Alliance Wars Discussion Thread

Hey Summoners!

We've just dropped some information on our next iteration of Alliance Wars, and this one includes some big changes to the Scoring method! Take a look at the announcement Thread and let us know if you have any questions or feedback!

http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/36645/alliance-wars-scoring-update-coming-december-13th

We've closed the last discussion thread, because it references older information that is no longer relevant. You can find that archived thread here: http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/31767/alliance-wars-discussion-2-0/

Comments

Thawnim

I like these changes. It is obvious that you have listened to the game community and attempted to address a lot of the previous issues with war. Only question right now is does the added complexity of the attack bonus have any potential negative affects (lagging, game crashing) to war overall?

UnsaferBinkie7

Not too bad, I'm ok with this for now kabam.

Still expecting some more changes to diversity, as it'll still have some forced feel to it.

And another question, a bunch of us have ranked up....useless champs you could say, wondering if we'll be even compensated a bit for it?

Because it seems diversity is getting pushed away a bit, it'll mean more of the same champs again (which is awesome), but some of us have a r5 that's useless in the content out there besides arena.

Kabam Miike

Thawnim wrote: »

I like these changes. It is obvious that you have listened to the game community and attempted to address a lot of the previous issues with war. Only question right now is does the added complexity of the attack bonus have any potential negative affects (lagging, game crashing) to war overall?

It shouldn't have any effect on the gameplay itself, as it's a score that is tabulated outside the fight, and just like all of the other scoring mechanisms. If problems crop up for some reason we will of course work to resolve them!

Mmx1991

Some good changes Kabam.

RevBlu

Any considerations towards changing/updating the AW rewards?

Gamer

Great move. Now Can u luck at the rewards it kind get old to

NevvB

Good changes. Looking forward to the new scoring method.

We are still waiting for an update on rewards after the map was buffed 3x but rewards were buffed 0x.

unknown

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Qwerty

i don't understand, in 1 section you write this:

We want to make sure that engaging in fights awards more points than just walking around a map.
The Alliance War map has a large amount of empty nodes, many being portal entrances and exits, and navigating through those shouldn't win a war over taking a shorter path that actually has Defenders along it.

and for attacker kills you write this:

Attacker walks through a node that could have a defender on it but doesn’t (i.e. an empty node - this does not include portal entrances/exits or other nodes where you can’t place a Defender):
- Attacker earns 240 Bonus Points in addition to any other points earned from node exploration.

what am i missing here?

Qwerty

otherwise good changes. looking forward to it.

DNA3000

Hmm. I need to think carefully about these changes but on the surface they appear to be very positive changes that address many of the players' complaints about AW. In particular the point system seems to shift towards awarding better attacker gameplay, and it does so using an idea proposed by several different players (including but not only myself) that shift defender kill points to attacker bonus points. Thanks for listening to that one, at least on iteration four.

I still believe that if defender diversity is intended to be a tie breaker it should function as a tie breaker, only being consulted if there is a tie. I see now what your reasoning has been: to reduce the "impact" of diversity points by reducing the total percentage of all possible points diversity accounts for. But I must point out that this isn't a good way to evaluate diversity points. In a match that is not close diversity won't change things because its fraction of total score is low. But in a closely fought match diversity will still be strong enough to swing the match. And Kabam needs to understand that it is *especially* in these very close hard fought for matches that players will be motivated to complain when diversity swings the victory.

To phrase simply: so long as diversity scores raw points it won't be a tie breaker, it will be the deciding factor in close enough wars. But it is those very wars where you will get the most complaints. Think about it: when the war is decided by a landslide the losing alliance knows they were whipped. They are less likely to complain about anything. But when the war is won or lost on a single player's actions, that's cause for celebration. Yay, Bob killed that last node and we won because of it. If in that situation diversity points snatches the victory from "Bob" that's when players will be the most angry.

FAL7EN

Changes look good, great job Kabam team!

meorean

and for attacker kills you write this:

Attacker walks through a node that could have a defender on it but doesn’t (i.e. an empty node - this does not include portal entrances/exits or other nodes where you can’t place a Defender):
- Attacker earns 240 Bonus Points in addition to any other points earned from node exploration.

what am i missing here?

They did that to stop the strategy of placing no defenders, in order to deny attack bonuses to your opponent.

UnsaferBinkie7

My comment is ignored

Coldfireknight

Will the champs be hidden again? That’s seems like it would add to the difficulty of planning what champs to bring.

DNA3000

Qwerty wrote: »

i don't understand, in 1 section you write this:

We want to make sure that engaging in fights awards more points than just walking around a map.
The Alliance War map has a large amount of empty nodes, many being portal entrances and exits, and navigating through those shouldn't win a war over taking a shorter path that actually has Defenders along it.

and for attacker kills you write this:

Attacker walks through a node that could have a defender on it but doesn’t (i.e. an empty node - this does not include portal entrances/exits or other nodes where you can’t place a Defender):
- Attacker earns 240 Bonus Points in addition to any other points earned from node exploration.

what am i missing here?

This sounds a lot like a suggestion I made, so on the assumption that it is similar, I can explain what I think this all means.

Ignoring portals, there are two kinds of nodes: nodes that you cannot place a defender on, and nodes you can place a defender on. For nodes that you cannot place a defender on, you just get exploration for "capturing" it. But for nodes that you can place a defender on, there is an invisible bucket of 240 bonus points sitting on it. However, every time you die there the bucket loses 80 points. Once you "capture" the node, you get whatever is in the bucket.

So if the other guys don't place a defender there, you get all 240 points automatically the moment you step onto the node. You "capture" it, and all the points. But if there is a defender there, you have to kill it to capture the node and grab the points. Do so with no deaths, get 240. Die once, the bucket drops by 80. Capture the node, and you'll grab 160. Die again, the bucket drops by 80 again. And so on.

Mental model: every node that can hold a defender has a bag of 240 bonus points you can grab. But every time the node kills you the bag loses 80 points. After three deaths, the bonus bag is empty. But you can still get exploration points for eventually defeating the node and "capturing" it.

DarkestDestroyer

Yeah the rewards HAVE to be looked at now!

War sounds like it will be good again though

unknown

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Qwerty

DNA3000 wrote: »

Qwerty wrote: »

i don't understand, in 1 section you write this:

We want to make sure that engaging in fights awards more points than just walking around a map.
The Alliance War map has a large amount of empty nodes, many being portal entrances and exits, and navigating through those shouldn't win a war over taking a shorter path that actually has Defenders along it.

and for attacker kills you write this:

Attacker walks through a node that could have a defender on it but doesn’t (i.e. an empty node - this does not include portal entrances/exits or other nodes where you can’t place a Defender):
- Attacker earns 240 Bonus Points in addition to any other points earned from node exploration.

what am i missing here?

This sounds a lot like a suggestion I made, so on the assumption that it is similar, I can explain what I think this all means.

Ignoring portals, there are two kinds of nodes: nodes that you cannot place a defender on, and nodes you can place a defender on. For nodes that you cannot place a defender on, you just get exploration for "capturing" it. But for nodes that you can place a defender on, there is an invisible bucket of 240 bonus points sitting on it. However, every time you die there the bucket loses 80 points. Once you "capture" the node, you get whatever is in the bucket.

So if the other guys don't place a defender there, you get all 240 points automatically the moment you step onto the node. You "capture" it, and all the points. But if there is a defender there, you have to kill it to capture the node and grab the points. Do so with no deaths, get 240. Die once, the bucket drops by 80. Capture the node, and you'll grab 160. Die again, the bucket drops by 80 again. And so on.

Mental model: every node that can hold a defender has a bag of 240 bonus points you can grab. But every time the node kills you the bag loses 80 points. After three deaths, the bonus bag is empty. But you can still get exploration points for eventually defeating the node and "capturing" it.

thanks

Qwerty

meorean wrote: »

and for attacker kills you write this:

Attacker walks through a node that could have a defender on it but doesn’t (i.e. an empty node - this does not include portal entrances/exits or other nodes where you can’t place a Defender):
- Attacker earns 240 Bonus Points in addition to any other points earned from node exploration.

what am i missing here?

They did that to stop the strategy of placing no defenders, in order to deny attack bonuses to your opponent.

please, sir, have a like.

Maximus_Spankerson

Bravo... nice work. Finally

GroundedWisdom

Overall, I think I'm cool with it. I admit I have to have more coffee and consider it deeper. Lol. My main issues with metrics for Kills and penalizing Resources are respected, so I'm okay with this. Interesting angle. Actually, some ideas I remember shared here. On the surface, looks good.

LeNoirFaineant

Qwerty wrote: »

i don't understand, in 1 section you write this:

We want to make sure that engaging in fights awards more points than just walking around a map.
The Alliance War map has a large amount of empty nodes, many being portal entrances and exits, and navigating through those shouldn't win a war over taking a shorter path that actually has Defenders along it.

and for attacker kills you write this:

Attacker walks through a node that could have a defender on it but doesn’t (i.e. an empty node - this does not include portal entrances/exits or other nodes where you can’t place a Defender):
- Attacker earns 240 Bonus Points in addition to any other points earned from node exploration.

what am i missing here?

@Qwerty if they didn't award full points for empty nodes my guess is it would bring back the win wars by placing fewer defenders thing. You could potentially score more than the opponent by giving them fewer opportunities to score points.

Qwerty

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

Qwerty wrote: »

i don't understand, in 1 section you write this:

We want to make sure that engaging in fights awards more points than just walking around a map.
The Alliance War map has a large amount of empty nodes, many being portal entrances and exits, and navigating through those shouldn't win a war over taking a shorter path that actually has Defenders along it.

and for attacker kills you write this:

Attacker walks through a node that could have a defender on it but doesn’t (i.e. an empty node - this does not include portal entrances/exits or other nodes where you can’t place a Defender):
- Attacker earns 240 Bonus Points in addition to any other points earned from node exploration.

what am i missing here?

@Qwerty if they didn't award full points for empty nodes my guess is it would bring back the win wars by placing fewer defenders thing. You could potentially score more than the opponent by giving them fewer opportunities to score points.

thanks

DNA3000

Indrick781 wrote: »

Changes look ok on paper. Attack bonus is basically defender kills. The problems I have are that everyone is still going to go for 100% exploration so defenders remaining will still basically be zero points and the rewards still are pretty terrible. The war crystals suck outside of loyalty and the shards are lower than arena still.

I don't see that as a problem with the defenders remaining metric. That metric specifically matters in alliance wars that don't end in 100%, and there are still lots of those. Where both sides reach 100% kills and 100% explore, the war will most likely be decided by the attacker bonus points. If that is close, it could be decided on diversity points but I've already addressed that in my first post.

As to rewards, we should cross that bridge when AW reaches its final form. Until it settles down, I don't think adding rewards to the system is a good idea myself. The majority of the competitively oriented players need to believe the wars are basically fair before we start discussing how the winners (and losers) should be rewarded in my opinion.

DNA3000

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

Qwerty wrote: »

i don't understand, in 1 section you write this:

We want to make sure that engaging in fights awards more points than just walking around a map.
The Alliance War map has a large amount of empty nodes, many being portal entrances and exits, and navigating through those shouldn't win a war over taking a shorter path that actually has Defenders along it.

and for attacker kills you write this:

Attacker walks through a node that could have a defender on it but doesn’t (i.e. an empty node - this does not include portal entrances/exits or other nodes where you can’t place a Defender):
- Attacker earns 240 Bonus Points in addition to any other points earned from node exploration.

what am i missing here?

@Qwerty if they didn't award full points for empty nodes my guess is it would bring back the win wars by placing fewer defenders thing. You could potentially score more than the opponent by giving them fewer opportunities to score points.

That was the specific intent when I proposed this idea. It should be impossible for the defenders to deny the attackers the bonus for being good attackers by simply not giving them anything to attack.

Nottafinga1

I feel we need to talk about rank down tickets, a lot of us wasted valuable resources on champs we never would've ranked up if you didn't push defender diversity in the 1st place. We just ranked up champs because YOU wanted diversity, not us. We now suffer from the improper decisions made on your part.

On a more positive note, I do like the sound of the changes you're implementing.

Kpatrix

Qwerty wrote: »

i don't understand, in 1 section you write this:

We want to make sure that engaging in fights awards more points than just walking around a map.
The Alliance War map has a large amount of empty nodes, many being portal entrances and exits, and navigating through those shouldn't win a war over taking a shorter path that actually has Defenders along it.

and for attacker kills you write this:

Attacker walks through a node that could have a defender on it but doesn’t (i.e. an empty node - this does not include portal entrances/exits or other nodes where you can’t place a Defender):
- Attacker earns 240 Bonus Points in addition to any other points earned from node exploration.

what am i missing here?

Possibly for the way mvp is decided ?

unknown

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Roninitup

Will the matchmaking parameters also be addressed or will it still be by prestige primarily and war rating second?