the game. Typical arguments for it include:

• Ladder is stressful, sometimes I don't feel up for it
• If I want to try new decks, ladder makes me hesitant, thus reducing diversity of play and fun for me
• If I have a whacky network connection, or my baby might wake up any minute, I might not want to "risk medals" in the ladder

Typical arguments against it include:

• For that, there's already the friendly games you can play in your alliance or with people on your friends list!
• This would reduce liquidity from the ladder, increasing queuing times

First, let's look at the counter arguments:

• Casual games in alliance and on friends list are okay for well-connected players who are active on discord. Casual games are basically inaccessible for most players. I would love to play more casual games, and I even am on discord – but I find it too much hassle, especially when I'm short on time.
• The risk of increasing ladder queuing time is indeed real. So the goal must be to design the casual mode in such a way that most players would still want to play ladder in many situations. If we get this right, then the casual mode could even reduce ladder queuing times, because it might keep players interested and invested in the game who really miss that mode. 

There are just certain types of players who find ladder stressful, and I feel we can respect that. Any other traditional RTS caters for these with custom games that can be easily set up, and where others can join easily. And still, most good players play lots of ladder in e.g. WarCraft 3 or StarCraft: Broodwar or StarCraft 2. 

Just a quick mock-up for illustration purposes. And yes, that's the German version of Rivals.

So, done right, casual games would make a lot of players happier without relevant downsides.

What would I suggest?

• There must be no or much slower progression through casual games compared to ladder.
• No fuel gained 
• No vat progress
• No (or fewer) Credits and XP
• Casual games must still involve different unit levels, as on ladder. So that even players who might like that game mode have an incentive to progress, hence play ladder.
• To facilitate a good matchmaking, I would suggest a hidden matchmaking algorithm that combines:
• Medals for active players (in a softer way than on ladder)
• Unit levels, to reduce situations where players with >2 level difference play against each other
• Potentially a secret casual matchmaking score (similar to medals, but hidden) that prevents too easy long loss runs (as they would be demotivating for newer players)
• Advertise the mode as a secondary "test and practice" mode and making it clear that it has downsides

Why do NightEnD, Happy & Co still play ladder, even though there is custom games? 

Would people still play ladder? Yes, of course!

Ladder is amazing because:

• It gives you a sense of progress through leagues, rankings, medal count
• I makes the rough skill level of your opponents transparent, giving you a sense of accomplishment & personal progression in your skill levels
• It ensures the opponents usually try their best, giving you a better sense of accomplishment and better training value

It might be that on the bottom end, some share of newer players would play this game mode a lot. But this might not be a bad thing:

1. Better than them playing less / stopping to play – they can switch to ladder later, or still be incentivized to recommend the game to others or buy something in the game
2. Queue times are not a problem at the lower leagues, so even if casual takes 20% of game volume there, I see no problem

Now, I'm not saying that this must be the #1 priority for the Rivals developers. But I strongly believe that beyond balancing units and the econonmy, it's important that the game improves it's stickiness for the numerous players for whom "ladder only" might not be the perfect experience. 

Beyond directly improving the experience of causal players, I still think that more tournaments, supported by Redwood, could help to improve the community feeling of Rivals & allow casual players (who are not on the discord or in a hyper-active alliance) to connect with the community and top players.


Thanks to Nhiyla, 13lade, CptBenzie, Sven/Eden, ZeroHour and others on discord for their thoughts on this topic.

After the Balance Patch is before the Balance Patch – Make Disruptors Great Again!

We just had a round of big balance changes for Rivals. so it might sound like an odd timing to suggest further changes without thoroughly testing the new meta.

So I'll try to restrict myself to few changes of things that were not changed significantly in the recent patch, but that need addressing in my view. The upside of the timing is that Redwood still has plenty of time to consider suggestions before the next round.

I'll try to address especially underused units among top players based on my experience in Tiberium and my recent analysis of the Top40 Nod decks and the Top25 GDI decks. If the concern is changing the meta too much for lower-league players, I'll also address that and suggest options.

Disruptor

Issue: Underused at top level

Suggestions: 

• Buff damage
• or buff the "time to fire" (i.e. allow Disruptor to more quickly start damaging units once they enter range).
• Nerf damage vs buildings (as it's already extreme against the base in the rare circumstances)

If there is a concern that Disruptor would be too strong on low levels: Reduce hitpoints to make it a "glass cannon" that needs skill to use

Artillery

Issue: Underused at top level

Suggestions: 

• Decrease set-up time 
• Allow it to slowly turn in set-up mode, but only upon manual targeting of a unit
• Reduce damage radius from area-of-effect to single-hex (this helps balance the buff, and differentiates it more from Juggernaut)
• Optional: Make it so that it only moves if you click on an empty field. If you click on opponent unit,

Avatar

Issue: Overused for base rushing

Suggestion: 

• Decrease base damage by 30% or so. The idea is to make it used as a battle unit that needs to be outmaneuvered (take other pads, or clear with air or overwhelming numbers) and not as a "superman that kills your base with a boost"
• If necessary, some small buff to balance out (would not do this immediately, though)

Jackson & Oxanna

Issue: Not useful for cheap units, too strong for (certain) expensive units, especially in the context of base rushing (Kodiak).

Suggestion: Nerf the boost for more expensive units.

Complication: Some time ago, I already suggested this in the discord, and a dev answered to me that they believe this would be too complicated to explain / understand for players. As you can't just write "+X% attack speed / movement speed".

Alternative suggestions that would be simpler (based on Jackson):

• Option 1: Nerf movement speed boost, keep attack speed boost. Make the movement speed boost again %-based vs fixed, but reduce it from e.g. +60% to +30%. This would make it less useful for slow units (Kodiak, Predator), and keep usefulness for cheaper and faster units largely intact.
• Option 2: Make a very simple variant of my original suggestion. "Units that cost more than 100 Tiberium only get a +30% boost on movement speed and attack speed."
• Option 3: Straight-up nerf from +60% / +60% to +50% / +50%.

Kodiak

Issue: Used for base rushing too much. Boring gameplay as in many cases, little interaction / counterplay possible. (This might not be as relevant if Jackson is nerfed enough for this use case.)

Suggestion:

• Nerf base damage by 40%.
• Revert HP nerf

Kane

Issue: Underused at top level

Suggestions: 

• Option 1: Reduce cost to 100, reduce damage by 25%, reduce hit points (and duration) by 25%. Idea: It will become more flexible to use
• Option 2: Reduce longevity by 50%, allow it to also attack air, reduce cost to 120. Idea: It will be a more versatile tactical defensive / area control structure

Buggy & Rhino

Issue: They contributed less and less to the range of viable opener with the adoption of Dogs & Wheels. But it's desirable that people use them, as it increases range of openings, thus diversity of play. 

Suggestion: Roll back vision change. There is no fundamental issue with two factory units with vision range 3.

If you have your own ideas & suggestions, you can post them on the Rivals Subreddit, in the Official Rivals Discord (channel "suggestions") or in the official forum (albeit the sign-up process is a bit cumbersome, so Reddit might be easier).

What do the economy changes mean for different types of Rivals players?

Edit: CaptainBenzie released a good video on this, so maybe you want to watch it as well:

Simultaneously to the big Balance update, there was a big update to the "Economy" of Rivals.

The balance changes will certainly change what decks we will see – already giving me a big incentive to re-do the GDI & Nod top player analyses in a couple of weeks.

The economy changes might have more subtle effects, because they impact different player groups in different ways. If you're just interested in the straight up impact on "what is the optimal way to spend Diamonds going forward", I recommend you to read this great analysis by Reddit user tonytuna99. There's also a reddit thread on this analysis if you have questions or comments.

My post is based on the insights from these great calculations, but I simplify a bit here on purpose. In a nutshell, the changes mean:

• Rushing chests (without Diamonds) got nerfed a bit, but not too much
• Rushing chests with Diamonds is now double as expensive
• Cloning vats are now 2x as good (free) / 3x as good (paid) as before

Rushing crates with Diamonds now costs more than twice as much

Here, I wanted rather to look at how these changes affects different types of players in different ways. I want to differentiate between 4 groups of players:

1. Normal players who don't spend any money
2. Top X players e.g. Top 300) who spend little or no money
3. Players who spend some money, but not tons (e.g. $10/month)
4. Players who spend lots of money (often also called Whales)

Normal players who don't spend any money

These players are better off than before: The absolute free return improved. 

• Diamond prices don't matter for these people
• Crates & crate rushing thus were not nerfed a lot for them
• Cloning vat is much better than before, even the free variant
• The "repeat bounties" option is not relevant for them, and it's still perfectly doable to complete the set of bounties every day

These players will be able to catch up a bit better than before, which is a great thing.

Top 300 Players

For Top 300 Players, it's a bit different. Most of them earned a lot of Diamonds in recent months, especially from some very juicy Champions events.

Here, it depends on how you look at it:

• If you assume they should continue to be able to earn Diamonds, then things have gotten worse
• If you assume that Redwoods anyways does not want to give many Diamonds as rewards anymore, this specific economy change does not make a big difference

Honestly, I personally would see this economy change as one big change together with the reduced Diamond rewards after February. Conclusion: Especially together, this is significantly worse for the Top 300.

Players who spend some money

For these, it's really worse. Because whilst the free rewards got a bit better (say, 20% overall?), the nerf to rushing chests is big. Before, with just $1 a day, you could rush 10 additional chests. Now, that's not possible anymore.

Especially players who pay low amounts and optimize their return, and who have no chance to win Diamonds in big events, are really worse off / incentivized to pay more to get the same progression.

Whales

You could argue that not much changes for Whales. Yet, I'd say things got better, or at least fairer, for them. Before, the differences in "return per Diamond" were so large that probably spendthrifts would waste a ton on very bad deals.

Conclusion

I think it's great that the situation for "normal" F2P players improved a bit, or at least did not get worse.

I think it's "okay" that the Top 300 are not winning out here. Of course, they are a key part of the community, and their view is important. But at least they usually have already L9 / L10 and can keep up a bit. Plus, even if they might not get many Diamonds, they will more other stuff in events going forward, allowing them to still outpace all other non-payers in terms of progress.

I think it's also good that Whales are not "tricked" into horrible deals anymore as much as before.

The one aspect I don't like is that people who spend a bit and tried to optimize their returns on it were punished. It feels these players are very healthy for the game. A continuous spend on some Diamonds for rushing chests could be seen as similar to a subscription. These players would be better able to catch up, but not get hilarious high levels like whales. Instead of nurturing this type of player, the change seems like an attempt to squeeze them. Which fits to the logic of game devs, of course: "You showed your general willingness to spend. Let's see what more we can get from you."

Ah well. I guess I can accept that, if (and only if) Redwood continues to improve on the game, especially in two areas:

1. New player experience
2. Tournaments!

Rivals Balance Changes March 19 2019

An interesting balance patch was just released. Overall, I like it & it will certainly make the coming weeks very interesting. Let's look right into the changes, that I tried to format a bit differently to make it easier to grasp:

GDI

Nerfs

• MLRS – Reload increased to 6.5 (was 5); Cost increased to 80 (was 70)
• Predator Tank – Cost increased to 70 (was 60)
• Rhino – Vision Reduced to 2 (was 3)
• Kodiak – Health decreased to 3465 (was 4000)

Buffs

• MG Squad – Speed increased to Average (was Slow)
• Orca – Health increased to 1210 (was 909) 
• Sandstorm – Health increased to 4330 (was 3600)
• Sniper Team – Time between attacks reduced to 0.1 seconds (was 1 second)
• Liang – Cost decreased to 40 (was 60)

Tiny Nerfs

• Jump Jet Troopers – Damage to Harvesters decreased to 350 (was 400)
• Lt. Strongarm – Turret Vision Reduced to 1 (was 2)
• Mohawk Gunship – Damage decreased to 396 (was 410)
• Pitbull – Health decreased to 1745 (was 1800)

Tiny Buffs

• Talon – Damage increased to 57 (was 55); Talon turn rate increased to 450 (was 150)

Nod

Nerfs

• Scorpion Tank – Cost increased to 70 (was 60)
• Buggy – Vision reduced 2 (was 3)
• Avatar – Health reduced to 5800 (was 6500)
• Inferno – Cost increased to 110 (was 100)

Buffs

• Stealth Tank – Reload time decreased to 10 (from 12)

Tiny Nerfs

• Banshee – Damage to Vehicles decreased to 396 (was 400)
• Chemical Buggy – HP reduced to 1550 (was 1600)
• Rockworm – Base damage reduced to 500 (was 2000)

Tiny Buffs

• Chemical Warriors – HP increased to 620 (was 600)

Tanks & Air

I like the changes to Tank (and with it, MLRS) cost. It's substantial, but it can be very interesting to see what happens with the viability of these units.

My worry rhough is that this, combined with the buffs for Mohawk and Orca, might lead to even more air decks – which I personally don't like, as I personally like the challenges that come with ground unit micro more. But that's a matter of taste, I guess.

Base Rush Nerfs

I love nerfing Avatar and Kodiak to give more counterplay against their base rushes. They just don't feel very interactive, i.e. too many cases where the opponent had little, if any, counterplay.

Redwood wants more Tech?

Liang being buffed is interesting. It was seen usually in Tech decks, so should boost them. A question is if it makes Liang viable in other decks somehow.

The Tank and MLRS nerf also certainly help Tech decks.

Sandstorm was not strong, but also not horrible – so it might become really interesting. But I do wonder why they did not buff fully underused Tech units like the Disruptor instead.

Why reduce vision for fringe openers?

The one change I do not like is the reduction of vision for Rhino & Buggy. These units are already not that strong, and certainly have been very fringe as openers. This now takes their viability as openers away fully, reducing the number of viable openers unnecessarily. Buggy already seem weaker than Cyberwheels as it is, same for Dogs vs Rhino.

Stealth tank already feels viable, but not strong – so this is also an interesting change. I also like the slight Inferno and Avatar nerfs.

Special Tactics: MG, Snipers & Stealth

Left are the buffs for MG, Snipers and Stealth Tanks. All seem reasonable, albeit hard to judge how this change wll feel in practice.

I'm not a huge fan of the MG zero harv decks, as it seems gambl-y: Some decks and openers counter it strongly, and other times it works very well. I worry that the MG still will not be too viable in other decks, whereas the gambl-y zero harv deck becomes stronger. But maybe I'll be proved wrong!

Nod in March 2019 – Top40 Players – Unit Distribution

Yesterday, I posted a similar analysis for GDI. Today, it's about Nod. I made some tweaks based on your feedback: Top40 instead of Top25 for a bit bigger sample size; added commanders; added deviation from average winrates & unit levels; improvents in the visualization.
The basics stayed the same:

• Data: Nod decks of the Top40 Nod players by medal count
• Distribution of Units & Commanders
• Split out analysis of the 10 lower-level decks that still make the Top40

Let's look straight at the data:

Frequency means share of decks in which this unit is included. Low-level columns show the data for the 10 decks with lowest levels (L10-11). Deviations vs average show how winrates and unit levels of all decks with the respective units deviate from the average. These deviations are of course not really conclusive, especially for units with low sample sizes.

Observations:

• On average 1.9 infantry units, 2.8, factory units, exactly 1 air unit and 0.45 tech units
• This is significantly more factory and less air, about the same infantry and tech compared to GDI
• The most common unit by far are the Scorpion Tank with 93% usage and Laser Troopers with 90% usage – more on this further below
• Bikes at 78%, Flames at 68%, Wheels at 63% complement the most common units, followed by the Banshee at 55% 
• Oxanna is the dominant commander at 58%, followed by Seth at 33%. Jade is seen 4 decks / 10%. No one uses Kane. Seth and Oxanna both have identical winrates, and Seth is used more by low-level decks. The latter is possibly partly driven from players chosing Seth because their Oxanna is not as high level, yet. But according to these stats, Seth is perfectly viable.
• Inferno / Phantom users enjoy a 7% higher winrate compared to the average. Why they still see not that much usage compared to GDI air might be down to unit cost (Mohawk / Talon is a stronger early-game threat) and the fact that many players might not yet have levelled the Inferno and Phantom high enough to feel comfortable fielding them. Also, the Inferno playstyle is very particular, and it might not be an accident that we have very experienced players like Gizarius, Bikerush and AliciaDestiny among the 8 Inferno users
• Venom sees no usage in the Top40, which likely is down to both Cyberwheels being a strong alternative and overall air becoming more commonplace, which weakens the fragile Venom
• Unsurprisingly to Masters players, but surprising to many players in lower leagues, Scarabs see no play. They are just not good as soon as the opponent has any 10 Tiberium unit in their deck, and in Nod, 93% of decks have at least one of Militant or Wheels
• The Avatar seems to have a similar role as the Kodiak – a game ender by destroying the base, plus an option for the very late game. It's telling that the three players with the highest winrate all run it. 
• Other Tech units are uncommon besides a handful of Cyborgs. Most of them star in pretty unique decks, and their decks all have a bit lower-than-average winrates. Artillery and Rock Worm see no usage in this list.

3 Decks without the Scorpion

• VictorBansemer with a L10(!) deck with a strong 80% winrate is the only Laser Drone deck in the list: Militant / Laser – Bikes – Laser Drones / Inferno / Phantom
• ResterVivant with the only deck without war factory (L11 @ 68% winrate): Militant / Laser / Chem Trooper – Banshee – Widowmaker / Avatar
• Nukin with the lowest winrate in the Top40 (L11.5 @ 55%) with Laser / Flame – Wheels / Bike – Inferno / Phantom

The 2-3-1 Meta Deck

14 players use the most common deck: Flame / Laser – Wheel / Bike / Tank – Banshee. 9 of them use Oxanna, 4 use Seth. It's especially popular for high skill / low unit level players (e.g. Russo Mau, nightmaRok, HayprO) , as it offers hard counters to all non-Tech units, allowing it to compete at for the first two rockets against decks that sport higher-level units.

An interesting variant that illustrates this thought is the deck of zFaDestiny – it flips out the Banshee in favor of a Phantom. As zFaDestiny has L12 tanks, he likely runs into overlevel tanks less often, so might not feel the need for the Banshee as strongly as the owner of L10 Scorpions. Yet, his higher levels might not help him as much once an opponent gets out heavy air, so the Phantom might help him more often than a Banshee might. 

Korean player KlarJK runs a curious variant of the 2-3-1 meta where he flips out Banshee for Cyborg, maintaining a 71% winrate on L11.

About Scorpion and Laser – and the Predator

On Reddit and in the official Discord, there is a recurring discussion: The Scorpion loses tank wars against the Predator pretty clearly, despite both of them having the same cost.

This explains why most Nod players feel forced to play Laser, as it's a cheap hard counter to mix in against Predators and force different units (Banshee being the other common counter, but Pitbull/Predator beats Banshee/Scorpion usually). GDI's missiles also see less usage because Jumpjet Troopers are strong, and there is no Nod equivalent to them.

Yet, why is the Scorpion so useful despite the Predator being so much stronger? First, GDI has more alternatives to it, e.g. with MLRS and Jumpjet Troopers. Second, thanks to Raider, the Pitbull is better in various situations compared to Bikes, so the relative need to run the Scorpion Tank increases. Third, because the Scorpion can be better than the Predator in various situations:

• Chasing Dogs / Wheels / Bikes / Pitbulls
• Moving away from Lasers / Missiles, e.g. when circling a harvester, or when switching positions with Flames or Wheels
• Killing Harvesters – here, the Scorpion's superior speed and DPS make it often better than the Predator

I'm not saying that the Predator is weak. It's still very powerful, maybe even too powerful. My point is that it's relative strength to the Scorpion might be balanced in the overall game due to the other units at play, and due to the Scorpion's advantages in certain key situations outside of tank wars.

Hence, calling for nerfing Predator / buffing Scorpion solely based on the 1:1 relationship of these two units is not reasonable – that line of thinking would in the end dilute the unique differences of the two factions, which would not be good.

As long as the overall gameplay between the factions is balanced and diverse, I see no issues with the Scorpion being dominated by the Predator.

Unusual Decks – Lex[Xen] is back!

As with GDI, Lex[Xen] from the S.O.R.T. alliance also utilizes a pretty unique Nod deck successfully, despite his relatively low L10 deck. No other player uses the Laser Drone or the Confessor, and there's only one other Centurion user. Kudos!

An honorable mention goes to Chuckylate with his Chem Troopers / Jade deck. As annoying as it can be, I'm glad you play this, as it increases overall diversity of play.

As with GDI, bhman also has a curious tech deck with Nod. and is the sole player without infantry: Bikes / Buggy / Tank – Flame Tank / Basilisk / Cyborg is the name of his game. Thanks to you, too! (I still hate it when you get this stuff out.)

List of all decks, and more data!

First, you can find the list of all 40 decks here in a spreadsheet.

Second, here's another chart, similar to the one I've plotted for GDI. It shows the relation between Unit Levels (I rounded the deck levels to .5 when gathering data) and Winrates. In comparison to the GDI chart, I inverted the axis, as I felt it makes it easier to read.

x-axis: Unit Level category for the deck;
y-axis: Winrate;
Blue dots: Players/decks;
Red line: Trendline (illustrative)

As always, looking forward for your feedback. And please feel encouraged to share this with your alliance or other Rivals-playing buddies!

GDI in March 2019 – what do the top players play?

Inspired by a couple of similar exercises in the Rivals subreddit in recent months, I analyzed the Top 25 GDI players (by Medal count) and what decks they play. I took the deck they played the most this season, and when there were two with similar amount, I took the ones with higher winrate.

To add some sophistication, I took into account win rates and unit levels. With these points, I created two sub-segments of 10 players:

1. "Low Level 10": The 10 players with low unit levels in the top 20 (L10-11.5). They still have an impressive 71% win rate at this high level. This group includes players such as HayprO, Lex[Xen], VictorBansemer and Nick, who all are in the Top 25 with decks lower than L11.
2. "Strong 10": With a compound of winrate and unit levels, I scored deck strength. This e.g. puts Lex[Xen] in the top tier together with Bikerush and Alicia, as he manages his 76% winrate with a L10 deck.

Let's look at the data below. The % show the amount of decks the unit is in.

For people who play in the highest leagues, this will not be surprising:

• Tech is played very little, and half of Tech usage is down to the Kodiak, commonly used for Jackson-boosted Base rushes.
• Pitbull, Shock Troopers and Jumpjet Troopers (JJ in the table above) are played the most. 12 of 25 decks contain all three of these units.
• GDI air has become very viable with the additions of Mohawk and Orca Bomber (which in turn also make Hammerhead more attractive)
• Rhinos don't see much play, likely due to a mix of Dogs still being viable and GDI decks containing more Air (so there are fewer decks with 3 factory units). 
• Despite voices complaining that the Predator Tank would be too strong, it does not see that much use. I expect to say way more Scorpion use for Nod. This shows that you cannot compare units just on their 1:1 (which the Predator wins), but you need to see them in the context of the full range of units and roles these units play.
• The new Orca Bomber already sees quite some usage. If it's indeed viable at top level, I expect it to be very strong in lower leagues, where double harvester is more common and where players likely will find it harder to counter the Orca Bomber with ground in emergency situations.

If we look at the how "Strong" als "Low Level" decks deviate:

• Kodiak seems more viable if you don't have a unit level disadvantage. This makes sense, as the Kodiak adds option value of base destruction for sacrificing a unit slot. Low level decks are reliant on being able to hard counter opponent's units, hence cannot afford as well to sacrifice a basic unit. 
• This doesn't mean that high-level decks can play Kodiak just due to their levels. It might well be that the Kodiak option is powerful enough that it reduces these players' variance – 4 of the 5 Kodiak decks sport incredible winrates of 95%-96%. Of course, this is also down to unit levels (all Kodiak decks have L12+), and the skill of the players.
• Missile Troopers are more prevalent in the Low Level decks. Possibly because they are cost-efficient hard counters to a number of key units (e.g. Tanks, Bikes, Pitbulls, Banshees, Mohawks) I expect this to be the same for Nod.

Observations that are not directly visible in the table:

• 23 of 25 decks have 10-20 Tib openers. The exceptions are bhman with his infamous expensive Juggernaut deck, and Alicia, who is one of the few people who like the Rhino opener.
• Only the 4 high-winrate Kodiak decks chose to not use any Heliport unit. From the other 21 decks, 19 have Talon or Hammerhead (the two other using Orca solo).
• MLRS has the highest winrate at 96%, but this is likely because it's used by Bikerush and Skelturix and not so much because of the unit.
• The two Drone players, SOFTSERVE and Lex[Xen] seem to know what they are doing: They catapult the Drone to a 79% winrate, the highest average for a Heliport unit.

Number of units by building in the average deck:

The award for the most unusual deck goes to Lex[Xen], who sports a deck with Missile, JJ, Drone, HH, Borca and Mammoth Tank. Especially his 76% winrate with a deck that is barely L10 is impressive:

If you want to look at the raw data & the specific decks of the top 25 players, check this spreadsheet.

Stay tuned for the Nod version of this, and let me know if you have any follow-up questions on the above, or wishes for the Nod analysis.

Impact of Unit Levels on Winrate

Unsurprisingly, there is a correlation between higher unit levels and higher winrate. But within a difference of a level, the variance is very high, which means that skill plays a huge role as long as the level difference is not huge.

A caveat on this: Winrate is not a perfect metric. For example, if, highly skilled players play their L10 deck in the Champions event with a L10 cap, they can easily get 90%+ winrate there even if they have has a 65-70% winrate on ladder. Thus, already the mix of games between ladder and Champions can skew winrates significantly.

X-axis: Winrate / Y-axis: Unit Levels (rounded to .5s for simplicity);

Red is a polynomial trendline for illustration purposes.

Interview with HayprO – “Rivals is ready for competitive play, the tournaments are missing!”

This is part 2 of our series of interviews with personalities from the Rivals community. After the interview with Rivals YouTuber CaptainBenzie, we know have one of the top players, Hayder ‘HayprO’ Hussein from Sweden.

If you follow StarCraft since a longer time, you might well know HayprO – for many years, he was in the respective top non-Korean teams in both Broodwar (Templars of Twilight) and StarCraft 2 (TeamLiquid) before retiring in 2012.

In the interview, HayprO shares his thoughts on Rivals, why he thinks it needs official tournaments, sponsored streamers and improvements in the new player experience.

Liquid'HayprO at MLG Anaheim 2011

Q: People who know you from StarCraft might have not heard about you since you retired. What have you been up to since then? And what brought you to Rivals ultimately?

HayprO: Hello! After retiring, I went back to university and finished my math and physics studies. After that I decided to study another year to get a teaching degree, so now I work as a math and physics teacher. Also, I’ve been married for soon to be three years and have a one year old daughter.

I started playing mobile games in 2012 when Marvel: War of Heroes came out. When the game got very P2W, I switched and started playing some Clash of Clans but switched as soon as Clash Royale came out. As soon as Rivals came out (I saw the exhibition game with iNcontroL at E3) I switched to it to try it out and it turned out to be a great game so I ‘ve been playing it for some months now.

iNcontrolL playing Rivals at the E3 in June 2018. The game, and how it's played at high level, went a long way since then.

Q: You’ve been playing both of the competitive RTS games at a very high level. What do you think about Rivals from the eyes of a BW/SC2 player?

HayprO: I think that it’s is a fun game and I would say that Rivals is a mini version of Broodwar and StarCraft 2. You got the economy part with harvesters. You got the micro. And you got the strategy and decision making with pad control and unit counters. At the same time the depth is obviously limited. That does not have to be a bad thing: What I enjoy about Rivals is that its fast-paced and simple to play while being competitive.

I think the game is ready for competitive play. The official tournaments is what’s missing.

Q: What’s your point of view on the balance Rivals strikes at being a “fair, competitive RTS” and the pay-to-win elements?

HayprO: I don’t think too much about the balance and when I play, levels is the issue more than a certain unit being overpowered. Being able to spend money on a game to gain levels faster is a part of the mobile games and it’s something to just accept. I don’t see an issue with it since it’s mostly limited to the ladder play. The Champions Blitz have level caps which limits the P2W aspect.

Q: What do you think about the direction Rivals is going right now? 

HayprO: I think the adding of new units is going too fast. It’s better if they work on the existing units that see no play. Some units are almost never used, fixing that is important to keep the game fun and balanced.

I feel the tweak to the champions model was too extreme. They went from giving away way too many diamonds to requiring diamonds to redo a run. I would like something in between. I do like the season reset, it's fun getting all those crates in the beginning.

Q: What would be one thing you would change about Rivals if you could?

HayprO: I would work on different things to make the player pool bigger. Right now, that’s the biggest issue imo. When you get to masters, you basically start to recognize every player you play against.

I think, if you compare the game to Clash Royale, it’s harder to win if you are a new player. That probably scares away an amount of players which limits the player pool. However, I don’t have a solution.

Q: It’s certainly a challenge to make the new player experience better in Rivals. A nut to crack for both Redwood and smart folks in the Rivals community!

You played in some of the first tournaments for Rivals. Do you enjoy the experience? What would you suggest for the community to do about tournaments so they are enjoyable both for the top players, and for the casual fans who like to watch/follow such events?

HayprO: I really like the spectator mode, its well done. The tournaments are an important part to help the game stay competitive and to attract more players.

I think official tournaments need to be hosted and also I would like to see sponsored streamers to help grow the game. I don’t think we can expect thousand of viewers on twitch, but I think it should be much more than what is now, maxing at like 60 viewers.

Q: Fully agree on the need for more tournaments. Official tournaments from Redwood would be the best, but even some more support from Redwoods for community tournaments would help a ton.

You’re part of the Ascendance alliance in Rivals. What brought you there, and what’s going on at Ascendance that makes you enjoy being part of it?

HayprO: I joined Ascendance because Alicia and Bikerush were at the top of the ladder and I wanted to be in a competitive clan. Being there for a couple of months now and the atmosphere is great.

Q: Speaking about alliances (or clans in Brood War, teams in SC2): Are you still in touch with some of your old team mates from ToT or TeamLiquid?

HayprO: Yes I am, but mostly only with the Swedish players that were in those teams. I talk to ToT)DaZe(, ToT)TreK(, HuK and Jinro on a regular basis.

Q: Do you still play BW/SC2 from time to time? Or follow Broodwar and/or StarCraft 2 tournaments as a fan?

HayprO: I don’t really follow SC2 much aside from the big tournaments like IEM and Blizzcon. For Broodwar I do follow the korean leagues. Broodwar will always be number one in my heart :)

When it comes to playing, I’ve basically stopped playing games on the PC aside from doing a game day every 1-2 months with some friends. When I play games, I want to do good, so I gotta invest time in the game and I just don’t have that amount of time anymore.  

Q: Glad to hear you still follow Broodwar. Just before this interview, I was watching the semi-finals of the ASL in Korea. Let’s get back to Rivals for the last question: What’s your favorite unit and why? Which unit do you hate playing against?

HayprO: My favorite unit is the Banshee. Without it, I would not be able to win against the GDI Predator tanks with my Scorpion tanks. The unit I hate playing against is overleveled Jumpjet Troopers. They kill harvesters so fast …

GDI Jumpjet Trooper & NOD Banshee

Q: Hayder, thank you for this interview! And dear readers, make sure to follow Haypro on Twitter: @LiquidHayprO

Read more interviews with Command & Conquer Rivals players and personalities!

Why Tournaments are important for Rivals – and how Redwood could support them

Tournaments are the heart of every competitive multi player game. They are great not just for the players, but also for the community: Casual players can watch great games, follow the development of the tournaments, root for their favorite players or decks, and discuss the results.

All this would count for Rivals, too. I for one would love to not just watch top player replays from time to time, but see them perform at their best in a tournament finals, all that with an entertaining and insightful commentary.

Yet, for Rivals, tournaments would be even more important. Rivals carries the baggage of a lot of negative perception from C&C fans, and fans of competitive RTS in general. The negative perception is because Rivals is a F2P game with "pay to win" elements (i.e. spending money gives you an edge in the default game mode).

I laid out in different articles why I believe that Rivals gets the balance right and why I think Rivals is still the best Mobile RTS out there. But what I think doesn't matter. It matters what people think who would in general be interested in playing a good Mobile PvP RTS, but do not – because they fundamentally reject the idea of F2P, or because they never played the game and don't understand why it's still a great game, or because potential new players read negative press and reviews about Rivals.

Yes, there are some examples for positive reviews about Rivals. But much of the feeedback is negative. Some of the negative press and reviews might be understandable, but it's often just focused on the principled issue, and does not check whether Rivals still can be great – even for players who don't want to spend money.

Yes, there are some P2W elements to rivals, but it's still a great games  And in tournaments, there would be no P2W.

Tournaments could help tackle this issue. How?

• Tournaments are held at equal unit levels, i.e. there is no pay 2 win element in Rivals tournament
• Tournaments are a hook to create some buzz and coverage for Rivals. Right now, if you Google for Rivals, you mostly find launch reviews on various gaming sites. Some even positive, but usually not very insightful, and not reflective of the great PvP RTS that Rivals can be. Tournament coverage can show people that Rivals can be an amazing and fair PvP RTS
• Tournaments can create the "meta content" and accessible community feeling that any multiplayer game needs. Yes, we have our discords, but they are intransparent for new players. There's no community sites or forums. There's basically just the Rivals Subreddit as a docking point to the community for new players. Tournaments can increase new player retention because they create community feeling and a meta layer on the game.

What should the Community do?

Simple: Run great tournaments. With a focus on good coverage. Tournaments need to work for the players, but they also need to work for the audience. Casual players who like to 'follow the scene' or just like to watch good games. 

Hence, any tournament run by the community should think about how make it accessible to casual players. Things that help:

1. Twitch stream for the tournament
2. YouTube videos with commented/casted top games from the tournament
3. An easy way to discover all relevant information on the tournament
4. Be reliable – that's not just key for players and watchers, but also to gain trust and buy-in from the developers

How could Redwood support the community?

Easy things Redwood could do for trustworthy, proven tournament formats (of which there are not many, yet – so the ball also lies in the corner of the community).

• Announce tournaments in the app through the notification system
• Announce tournaments on their Twitter or the Facebook page (which is by the way horrendously inactive)
• Advertise YouTube videos of the finals if they are on trusted YouTube channels like Captain Benzie or Excoundrel

Harder things:

• Have a dedicated community & social media manager, whose job is to run Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Discord and liaise with tournament organizers to support them
• Support tournaments with some prizes, e.g. Diamonds or Chests for the prize pool

Very hard (expensive) things to do:

• Support a tournament mode in the app
• Support / run more sophisticated tournaments, potentially even including offline events like the launch celebration

My suggestion would be:

1. For the community to run more events that show Redwood that there is value in them (which needs a bit of reach, good YouTube content etc.)
2. For Redwood to start with the simple things I listed above. The hard things can wait, but there's no reason to not start something soon.

Okay, Flash, Jaedong and Bisu won't play Rivals anytime soon. But let's try to get Rivals tournaments somewhere!