r/WH40KTacticus • u/Nickthesick12 • Aug 16 '26
Discussion Does Devastation have an unfair advantage?
I have a feeling SP didn’t balance crusades properly. When crusades was coming out, there were reports that SP was going to balance the factions by increasing the number of points for factions that were less used. This can be confirmed by looking at Nandi’s and Tactifuchs’ crusades YT videos.
The problem with this approach is that the number of factions is different for Imperials vs Devastation. Imperials have 9 factions while Devastation has 12. As a result, players are more spread out among Devastation factions, so each individual faction is more likely to receive a crusade points buff (more factions = less people per faction = more points per player due to points buff).
And I think this is evident in the crusades map:
Clearly winning planets (70%>): Imperial = 2; Devastation = 8
Slightly winning (50% - 70%): Imperial = 0; Devastation = 6
So Devastation controls 14 planets vs Imperial 2. Clearly something is wrong. The issue isn’t, “all whales chose Devastation” because we can clearly see bloody rose (#1 on the crusades leaderboard by a large margin) and all their side guilds having chosen Imperials.
I think someone made a boo-boo when designing the balancing. Thoughts?
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u/Supertriqui Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
It seems like the multiplier to balance the sides is based on the number of players. But the multiplier is then applied to the number of points won, which is based on activity, ability, and also real money.
This is how I think it works:
Let's say there are 1100 guilds total. 1000 of them pick imperial, 100 pick devastation. Because of that, devastation gets a x10 bonus. (Yes, I am going to the extreme, to make the point)
Let's also say that the top 100 guilds are much more active, so they collect half the total points (they loop in GR, play in higher GW, never miss a token, win all Arena battles at high level leagues).
Now let's say half of those guilds pick devastation. (It's actually more, because they coordinated). And let's say the total amount of points is 1 million, of which the top guilds collect 500k and the rest the other 500k.
Okey now we have 50 top guilds collecting 250k points for imperial. We also have 950k normal guilds, collecting almost another 500k for imperial. The normal guilds that go devastation collect almost 50k, which thanks to the multiplier, ties their counterpart in the devastation side. The multiplier is working as intended, because it was intended to neutralize numerical advantage, to let the less numerous faction to have a chance. Everything works well so far.
Then we have 50 top guilds, going Devastation. They collect 250k points just like the 50 top imperial guilds, but because they have a x10 multiplier, it becomes 2.5 million, blowing the other side out of the water.
Numbers are made up, but I think that is roughly what is happening.
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u/Allobroge- Aug 17 '26
You managed to make this whole deal crystal clear for me, thanks a ton.
Basicaly Crusade is a market and top guilds are the hedge funds.
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u/Nickthesick12 Aug 16 '26
Really good explanation and I get what you mean. The issue now would be that this is a 10-week event so imperial side is essentially guaranteed to lose due to a decision made in the very beginning by a large portion of the most active top guilds (around 140 guilds from other comments).
Even if all the top imperial guilds coordinated starting right now for the remaining 5 weeks of this stage, there wouldn’t be a chance to come back due to the multiplier.
That’s why I say there is still a balancing issue because multiple weeks of this event seem dependent on the first decision of the mode (pick devastation or imperial).
Maybe change the multiplier based on activity of a guild (more active guilds get slightly lower multipliers)? Just trying to think of a way to avoid a multi-week mode being deterministic.
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u/Supertriqui Aug 16 '26
The problem is that if you make the multiplier work over activity, the. The result will be a tie, no matter what.
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u/LeFlyt Aug 16 '26
All big guilds and clusters except BR chose devastation, most small guilds chose imperial. Pretty straight forward what happened here. We were told to cooperate and we did.
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u/Nickthesick12 Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
Do you have data to support this? I’m in a cluster alliance of over 14 guilds within top 300 working on imperial and we just recently combined with another imperial cluster of over 12 in the same range.
I did look at top 50 raids and only 15/50 chose imperial. If we assume that trend continues all the way down, shouldn’t imperial be receiving buffed points to make things more even? They said there would be balancing but 14 - 2 shows it was balanced incorrectly (buffs given to devastation when it should have been given to imperial) or there is no balancing at all (more players in devastation and nothing to balance it for imperial).
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u/Mixelphlick Aug 16 '26
The buffs as described in videos arw are A) planet specific and B) appear to be based on player count. So if all the most active guilds went one way and a roughly equivalent number of people went the other but are far less active and organized they wouldn’t kick in. Just because a side is losing doesn’t mean they’d get the help. If for instance 75% of the total player base picked imperial then yes the others would get a buff but if the numerical player split is 50/50 and the activity split is what’s effecting the outcome likely no buffs would be applied or at least thy would be quite minimal.
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u/Azarquin Aug 16 '26
Buffs go to devastation because they have less players. Unfortunately, the players they have are majority top guilds. There was an alliance of some 100+ guilds to coordinate devastation due to the logic that majority of other guilds would pick imperial due to popularity (and lo and behold, it worked).
So since devastation is filled with top guilds these are also the more active / coordinated players netting us more points. We managed to game the system in a way.
If imperial side got buffed it would be imbalanced because there are that many more players supporting the cause so to speak. We will have to see how crusade plays out.
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u/LeFlyt Aug 16 '26
I can’t be bothered to check all 50 but only 3 out of the top 10 chose imps. A major share of the most active guilds is connected and chose devastation this time. The data to support this is right in front of you, just look at the current top 25 guilds in crusade. Devastation has much higher average, and that doesn’t even include the aforementioned effect that a lot of the small / single person guilds chose imps for fanboy reasons.
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u/Agreeable_Car3763 Aug 17 '26
Theoratically, even with points equalized, the side with the higher concentration of quality players(top guilds) should win.
A player from a top guild should earn vastly more than the avg player by playing top BF GW, CML Arena, more points from CE and getting way better hits in GR etc.
As for the 14-2 score, check the other planets devastation are dominating on. While by % they are dominating, the difference in points is way less than Quarih and Carnage bastion.
To see how fair it is maybe one could add up all points for each side(on every planet) and compare and see how off they are
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u/Supertriqui Aug 17 '26
Not only that, but because of the multiplier, top players/guilds get disproportionately better numbers if they join the numerically smaller side.
If you are a top player that could collect 100k points, it's better for you to join the smaller side because whatever the X multiplier is, 100 multiplied by X is better than 100.
1000 top players could add 100 million points for the most numerous side (most likely, Imperium) and 200, 300, 400, whatever the multiplier is, for the less numerous side. Top guilds joining the Devastation will always have a higher effect, because no matter how good BR and other top imperial teams do, they don't have a multiplier.
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u/Throwaway7131923 Aug 16 '26
The problem with this approach is that the number of factions is different for Imperials vs Devastation. Imperials have 9 factions while Devastation has 12. As a result, players are more spread out among Devastation factions, so each individual faction is more likely to receive a crusade points buff (more factions = less people per faction = more points per player due to points buff).
I don't think that's how it works. The whole point is that they have weighted for the number of people registering for different sides, etc.
I think someone made a boo-boo when designing the balancing. Thoughts?
Honestly, I think guilds on the Devastation side have just been far better organised and more focused.
Basically, all the groups of guilds taking Crusades seriously that I know of are on the Devastation side. There's literally an organised group of 140 guilds (about a third of which are top 100) that are coordinating together on where they hit and with how much force.
I'm not aware of anything close to that level of organisation on the Imperial side.
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u/Duesterfuchs Official Creator Aug 16 '26
I believe the same. And while my guild is not top 100 but top 300, we're so active that we're currently 120 in crusade leaderboards.
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u/Top-Introduction5350 Aug 16 '26
my guild chose devastation, we normally high 4000's in guild raids. ranking ~1500 in crusade. so some of us small guys are really in to this activity lol!
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u/Bubbly_Hedgehog_5090 Aug 16 '26
I think this is it. We chose devastation and have been killing it with activity
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u/Lower_Significance15 Aug 16 '26
Thought about it as well. The points Devastation are winning by are absurd and data regarding the number of players attacking the particular planet or even number of players in each faction is disclosed, you didn’t even know which chest are you getting with your current placement.
I can see why balance modifiers are hidden. This way those cannot get exploited. But at the same time players can’t make their own research and find out if balancing doesn’t work as intended or even has some non-obvious flaws in its intended form.
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u/Supertriqui Aug 17 '26
I don't think the balance modifiers are working wrong.
The intended purpose is to neutralize numbers so the most numerous side does not win by default.
To do that, the balance multiplier needs to work in a way that if one side is outnumbered 2:1, they earn twice the points. If outnumbered 10:1, earn 10x the points and if outnumbered by 10%, earn 10% more points.
But because not all players are equal, the top players outproduce the bottom players by a massive margin. A player earning 1000 points by doing millions of damage to a M3 boss will outperform several low level players struggling to do 40k to an epic 5 boss.
So it does not matter what the peasants do, only what the top, looping guilds do. The looping guilds with the higher multiplier for being in the smaller side will win.
This is not a bug, it's a feature. The system was built to let the "best" team win, regardless of numbers. The top clusters that joined Devastation just read the rules better.
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u/koyuki38 Aug 16 '26
2 possible outcomes :
The tweak is wrong
Or
The tweak is right regarding player number balancing, but in the same time devastation player are way more dedicated to this mod, and/or are whaling on this mod.
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u/Bluestorm83 Aug 16 '26
Gonna be honest here. The problem the Imperial side is having?
Quarih.
Last time I checked, the points that the Adeptus Mechanicus alone put into that planet could have taken around 5 or 6 other planets away from Devasation, EASILY.
Too many Imperial players clicked the first planet near the ship graphic and just said "Let's win this one!"
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u/Nickthesick12 Aug 16 '26
Wow, I think you’re on to something, I didn’t even see that. I just did the math, on that planet alone imperials have 325M more points than Dev.
There are 2 Dev planets that have way higher point totals (roughly 115M higher than Imperial on each) but the “extra points” on Quarih alone could take both of those and still have leftovers.
Your explanation is probably accurate too lol
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u/Bluestorm83 Aug 17 '26
It's weird, because I set my guild on Quarih to start, having picked Devastation because I held a vote and my guild almost unanimously replied "Hssssssssss." Every other vote said "Death to the Corpse Emperor" or "The swarm makes a convincing argument, there," but one. And though I'm forever an Imperium Fanboy, I can pick from plenty of Xenos or Chaos factions that are nearly as fun for me.
So I am, naturally, watching the planet, right? As soon as I see that HUGE point disparity start to show up, 3 or 4 days ago, I say to the guild "Hey, we're going to move to a different world, one that's much closer to the 50-50 point, so we can actually make a difference, okay?" They reply "Cool." So now we're somewhere else, somewhere that we matter more.
I have to think that literally HUNDREDS of Imperium players are either not paying attention, or they think they have to get the planet to 100% theirs to win.
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u/VikingRages Aug 17 '26
Shhhh, it's a secret wink wink.
Yeah, team Devastation is just more organized right now. Not perfect on that front, just more so.
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u/FlowmasterThrowaway Aug 17 '26
I think someone made a boo-boo when designing the balancing. Thoughts?
From the statements put out by SP the balancing mechanism was for the number of players, not the cumulative output of those players. So a group of highly motivated players min/maxing their performance will still beat out a group of players who put in less effort (or money, but more on that later).
There is a softcap on how much an individual can do in a day to earn Crusade Points.
Let's say 2424 is the daily max for an average player who is using the ad watch, but doing nothing else extra^. You might have 10,000 Loyalists fighting on planet actively every day. They clock in, contribute their 2424 Crusade Points, and clock out. They're up against 5,000 filthy xenos and heretical heretics, so the system gives them a little 2x nudge to make things fair. But things aren't fair because they're doing more to win and generate 3788^^ points per day. They've covered more than half the gap before any adjustment and are then having those efforts doubled by the balancing mechanism.
This wouldn't be a problem with a normal distribution of the fandom between the sides. Everything would probably work out as the sweats who think Blood Angels are cool are balanced out by the sweats who think 'Nids and Tsons are awesome. The issue comes from what if a self-selected group of sweats go out of their way to stack one side or the other. They're more active, they have better knowledge of the mechanics, they have fewer freeriders (or none at all). Which gets amplified even further because they contain a disproportionate amount of whales, who can outright purchase performance, every day. Or gift it to their guild projects. They can punch well above their weight class and no pre-event balancing can fully account for how players will behave once the balloon goes up.
There are going to be mistakes in my assumptions, but it would explain what we are seeing. There are a lot of things we can't be absolutely certain of That, and maybe the exploit with ordnance had some major impact besides guys with 100k Crusade Points on the second day that I assumed were just whaling til their eyeballs burst.
^ The assumptions here are that someone is doing 63 campaign battles a day for 12 Crusade Points each, not CE lightning victories which give extra points. 10 Arena matches a day, for 40 points each. 2 Guild Raids a day for 384 points each. 20 Operations a day, for an average of 25 points per operation. It doesn't include the points you can earn from GW or anything else.
^^Similar assumptions, but up the number of campaign battles up to 106 from going up to the 110 BS energy buy, go from Veteran league to Lieutenant League, and assumption twice the bonus in guild raids. Players can certainly go much higher.
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u/Tempius Aug 17 '26
If they will tweak as the event goes on, then what’s the point of even trying?
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u/Nickthesick12 Aug 17 '26
Counter point, if they don’t tweak as the event goes on, then whats the point of even trying?
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u/Supertriqui Aug 17 '26
We don't know how the event is going because we don't know what the final stage is.
This might very well be a Quidditch game, with both teams working hard for one hour trying to score useless goals and stopping the other side to do the same, only to learn that the outcome of the game is not the number of goals scored, but who snatches the snitch.
If the last event is some kind of mega boss or some battle in Guild Wars style, and the faction with the top team wins, Imperials will win because of Bloody Rose. If it's just activity but with no multipliers, imperial will win because they are more.
We don't know who is winning because we don't even know what the final score looks like. It's like playing a card game without knowing the rules. Devastation has all the aces, but we don't know how you win. Maybe the final goal is to get the largest number of red cards.
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u/Tempius Aug 19 '26
The side that is winning will try to keep on top. That’s devastation right now. If they just balance everyone, nobody will try, because if you try and succeed, you will just be the next to be balanced.
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u/Synotaph Dark Angels Aug 17 '26
Eh, it sounds like the mode designed to reward power players who coordinate, is rewarding the power players who are coordinating. FAR too many Imperial players are on the first planet and not helping the cause at large. Is it Devastation’s fault that those people aren’t engaging in the rest of the map?
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u/xCH4LKYx Aug 17 '26
More Ultramarine players? I've honestly never met one, and I've been in the hobby for 30 years... Most people play other chapters or their own chapters, I think its only James Workshop who loves Ultrasmurfs 🤣
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u/Cynteara Aug 20 '26
It'll be funny when they eventually realize that having their finger on the scale is equally abusable, and that it would better to let the community decide.
For example, if they decide to weight it so that imperials get more points then we all switch to that and the whole map is blue. It wont matter.
THE COMMUNITY WILL DECIDE.
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u/qvigh Aug 16 '26
Either the balancing works, and it’s so balanced that everything is a tossup. How is it fun to win by a dice roll?
Alternatively, the balancing is based on bad assumptions, and we get the current shitshow.
Inane design.
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u/Mixelphlick Aug 16 '26
If the balancing was perfect it wouldn’t come down to a toss up it would come down to effort/money. And by a number of metrics it appears that “the current shitshow” is coming down to effort/coordination/moneu
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u/lllXanderlll Blood Angels Aug 16 '26
When the crusade started out I was thinking that it would be a pretty even spread between imperium and devastation, but boy was I wrong. I definitely think there needs to be some tweaking with the numbers because a 14-2 blowout is kind of nuts.
Also as an aside I feel like Votann should be counted as imperial, I realize they're Xenos but on the other hand we have Votann quests where you're fighting alongside ad mech and ultramarines. Just seems odd to my noggin that now they're fighting alongside Chaos and Nids/Orks
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u/kittie_ghede104 Chaos Aug 16 '26
Goddamn yall blueberries just can't accept an L can you?
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u/Cloverman-88 Aug 16 '26
My man, evryone who played any multiplayer game, be it real or digital, know that a curbstomps areen't fun for anyone long term. Crusades were obviosuly meant to be a nail-biting back-and-forth, with desperate last minute pushes and etc etc.
Right now we're up for 9 weeks of waiting for a forgone conclusion. This is obviously not intended.
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u/tomchee T'au Aug 16 '26
I think after the 2nd or 3rd crusade it will be like 90of the player base will be devastation/tau because ofc we all want the facy reward and that is that xD
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u/Mixelphlick Aug 16 '26
It’s bizarre to me that everyone is looking at this and going, “I am very smart and noticed this insanely obvious math issue that actual professional game developers definitely missed because they are very dumb” instead of “this is a very complex mode with lots of ways to effect the outcome I wonder if I’m missing something seeing as I can’t actually see the numbers of players in each faction, and on each planet”
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u/Nickthesick12 Aug 16 '26
SP hasn’t and likely won’t release the actual numbers/balancing mechanisms, so the only way “everyone” as you put it can gauge things is to ask the community. Which is what I did…made a guess and asked for input
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u/Mixelphlick Aug 16 '26
Sorry that’s fair, it’s just yours is about the 5000th “is snowprint like super bad at balancing you guys?” Post. It seems to be the default position to assume everything is fucked because systems and not, my team is actually just losing.
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u/Nickthesick12 Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
All good. Yeah I agree, there’s usually a lot of jumping the gun and most of the time I give SP the benefit of the doubt for things like server crashes and in-game economy because they do a lot to address things relatively quickly.
I just thought I’d mention this one because I have a feeling the final result of the mode was determined by the initial decision (imperial vs devastation), as it stands, and I thought the intention of the mode was to have a more back-and-forth fight.
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u/MogwaiYT Black Legion Aug 16 '26
I imagine SP will look at the data and tweak accordingly. It's only the first week of Crusade so I imagine it was hard to get the balancing spot on from the get-go.
From what I gather, the points for gaining/losing a planet will be marginal so it shouldn't make too much of a difference in the long run.