Top Ten Myths about Clan Wars.

Top Ten Myths About Clan Wars.

“myth” noun \ˈmith\ : an idea or story that is believed by many people but that is not true

I’ve been reading YoYo Clan News and Activision's Clan boards for around a year. It still amazes me what people write. Worse yet, the ridiculous comments that go unchallenged there and then spread around as fact. I will also admit that I use to preach one or two of these myths. But then I saw the actual real clan population data come in. I saw reality. Let’s dispel a number of these. I’m going to use data from the 2014 CoD Clan Wars for most of examples, as well as actual real comments from various message boards.

Myth #10. – “It’s harder running a big clan, because they have more no-shows happen. Our clan of 70 people had seven people no show last Clan War. That’s more people than most small clans even have!!! “

False. While a bigger clan will have more people no-show (in raw numbers), the rate at which people no show will be constant, regardless of clan size. A human being no-showing is due to a myriad of factors, none of which are determined by the bucket classification next to his/her name. An example. Clan DP has 70 people. Clan WIPE has 30 people. Both clans have 10% of their people no-show. What happens? The clan with 70 will lose seven people. The clan with 30 will lose three. End result? Both clans are operating at a disadvantage of a 90% participation ratio. Both clans are affected equally.

Myth #9 – “In the larger buckets, it takes way more wins than the lower brackets to get a node. So it’s much harder”

False. Do we need to even explain why? Beachhead balances the work effort need to cap a node, to adjust for different clan bucket sizes. A bucket of 12 people, will need the same work effort (# wins) to get a node, as a group of 100 people playing. It’s balanced.

Myth #8 – “Percentages matter. The higher divisions become so fragmented. If two clans are in the 70 bucket, but clan A has only 54 playing while clan B has 57 playing, it's not like the participation percentage of two clans playing with 12 members who have 11 and 9 players playing respectively”

False. I’ve seen comments like this, and they prove nothing other than confusing people. Clan A has a 77% participation ratio. Clan B has a 81% participation ratio due to no shows. Ok? With the small clans, the 9-person clan would have 75%, the 11-person clan would have a 91%. What is proven there? Nothing. The two clans with the highest no shows, are both affected somewhat equally. 77% and 75%. Again, people no-showing are not a function of bucket classification. No-showing is a human function that hits all clan sizes equally, and is best tempered with pre-screening by Clan Leaders.


Myth #7 - “It's 5 times easier at 20 members to achieve 70% participation than at 100 members. Any clan getting 90% participation of 100 members is ludicrous. Saying that about a 20 member clan, not so much.”

False.This is yet another example of misdirection math games, used to favor a heavily biased opinion. Reality? There is no way to determine how much harder it is to get higher participation on a big clan (over a smaller one), especially such an exact number like ‘5x’. How is effort measured? By time spent? How much time is actually spent confirming a person as playing? While it is probably harder, the actual effort required (2x, 3x, 6x etc..), can never be measured. That's a ridiculous point that will never be calculated. But guess what?. What is easy to calculate is the advantage the size bonus gives out. It was 10 points per war last year. Over 12 Diamond Wars, that amounted to 120pts advantage to bigger clans. This 'big clan' point advantage, pretty much gave one free 1st place (w.bonuses) war point total to them. That is a ridiculously HUGE advantage. Was it justified? This comes into play on the next myth….

Myth #6 – “Bigger clans are harder to run and have it tougher. So they deserve bonus points”

False. This is one of the most argumentative aspects of Clan Wars. BeachHead currently gives extra Diamond points, just for having more people in your clan. In theory, this is a good rule. In theory, it is harder to organize, maintain, track & war with 70 people, than say 20 people. But unfortunately, this is only ‘in theory’. Reality has shown this to mostly be a myth. Reasons:

1. Clan ‘competition’ size is not related to Clan total population size. Many clans playing in an 18 person bucket for example, actually had 50, 60 or as many as 100 people in their clan. So in actuality, they are still doing the same exact pre-planning/organization work effort as a higher bucket competing clan. Shouldn't they get bonus points for their pre-clan war effort'?

2. Clan War Population stats (peak population in May of 2014 – 20,418 clans with pts) conclusively showed that 90% of clans, their actual competition size, was in the under 21-people bucket sizes. So reality was, there was more clans competing in low buckets. Lower buckets actually had to work harder in wars. Why? Their brackets were filled, unlike bigger bucket comps, where most brackets were half empty. As well as getting easy bonus points due to no competition.

3. While Bigger bucket clans did have to work harder to move 70 (or more) people around a map during a war….reality was they never actually had to move people anywhere. Most all the times, they had no opponents, or at most, just one. You can't credit a clan for 'added difficulty', when there was no actual difficulty going on.

4. The above system created a perverse gaming structure. 90% of the clans had to fiercely compete with each other with more competition per war, while bigger clans got bonus points, for having less competition.

Myth #5 – “If smaller size clans wanted bonus points, all they had to do was grow in size!

False. This is classic myth spreading at its worst. In theory, this sounds good on paper. Move up to compete, if you want the same bonus points. A clan would then get easier clan wars in theory. Unfortunately, this myth is built upon misdirection. Hoping that people forget the climate that the 2014 CoD Ghosts game operated in.

Reality is that once the spring of 2014 came around, CoD Ghosts was a slowly dying game. It was not well received and for the most part, people left it for many reasons (to slow, camping, maps to large, etc..). If you weren’t a clan with an already existing organization recruiting process in motion (Twitter, big name, Youtube, etc..), it was difficult to recruit in a game with declining population (fact). Furthermore, BeachHead studios did no clan any favors in this process either. Each war, clans were forced to cut players who could not help (fact) It’s hard to feel part of any clan, when you see your name ‘cut’ now and then. This is an ‘anti-growth’ measure taken by BeachHead (fact) And person throwing up a “Just grow” is flat out being disingenuous to the above reality. ‘Growing’ in a declining game was not a viable option.

Myth #4 – “The strategies that play out in these big wars, like with lethal and pwn clan wars, are more elaborate than anyone realizes”

False. This is yet another example of spreading biased opinions.

There is no doubt that ‘some’ of the best wars have been played by two big clans going head to head, with 50 to 75+ players moving around the map. And there is no doubt that complex tactics are being used to attack and counter opponent’s moves. That said, small size clan wars have their own additional complexity. An example of this would include having to tend to deal with more opponent clans on average. It is without question, that it is measurably harder trying to deal with three or four opponents, rather than just one. Predicting one opponent is tough. Predicting two or three opponents is even harder. This is something small bucket competing clans had to deal with on a much more regular basis during a clan war season.

The other problem with this myth is this. It assumes: 1) that smaller bucket competing clans have never competed in thelarger bucket sizes. This is often not the case. Many clans competing in say a 20 person bucket, did compete in higher buckets earlier in the season AND know all the tactics very well. 2) that people who run smaller clans, are not smart enough to adapt to the tactics of running large numbers of players on a war map, or to dumb to come up with tactics on their own. This is complete nonsense and ignorant thinking.

Myth #3– “Big clans wars are more fun to watch”

False. This is opinion based, and not factual. And is definitely not a basis for rewarding bonus points to big clans. Reality? A clan war composed of four 20-person clans can be just as entertaining as a war of two 50-person clans going at it. Most people using this as a reason to reward bigger clans (‘entertainment’ criteria), are really saying this, …”I prefer to watch big-name clans compete” You often see this at MLG events, where some fans have no interest in seeing the best squads playing, but only wants to watch ‘Optic Gaming’. Fine to have an opinion and there’s nothing wrong with being a fanboy. But be honest with your nutriding and don’t use that as an excuse to try and influence more bonus points to big clans.


Myth #2 – "My clan crushed your clan last year by over 80pts, so we are really the better clan (even though behind in the rankings)”

False. People saying dumb comments like this, have no understanding how 'the game' worked. Go back. BeachHead’s Clan Wars were set up differently from what was used in prior versions like MW3’s Clan Wars, or BO2’s League play. For the first time in CoD history, BeachHead devised a way to determine which clan was ‘the best’ over an entire season of a game. Over the course of the year, Beachhead would have qualifying rounds, then a dozen plus DiamondWars, a 'game' to determine the best of the best over a WHOLE season of gaming.

Was it perfect? No. But it was how THAT particular Clan War game was going to be played. Want to win it? Play the game how it was designed. What people just don’t understand is that BeachHead’s [flawed] system was never made to determine the best by individual results on some weekend war (like what was done with MW3)  That wasn't how it was set up. The 'game' was played to simply have the most points AT THE END.  And there was nothing in the rules that said you couldn’t lose a war. You could in theory lose a couple of wars and still win. So even if the eventual champion lost a few wars, ...so what? One of the biggest factors in a clan’s success, wasn’t any one individual war on some long forgotten weekend in April. The biggest factor was simply keeping your troops playing and having consistent success.

Myth #1 – “Ok, but my clan (Clan PSSY) quit in May. We didn’t have the opportunity to rack up a lot of Diamond points. So that was unfair. But we did beat the eventual champion, and never lost when we played. So we are truly the better clan”

False. This is basically the 'Hate LG' excuse. I see this all the time from haters, trying to discredit Lethal Gaming for finishing 1st, and saying they truly weren't the best.

BONUS MYTH –“But we didn't finish because we were bored. We lost interest. So how’s that our fault we quit? We were still undefeated when we played, so we are better”

False. While you are entirely within your right to quit (Ghosts did kind of suck, we get that) you still have no right to come back and use ‘Boredom’ as an excuse. Part of what determines a successful team is focus over the ENTIRE season. Plenty of clans who did finish, were also bored too. But they stayed focused and kept their clans playing. If anything, using the excuse of ‘boredom’ shows lack of focus of keeping your eye on the prize.

* The above editorial is not looking to favor big or small clans. Only to clear up myths that both sides keep perpetuating. As long as clans keep fighting/arguing with each other, we keep ignoring the reality that changes aren't being made to fix things, for ANY SIZE clan. Reality is, we shouldn't be fighting with ourselves. We should be directing our arguments/discussions to BeachHead, the CoD Developers, and Activision, who keep ignoring requests to make the above process more fair.  instead, we argue with each other.

We are the customer. Millions of players pay up to $100 to play this game, giving these people at Activision, Beachhead and Sledgehammer employment. We should be treated with respect, Take for example the whole issue with bonus points for clan sizes, and strength of schedule. New season in 2015, and the same system is still in place from last year, addressing none of the problems.

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