I fell into the trap early in Wardogs of picking the blue team and not budging. The chat is constantly telling me that this team – my team – is eternally useless and always loses. This isn’t exactly true, of course, because I have won a fair few games, but sometimes I do think that I may be putting myself at a bit of a disadvantage for my loyalty.
The blue team, according to Wardogs’ devs, has a “notoriously lower win rate” compared to the others. This, according to Bulkhead, stems from things like higher uniform visibility and some spawn issues. That isn’t all, though; it appears as though player sentiment also plays a role in the downbeat blues. A kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
There are also a few other factors that could be in play here. The color, for instance: blue is generally seen as less aggressive than, say, red, and the fact that the blue team is the first on the left may mean that new players default to clicking that one instead of exploring other options. Whatever it is, it’s been fascinating to watch the blue agenda play out.
There is so much of a blue team issue, or whatever you want to call it, that Bulkhead is looking to experiment a bit with the setup, making changes with Season 2 that will, in theory, bring the win percentage up. Spawn points on Bakurani specifically are being tweaked, as apparently most games were basically just red smashing blue, with green sitting pretty in its two-tower defensive setup – and ultimately winning.
More subtle, however, are Bulkhead’s attempts to sway the overall opinion of the blue team. Beginning in, and apparently only for, Season 2, anyone on the blue team will get cash and XP bonuses, teamplay multipliers, and a new semi-catch-up mechanic of a 20% shop discount if a team is losing. Whether this will entice better players onto the blue team, or if new players will see this as a good method of progression, remains to be seen, but the idea is fascinating.
Wardogs is still in early access, so experimentation is welcome, and the team over at Bulkhead doesn’t seem shy about taking a couple of risks here and there. These changes could also give each new season its own flavor – the blue redemption could pave the way for something else, some other new situation where me and mine are called out constantly in the chat for being rubbish. They’re probably right, to be honest.