.....and I am NOT going to make a single claim about boosting.
In fact, I am going to put some POSITIVE material, talking about what happens when things work right. And i am going to do so, by dispelling some myths being tossed around. Discuss some things that happened over the weekend in our Diamond Clan War battle. A CW where our clan, faced off against a number of good clans, including Lethal Gaming, who is (or was) ranked #2 in the world on the Leaderboards.
This meeting took place in the Diamond division battle, the 46 to 54 category
Myth 1 - It's not fair getting top clans -
Prior to this CW, we had played all of our contests in the 85 to 100 division, the 'big team' division, and even our first time contests in Diamond (we took 1st and 3rd so far) Why did we drop? To increase our participation ratio. And how were we rewarded? Beachhead rewarded us by dumping CoD #2 ranked clan right into our pool. I can't imagine this was pure chance, but either way, it wasn't a bad thing. Why? It forced us to step up. You don't get better playing scrubs. Your clan's efficiency improves by being tested. This applies to any sport, and CoD clan contests aren't any different.
Myth 2 - Clans don't compete in ClanWars -
This may be true, but not in our case this weekend. Our pool had six of the seven clans going at it, and playing to win. Unfortunately, the 5th & 6th clans got shut out, but it wasn't due to lack of effort. They posted wins in almost every node, but just couldn't cap nodes fast enough over the other four. Point here is this, Clan Wars can work very well when teams compete, and this CW was proof of it. Five of the clans were going HARD. And this was Clan Wars at it's finest. If anyone could had seen it, it was a thrilling ride, with all the back and forth moves being made.
Myth 3 - "Top Clans boost" -
To the untrained eye this weekend, just observing our own pool of contestants, let me say this....it probably looked like a ton of boosting in our contest. I'm sure some people thought that. There were nodes that needed 98 wins being dropped in less than 11 minutes. There were times where nodes were moving and dropping, one just couldn't keep up. And the fastest clan in our pool? Lethal Gaming. I know LG gets a ton of crap for cheating and boosting....but not from me. I'll vouch for them. Our clan (HSV1), we had people measuring and tracking. everything to the minute. Every node cap.We weren't doing this to try and bust Lethal, but for our own information purposes, to help us make Real Time decisions on when to strike. But based off of our numbers, things measured up and were fair. Straight up fast playing on their part.
Myth 4 - "It's just a numbers game. Get more people, you win"
Not true. This weekend was proof of that. We got smacked hard in round 1, Friday night. We were behind by a 120 to 314 score. We didn't blame Lethal for cheating. We looked in a mirror, probably what most clans should do first. What did we see? We were sloppy. We had 12 people show up late. We had six no shows. We only had 34 of our 54 people playing the first few hours. The most we had on all Friday was like 39 people. Bad organization on our part. We ended the night in 2nd place.
What did we do? Did we whine to Beachhead about Lethal cheating? No. We sucked it up. We regrouped. And even though we only had 39 playing (of 54) the second night, we still worked together. We planned. We calculated. We thought out every move. We worked as a team. We grabbed four nodes that second round Sat night. Getting two of them just barely, watching LG easily outpace our speed a number of times. But we played smart. End of the night, we actually outscored Lethal Gaming, 182 to 134. That's not a typo. Somehow we pulled it off.
The point above is not to brag. The point is to remind people to not quit. Keep playing in these clan wars.. Reorganize and try harder. You keep trying, good things can happen. We did it against the #2 clan in the world. I don't know their situation in that second round, but based on the timed measurements I wrote down, they had more people than us most of the night. We didn't get discouraged. If we can do this, so can you all.
Myth 5 - "Tactics don't matter"
Read what I said in the above 'Myth 4'. Tactics do matter. And up to a point, Tactics can swing things in your favor, even when you have less people.
Myth 6 - "I can spot boosting easily"
No. Most people can't. I think 90% of the people on these boards have no clue how to measure the movements of clans. How fast people are grabbing nodes. There are a lot of things that can be missed. The opponent might have more people than you. The opponent might be winning games faster than you. The opponent might be winning all their games, while your side lost some. The opponent might have rotated into the node before you, skewing your measurements. That is a huge one. Also the cycle of wins. Does your team need three cycle, while an opponent needs two? Make sure you measure correctly, before accusing someone of cheating.
Conclusion
I wish I could get on here and say "We beat them!!!". But I can't. We ended up in 2nd place. But after getting worked Friday night, ....we won Saturday and pretty much played them closely the remainder of the weekend. Again, this is not being said to brag, but to remind people to not quit. Use our clan as inspiration. We aren't the best in the world. We are solid, 100 person clan that has won six CW's. And now presently play in Diamond. But we aren't one of top ranked, top 10 teams. So if our clan can do it, playing shorthanded against the no. 2 clan in the world,,.....most of you all can do it against lessor opponents. Keep playing.
The side benefit of the above, is that when everyone plays, it actually helps.......everyone. The 1st place clan can't single out the 2nd place place clan. And the top clans, then can't single out the 4th through 7th clans. More chaos occurs, which means 'tactics' matter more, with less emphasis on 'who has more people'. If everyone plays, all the 2nd to 7th place can actually do better!! And the best benefit? It's more fun. We had more fun finishing 2nd in this clan war, than most of the contests we finished first. We'll gladly take a dip in the rankings, for the intensity and excitement of what we did last weekend.
Peace.