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.
I feel like you aren't really addressing the heart of the matter. We aren't talking about one player dropping to a lower alliance. We are talking about an entire alliance dropping to another alliance which has had the war rating manipulated as a shell so that they can still get decent rewards while playing against lower teams who have that same rating by fighting at the highest level they can. Other alliances at that level will use items in order to win some and lose some. The higher alliance will now compete against them while winning all their wars at no cost. And all of this in a mode that is supposed to be the highest level of competition in the game. The lower alliances shouldn't have to get matched against master groups "taking a break" while they are fighting to get gold 1 or platinum rewards. Gaming the system against real people trying to compete with others at their level kind of sucks and I hope it gets stopped. All good if you disagree but the "joining another league" analogy doesn't work. They are getting higher rewards than others playing in that league will get because they get guaranteed wins with unbeaten defenders while the others have to slog it out. And some of their opponents will get lower rewards than they deserved because they had the misfortune to get mismatched against a group taking it easy.
And to answer your question, players have the right to compete at whatever level they want within certain parameters. Heavyweight boxers can't compete in the lightweight division. NFL players can't go back to college. But a 5* college recruit can decide to play in FCS. Nick Saban can't schedule all FCS teams for Alabama though.
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.
I feel like you aren't really addressing the heart of the matter. We aren't talking about one player dropping to a lower alliance. We are talking about an entire alliance dropping to another alliance which has had the war rating manipulated as a shell so that they can still get decent rewards while playing against lower teams who have that same rating by fighting at the highest level they can. Other alliances at that level will use items in order to win some and lose some. The higher alliance will now compete against them while winning all their wars at no cost. And all of this in a mode that is supposed to be the highest level of competition in the game. The lower alliances shouldn't have to get matched against master groups "taking a break" while they are fighting to get gold 1 or platinum rewards. Gaming the system against real people trying to compete with others at their level kind of sucks and I hope it gets stopped. All good if you disagree but the "joining another league" analogy doesn't work. They are getting higher rewards than others playing in that league will get because they get guaranteed wins with unbeaten defenders while the others have to slog it out. And some of their opponents will get lower rewards than they deserved because they had the misfortune to get mismatched against a group taking it easy.
That was a good summary and really gets to the nub of our disagreement. My point is that whether it is 1 player choosing to drop, 10 players, or 30 players (ie, an entire alliance), it really makes no difference. Players should be entitled to choose the level at which they compete. You are seeing it as unfairness from the perspective of, say, the Gold tier alliance that has to face the Plat tier alliance that dropped down. I am seeing it from the perspective of the Plat tier alliance, which should have the right to choose the level it wishes to compete at. The effect of prohibiting such swaps is to compel alliances to compete at the highest level possible, instead of having the option of cutting back a season or two as they please.
Yes it seems unfair to the Gold tier alliance that has to go up against the Platinum tier alliance, but that is just the nature of competition. Sometimes you go up against stronger teams. You cannot start to ban players with, say, 5 r5 5*s from competing in Gold just because they have such stacked rosters. They earned those rosters and should be entitled to use them anywhere they want.
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.
I feel like you aren't really addressing the heart of the matter. We aren't talking about one player dropping to a lower alliance. We are talking about an entire alliance dropping to another alliance which has had the war rating manipulated as a shell so that they can still get decent rewards while playing against lower teams who have that same rating by fighting at the highest level they can. Other alliances at that level will use items in order to win some and lose some. The higher alliance will now compete against them while winning all their wars at no cost. And all of this in a mode that is supposed to be the highest level of competition in the game. The lower alliances shouldn't have to get matched against master groups "taking a break" while they are fighting to get gold 1 or platinum rewards. Gaming the system against real people trying to compete with others at their level kind of sucks and I hope it gets stopped. All good if you disagree but the "joining another league" analogy doesn't work. They are getting higher rewards than others playing in that league will get because they get guaranteed wins with unbeaten defenders while the others have to slog it out. And some of their opponents will get lower rewards than they deserved because they had the misfortune to get mismatched against a group taking it easy.
That was a good summary and really gets to the nub of our disagreement. My point is that whether it is 1 player choosing to drop, 10 players, or 30 players (ie, an entire alliance), it really makes no difference. Players should be entitled to choose the level at which they compete. You are seeing it as unfairness from the perspective of, say, the Gold tier alliance that has to face the Plat tier alliance that dropped down. I am seeing it from the perspective of the Plat tier alliance, which should have the right to choose the level it wishes to compete at. The effect of prohibiting such swaps is to compel alliances to compete at the highest level possible, instead of having the option of cutting back a season or two as they please.
Yes it seems unfair to the Gold tier alliance that has to go up against the Platinum tier alliance, but that is just the nature of competition. Sometimes you go up against stronger teams. You cannot start to ban players with, say, 5 r5 5*s from competing in Gold just because they have such stacked rosters. They earned those rosters and should be entitled to use them anywhere they want.
LOL. So in that case they should be given Gold rewards as well? Since they are competing there.
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.
I feel like you aren't really addressing the heart of the matter. We aren't talking about one player dropping to a lower alliance. We are talking about an entire alliance dropping to another alliance which has had the war rating manipulated as a shell so that they can still get decent rewards while playing against lower teams who have that same rating by fighting at the highest level they can. Other alliances at that level will use items in order to win some and lose some. The higher alliance will now compete against them while winning all their wars at no cost. And all of this in a mode that is supposed to be the highest level of competition in the game. The lower alliances shouldn't have to get matched against master groups "taking a break" while they are fighting to get gold 1 or platinum rewards. Gaming the system against real people trying to compete with others at their level kind of sucks and I hope it gets stopped. All good if you disagree but the "joining another league" analogy doesn't work. They are getting higher rewards than others playing in that league will get because they get guaranteed wins with unbeaten defenders while the others have to slog it out. And some of their opponents will get lower rewards than they deserved because they had the misfortune to get mismatched against a group taking it easy.
That was a good summary and really gets to the nub of our disagreement. My point is that whether it is 1 player choosing to drop, 10 players, or 30 players (ie, an entire alliance), it really makes no difference. Players should be entitled to choose the level at which they compete. You are seeing it as unfairness from the perspective of, say, the Gold tier alliance that has to face the Plat tier alliance that dropped down. I am seeing it from the perspective of the Plat tier alliance, which should have the right to choose the level it wishes to compete at. The effect of prohibiting such swaps is to compel alliances to compete at the highest level possible, instead of having the option of cutting back a season or two as they please.
Yes it seems unfair to the Gold tier alliance that has to go up against the Platinum tier alliance, but that is just the nature of competition. Sometimes you go up against stronger teams. You cannot start to ban players with, say, 5 r5 5*s from competing in Gold just because they have such stacked rosters. They earned those rosters and should be entitled to use them anywhere they want.
LOL. So in that case they should be given Gold rewards as well? Since they are competing there.
They should be given the same rewards any alliance starting in Gold Tier can get.
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.
I feel like you aren't really addressing the heart of the matter. We aren't talking about one player dropping to a lower alliance. We are talking about an entire alliance dropping to another alliance which has had the war rating manipulated as a shell so that they can still get decent rewards while playing against lower teams who have that same rating by fighting at the highest level they can. Other alliances at that level will use items in order to win some and lose some. The higher alliance will now compete against them while winning all their wars at no cost. And all of this in a mode that is supposed to be the highest level of competition in the game. The lower alliances shouldn't have to get matched against master groups "taking a break" while they are fighting to get gold 1 or platinum rewards. Gaming the system against real people trying to compete with others at their level kind of sucks and I hope it gets stopped. All good if you disagree but the "joining another league" analogy doesn't work. They are getting higher rewards than others playing in that league will get because they get guaranteed wins with unbeaten defenders while the others have to slog it out. And some of their opponents will get lower rewards than they deserved because they had the misfortune to get mismatched against a group taking it easy.
That was a good summary and really gets to the nub of our disagreement. My point is that whether it is 1 player choosing to drop, 10 players, or 30 players (ie, an entire alliance), it really makes no difference. Players should be entitled to choose the level at which they compete. You are seeing it as unfairness from the perspective of, say, the Gold tier alliance that has to face the Plat tier alliance that dropped down. I am seeing it from the perspective of the Plat tier alliance, which should have the right to choose the level it wishes to compete at. The effect of prohibiting such swaps is to compel alliances to compete at the highest level possible, instead of having the option of cutting back a season or two as they please.
Yes it seems unfair to the Gold tier alliance that has to go up against the Platinum tier alliance, but that is just the nature of competition. Sometimes you go up against stronger teams. You cannot start to ban players with, say, 5 r5 5*s from competing in Gold just because they have such stacked rosters. They earned those rosters and should be entitled to use them anywhere they want.
LOL. So in that case they should be given Gold rewards as well? Since they are competing there.
They should be given the same rewards any alliance starting in Gold Tier can get.
Within the last week, I've learned and personally witnessed a strategy employed by some players in which, to start the AW season, the entire alliance moves to a different alliance with a lower AW rating than the one they competed in previously. The thought behind the strategy is for that alliance to face weaker opponents, obtain much higher scores, and rack up easy wins, all in an effort to go 12-0 during the season.
For example, my alliance has about a 2600 rating and fights regularly between tier 3 or 2. Wins and losses against like opponents are often within razor thin margins. In the most recent AW, my alliance faced an alliance that had virtually the same AW rating (over 2600), but, for season 5, that alliance was noted as having achieved "Participation." A closer examination of every player's profile revealed that each one of them had a War Elite title for placing in the top 20 of last season's AW, i.e., each one did not received "Participation" but rather received at least top 20 rewards. As became clear, the strength of our opponents' defense, based on having the resources from top 20 rewards, was so much greater than our own that we did not belong in the same AW. They were clearly much better than us on defense and offense, and we got our butt kicked.
This is but one example. I'm aware of many other alliances that are employing this strategy. And while I am not aware of anything that expressly prohibits this strategy, it feels like an end around the purpose of matching like opponents with like opponents based on rating. Even though we each had a 2600 rating, the reality is that we were fighting an alliance that had more like a rating over 3000 based on the strength of their roster and their offensive skill. The end result is that my alliance fought in an AW where we had no true chance of success based on the level we are at in the game, and a much more advanced alliance obtained an easy win.
There are many aspects to this strategy that feel like the equivalent of a college sports team choosing an easy schedule over a hard one in an effort to have a better looking record. The difference, however, is that there is no form of competitive penalty for the team that goes for the soft schedule. To be sure, the multiplier that exists does not necessarily close that gap.
For instance, assume one team is in tier 1 all season and goes 9-3. Those 9 wins net 3,150,000 additional points (50,000 * 7 * 9). If another team in tier 2 goes 12-0, those 12 wins net an additional 3,720,000 (50,000 * 6.2 * 12). The tier 2 team thus earns 570,000 more than the tier 1 team.
More than that, the converse is that the alliance that faced the much stronger alliance suffers potentially brutal consequences. In our matchup, as an example, we did not obtain 3 boss kills. That never happens when we face an evenly matched alliance. It happened in this case, however, because the depth and strength of the alliance's defense we were facing created some awful roadblocks. The end result is that we lost crucial points based on a disproportionate matchup. Put simply, a plat 3 alliance should not be matched up with a war elite alliance the second match of the year.
Of course, I know this could sound like sour grapes, but I think it actually speaks more to another current flaw in the matchmaking system that should be addressed. Like alliances should be fighting against like alliances. This new strategy goes directly counter to that principle.
In the past, issues like this were eventually addressed. So, for example, prior alliance swapping issues in aq were addressed with black out periods. Piloting has supposedly been addressed with various penalties. It feels like this new strategy (as well as the strategy to deliberately lose in the off season to drop ratings), requires some form of solution. Perhaps one way this could be solved is by rewarding alliances that stay together with some form of bonus that negates any incentive to alliance swap. For example, any alliance that achieves P3 in back to back seasons gets some extra rewards. Same for each tier such that the incentive to stay in an alliance to get those rewards outweighs swapping.
Or another way is to alter the war rating formula to account for the prior season's standings. If an alliance is one that is "participation," then their aw multiplier should match, i.e., they start with a tier 22 multiplier.
The bottom line is that this new strategy feels like one that should not be rewarded because it runs directly counter to any notion of competitive balance.
Is it swapping or tanking? Is there any way to tell which? Either way, it is disgusting behavior when alliances feel the need to cheat the system in order to get easy matchups in war. I have no respect for alliances that employ such strategies.
by any means, my friend, by any means.
no other sport plays fair. name a team in any sport that dont take advantage of the system they are currently participating in.
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.
What *I* was discussing was the specific question you asked, which was: "Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers?" And the simple answer is: you can "punish" anyone for anything in a game if you simply decide to do so and everyone else accepts that decision as fair.
Why the analogy works and yours doesn't is because in your counter-analogy, when you change leagues you escape the rules-making of the prior league. When a pro player quits to join an amateur league, the pro league can't penalize them for that because they are literally not playing that game anymore. But when an MCOC alliance decides to choose their competition because they want that competition to be easier on their members, regardless of *why* they want to do that, they are still playing the same game. They are taking a unilateral action to change the conditions of that game for them, and the game has the right to respond in kind.
So long as there is just one competition, one "league" of alliance war, alliances don't get to choose their competition, no matter why they want to do that. It could be for completely innocuous reasons, but that's entirely besides the point.
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.
What *I* was discussing was the specific question you asked, which was: "Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers?" And the simple answer is: you can "punish" anyone for anything in a game if you simply decide to do so and everyone else accepts that decision as fair.
Why the analogy works and yours doesn't is because in your counter-analogy, when you change leagues you escape the rules-making of the prior league. When a pro player quits to join an amateur league, the pro league can't penalize them for that because they are literally not playing that game anymore. But when an MCOC alliance decides to choose their competition because they want that competition to be easier on their members, regardless of *why* they want to do that, they are still playing the same game. They are taking a unilateral action to change the conditions of that game for them, and the game has the right to respond in kind.
So long as there is just one competition, one "league" of alliance war, alliances don't get to choose their competition, no matter why they want to do that. It could be for completely innocuous reasons, but that's entirely besides the point.
You're missing the point. You're talking about whether Kabam can penalise those alliances. Of course they can, this is their world and they can do anything. That discussion is of no interest. The real issue is whether kabam should. Of course those alliances are "taking a unilateral action to change the conditions of that game for them", but why can't they have that right? Again, back to the sporting analogy, you are saying that a professional player should be banned from competing in an amateur league (its not about whether they can, but whether they should be allowed).
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.
I feel like you aren't really addressing the heart of the matter. We aren't talking about one player dropping to a lower alliance. We are talking about an entire alliance dropping to another alliance which has had the war rating manipulated as a shell so that they can still get decent rewards while playing against lower teams who have that same rating by fighting at the highest level they can. Other alliances at that level will use items in order to win some and lose some. The higher alliance will now compete against them while winning all their wars at no cost. And all of this in a mode that is supposed to be the highest level of competition in the game. The lower alliances shouldn't have to get matched against master groups "taking a break" while they are fighting to get gold 1 or platinum rewards. Gaming the system against real people trying to compete with others at their level kind of sucks and I hope it gets stopped. All good if you disagree but the "joining another league" analogy doesn't work. They are getting higher rewards than others playing in that league will get because they get guaranteed wins with unbeaten defenders while the others have to slog it out. And some of their opponents will get lower rewards than they deserved because they had the misfortune to get mismatched against a group taking it easy.
That was a good summary and really gets to the nub of our disagreement. My point is that whether it is 1 player choosing to drop, 10 players, or 30 players (ie, an entire alliance), it really makes no difference. Players should be entitled to choose the level at which they compete. You are seeing it as unfairness from the perspective of, say, the Gold tier alliance that has to face the Plat tier alliance that dropped down. I am seeing it from the perspective of the Plat tier alliance, which should have the right to choose the level it wishes to compete at. The effect of prohibiting such swaps is to compel alliances to compete at the highest level possible, instead of having the option of cutting back a season or two as they please.
Yes it seems unfair to the Gold tier alliance that has to go up against the Platinum tier alliance, but that is just the nature of competition. Sometimes you go up against stronger teams. You cannot start to ban players with, say, 5 r5 5*s from competing in Gold just because they have such stacked rosters. They earned those rosters and should be entitled to use them anywhere they want.
LOL. So in that case they should be given Gold rewards as well? Since they are competing there.
They should be given the same rewards any alliance starting in Gold Tier can get.
You’re awfully mistakened about Tiers and Ranks.
I am not. I am using "Gold Tier" as a shorthand for spelling out the specific war rating of alliances. I understand that it is war rating swapping that is in issue. Nonetheless my point is simply that if you start at a certain rating, say, 2000 for instance, that is roughly the war rating of Gold tier alliances.
I am not. I am using "Gold Tier" as a shorthand for spelling out the specific war rating of alliances. I understand that it is war rating swapping that is in issue. Nonetheless my point is simply that if you start at a certain rating, say, 2000 for instance, that is roughly the war rating of Gold tier alliances.
So what you're saying is, "an alliance that starts at a certain war rating that will most probably end up ranking in Gold". Is that right?
Do you roughly know where an alliance will rank if it wins all 12 wars starting at 2,000 war rating?
I am not. I am using "Gold Tier" as a shorthand for spelling out the specific war rating of alliances. I understand that it is war rating swapping that is in issue. Nonetheless my point is simply that if you start at a certain rating, say, 2000 for instance, that is roughly the war rating of Gold tier alliances.
So what you're saying is, "an alliance that starts at a certain war rating that will most probably end up ranking in Gold". Is that right?
Do you roughly know where an alliance will rank if it wins all 12 wars starting at 2,000 war rating?
Atleast 2750 rating with huge 5* shards plus 4* shards plus loyalty and without spending pots and ending almost in Platinum1
Little bit guess work
I am not. I am using "Gold Tier" as a shorthand for spelling out the specific war rating of alliances. I understand that it is war rating swapping that is in issue. Nonetheless my point is simply that if you start at a certain rating, say, 2000 for instance, that is roughly the war rating of Gold tier alliances.
So what you're saying is, "an alliance that starts at a certain war rating that will most probably end up ranking in Gold". Is that right?
Do you roughly know where an alliance will rank if it wins all 12 wars starting at 2,000 war rating?
Atleast 2750 rating with huge 5* shards plus 4* shards plus loyalty and without spending pots and ending almost in Platinum1
Little bit guess work
Yup. Close. Either Plat 2 or 3.
From a "Gold" alliance. See the problem @Ultra8529 ?
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.
What *I* was discussing was the specific question you asked, which was: "Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers?" And the simple answer is: you can "punish" anyone for anything in a game if you simply decide to do so and everyone else accepts that decision as fair.
Why the analogy works and yours doesn't is because in your counter-analogy, when you change leagues you escape the rules-making of the prior league. When a pro player quits to join an amateur league, the pro league can't penalize them for that because they are literally not playing that game anymore. But when an MCOC alliance decides to choose their competition because they want that competition to be easier on their members, regardless of *why* they want to do that, they are still playing the same game. They are taking a unilateral action to change the conditions of that game for them, and the game has the right to respond in kind.
So long as there is just one competition, one "league" of alliance war, alliances don't get to choose their competition, no matter why they want to do that. It could be for completely innocuous reasons, but that's entirely besides the point.
You're missing the point. You're talking about whether Kabam can penalise those alliances. Of course they can, this is their world and they can do anything. That discussion is of no interest. The real issue is whether kabam should. Of course those alliances are "taking a unilateral action to change the conditions of that game for them", but why can't they have that right? Again, back to the sporting analogy, you are saying that a professional player should be banned from competing in an amateur league (its not about whether they can, but whether they should be allowed).
No, you're the one missing the point. Of course Kabam can do anything they want with their game within the law, and that's pretty much anything. That's not really up for discussion. But the question being discussed as you say is whether they should, and the criteria for whether they should is ultimately what's best for the game. What any one person thinks is "fair" personally is of no consequence. And I'm saying that not to assert my own opinion on right and wrong, but to assert the observation that this is how all games and sports are regulated. Fairness isn't some Aristotelian absolute that people can simply decide for themselves. Fairness is a consensus arbitration, because all games rules are arbitrary. Whether or not we can pilot is an arbitrary decision based on a rough general agreement on fairness, but also ultimately its entirely up to Kabam to decide whether that fits the parameters they want for their competition. The same thing goes for using mods. You can't "prove" these things to be fair or unfair, we collectively decide if they are fair. And to be specific, Kabam decides if they are fair or not, and we collectively decide if we want to support that decision by continuing to play the game.
Getting back to the specific analogy, in MCOC at the moment there is only one "league." You can't just wave your hands and say that you're making up your own league by, say, dropping from Platinum 3 to Gold 1 because competition isn't set by season bracket. It is set by war rating. A 2400 Platinum 3 will get matched against a 2400 Gold 1 alliance because the match making system doesn't care about and isn't even aware of season brackets. You are still in the same "league."
To put it bluntly, the reason why you don't just get to decide to face easier competition, is ultimately because a majority of players don't want you to have that choice, and Kabam is likely to side with them, and that's that. Or if you want to get meta, you can choose to deliberately manipulate your competition match ups to be lower, placing those alliances at a huge disadvantage, and they can choose to appeal your actions to Kabam. That is an equally legitimate choice.
I am not. I am using "Gold Tier" as a shorthand for spelling out the specific war rating of alliances. I understand that it is war rating swapping that is in issue. Nonetheless my point is simply that if you start at a certain rating, say, 2000 for instance, that is roughly the war rating of Gold tier alliances.
So what you're saying is, "an alliance that starts at a certain war rating that will most probably end up ranking in Gold". Is that right?
Do you roughly know where an alliance will rank if it wins all 12 wars starting at 2,000 war rating?
Atleast 2750 rating with huge 5* shards plus 4* shards plus loyalty and without spending pots and ending almost in Platinum1
Little bit guess work
Yup. Close. Either Plat 2 or 3.
From a "Gold" alliance. See the problem @Ultra8529 ?
What's the problem? What if it is genuinely a good Gold tier alliance (meaning a genuinely good alliance starting at 2000 war rating)? Why should they not be entitled to the rewards they are getting if they win 12 wars in a row in seasons?
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.
What *I* was discussing was the specific question you asked, which was: "Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers?" And the simple answer is: you can "punish" anyone for anything in a game if you simply decide to do so and everyone else accepts that decision as fair.
Why the analogy works and yours doesn't is because in your counter-analogy, when you change leagues you escape the rules-making of the prior league. When a pro player quits to join an amateur league, the pro league can't penalize them for that because they are literally not playing that game anymore. But when an MCOC alliance decides to choose their competition because they want that competition to be easier on their members, regardless of *why* they want to do that, they are still playing the same game. They are taking a unilateral action to change the conditions of that game for them, and the game has the right to respond in kind.
So long as there is just one competition, one "league" of alliance war, alliances don't get to choose their competition, no matter why they want to do that. It could be for completely innocuous reasons, but that's entirely besides the point.
You're missing the point. You're talking about whether Kabam can penalise those alliances. Of course they can, this is their world and they can do anything. That discussion is of no interest. The real issue is whether kabam should. Of course those alliances are "taking a unilateral action to change the conditions of that game for them", but why can't they have that right? Again, back to the sporting analogy, you are saying that a professional player should be banned from competing in an amateur league (its not about whether they can, but whether they should be allowed).
No, you're the one missing the point. Of course Kabam can do anything they want with their game within the law, and that's pretty much anything. That's not really up for discussion. But the question being discussed as you say is whether they should, and the criteria for whether they should is ultimately what's best for the game. What any one person thinks is "fair" personally is of no consequence. And I'm saying that not to assert my own opinion on right and wrong, but to assert the observation that this is how all games and sports are regulated. Fairness isn't some Aristotelian absolute that people can simply decide for themselves. Fairness is a consensus arbitration, because all games rules are arbitrary. Whether or not we can pilot is an arbitrary decision based on a rough general agreement on fairness, but also ultimately its entirely up to Kabam to decide whether that fits the parameters they want for their competition. The same thing goes for using mods. You can't "prove" these things to be fair or unfair, we collectively decide if they are fair. And to be specific, Kabam decides if they are fair or not, and we collectively decide if we want to support that decision by continuing to play the game.
Getting back to the specific analogy, in MCOC at the moment there is only one "league." You can't just wave your hands and say that you're making up your own league by, say, dropping from Platinum 3 to Gold 1 because competition isn't set by season bracket. It is set by war rating. A 2400 Platinum 3 will get matched against a 2400 Gold 1 alliance because the match making system doesn't care about and isn't even aware of season brackets. You are still in the same "league."
To put it bluntly, the reason why you don't just get to decide to face easier competition, is ultimately because a majority of players don't want you to have that choice, and Kabam is likely to side with them, and that's that. Or if you want to get meta, you can choose to deliberately manipulate your competition match ups to be lower, placing those alliances at a huge disadvantage, and they can choose to appeal your actions to Kabam. That is an equally legitimate choice.
To put it simply, yes or no: you are saying that players shouldn't have the right to choose to drop down from competing in master to competing in gold tier? If you are a master tier player with an equivalent roster, you are compelled to play in master only (alliance with about 3000 war rating). If you ever choose to play in gold tier (2400 rating or lower), you are a cheater and should be punished. Yes or no - that is your point?
Also, on your view that fairness is something decided majority of players, who gave you the mandate to speak on behalf of the MCOC community? What should be the rules that govern this situation is precisely what we're debating here. You have absolutely no basis to speak on behalf of the entire community. You are looking at it from one perspective (namely, those at a lower tier facing higher tier alliances that drop down), whereas I am approaching it from the opposite perspective (the right of higher tier alliances to take it easy as and when they want to). The exchange of ideas and perspectives is for the very purpose of giving the entire community an informed and educated understanding of how this decision will impact them. My point with regard to your view is that it will end up punishing players and alliances that one day decide that they want to take it easier in the game and stop pushing at the top. You wish to prohibit and penalise such behaviour, taking away free choice in this game.
I am not. I am using "Gold Tier" as a shorthand for spelling out the specific war rating of alliances. I understand that it is war rating swapping that is in issue. Nonetheless my point is simply that if you start at a certain rating, say, 2000 for instance, that is roughly the war rating of Gold tier alliances.
So what you're saying is, "an alliance that starts at a certain war rating that will most probably end up ranking in Gold". Is that right?
Do you roughly know where an alliance will rank if it wins all 12 wars starting at 2,000 war rating?
Atleast 2750 rating with huge 5* shards plus 4* shards plus loyalty and without spending pots and ending almost in Platinum1
Little bit guess work
Yup. Close. Either Plat 2 or 3.
From a "Gold" alliance. See the problem @Ultra8529 ?
My point is that the problem is not in alliances choosing to start at 2000 war rating. The problem instead is that it seems unfair, to some, that an alliance starting at 2000 war rating can eventually get the rewards it does if it wins all 12 matches. That is a value judgment. If that is deemed to be unfair, then the problem is one of scoring and of rewards. Put differently, if Kabam thinks that it is unfair for an alliance starting at 2000 war rating and winning 12 matches in a row in season to get Plat 2 or 3 rewards, then do something to the multiplier to make that impossible. It is entirely within Kabam's hands to limit, by tweaking the relevant multipliers, the maximum attainable rewards from any given starting point. It can easily be backwards calculated what multipliers should be applied in order to ensure, say, that any alliance starting at 2000 has a ceiling of Platinum 3 rewards even if they win 12 matches in a row. @xNig
@Ultra8529 Individual players can compete in any alliance that will have them. That's not at all the same thing as an alliance manipulating their war rating for the purpose of taking it easy by destroying lower groups who are trying to compete. Top alliances can also take it easy by no longer boosting for every fight. No one is forcing them to do what is necessary to be in the top bracket. Taking it easy by winning every war on the cheap after manipulating their war rating so they can destroy lower alliances should be stopped. No one is suggesting that top groups can't stop pushing at the top. There are other alternatives besides manipulating the system lol. Your version of "taking it easy" is at the expense of other alliances who aren't gaming the system. Actually just taking it easier works too.
@Ultra8529 Individual players can compete in any alliance that will have them. That's not at all the same thing as an alliance manipulating their war rating for the purpose of taking it easy by destroying lower groups who are trying to compete. Top alliances can also take it easy by no longer boosting for every fight. No one is forcing them to do what is necessary to be in the top bracket. Taking it easy by winning every war on the cheap after manipulating their war rating so they can destroy lower alliances should be stopped. No one is suggesting that top groups can't stop pushing at the top. There are other alternatives besides manipulating the system lol. Your version of "taking it easy" is at the expense of other alliances who aren't gaming the system. Actually just taking it easier works too.
So you agree individual players have the right to drop down to any tier alliance they want? @LeNoirFaineant
Or are you saying they are compelled to stay in master tier alliances and their only option is to choose not to boost/heal in that alliance?
@Ultra8529 Individual players can compete in any alliance that will have them. That's not at all the same thing as an alliance manipulating their war rating for the purpose of taking it easy by destroying lower groups who are trying to compete. Top alliances can also take it easy by no longer boosting for every fight. No one is forcing them to do what is necessary to be in the top bracket. Taking it easy by winning every war on the cheap after manipulating their war rating so they can destroy lower alliances should be stopped. No one is suggesting that top groups can't stop pushing at the top. There are other alternatives besides manipulating the system lol. Your version of "taking it easy" is at the expense of other alliances who aren't gaming the system. Actually just taking it easier works too.
So you agree individual players have the right to drop down to any tier alliance they want? @LeNoirFaineant
Or are you saying they are compelled to stay in master tier alliances and their only option is to choose not to boost/heal in that alliance?
We're not talking about a couple of people who want to reduce their stress and pressure. We're talking about a deliberate manipulation of the system.
Of course they can drop to any tier they want. I don't know anyone who has suggested otherwise. We are a plat 2/3 alliance and have had guys who have been in top 5 alliances. But when they join us, there is no manipulating the system. We have guys that need a break from this level and go play in a lower alliance for awhile. All well and good. That's not at all the same thing as using a shell alliance or tanking the offseason in order to get mismatched against lower groups.
Many things that result in unfair advantages begin with plausible but untrue justifications. Now, I'm not implying you're justifying any kind of wrong behavior. I don't know your habits, or details. All I'm saying is when we're dealing with deliberate actions that are a) taking advantage of weaker Allies and b) manipulating the system within its own design, then that needs to be looked at. The moment we start making "what if" excuses, becomes the moment we start opening windows for wrong behavior.
Of course they can drop to any tier they want. I don't know anyone who has suggested otherwise. We are a plat 2/3 alliance and have had guys who have been in top 5 alliances. But when they join us, there is no manipulating the system. We have guys that need a break from this level and go play in a lower alliance for awhile. All well and good. That's not at all the same thing as using a shell alliance or tanking the offseason in order to get mismatched against lower groups.
Thank you for that concession. I say concession because once you accept that individual players have such a right, then it is a slippery slope if you want to start penalising alliances for similar behaviours. An alliance is nothing more than 30 individual players. Where do you draw the line between permissible dropping (1 player), and impermissible dropping?
Say 10 players with 8 r5s and master tier skill wish to drop into a 2000 war rating alliance, I can guarantee you that on the basis of those 10 players alone, that alliance can win every single war from 2000 rating to 2500 rating. They can split among 3 BGs handle all the toughest paths in AW. And their defence will make opponents at that level unable to complete the map. Is this permissible or not? If that is not permissible, then how about 9 player? 8? If that is permissible, then how about 11 or 12?
It is a slippery slope and any number you stipulate is entirely arbitrary. The solution is to fix scoring and matchmaking, rather than trying to impose artificial and arbitrary limits on players' freedoms to choose where and how they want to compete.
Many things that result in unfair advantages begin with plausible but untrue justifications. Now, I'm not implying you're justifying any kind of wrong behavior. I don't know your habits, or details. All I'm saying is when we're dealing with deliberate actions that are a) taking advantage of weaker Allies and b) manipulating the system within its own design, then that needs to be looked at. The moment we start making "what if" excuses, becomes the moment we start opening windows for wrong behavior.
You are imputing a negative and sinister aim into what is otherwise a neutral behaviour (namely, competing at a lower level). 30 players dropping into a lower alliance can be for equally innocuous reasons, such as simply wishing to fight at a lower level.
You draw the line when people waive that right by using that as an excuse to pulverized people. I can assure you it's widespread. Do I believe you have to force people to stay in their Ally? No. Do I believe people should be Matched in relatively close strengths? Absolutely. What we have is widespread manipulation of the system. That's a problem. It's not about a casual situation where people are just taking it easy. They're taking the pi## out of people weaker than them.
We're currently in a War against an Ally that's 10 Mil more than us. After falling down a number of Tiers last Season from these Matches, and they're still coming. You have a better chance of convincing me Dahmer was a Culinary Genius than convincing me the right to just take it easy has precedence right now.
Of course they can drop to any tier they want. I don't know anyone who has suggested otherwise. We are a plat 2/3 alliance and have had guys who have been in top 5 alliances. But when they join us, there is no manipulating the system. We have guys that need a break from this level and go play in a lower alliance for awhile. All well and good. That's not at all the same thing as using a shell alliance or tanking the offseason in order to get mismatched against lower groups.
Thank you for that concession. I say concession because once you accept that individual players have such a right, then it is a slippery slope if you want to start penalising alliances for similar behaviours. An alliance is nothing more than 30 individual players. Where do you draw the line between permissible dropping (1 player), and impermissible dropping?
Say 10 players with 8 r5s and master tier skill wish to drop into a 2000 war rating alliance, I can guarantee you that on the basis of those 10 players alone, that alliance can win every single war from 2000 rating to 2500 rating. They can split among 3 BGs handle all the toughest paths in AW. And their defence will make opponents at that level unable to complete the map. Is this permissible or not? If that is not permissible, then how about 9 player? 8? If that is permissible, then how about 11 or 12?
It is a slippery slope and any number you stipulate is entirely arbitrary. The solution is to fix scoring and matchmaking, rather than trying to impose artificial and arbitrary limits on players' freedoms to choose where and how they want to compete.
It's not really a slippery slope. Finding a shell alliance is much easier than finding a group with a reasonable war rating that needs 10 members at the right time. And if you could, the rest of the alliance won't be good enough even with the 10 to get to plat one making this a not very attractive option for master group manipulation. We have an actual problem with shell alliances and tanking that it would be good to fix. But if 10 guys from master want to join a lower group and get them to plat 3 or gold 1 more power to them. If it turns out that there is a way to game the system that way we can cross that bridge when we come to it. It isn't a reason to not deal with the problem at hand. And if it requires a certain amount of arbitrary line drawing so be it.
Neither of you are addressing the point that there is an alternative to your identified problem. It is 100% neater than trying to draw some arbitrary lines.
Your reply betrays the fact that you have no answer to the problem. So how about if 29 people swap into an alliance? Should that be penalised? By saying "if it turns out that there is some way to game the system", you are effectively saying "this doesn't bother me yet, so I can live with it. But if i start losing to such alliances, then it is unfair". That is entirely unprincipled and not at all how rules should be made.
As for the getting pulverised point - let me tell you that the cold hard truth is that smaller alliances will increasingly face stacked rosters and increasingly get pulverised because more and more top players are getting burnt out in higher tier wars. I have seen players with a Sig 200 R5 Korg going down into 1800 war rating alliances - what do you think that does to the other team? I've seen 3 - 4 players item out on him at that tier. Is that fun? Not for the other team. But is that fair? Of course it is, the player earned that r5 sig 200 Korg and is entitled to use it wherever he pleases. The reality is you just need 1 or 2 of these monster defenders or accounts at that low tier, and it will completely crush the other team. So this problem of getting pulverised, alone, is not going away. It is the nature of AW and how Kabam has set up certain defenders/nodes to be nearly impossible unless you have the right combination of roster +skill - both of which tend to be lacking at the lower tiers.
Comments
I feel like you aren't really addressing the heart of the matter. We aren't talking about one player dropping to a lower alliance. We are talking about an entire alliance dropping to another alliance which has had the war rating manipulated as a shell so that they can still get decent rewards while playing against lower teams who have that same rating by fighting at the highest level they can. Other alliances at that level will use items in order to win some and lose some. The higher alliance will now compete against them while winning all their wars at no cost. And all of this in a mode that is supposed to be the highest level of competition in the game. The lower alliances shouldn't have to get matched against master groups "taking a break" while they are fighting to get gold 1 or platinum rewards. Gaming the system against real people trying to compete with others at their level kind of sucks and I hope it gets stopped. All good if you disagree but the "joining another league" analogy doesn't work. They are getting higher rewards than others playing in that league will get because they get guaranteed wins with unbeaten defenders while the others have to slog it out. And some of their opponents will get lower rewards than they deserved because they had the misfortune to get mismatched against a group taking it easy.
That was a good summary and really gets to the nub of our disagreement. My point is that whether it is 1 player choosing to drop, 10 players, or 30 players (ie, an entire alliance), it really makes no difference. Players should be entitled to choose the level at which they compete. You are seeing it as unfairness from the perspective of, say, the Gold tier alliance that has to face the Plat tier alliance that dropped down. I am seeing it from the perspective of the Plat tier alliance, which should have the right to choose the level it wishes to compete at. The effect of prohibiting such swaps is to compel alliances to compete at the highest level possible, instead of having the option of cutting back a season or two as they please.
Yes it seems unfair to the Gold tier alliance that has to go up against the Platinum tier alliance, but that is just the nature of competition. Sometimes you go up against stronger teams. You cannot start to ban players with, say, 5 r5 5*s from competing in Gold just because they have such stacked rosters. They earned those rosters and should be entitled to use them anywhere they want.
LOL. So in that case they should be given Gold rewards as well? Since they are competing there.
They should be given the same rewards any alliance starting in Gold Tier can get.
You’re awfully mistakened about Tiers and Ranks.
YOU LOST ME AT AT THE FIRST PARAGRAPH..
by any means, my friend, by any means.
no other sport plays fair. name a team in any sport that dont take advantage of the system they are currently participating in.
What *I* was discussing was the specific question you asked, which was: "Why would the game punish people who are legitimately just fed up with wars at the higher tiers?" And the simple answer is: you can "punish" anyone for anything in a game if you simply decide to do so and everyone else accepts that decision as fair.
Why the analogy works and yours doesn't is because in your counter-analogy, when you change leagues you escape the rules-making of the prior league. When a pro player quits to join an amateur league, the pro league can't penalize them for that because they are literally not playing that game anymore. But when an MCOC alliance decides to choose their competition because they want that competition to be easier on their members, regardless of *why* they want to do that, they are still playing the same game. They are taking a unilateral action to change the conditions of that game for them, and the game has the right to respond in kind.
So long as there is just one competition, one "league" of alliance war, alliances don't get to choose their competition, no matter why they want to do that. It could be for completely innocuous reasons, but that's entirely besides the point.
You're missing the point. You're talking about whether Kabam can penalise those alliances. Of course they can, this is their world and they can do anything. That discussion is of no interest. The real issue is whether kabam should. Of course those alliances are "taking a unilateral action to change the conditions of that game for them", but why can't they have that right? Again, back to the sporting analogy, you are saying that a professional player should be banned from competing in an amateur league (its not about whether they can, but whether they should be allowed).
I am not. I am using "Gold Tier" as a shorthand for spelling out the specific war rating of alliances. I understand that it is war rating swapping that is in issue. Nonetheless my point is simply that if you start at a certain rating, say, 2000 for instance, that is roughly the war rating of Gold tier alliances.
So what you're saying is, "an alliance that starts at a certain war rating that will most probably end up ranking in Gold". Is that right?
Do you roughly know where an alliance will rank if it wins all 12 wars starting at 2,000 war rating?
Atleast 2750 rating with huge 5* shards plus 4* shards plus loyalty and without spending pots and ending almost in Platinum1
Little bit guess work
Yup. Close. Either Plat 2 or 3.
From a "Gold" alliance. See the problem @Ultra8529 ?
No, you're the one missing the point. Of course Kabam can do anything they want with their game within the law, and that's pretty much anything. That's not really up for discussion. But the question being discussed as you say is whether they should, and the criteria for whether they should is ultimately what's best for the game. What any one person thinks is "fair" personally is of no consequence. And I'm saying that not to assert my own opinion on right and wrong, but to assert the observation that this is how all games and sports are regulated. Fairness isn't some Aristotelian absolute that people can simply decide for themselves. Fairness is a consensus arbitration, because all games rules are arbitrary. Whether or not we can pilot is an arbitrary decision based on a rough general agreement on fairness, but also ultimately its entirely up to Kabam to decide whether that fits the parameters they want for their competition. The same thing goes for using mods. You can't "prove" these things to be fair or unfair, we collectively decide if they are fair. And to be specific, Kabam decides if they are fair or not, and we collectively decide if we want to support that decision by continuing to play the game.
Getting back to the specific analogy, in MCOC at the moment there is only one "league." You can't just wave your hands and say that you're making up your own league by, say, dropping from Platinum 3 to Gold 1 because competition isn't set by season bracket. It is set by war rating. A 2400 Platinum 3 will get matched against a 2400 Gold 1 alliance because the match making system doesn't care about and isn't even aware of season brackets. You are still in the same "league."
To put it bluntly, the reason why you don't just get to decide to face easier competition, is ultimately because a majority of players don't want you to have that choice, and Kabam is likely to side with them, and that's that. Or if you want to get meta, you can choose to deliberately manipulate your competition match ups to be lower, placing those alliances at a huge disadvantage, and they can choose to appeal your actions to Kabam. That is an equally legitimate choice.
What's the problem? What if it is genuinely a good Gold tier alliance (meaning a genuinely good alliance starting at 2000 war rating)? Why should they not be entitled to the rewards they are getting if they win 12 wars in a row in seasons?
To put it simply, yes or no: you are saying that players shouldn't have the right to choose to drop down from competing in master to competing in gold tier? If you are a master tier player with an equivalent roster, you are compelled to play in master only (alliance with about 3000 war rating). If you ever choose to play in gold tier (2400 rating or lower), you are a cheater and should be punished. Yes or no - that is your point?
Also, on your view that fairness is something decided majority of players, who gave you the mandate to speak on behalf of the MCOC community? What should be the rules that govern this situation is precisely what we're debating here. You have absolutely no basis to speak on behalf of the entire community. You are looking at it from one perspective (namely, those at a lower tier facing higher tier alliances that drop down), whereas I am approaching it from the opposite perspective (the right of higher tier alliances to take it easy as and when they want to). The exchange of ideas and perspectives is for the very purpose of giving the entire community an informed and educated understanding of how this decision will impact them. My point with regard to your view is that it will end up punishing players and alliances that one day decide that they want to take it easier in the game and stop pushing at the top. You wish to prohibit and penalise such behaviour, taking away free choice in this game.
My point is that the problem is not in alliances choosing to start at 2000 war rating. The problem instead is that it seems unfair, to some, that an alliance starting at 2000 war rating can eventually get the rewards it does if it wins all 12 matches. That is a value judgment. If that is deemed to be unfair, then the problem is one of scoring and of rewards. Put differently, if Kabam thinks that it is unfair for an alliance starting at 2000 war rating and winning 12 matches in a row in season to get Plat 2 or 3 rewards, then do something to the multiplier to make that impossible. It is entirely within Kabam's hands to limit, by tweaking the relevant multipliers, the maximum attainable rewards from any given starting point. It can easily be backwards calculated what multipliers should be applied in order to ensure, say, that any alliance starting at 2000 has a ceiling of Platinum 3 rewards even if they win 12 matches in a row. @xNig
So you agree individual players have the right to drop down to any tier alliance they want? @LeNoirFaineant
Or are you saying they are compelled to stay in master tier alliances and their only option is to choose not to boost/heal in that alliance?
We're not talking about a couple of people who want to reduce their stress and pressure. We're talking about a deliberate manipulation of the system.
Thank you for that concession. I say concession because once you accept that individual players have such a right, then it is a slippery slope if you want to start penalising alliances for similar behaviours. An alliance is nothing more than 30 individual players. Where do you draw the line between permissible dropping (1 player), and impermissible dropping?
Say 10 players with 8 r5s and master tier skill wish to drop into a 2000 war rating alliance, I can guarantee you that on the basis of those 10 players alone, that alliance can win every single war from 2000 rating to 2500 rating. They can split among 3 BGs handle all the toughest paths in AW. And their defence will make opponents at that level unable to complete the map. Is this permissible or not? If that is not permissible, then how about 9 player? 8? If that is permissible, then how about 11 or 12?
It is a slippery slope and any number you stipulate is entirely arbitrary. The solution is to fix scoring and matchmaking, rather than trying to impose artificial and arbitrary limits on players' freedoms to choose where and how they want to compete.
You are imputing a negative and sinister aim into what is otherwise a neutral behaviour (namely, competing at a lower level). 30 players dropping into a lower alliance can be for equally innocuous reasons, such as simply wishing to fight at a lower level.
We're currently in a War against an Ally that's 10 Mil more than us. After falling down a number of Tiers last Season from these Matches, and they're still coming. You have a better chance of convincing me Dahmer was a Culinary Genius than convincing me the right to just take it easy has precedence right now.
It's not really a slippery slope. Finding a shell alliance is much easier than finding a group with a reasonable war rating that needs 10 members at the right time. And if you could, the rest of the alliance won't be good enough even with the 10 to get to plat one making this a not very attractive option for master group manipulation. We have an actual problem with shell alliances and tanking that it would be good to fix. But if 10 guys from master want to join a lower group and get them to plat 3 or gold 1 more power to them. If it turns out that there is a way to game the system that way we can cross that bridge when we come to it. It isn't a reason to not deal with the problem at hand. And if it requires a certain amount of arbitrary line drawing so be it.
Your reply betrays the fact that you have no answer to the problem. So how about if 29 people swap into an alliance? Should that be penalised? By saying "if it turns out that there is some way to game the system", you are effectively saying "this doesn't bother me yet, so I can live with it. But if i start losing to such alliances, then it is unfair". That is entirely unprincipled and not at all how rules should be made.
As for the getting pulverised point - let me tell you that the cold hard truth is that smaller alliances will increasingly face stacked rosters and increasingly get pulverised because more and more top players are getting burnt out in higher tier wars. I have seen players with a Sig 200 R5 Korg going down into 1800 war rating alliances - what do you think that does to the other team? I've seen 3 - 4 players item out on him at that tier. Is that fun? Not for the other team. But is that fair? Of course it is, the player earned that r5 sig 200 Korg and is entitled to use it wherever he pleases. The reality is you just need 1 or 2 of these monster defenders or accounts at that low tier, and it will completely crush the other team. So this problem of getting pulverised, alone, is not going away. It is the nature of AW and how Kabam has set up certain defenders/nodes to be nearly impossible unless you have the right combination of roster +skill - both of which tend to be lacking at the lower tiers.