Ranked War Payouts Improvement Proposal

Here is a relatively simple, straight forward fix to competitive ranked warring's biggest problem - costs.

The longer a competitive ranked war lasts - the more unlikely it is to generate any profit for the losing side and in many cases even the winning side. This comes from an obvious design limitation, aligned with the current meta of fixing wars and letting them time out for maximum financial gain. The capped possible max payouts mean any real wars are largely avoided and shunned by the majority of competitive players in favor of fast, efficient and predictable profits. Ched has said multiple times he is okay with this, it is his game, his rules.

Whilst I can only speak from a Diamond bracket fighting perspective, I would imagine lower warring brackets experience the same financial constraints or even worse, due to the scaling of payout differences. I also do not know if the amount of termed/rigged wars is as abundant in the lower divisions, especially given how few caches get distributed in those.

Now onto my point. We do not want to simply add more caches as payouts in long wars as that woun't fix the issue and it would also have a significant impact on cache prices. I propose a different route.

• Firstly lower the required amount of points to win at Diamond - getting to 18k or more points can take days and with the current system the reward does not reflect the effort to get there at all. Many factions do race to 10k for example instead. Whilst lowering it that much may be a little too much , a half way point can be had at 12-14k, seems much more reasonable.
• Secondly - have an automatic system trigger for a financial bonus upon reaching a preset overall war points treshold - based on the required points to win, for example at diamond and how current matchups are - something like 60k-70k points combined indicates both sides invested a considereble amount of energy competing to trigger the financial bonus
• The bonus itself can be sent at the end of the war as a 24hr bank check (like lotto win), along with the cache payouts and the recipients will be the faction leaders themselves. This is to avoid any potential banking issues, misuse etc. The main reason for this bonus is to cover the significant expenses of a long war, that caches simply do not - and this can be based on existing war results, direct consulting with big faction leaders, A.I. based estimations that have mercs, revive, needle, SED, cans, meds, delays factored in to provide the best possible result.
• The bonus will only by awarded when several specific criteria are met that can be quickly analysed by AI and those can include combinations of things such as : both factions  overall activity levels, push spikes (mass attacks on each other in short time frames), needles used, energy used, revives received, external and internal hosps, mail received, meds used, retaliations, assists, overall score from each side, war time duration and many other indicators that will reflect the war is indeed genuine and not a rigged termed one to simply profit.

I believe something like this can be implemented using a mix of  A.I. and predefined automation in a way to make gaming it for profit that much harder, but more importantly - it absolutely WILL encourage factions to go all out in wars without having to worry they will bankrupt themselves if they lose. Now of course, I am not proposing a money printer here at all, what I am proposing is a way to help factions cover more of their expenses in a truly competitive war, where caches are insufficient. If this proves like something that can be gamed, the criteria can be refined or money bonus lowered to discourage rigging.

Good stuff Wade. Hopefully this has been thought about in the upcoming RW changes 

something definately needs to be done in these wars to help the sunken cost of them the only way its going to improve is to reduce the cost each war will cost as its just ridicolous a war like we just had every week would bankrupt us and most if not all factions in torn 

Aw dude, you really had me for like... 90% of this. Then you brought AI into the equation and you lost me. If I ignore the AI portion, here's my thoughts:

• Lowering required points to win: Yeah, that seems pretty cut and dry. I can't say I've been in a war yet that has required such a huge lead, but I can definitely see an 18k point lead being an exceedingly difficult thing to achieve, regardless of the bracket you're in. So yeah, very simple, I think that's a reasonable request.
• Automatic financial bonus trigger: I'm not 100% on this, not because I don't think it's a good incentive, but for two other reasons. One, Pete has mentioned that reworking the rewards system to incentivize real wars is already on the docket. This may be on the whiteboard of ideas, it may not be, but I'd generally lean towards not. Reason being reason number two, once you put a hard, financial reward in there with a clearly defined trigger or set of triggers, all you've done is create a premium reward for warring that war fixers can also take advantage of. Yes, it'd be harder than what's going on right now, but if it's intended to compensate for the extra effort put in, then I can't see many situations where any faction that can take advantage of it won't. Totally down for greater rewards for real wars and participation, but I do think it's better to leave actual cash out of the equation.
• 24hr bank check: As mentioned above, probably best not to be cash. Buuuuuuut, if, say, some premium supply caches were dropped (like drug packs, med kits, or even energy drink packs), I think that could be an interesting way of rewarding without handing out cash.

All in all, you got some good thoughts out here (minus the AI thing). Might need some refinement and fine tuning on the back-end, but I like it.

#chedging

I said it in the ranked war thread but it is clear that member count and lead score required need to play a bigger part in the reward scaling. It is harder to pay everyone when you have more members and when more hits are required. It is that simple. 

The member count is already somewhat factored in, but nowhere near enough. The lead score has essentially no impact. The increased rewards for being in a higher rank are entirely swallowed by the increased lead required. 

What is supposed to be the incentive for being in diamond? Because it sure as hell isn't a better reward payout. The rewards are worse per person than the lower ranks.

I actually like the increased lead. It gives time for a turnaround. If the ODB vs DA war was a lower lead score required then ODB would have won before it got exciting. Keep the lead scores, just REWARD it. 

It's out of the question that something needs to be done payment wise.

Secondly - have an automatic system trigger for a financial bonus upon reaching a preset overall war points treshold - based on the required points to win, for example at diamond and how current matchups are - something like 60k-70k points combined indicates both sides invested a considereble amount of energy competing to trigger the financial bonus

I don't think this is going to work whatsoever as long as wars are allowed to be rigged.

Either the payout isn't going to be enough at these cuts or the payout is going to be too much and friendly factions are going to chain on each other to get a better pay out. I'd even imagine SMTH shuffling around players around their factions to align activity / stats, so they can keep farming payments on each other. 

Thus far I've never seen a suggestion that completely solves everything as long as rigging is allowed.

What happened to fighting for honour... Or at least fun.

In the recap of the last Torn Con, I believe it was noted that Ched mentioned he feels RW payouts are too high.  Meaning, any decrease observed in payments moving forward is probably deliberate.

What I am proposing is not another free cash printer for factions to exploit, but rather a bonus payment for factions that dare to go far beyond the usual effort in a real war that would otherwise leave them with a huge financial loss and definitely something they cannot do on a regular basis. If a game's basic competitive warring design makes it impossible to be competitive - something is fundamentally wrong.

If the majority prefers to have rigged matches with 0 effort and print money, then the competitive element of warring is practically dead.

With it merc and revive services will eventually die as well, as well as temps sales, cans, fhc's etc.

Another solution is to simply ban people who exploit the system for financial gain from queuing for ranked wars for days, then weeks, then months.

Again it is not terribly hard to track attacks made, revives received, meds used, energy used, activity etc. in a real war by BOTH sides. All actions are tracked in torn. If someone wanted to rig the system to pretend they are actively warring they have to go trough all these motions, so whilst faking it, they are essentially warring anyways. You can't fake 40k+ points in a war without using energy from both sides.

The current problem is both sides do a certain amount of hits to meet a specific award threshold, then they stop and let the war time out and get maximum gain for very little effort. And the same reward is given to factions who fight for days. It's glaringly obvious how this is not normal or sustainable long term, at the cost of the health of the game itself.

The main thing that would keep this thing afloat is the AI analysis part.

Every other thing could very well be exploited too: 12-14k score means less e spent in termed wars. Paycheck at 70k total means if the pay is just that good,.both faction can just farm hits on each other and get the bonus. (Maybe this could work if the paycheck is worth exactly the amount of extra effort it would take, but that also would make it useless, and push towards ranked wars. If the bonus isn't rewarding, no point in fighting to get it)

The only question is, does ched want real wars only, or does he not. If he didn't want wars, and wanted to reward real wars much more, there is no need for such important changes, a bit of scouting in every rw would tell you if a war was termed or not in 5 mins tops.

Now, I do agree that the proposed changes are good, but they affect in no way people who will still decide to term. This happens a lot in real life too, you can't give opportunities people aren't willing to take.

Lower the score win margin threshold, yes.

i could see them, instead of financial bonus, going the route of reducing payouts for termed out wars.  In real war experiences, one faction is always pinned down, little to no members out of hospital. So it’s pretty obvious when both factions have majority of members out of hosp that they aren’t really battling it out. Also when wars are timed out, both factions have most members out of hosp and war times out, it’s a sign. So maybe after a war surpasses 24 hours, and the above happens, then the cache payouts start to reduce. That is of course, only if the score margin to win is reduced. I could also see there being an abandon or surrender button to end things more abruptly. Sometimes there is just no good reason for either side to draw things about.  Though that may not be needed if the win score lead criteria is reduced. 

Probably like to see a score accelerant or something to penalize long extended turtling, like win margin decreases faster if after 24 hours, more than 5 members or whatever threshold makes sense, if example more than 5 are all in hosp for 60 minutes or 120 minutes or whatever, then score margin to win reduces quicker. Then it return to normal pacing if not longer turtling for that extended time. 

edit: and yeah sure, I think a bonus of some sort could and should be added in for the obvious hard fought and extended battles. As long as there is a good way to split out gaming the system and legit battles. 

That is the whole point, in order to actually get a bonus payout you have to put in the work. At the moment rigged wars' players are doing nothing for days and getting the same payout as factions who are fighting the entire time during those days. Those who are used to getting paid for nothing will probably be very reluctant to spend thousands of E to get the same payouts if the change happens.

Basing it off points would not be the greatest, personally i would look at total E expenditure or time spent actively warring/chaining (used essentially as an activity tracking mertic). This would also make terming less attractive as more effort would be met with more rewards for all involved

Ew don't touch non diamond with whatever this is.

something like 60k-70k points combined

Lol. Lololol. No one is getting that much of a score outside of Diamond and possibly Platinum. It would have to be a significantly termed respect farming war in Silver to get that high of a score.

Most we've ever gotten from a respect farming war was 11k each side during Halloweek. This was a highly termed respect farming extended decay war. Even more terms would be needed to push that score higher.

If we were capable of getting 60k+ score from one war we wouldn't be in Silver.

However that said lowering the already ridiculously low target scores in Silver would suck. I already struggle to get all of my members paid with 2 to 4 hour wars.

Please keep any future war changes restricted to Diamond. Thank you.

I understand your concern and I think this can be perfectly scaled down to match the lower brackets, respectively. 

What doesn't change for a competitive war in any of the brackets and can be used to determine bonus eligibility are activity levels, revives received, temps used, E used, number of pushes, retaliations and so on.

I think the score requirements in the lower brackets may be fine, and the only real change needed is in Diamond.

Brother we don't do any of the diamond stuff in silver.

Half our wars end with people still having e, whether termed or not. I have gotten revives maybe 3 times in the past year during war. When I hit my max med CD I fly. I only get revives if I need one abroad, and that's only if I can guilt trip my Torn husband into rescuing me for free. War pay doesn't pay for revives.

Only real metrics you can use to determine if one of my non-stomp wars are termed or not is 1. if I've bountied my members 1 bounty at a time when they are abroad. If they're in Torn the chances I put a bounty on them are low, and 2. If the war lasts over 5 hours. Oh and also if any of our members have hospitalized any of our other members ("self merc") which is something I pay for in real wars.

However some termed wars can last longer if we should have taken a win but did not, and the opposition sucks at chaining. Or if it started on a weekday and we lost the chain due to lack of participation due to people being at work. Or of they so out-statted us they had to use 5x as many attacks as us to get the lead to win.

If it's a stomp it is a real war, period.

If you’re finishing with people still stacked in a “real” war I’d argue your faction should be a higher rank than it is as your obviously fighting better than silver. 

we’re fighting a gold 1 faction right now, both sides expelling a LOT of energy, first 30 minutes alone BoD had 200 hits made and 30+ assists made. So many needles being used it’d make a glasweigan crackhead look normal. 

only term was no mercs no bounties, make things activity vs activity. 

I reckon if you continue fighting the way you are you’ll be able to sit in gold no issue 

We are under ranked by choice. And under capacity by choice so as to not get matched with alliance backed cache farms covered in RW gear with free family-provided mercs, as we are not familied and don't have a fuck ton of old money supporting us.

I have used needles exactly twice in my entire Torn career, for a retal outside of war.

We did have a needle user previously but he's currently not in our faction.

I have yet to do any partially termed wars such as you're describing.

Having had to put up with the bot hunter multiple times daily for more than 5 weeks now, I can tell you that you do NOT want to let AI’s greasy little fingers anywhere near any more Torn controls.

Also, adding cash to the payouts can have negative ripple effects across the Torn economy, and I’m certain that the devs are not going to consider such an option.

I agree the longer wars are less profitable, but if the target score is reduced, care needs to be taken not to shorten wars too much. We have fought 29 untermed RWs in 2026. Average time is just under 14 hours, and median time is just over 11 hours. We have had good members leave whose schedules simply didn’t align with our RWs, and they tended to end before those players had a chance to participate. I suspect the average and median times will trend longer under the new matching, but our RW this week was not evidence of that, ending in just under 8 hours.

My position remains that rewards should be tied more closely to E spent attacking the opponent. Yes, that can be gamed, too, but currently, there is little financial downside to letting a RW time out. In fact, there is proven financial incentive TO reach a minimum score and let it time out, which is why so many do it. If rewards are tied to E spent, at least artificially padding those numbers comes with a price. But E spent is able to be measured and have a value applied to it. It would be an easy way to reward factions who put in genuine efforts. It would also remove the incentive to let wars time out. For those gaming the system to pad rewards, it adds a cost to do so, at least.

I do like Elizabeth’s suggestion of throwing some premium supply caches into the mix. Perhaps those could be tied in some fashion to actual expenditures, like a faction getting their asses kicked and having to med out a lot might get more med supply boxes. It might lead to lower values for those packs, but that could also encourage more fighting.