I have been pondering this for a while and have been following Infinity Statistics: https://stats.infinitytheacademy.com/factionWinrate?season=14 Vanilla Haqqislam has been my faction since I started Infinity (when N3 launched). But ITS 15 was a really rough season. With a win rate of 43.9%, we were the lowest Vanilla faction and in the bottom section. Compare that to ITS 14 when we were ranked 12th with 54.6% So what happened? All I could think of were the points that @QueensGambit made when he was walking away from Infinity. What about you guys? What are your thoughts? @Rabble , @Grotnib ,@HeadChime ,@Errhile @RobertShepherd
I stopped playing vHaqq this season because O12 prestige made it feel weaker relative to other faction choices. With ITS16, I will be back.
Can you expand on why O12 prestige made vHaqq feel weaker? Is it because we have to use our Command tokens a lot converting Irregular orders?
Ya, exactly. One of vHaqq's strengths is the great irregular profiles. You often want to use your command tokens to convert those irregular orders to regular orders. I never have an issue spending all of my command tokens in vHaqq. O12 prestige just added more demand. Conversely, when I play Steel Phalanx or OSS, I usually have command tokens to spare, so O12 prestige is a just a free order every turn.
Bear in mind that win rate is not exactly an expression of how powerful a faction is. Win rate is a function of player performance, which is influenced by faction power, environmental conditions, who's playing it in any given season and other factors. Particularly among players who look to optimise for tourney performance, O-12 Prestige in ITS15 was a steer to put Haqqislam down for the year, as it offered little to the army. So in addition to producing a small relative power decline, it was likely to also incentivise tourney-optimising players toward other factions for the season. I note that O-12 Prestige is gone in ITS16 (I enjoyed it, but I'm also glad it didn't join the game full-time), but ITS16 will be too disrupted by N5 to really draw any significant conclusions from.
I assume it'll probably be very possible to split the data between the N4 and N5 parts of the season, but once we have N5 the N4 data doesn't really matter too much any more, and the first year of a new edition is going to be an absolute hot mess as far as accurately assessing power levels goes in any case. Personally I consider that part of the edition to be super fun, but if you're mathematically inclined you basically need to write it off and wait.
Personally I would contest that a big factor in the drop of vHaqq's winrate from season 14 to 15 is the increased popularity of factions like Bakunin and Torchlight. While I think the matchup for vHaqq vs Torchlight is maybe even favored for vHaqq in the abstract, it's a tricky matchup in practice since most of the time it's on the vHaqq player to try and break Torchlight's castle core through asymmetric means. I can imagine it being especially frustrating on more open tables. MAF is also similar to Torchlight in this way. BJC, which afaik has had a big boom in popularity, is for my money the worst matchup for vHaqq in the game and utterly miserable. We don't really have a compelling answer to pure core Riot Grrls especially on a more open table, they have some of the best Fiday defense in the game and plenty of tools to sweep a midfield position that we try and set up. Ofc the data is unreliable and not worth much outside of maybe just looking at changes in numbers between seasons, but that's my two cents on why we've seen a decrease in winrate for vHaqq in season 15.
Indeed the formative year of the edition is one of the best periods, however frustrating it may be on occasion.
