1. Why can't an alliance legitimately decide that they are fed up with the rewards chase and item-burn at the top masters level, and decide that they (as an alliance) want a break together at a lower war rating to have some chill wars, and take it easy over the holiday season? It is ok for 1 player to retire, ok for 10 players to retire, why can't an entire alliance have a change in direction?
Take a break from war then. They aren't chill wars for the alliances that they are playing lol.
So you cannot choose your war tier in this game or level at which you wish to compete? Its either quit AW for good or fight at Master? That seems pretty untenable.
So you cannot choose your war tier in this game? its either quit AW for good or fight at Master?
Don’t conflate moving to a lower tier to take a break from master tier with the massive amounts of AW war rating manipulation to fraud your way to extra season points/defenders remaining against weaker competition while avoiding your actual competition.
That's what I'm getting at - what is "actual competition"? Who is to decide that? Why can't I or anybody legitimately decide that I refuse to spend the amount needed to compete in the Master bracket, and choose to compete only at the platinum or even gold bracket?
Edit to add: if anything at all, it seems to me that the problem is one of scoring. If an ally starting at a certain rating is able to climb up still into masters/platinum, and that is considered unfair, then the scoring system should be changed not to allow that. People must be allowed to determine what level they wish to play at. Where they end up over the course of a season is, however, a matter for game development, and by extension the game makers, to decide.
That's what I'm getting at - what is "actual competition"? Who is to decide that? Why can't I or anybody legitimately decide that I refuse to spend the amount needed to compete in the Master bracket, and choose to compete only at the platinum or even gold bracket?
That’s fine. You just don’t get to purposely avoid tougher competition but still scheme to get those same rewards by fighting overmatched alliances that give you inflated scores all without spending or boosting.
Well I mean, under the current scoring system you DO get to do that, and that’s the problem.
Not only has @Kabam Miike said it’s against the spirit of competition but kabam is also losing money every time it happens.
That's what I'm getting at - what is "actual competition"? Who is to decide that? Why can't I or anybody legitimately decide that I refuse to spend the amount needed to compete in the Master bracket, and choose to compete only at the platinum or even gold bracket?
That’s fine. You just don’t get to purposely avoid tougher competition but still scheme to get those same rewards by fighting overmatched alliances that give you inflated scores all without spending or boosting.
Well I mean, under the current scoring system you DO get to do that, and that’s the problem.
Not only has @Kabam Miike said it’s against the spirit of competition but kabam is also losing money every time it happens.
Yes, definitely agree with you. And the root of the problem is mis-matches in general. Master allies need to stop matching up with anyone more than 5 spots away from them in the season leaderboard for instance. The predominant strategy now for top 5 is to match smaller allies that are unable to complete their defences, and thereby allowing them to gain extra points from nodes left up. They also conveniently have to spend little to nothing in ensuring these easy victories.
That's what I'm getting at - what is "actual competition"? Who is to decide that? Why can't I or anybody legitimately decide that I refuse to spend the amount needed to compete in the Master bracket, and choose to compete only at the platinum or even gold bracket?
That’s fine. You just don’t get to purposely avoid tougher competition but still scheme to get those same rewards by fighting overmatched alliances that give you inflated scores all without spending or boosting.
Well I mean, under the current scoring system you DO get to do that, and that’s the problem.
Not only has @Kabam Miike said it’s against the spirit of competition but kabam is also losing money every time it happens.
Yes, definitely agree with you. And the root of the problem is mis-matches in general. Master allies need to stop matching up with anyone more than 5 spots away from them in the season leaderboard for instance. The predominant strategy now for top 5 is to match smaller allies that are unable to complete their defences, and thereby allowing them to gain extra points from nodes left up. They also conveniently have to spend little to nothing in ensuring these easy victories.
Yea that’s been the strategy for months. But not everyone in the top 5 does that.
I know an alliance named R13 shifted to G13
They now in gold1 and aiming Platinum1 by winning all wars
Last season they're in Platinum 2 rank1
So you are the smart one in your alliance huh?
Boy, it is not possible to get in P1 from gold 1.
Has it ever came across your mind that, said alliance might be taking a break from the competitive aspect?
I don't know whether I'm the smart one or not but i can atleast say that i or my alliance never used unfair means to hamper the level of competition in the game or to harm the lower tier alliances, who already receiving way too less in form of rewards (which is now taken away by high tier alliances shifted to lower tier just for sake of low competition and easy equivalent rewards that they're earning before)
If shifting to lower tier isn't a problematic thing then kabammiike would never had commented on this post and affirm the post of OP
If an alliance is taking a break then why not shift to zero rated alliances and why deliberately dropping or shifting to Gold1 or Platinum3
And in order to get over with the level of Competition the shell alliances were acquired through which every war can be won and ended up in similar season rewards by dropping less glory on potions and collectively be in better position than before.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
I still think a viable solution is to incorporate Prestige into the Matchmaking somehow. It's already a mechanic used for AQ. It's not likely to be manipulated by individuals because they aren't going to change that within their own Accounts. Especially now that you can't sell 5*s.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
1. Why can't an alliance legitimately decide that they are fed up with the rewards chase and item-burn at the top masters level, and decide that they (as an alliance) want a break together at a lower war rating to have some chill wars, and take it easy over the holiday season? It is ok for 1 player to retire, ok for 10 players to retire, why can't an entire alliance have a change in direction?
There's nothing wrong with that. However, it is extremely unlikely for any high tier alliance to end up rating in the "Participation" bracket when throttling down to a slower pace. At higher war ratings a *single* war could jump you into the bronze bracket and certainly out of the Participation bracket. If you see a group of highly rated or very strong players in a participation alliance they either took the entire season off (possible but unlikely) or they jumped into a shell (vastly more likely to be manipulative in nature). I don't think it is even possible they created a new alliance because that would show no prior history.
1. Why can't an alliance legitimately decide that they are fed up with the rewards chase and item-burn at the top masters level, and decide that they (as an alliance) want a break together at a lower war rating to have some chill wars, and take it easy over the holiday season? It is ok for 1 player to retire, ok for 10 players to retire, why can't an entire alliance have a change in direction?
There's nothing wrong with that. However, it is extremely unlikely for any high tier alliance to end up rating in the "Participation" bracket when throttling down to a slower pace. At higher war ratings a *single* war could jump you into the bronze bracket and certainly out of the Participation bracket. If you see a group of highly rated or very strong players in a participation alliance they either took the entire season off (possible but unlikely) or they jumped into a shell (vastly more likely to be manipulative in nature). I don't think it is even possible they created a new alliance because that would show no prior history.
I think some of that is what we've been experiencing. After Season 5, we were knocked down. WAY down. Mostly because of the insane Matches. Hence my posting. Technically, because we lost, but over half the Season had Matches that really didn't add up. Now, we're still being Matched with Allies that have R5 5*s and 6*s, that really don't belong where they're at. Which is how we got there. The system is all over the place, and I find it very difficult to believe it's the result of people just taking it easy.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Alliance rating should have some say in tier...a 18mill group should never play a 9mill.
Attempting to match both war rating and alliance rating is one of the critical failures of the current match making system. One problem is that for many combinations of war rating and alliance rating there are no other alliances that can perfectly match you. That's why in past iterations and even in the current system some alliances wait indefinitely for a match.
Based on current behavior, the current system first looks for a near identical war rating seeking match. If it finds another alliance currently matching, it checks alliance rating. If that is close enough, they get matched. If it is not close enough, both alliances continue looking. However, the longer they are in the queue, the more the system begins to relax both criteria and look for alliances that have slightly higher or lower war rating, and eventually higher or lower alliance rating. The longer you are in the queue, the wider the match the game will "settle" for. This contributes to both longer match times (bad) and weird match ups (also bad).
So long as the game allows players to choose the time that they start looking for matches, it is literally impossible for the game to consistently find matches based on both war rating and alliance rating. And ironically, the more people complain about "mismatches" the more Kabam fiddles with the system to "fix" those mismatches and the system actually tends to perform worse.
Alliance rating should have ZERO effect on match making. Alliance rating doesn't correlate to war fighting strength, only war rating does as war rating is affected by wins and losses. Alliance rating is affected by how many champs every player has. Matching based on alliance rating (which the current system stupidly does) is like using the average height of the team to determine the seating for the NFL playoffs.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Even this is flawed. Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers? If after every season my war rating gets close to 2800 and I start running into Master alliances, and I want to avoid that, why can't I do that? You are saying that players should be deprived of the choice of how hard they want to play in AW?
As I mentioned above, the problem is one of scoring. Players should always be entitled to choose their starting points, but the game should be tweaked to adjust how far it is possible to go with those starting points.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Even this is flawed. Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers? If after every season my war rating gets close to 2800 and I start running into Master alliances, and I want to avoid that, why can't I do that? You are saying that players should be deprived of the choice of how hard they want to play in AW?
As I mentioned above, the problem is one of scoring. Players should always be entitled to choose their starting points, but the game should be tweaked to adjust how far it is possible to go with those starting points.
The problem is, in "alleviating that pressure", they're pecking off others who aren't nearly as equipped as them. Which is why there needs to be some kind of mechanism that Matches relatively close strengths. As it stands, the system that Matches based on abilities is being pulled in all different directions because it Matches based on cumulative performance, and nothing is regulating whether the Matches are fair or reasonable. Whether taking a break or manipulating the system, the overall effect is Allies are being stonewalled through no fault of their own but Matchmaking a War.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Even this is flawed. Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers? If after every season my war rating gets close to 2800 and I start running into Master alliances, and I want to avoid that, why can't I do that? You are saying that players should be deprived of the choice of how hard they want to play in AW?
As I mentioned above, the problem is one of scoring. Players should always be entitled to choose their starting points, but the game should be tweaked to adjust how far it is possible to go with those starting points.
Why do we punish people who don't like to dribble in basketball? At some point, the answer to those kinds of questions is, we design the game, we design the rules, we decide what is fair and unfair competition. We want more passing in football, we create the pass interference rule. Is it unfair to defenders? Not by definition. If we decide that players manipulating rating in a way that grants them a significant advantage in earning rewards is not acceptable, then we state so for the record and we then penalize that behavior.
Even you're saying that the game "should be tweaked" to adjust what's possible when you provide starting point options. Why are you allowed to punish players for making those choices, if you don't like others doing the same? Why shouldn't players that make those choice be allowed to score as many points as they currently can, and achieve any rewards they can obtain?
In any event, my proposed solution to all objections like this is to have two tiers of AW. In the lower tier, things like you're describing would be intrinsically fair, because rewards would be capped and manipulation would also be capped. In the upper tier, you want access to those rewards, you accept the harsher restrictions. If you don't want to run into master alliances often and you're willing to sacrifice the top tier rewards, you simply stay in the lower tier.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Even this is flawed. Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers? If after every season my war rating gets close to 2800 and I start running into Master alliances, and I want to avoid that, why can't I do that? You are saying that players should be deprived of the choice of how hard they want to play in AW?
As I mentioned above, the problem is one of scoring. Players should always be entitled to choose their starting points, but the game should be tweaked to adjust how far it is possible to go with those starting points.
The problem is, in "alleviating that pressure", they're pecking off others who aren't nearly as equipped as them. Which is why there needs to be some kind of mechanism that Matches relatively close strengths. As it stands, the system that Matches based on abilities is being pulled in all different directions because it Matches based on cumulative performance, and nothing is regulating whether the Matches are fair or reasonable. Whether taking a break or manipulating the system, the overall effect is Allies are being stonewalled through no fault of their own but Matchmaking a War.
Fully agree with you here. The point as you have pointed out is that the matchmaking system is currently flawed. I have made the point above that, yes, some may be seeing it as certain alliances swapping down and "pecking off others", but this is simply a result of the same thing happening to them higher up. Master alliances are "pecking off" platinum alliances; platinum alliances get fed up playing at that level, want to move somewhere more relaxed, and then end up "pecking off" gold alliances, on and on. The root cause is matchmaking. The solution is to fix that, not to arbitrarily impose some barrier on players' free choice as to what ally and what war rating they want to play at.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Even this is flawed. Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers? If after every season my war rating gets close to 2800 and I start running into Master alliances, and I want to avoid that, why can't I do that? You are saying that players should be deprived of the choice of how hard they want to play in AW?
As I mentioned above, the problem is one of scoring. Players should always be entitled to choose their starting points, but the game should be tweaked to adjust how far it is possible to go with those starting points.
Why do we punish people who don't like to dribble in basketball? At some point, the answer to those kinds of questions is, we design the game, we design the rules, we decide what is fair and unfair competition. We want more passing in football, we create the pass interference rule. Is it unfair to defenders? Not by definition. If we decide that players manipulating rating in a way that grants them a significant advantage in earning rewards is not acceptable, then we state so for the record and we then penalize that behavior.
Even you're saying that the game "should be tweaked" to adjust what's possible when you provide starting point options. Why are you allowed to punish players for making those choices, if you don't like others doing the same? Why shouldn't players that make those choice be allowed to score as many points as they currently can, and achieve any rewards they can obtain?
In any event, my proposed solution to all objections like this is to have two tiers of AW. In the lower tier, things like you're describing would be intrinsically fair, because rewards would be capped and manipulation would also be capped. In the upper tier, you want access to those rewards, you accept the harsher restrictions. If you don't want to run into master alliances often and you're willing to sacrifice the top tier rewards, you simply stay in the lower tier.
The rules within the game like dribbling and passing are entirely different from choosing the league you want to play in in the first place. The proper equivalent in our case would be rules like diversity and defenders remaining. What we're talking about when discussing swapping is players choosing the level/league at which they want to play. My point is that any player should be entitled to choose where he wants to play. Your suggestion of imposing prohibitions on that is akin to saying a professional football player ought never to be allowed to play in an amateur league. He must opt either to play in a professional league or never at all for the rest of his life. How is that fair? Yes, when he moves to play in the amateur league, he will dominate the rest and in a sense that makes it tougher for his opponents, but the trade off on his part is that he doesnt get the same rewards as he would otherwise get playing in the professional league.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Even this is flawed. Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers? If after every season my war rating gets close to 2800 and I start running into Master alliances, and I want to avoid that, why can't I do that? You are saying that players should be deprived of the choice of how hard they want to play in AW?
As I mentioned above, the problem is one of scoring. Players should always be entitled to choose their starting points, but the game should be tweaked to adjust how far it is possible to go with those starting points.
Why do we punish people who don't like to dribble in basketball? At some point, the answer to those kinds of questions is, we design the game, we design the rules, we decide what is fair and unfair competition. We want more passing in football, we create the pass interference rule. Is it unfair to defenders? Not by definition. If we decide that players manipulating rating in a way that grants them a significant advantage in earning rewards is not acceptable, then we state so for the record and we then penalize that behavior.
Even you're saying that the game "should be tweaked" to adjust what's possible when you provide starting point options. Why are you allowed to punish players for making those choices, if you don't like others doing the same? Why shouldn't players that make those choice be allowed to score as many points as they currently can, and achieve any rewards they can obtain?
In any event, my proposed solution to all objections like this is to have two tiers of AW. In the lower tier, things like you're describing would be intrinsically fair, because rewards would be capped and manipulation would also be capped. In the upper tier, you want access to those rewards, you accept the harsher restrictions. If you don't want to run into master alliances often and you're willing to sacrifice the top tier rewards, you simply stay in the lower tier.
There is a difference between rules like dribbling and passing in sports, and what we're discussing here, which is akin to choosing the league in which you wish to play. Rules like dribbling and passing are equivalent to the rules in AW like diversity points and defenders left remaining. We are not quarreling over those. What we are discussing is whether players have a right to choose the league at which they wish to play - to continue the analogy of sports. What you are saying is that a professional football player is not entitled to decide one day that he doesn't want to play professionally anymore, and wants to play in an amateur league. Why should he be prevented from doing that? Yes it is true that he will dominate the teams and players he faces in the amateur league because he is so much more skilled, but how does that make it unfair? He earned his skill, its part of him. It would be more unfair to prevent him arbitrarily from competing in an amateur league just because those there don't want to lose. Bear in mind that there is a trade off for him playing in the amateur league, namely, that he loses the chance to obtain the rewards that professional play offers.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Even this is flawed. Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers? If after every season my war rating gets close to 2800 and I start running into Master alliances, and I want to avoid that, why can't I do that? You are saying that players should be deprived of the choice of how hard they want to play in AW?
As I mentioned above, the problem is one of scoring. Players should always be entitled to choose their starting points, but the game should be tweaked to adjust how far it is possible to go with those starting points.
Why do we punish people who don't like to dribble in basketball? At some point, the answer to those kinds of questions is, we design the game, we design the rules, we decide what is fair and unfair competition. We want more passing in football, we create the pass interference rule. Is it unfair to defenders? Not by definition. If we decide that players manipulating rating in a way that grants them a significant advantage in earning rewards is not acceptable, then we state so for the record and we then penalize that behavior.
Even you're saying that the game "should be tweaked" to adjust what's possible when you provide starting point options. Why are you allowed to punish players for making those choices, if you don't like others doing the same? Why shouldn't players that make those choice be allowed to score as many points as they currently can, and achieve any rewards they can obtain?
In any event, my proposed solution to all objections like this is to have two tiers of AW. In the lower tier, things like you're describing would be intrinsically fair, because rewards would be capped and manipulation would also be capped. In the upper tier, you want access to those rewards, you accept the harsher restrictions. If you don't want to run into master alliances often and you're willing to sacrifice the top tier rewards, you simply stay in the lower tier.
The rules within the game like dribbling and passing are entirely different from choosing the league you want to play in in the first place. The proper equivalent in our case would be rules like diversity and defenders remaining. What we're talking about when discussing swapping is players choosing the level/league at which they want to play. My point is that any player should be entitled to choose where he wants to play. Your suggestion of imposing prohibitions on that is akin to saying a professional football player ought never to be allowed to play in an amateur league. He must opt either to play in a professional league or never at all for the rest of his life. How is that fair? Yes, when he moves to play in the amateur league, he will dominate the rest and in a sense that makes it tougher for his opponents, but the trade off on his part is that he doesnt get the same rewards as he would otherwise get playing in the professional league.
There is a difference between a pro football player opting to play in a lesser league and the NY Giants opting as a team to play against college teams while still collecting NFL salaries lol
There is a difference between a pro football player opting to play in a lesser league and the NY Giants opting as a team to play against college teams while still collecting NFL salaries lol
NY Giants = Tier 1 Alliance
College Teams = Tier 2-3 Alliance
NFL salaries = AW Season Master & Top 3 Rewards
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Even this is flawed. Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers? If after every season my war rating gets close to 2800 and I start running into Master alliances, and I want to avoid that, why can't I do that? You are saying that players should be deprived of the choice of how hard they want to play in AW?
As I mentioned above, the problem is one of scoring. Players should always be entitled to choose their starting points, but the game should be tweaked to adjust how far it is possible to go with those starting points.
Why do we punish people who don't like to dribble in basketball? At some point, the answer to those kinds of questions is, we design the game, we design the rules, we decide what is fair and unfair competition. We want more passing in football, we create the pass interference rule. Is it unfair to defenders? Not by definition. If we decide that players manipulating rating in a way that grants them a significant advantage in earning rewards is not acceptable, then we state so for the record and we then penalize that behavior.
Even you're saying that the game "should be tweaked" to adjust what's possible when you provide starting point options. Why are you allowed to punish players for making those choices, if you don't like others doing the same? Why shouldn't players that make those choice be allowed to score as many points as they currently can, and achieve any rewards they can obtain?
In any event, my proposed solution to all objections like this is to have two tiers of AW. In the lower tier, things like you're describing would be intrinsically fair, because rewards would be capped and manipulation would also be capped. In the upper tier, you want access to those rewards, you accept the harsher restrictions. If you don't want to run into master alliances often and you're willing to sacrifice the top tier rewards, you simply stay in the lower tier.
The rules within the game like dribbling and passing are entirely different from choosing the league you want to play in in the first place. The proper equivalent in our case would be rules like diversity and defenders remaining. What we're talking about when discussing swapping is players choosing the level/league at which they want to play. My point is that any player should be entitled to choose where he wants to play. Your suggestion of imposing prohibitions on that is akin to saying a professional football player ought never to be allowed to play in an amateur league. He must opt either to play in a professional league or never at all for the rest of his life. How is that fair? Yes, when he moves to play in the amateur league, he will dominate the rest and in a sense that makes it tougher for his opponents, but the trade off on his part is that he doesnt get the same rewards as he would otherwise get playing in the professional league.
There is a difference between a pro football player opting to play in a lesser league and the NY Giants opting as a team to play against college teams while still collecting NFL salaries lol
Sure, but then is the problem with (1)NY Giants choosing to play against college teams, or (2) the fact that they can do so and still collect NFL salaries? If they aren't getting the same salaries, then whats the complaint? That's my point - the issue we're seeing is a scoring issue, and people shouldn't blame players wanting to drop down a tier for the sake of taking it more easily in the game.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Even this is flawed. Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers? If after every season my war rating gets close to 2800 and I start running into Master alliances, and I want to avoid that, why can't I do that? You are saying that players should be deprived of the choice of how hard they want to play in AW?
As I mentioned above, the problem is one of scoring. Players should always be entitled to choose their starting points, but the game should be tweaked to adjust how far it is possible to go with those starting points.
Why do we punish people who don't like to dribble in basketball? At some point, the answer to those kinds of questions is, we design the game, we design the rules, we decide what is fair and unfair competition. We want more passing in football, we create the pass interference rule. Is it unfair to defenders? Not by definition. If we decide that players manipulating rating in a way that grants them a significant advantage in earning rewards is not acceptable, then we state so for the record and we then penalize that behavior.
Even you're saying that the game "should be tweaked" to adjust what's possible when you provide starting point options. Why are you allowed to punish players for making those choices, if you don't like others doing the same? Why shouldn't players that make those choice be allowed to score as many points as they currently can, and achieve any rewards they can obtain?
In any event, my proposed solution to all objections like this is to have two tiers of AW. In the lower tier, things like you're describing would be intrinsically fair, because rewards would be capped and manipulation would also be capped. In the upper tier, you want access to those rewards, you accept the harsher restrictions. If you don't want to run into master alliances often and you're willing to sacrifice the top tier rewards, you simply stay in the lower tier.
The rules within the game like dribbling and passing are entirely different from choosing the league you want to play in in the first place. The proper equivalent in our case would be rules like diversity and defenders remaining. What we're talking about when discussing swapping is players choosing the level/league at which they want to play. My point is that any player should be entitled to choose where he wants to play. Your suggestion of imposing prohibitions on that is akin to saying a professional football player ought never to be allowed to play in an amateur league. He must opt either to play in a professional league or never at all for the rest of his life. How is that fair? Yes, when he moves to play in the amateur league, he will dominate the rest and in a sense that makes it tougher for his opponents, but the trade off on his part is that he doesnt get the same rewards as he would otherwise get playing in the professional league.
There is a difference between a pro football player opting to play in a lesser league and the NY Giants opting as a team to play against college teams while still collecting NFL salaries lol
Sure, but then is the problem with (1)NY Giants choosing to play against college teams, or (2) the fact that they can do so and still collect NFL salaries? If they aren't getting the same salaries, then whats the complaint? That's my point - the issue we're seeing is a scoring issue, and people shouldn't blame players wanting to drop down a tier for the sake of taking it more easily in the game.
They aren't winning the Superbowl and getting all the playoff bonuses, but by manipulating the war rating they are still collecting higher level rewards (NFL saleries in the analogy) while playing significantly lower opponents. If you want to take it easy by not boosting every fight and dropping to wherever that puts you that's one thing. Manipulating the system to control the level of your matches for the purpose of taking it easy at the expense of alliances trying to compete at the highest level that they can should be stopped imo.
Actually, a simple way to find out the people doing alliance swapping is to just sort them according to the alliance they were in last season, and the alliance they are currently in.
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Even this is flawed. Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers? If after every season my war rating gets close to 2800 and I start running into Master alliances, and I want to avoid that, why can't I do that? You are saying that players should be deprived of the choice of how hard they want to play in AW?
As I mentioned above, the problem is one of scoring. Players should always be entitled to choose their starting points, but the game should be tweaked to adjust how far it is possible to go with those starting points.
Why do we punish people who don't like to dribble in basketball? At some point, the answer to those kinds of questions is, we design the game, we design the rules, we decide what is fair and unfair competition. We want more passing in football, we create the pass interference rule. Is it unfair to defenders? Not by definition. If we decide that players manipulating rating in a way that grants them a significant advantage in earning rewards is not acceptable, then we state so for the record and we then penalize that behavior.
Even you're saying that the game "should be tweaked" to adjust what's possible when you provide starting point options. Why are you allowed to punish players for making those choices, if you don't like others doing the same? Why shouldn't players that make those choice be allowed to score as many points as they currently can, and achieve any rewards they can obtain?
In any event, my proposed solution to all objections like this is to have two tiers of AW. In the lower tier, things like you're describing would be intrinsically fair, because rewards would be capped and manipulation would also be capped. In the upper tier, you want access to those rewards, you accept the harsher restrictions. If you don't want to run into master alliances often and you're willing to sacrifice the top tier rewards, you simply stay in the lower tier.
The rules within the game like dribbling and passing are entirely different from choosing the league you want to play in in the first place. The proper equivalent in our case would be rules like diversity and defenders remaining. What we're talking about when discussing swapping is players choosing the level/league at which they want to play. My point is that any player should be entitled to choose where he wants to play. Your suggestion of imposing prohibitions on that is akin to saying a professional football player ought never to be allowed to play in an amateur league. He must opt either to play in a professional league or never at all for the rest of his life. How is that fair? Yes, when he moves to play in the amateur league, he will dominate the rest and in a sense that makes it tougher for his opponents, but the trade off on his part is that he doesnt get the same rewards as he would otherwise get playing in the professional league.
There is a difference between a pro football player opting to play in a lesser league and the NY Giants opting as a team to play against college teams while still collecting NFL salaries lol
Sure, but then is the problem with (1)NY Giants choosing to play against college teams, or (2) the fact that they can do so and still collect NFL salaries? If they aren't getting the same salaries, then whats the complaint? That's my point - the issue we're seeing is a scoring issue, and people shouldn't blame players wanting to drop down a tier for the sake of taking it more easily in the game.
They aren't winning the Superbowl and getting all the playoff bonuses, but by manipulating the war rating they are still collecting higher level rewards (NFL saleries in the analogy) while playing significantly lower opponents. If you want to take it easy by not boosting every fight and dropping to wherever that puts you that's one thing. Manipulating the system to control the level of your matches for the purpose of taking it easy at the expense of alliances trying to compete at the highest level that they can should be stopped imo.
You are saying that a professional player cannot play in the amateur league then. He must continue to play in the professional league until he gets kicked out of it. He cannot choose to quit of his own volition and simply join another league.
If winning the amateur league somehow gives him rewards equivalent to the professional league, how is that his fault? People have the freedom to choose where they want to compete surely.
Comments
Don’t conflate moving to a lower tier to take a break from master tier with the massive amounts of AW war rating manipulation to fraud your way to extra season points/defenders remaining against weaker competition while avoiding your actual competition.
Edit to add: if anything at all, it seems to me that the problem is one of scoring. If an ally starting at a certain rating is able to climb up still into masters/platinum, and that is considered unfair, then the scoring system should be changed not to allow that. People must be allowed to determine what level they wish to play at. Where they end up over the course of a season is, however, a matter for game development, and by extension the game makers, to decide.
That’s fine. You just don’t get to purposely avoid tougher competition but still scheme to get those same rewards by fighting overmatched alliances that give you inflated scores all without spending or boosting.
Well I mean, under the current scoring system you DO get to do that, and that’s the problem.
Not only has @Kabam Miike said it’s against the spirit of competition but kabam is also losing money every time it happens.
Yes, definitely agree with you. And the root of the problem is mis-matches in general. Master allies need to stop matching up with anyone more than 5 spots away from them in the season leaderboard for instance. The predominant strategy now for top 5 is to match smaller allies that are unable to complete their defences, and thereby allowing them to gain extra points from nodes left up. They also conveniently have to spend little to nothing in ensuring these easy victories.
Yea that’s been the strategy for months. But not everyone in the top 5 does that.
I don't know whether I'm the smart one or not but i can atleast say that i or my alliance never used unfair means to hamper the level of competition in the game or to harm the lower tier alliances, who already receiving way too less in form of rewards (which is now taken away by high tier alliances shifted to lower tier just for sake of low competition and easy equivalent rewards that they're earning before)
If shifting to lower tier isn't a problematic thing then kabammiike would never had commented on this post and affirm the post of OP
If an alliance is taking a break then why not shift to zero rated alliances and why deliberately dropping or shifting to Gold1 or Platinum3
Further few days back you yourself pointed out your concerns on high tier wars in this thread created by you
https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/77851/i-blame-it-to-higher-tier-alliances-for-what-is-going-on-right-now#latest
And in order to get over with the level of Competition the shell alliances were acquired through which every war can be won and ended up in similar season rewards by dropping less glory on potions and collectively be in better position than before.
Take care
P.s Don't enter the danger zone on your own
If more than 25-26 people register the same pre and post results, then it’s almost suffice to say that the entire alliance is guilty of shell alliance swapping and should be penalized.
The fun part can then be to not inform the alliance then implement the penalty at the end of the Season by halving their Season score. (Just trolling about this but it would sure be fun to see the reactions.)
@Kabam Miike
(Just wanted Miike to see the suggestion.)
"Exploit" is Kabam's catch all for penalties which aren't against a specific rule and war rating manipulation qualifies.
There's nothing wrong with that. However, it is extremely unlikely for any high tier alliance to end up rating in the "Participation" bracket when throttling down to a slower pace. At higher war ratings a *single* war could jump you into the bronze bracket and certainly out of the Participation bracket. If you see a group of highly rated or very strong players in a participation alliance they either took the entire season off (possible but unlikely) or they jumped into a shell (vastly more likely to be manipulative in nature). I don't think it is even possible they created a new alliance because that would show no prior history.
I think some of that is what we've been experiencing. After Season 5, we were knocked down. WAY down. Mostly because of the insane Matches. Hence my posting. Technically, because we lost, but over half the Season had Matches that really didn't add up. Now, we're still being Matched with Allies that have R5 5*s and 6*s, that really don't belong where they're at. Which is how we got there. The system is all over the place, and I find it very difficult to believe it's the result of people just taking it easy.
By itself I don't think you can do this, because I can easily conceive of scenarios where this would happen for perfectly legitimate reasons. Suppose you're in a high level alliance and the leader gets tagged for cheating. Well, technically speaking the alliance gets tagged, but everyone knows it is the leader. The leader refuses to acknowledge or stop their behavior, so everyone else decides to leave. One of them has a secondary account in a dead alliance, so they all decide to move to that alliance. That's a legitimate move.
Now, if you see these guys flip back and forth between two alliances, that repeated behavior would be a much stronger pattern of obvious manipulation. But it would take multiple seasons to detect. Usually, with things like this a single signature isn't enough to prove anything strongly enough. But multiple behaviors happening simultaneously or consecutively can build a strong circumstantial case. That's one of the reasons no one discusses how they catch cheaters. It is often the case that there is no smoking gun, rather there's a checklist they are looking for, and anyone scoring high enough on it gets nabbed. Knowing what's on that checklist and knowing how they score you can give you the means to evade their detection system.
Attempting to match both war rating and alliance rating is one of the critical failures of the current match making system. One problem is that for many combinations of war rating and alliance rating there are no other alliances that can perfectly match you. That's why in past iterations and even in the current system some alliances wait indefinitely for a match.
Based on current behavior, the current system first looks for a near identical war rating seeking match. If it finds another alliance currently matching, it checks alliance rating. If that is close enough, they get matched. If it is not close enough, both alliances continue looking. However, the longer they are in the queue, the more the system begins to relax both criteria and look for alliances that have slightly higher or lower war rating, and eventually higher or lower alliance rating. The longer you are in the queue, the wider the match the game will "settle" for. This contributes to both longer match times (bad) and weird match ups (also bad).
So long as the game allows players to choose the time that they start looking for matches, it is literally impossible for the game to consistently find matches based on both war rating and alliance rating. And ironically, the more people complain about "mismatches" the more Kabam fiddles with the system to "fix" those mismatches and the system actually tends to perform worse.
Alliance rating should have ZERO effect on match making. Alliance rating doesn't correlate to war fighting strength, only war rating does as war rating is affected by wins and losses. Alliance rating is affected by how many champs every player has. Matching based on alliance rating (which the current system stupidly does) is like using the average height of the team to determine the seating for the NFL playoffs.
I know but what if there was such a thing
Even this is flawed. Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers? If after every season my war rating gets close to 2800 and I start running into Master alliances, and I want to avoid that, why can't I do that? You are saying that players should be deprived of the choice of how hard they want to play in AW?
As I mentioned above, the problem is one of scoring. Players should always be entitled to choose their starting points, but the game should be tweaked to adjust how far it is possible to go with those starting points.
The problem is, in "alleviating that pressure", they're pecking off others who aren't nearly as equipped as them. Which is why there needs to be some kind of mechanism that Matches relatively close strengths. As it stands, the system that Matches based on abilities is being pulled in all different directions because it Matches based on cumulative performance, and nothing is regulating whether the Matches are fair or reasonable. Whether taking a break or manipulating the system, the overall effect is Allies are being stonewalled through no fault of their own but Matchmaking a War.
Why do we punish people who don't like to dribble in basketball? At some point, the answer to those kinds of questions is, we design the game, we design the rules, we decide what is fair and unfair competition. We want more passing in football, we create the pass interference rule. Is it unfair to defenders? Not by definition. If we decide that players manipulating rating in a way that grants them a significant advantage in earning rewards is not acceptable, then we state so for the record and we then penalize that behavior.
Even you're saying that the game "should be tweaked" to adjust what's possible when you provide starting point options. Why are you allowed to punish players for making those choices, if you don't like others doing the same? Why shouldn't players that make those choice be allowed to score as many points as they currently can, and achieve any rewards they can obtain?
In any event, my proposed solution to all objections like this is to have two tiers of AW. In the lower tier, things like you're describing would be intrinsically fair, because rewards would be capped and manipulation would also be capped. In the upper tier, you want access to those rewards, you accept the harsher restrictions. If you don't want to run into master alliances often and you're willing to sacrifice the top tier rewards, you simply stay in the lower tier.
Fully agree with you here. The point as you have pointed out is that the matchmaking system is currently flawed. I have made the point above that, yes, some may be seeing it as certain alliances swapping down and "pecking off others", but this is simply a result of the same thing happening to them higher up. Master alliances are "pecking off" platinum alliances; platinum alliances get fed up playing at that level, want to move somewhere more relaxed, and then end up "pecking off" gold alliances, on and on. The root cause is matchmaking. The solution is to fix that, not to arbitrarily impose some barrier on players' free choice as to what ally and what war rating they want to play at.
The rules within the game like dribbling and passing are entirely different from choosing the league you want to play in in the first place. The proper equivalent in our case would be rules like diversity and defenders remaining. What we're talking about when discussing swapping is players choosing the level/league at which they want to play. My point is that any player should be entitled to choose where he wants to play. Your suggestion of imposing prohibitions on that is akin to saying a professional football player ought never to be allowed to play in an amateur league. He must opt either to play in a professional league or never at all for the rest of his life. How is that fair? Yes, when he moves to play in the amateur league, he will dominate the rest and in a sense that makes it tougher for his opponents, but the trade off on his part is that he doesnt get the same rewards as he would otherwise get playing in the professional league.
There is a difference between rules like dribbling and passing in sports, and what we're discussing here, which is akin to choosing the league in which you wish to play. Rules like dribbling and passing are equivalent to the rules in AW like diversity points and defenders left remaining. We are not quarreling over those. What we are discussing is whether players have a right to choose the league at which they wish to play - to continue the analogy of sports. What you are saying is that a professional football player is not entitled to decide one day that he doesn't want to play professionally anymore, and wants to play in an amateur league. Why should he be prevented from doing that? Yes it is true that he will dominate the teams and players he faces in the amateur league because he is so much more skilled, but how does that make it unfair? He earned his skill, its part of him. It would be more unfair to prevent him arbitrarily from competing in an amateur league just because those there don't want to lose. Bear in mind that there is a trade off for him playing in the amateur league, namely, that he loses the chance to obtain the rewards that professional play offers.
There is a difference between a pro football player opting to play in a lesser league and the NY Giants opting as a team to play against college teams while still collecting NFL salaries lol
NY Giants = Tier 1 Alliance
College Teams = Tier 2-3 Alliance
NFL salaries = AW Season Master & Top 3 Rewards
Feel like I got that right
Sure, but then is the problem with (1)NY Giants choosing to play against college teams, or (2) the fact that they can do so and still collect NFL salaries? If they aren't getting the same salaries, then whats the complaint? That's my point - the issue we're seeing is a scoring issue, and people shouldn't blame players wanting to drop down a tier for the sake of taking it more easily in the game.
They aren't winning the Superbowl and getting all the playoff bonuses, but by manipulating the war rating they are still collecting higher level rewards (NFL saleries in the analogy) while playing significantly lower opponents. If you want to take it easy by not boosting every fight and dropping to wherever that puts you that's one thing. Manipulating the system to control the level of your matches for the purpose of taking it easy at the expense of alliances trying to compete at the highest level that they can should be stopped imo.
You are saying that a professional player cannot play in the amateur league then. He must continue to play in the professional league until he gets kicked out of it. He cannot choose to quit of his own volition and simply join another league.
If winning the amateur league somehow gives him rewards equivalent to the professional league, how is that his fault? People have the freedom to choose where they want to compete surely.