Shell Alliances - When Will They be Punished?

A good number of top-tier alliances are utilizing “shells” to manipulate the AW matchmaking system. This is a much bigger problem than “account sharing” ever could be, and yet the offenders aren’t facing any penalties. Why is that? It’s very easy to expose their system. It’s hurting more and more honest and hardworking alliances every season.

Is this issue included in the matchmaking fix that has been promised? Are any plans in place to address these offenders via ticket submission in the near future?

Comments

Demonzfyre

They have commented on this and they have been looking at ways of punishment. But in reality, how do you prove it? How can you ever know without them admitting they did it? It's a fine line Kabam would have to walk on that topic.

PaytoPlay

Bracket system where everyone is fighting for placement within certain tier can probably address this.

When season ends you get the rewards based on your ranking within the bracket, and you get to move up / down / stay next season based on the ranking. Kinda like the old AQ bracket system. Shell alliance will get u lower rewards for the whole next season, top alliance will have to fight with each other instead of a much lower rated alliance for the whole season. Off season can happen with any duration since the only way you can move up or down a certain tier is based on season rank and determined at the end of a season.

Cranmer00

@CPT_Smash not true at all. My buddies alliance TXA got matched 2 wars in a row to two top 10 Master alliances with a war rating 300-500pts ahead..

Until kabam fixes their glitchy bs matchmaking system, the alliance swapping your talking about, if that’s even a thing should be allowed.

CPT_Smash

It’s actually pretty easy to prove. Alliances that were Stone 2 last season with a 2500 war rating and are on a path to Master/Platinum 1 are a huge red flag.

And these players that switch back and forth mostly stay together when they bounce between their two alliances.

Very easy to track.

unknown

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Cranmer00

CPT_Smash wrote: »

It’s actually pretty easy to prove. Alliances that were Stone 2 last season with a 2500 war rating and are on a path to Master/Platinum 1 are a huge red flag.

And these players that switch back and forth mostly stay together when they bounce between their two alliances.

Very easy to track.

What is your alliance? Are you all tanking wars in the offseason to lower your rating?

Kabam cannot do anything to “shell” alliances until they
#1 fix their horrible matchmaking system
#2 punish alliances for tanking in offseason to lower rating.

All shell alliances are doing is dropping their rating so they don’t get screwed in the horrible matchmaking and not having to drop every war in offseason because that’s what the game has come too.

I bet your dropping wars in offseason and complaining about Shell alliances

Ultra8529

Cranmer00 wrote: »

CPT_Smash wrote: »

It’s actually pretty easy to prove. Alliances that were Stone 2 last season with a 2500 war rating and are on a path to Master/Platinum 1 are a huge red flag.

And these players that switch back and forth mostly stay together when they bounce between their two alliances.

Very easy to track.

What is your alliance? Are you all tanking wars in the offseason to lower your rating?

Kabam cannot do anything to “shell” alliances until they
#1 fix their horrible matchmaking system
#2 punish alliances for tanking in offseason to lower rating.

All shell alliances are doing is dropping their rating so they don’t get screwed in the horrible matchmaking and not having to drop every war in offseason because that’s what the game has come too.

I bet your dropping wars in offseason and complaining about Shell alliances

This is 100% spot on. Whatever tanking/shell swapping we are seeing is purely symptomatic of the larger problem that is matchmaking. I am pretty certain that once kabam fixes their matchmaking system - meaning that a plat 1 alliance doesn't get matched up against a top 10 alliance in Master - much of these issues will resolve themselves. For now, tanking/shell swapping is but a mechanism that alliances are using to cope with the absurd fights that they might otherwise find themselves in. If you are 2800 war rating and don't want to keep matching with 3300 alliances, what do you do? You go down to 2600 and put another 100 alliances between you and the 3300 alliances. Once 2800 alliances stop being able to match 3300 alliances, they won't bother dropping down anymore and instead fight at the higher rating that they are capable of. What people don't see is the other side of that story, namely, that alliances dropping down are in fact victims of the exact same thing that the alliances lower down are complaining of. **** flows downwards, so its just a gradual progression to the bottom until the system is fixed.

The second point is that there is no 100% verifiable way for the game to distinguish between "shell-swapping" and legitimate moves to a new alliance. Imagine a situation where the leader of alliance A loses the respect of the other 29 members, and 1 officer steps up, forms an alliance B, and all other 28 members go over. On paper you would see that 29 have moved to a new alliance (B), which may have been inactive the past season. Is that swapping then? No because it was entirely legitimate. Unless/until the game can come up with a foolproof way of detect illegitimate swapping as opposed to legitimate movement of players, the game cannot penalise such actions, or risk penalising the innocent.

Cranmer00

Ultra8529 wrote: »

Cranmer00 wrote: »

CPT_Smash wrote: »

It’s actually pretty easy to prove. Alliances that were Stone 2 last season with a 2500 war rating and are on a path to Master/Platinum 1 are a huge red flag.

And these players that switch back and forth mostly stay together when they bounce between their two alliances.

Very easy to track.

What is your alliance? Are you all tanking wars in the offseason to lower your rating?

Kabam cannot do anything to “shell” alliances until they
#1 fix their horrible matchmaking system
#2 punish alliances for tanking in offseason to lower rating.

All shell alliances are doing is dropping their rating so they don’t get screwed in the horrible matchmaking and not having to drop every war in offseason because that’s what the game has come too.

I bet your dropping wars in offseason and complaining about Shell alliances

This is 100% spot on. Whatever tanking/shell swapping we are seeing is purely symptomatic of the larger problem that is matchmaking. I am pretty certain that once kabam fixes their matchmaking system - meaning that a plat 1 alliance doesn't get matched up against a top 10 alliance in Master - much of these issues will resolve themselves. For now, tanking/shell swapping is but a mechanism that alliances are using to cope with the absurd fights that they might otherwise find themselves in. If you are 2800 war rating and don't want to keep matching with 3300 alliances, what do you do? You go down to 2600 and put another 100 alliances between you and the 3300 alliances. Once 2800 alliances stop being able to match 3300 alliances, they won't bother dropping down anymore and instead fight at the higher rating that they are capable of. What people don't see is the other side of that story, namely, that alliances dropping down are in fact victims of the exact same thing that the alliances lower down are complaining of. **** flows downwards, so its just a gradual progression to the bottom until the system is fixed.

The second point is that there is no 100% verifiable way for the game to distinguish between "shell-swapping" and legitimate moves to a new alliance. Imagine a situation where the leader of alliance A loses the respect of the other 29 members, and 1 officer steps up, forms an alliance B, and all other 28 members go over. On paper you would see that 29 have moved to a new alliance (B), which may have been inactive the past season. Is that swapping then? No because it was entirely legitimate. Unless/until the game can come up with a foolproof way of detect illegitimate swapping as opposed to legitimate movement of players, the game cannot penalise such actions, or risk penalising the innocent.

Spot on the money there..

And the second part... exactly.. just like OMNI was doing, think they disbanded and reformed

The way to catch would be 29 members switching to an alliance, and then 28-30 of those switching back to the same ally and then repeating back lol. It’s easy to catch because they swapping back n forth.

BUT, that’s not even the point.. complaining because you got beat by a shell alliance that is in the same division as you when you are tanking yourself is an oxymoron and throwing stones in a glass house.

The bigger issue of matchmaking needs to be fixed.. tanking/shelling is a result of it, and until then, I will follow along with the entire rest of tier 2-4 just to keep up, because everyone is doing it.

Kabam Mike said we should be hearing some changes before the end of the month about matchmaking, so hoping that’s the case. When your first 2/3 wars to start a season at 2700-2800 facing 3200-3300 alliances, you have no choice but to tank or shell so it doesn’t happen again. Because once you get beat by them, since they were sooo much higher, your war rating only drops like 10pts so you have a better chance of pairing expert matchups again because you lost, but your rating didn’t drop like others who lost in your tier.

Cranmer00

Also... how hard can it be for matchmaking to match alliances by the tier they are in, or the top 20 can only match the top 20 . There has to be a much easier and better solution to the top teams only making top 3 by whose not better, but who matched the most t2-t3 teams that season.

I saw a 3300 alliance match a tier 3 alliance on here.. just dumb

Mathking13

um... so what's 'shelling'? I really want to understand what's being discussed here but yeah...

Cobs

Shells are a Bi product of a broken system, fix the system and shells wont exist it’s simple as that, Find a cure dont just treat the symptoms. Swapping alli’s isnt just to scam the system for easy wars its done to avoid death matches once you reach a certain point. If your in t1 averaging 15 deaths a war you can beat the majority of allainces out there. but once your there in t1 you end up facing the same 10 or so alliances that you cant beat. So If you get unlucky with match making you’ll be stuck down in plat2 by this point in the season even tho you average less deaths and are better then the majority of the alliances above you if thats who you were facing. No one wants to swap alli’s cause its fun, its a pain in the ass but its better then wasting resources on unwinnable wars and losing out on good season rewards because of a poorly designed sytem. This is why shells exist, scoring and Match making dont work like they should.

18sae56

Even if they fix matchmaking shelling will still happen. Teams do this to go on a win streak because they’re stronger than their war rating suggests. Much like long term tanking off season. For kabam to fix it, they would have to change the boss ko value depending on tier. That would effectively make it if you’re not tier one, you can’t be ranked master. Tier 3 all season shouldn’t ever hit p1.

And no, the teams that are currently doing this shouldn’t be punished for it right now cause kabam never came out and said anything about this. They are playing within the rules, they just gamed the system.

Cranmer00

18sae56 wrote: »

Even if they fix matchmaking shelling will still happen. Teams do this to go on a win streak because they’re stronger than their war rating suggests. Much like long term tanking off season. For kabam to fix it, they would have to change the boss ko value depending on tier. That would effectively make it if you’re not tier one, you can’t be ranked master. Tier 3 all season shouldn’t ever hit p1.

And no, the teams that are currently doing this shouldn’t be punished for it right now cause kabam never came out and said anything about this. They are playing within the rules, they just gamed the system.

Btw you can be ranked master starting in tier 2

18sae56

Cranmer00 wrote: »

Btw you can be ranked master starting in tier 2

That's my point. If you're tier 2 you shouldn't be able to get master in 1 season. You should have to work your way up to tier 1 and at least play 1/2 of the season in tier 1 to make master.

CPT_Smash

Cranmer00 wrote: »

CPT_Smash wrote: »

It’s actually pretty easy to prove. Alliances that were Stone 2 last season with a 2500 war rating and are on a path to Master/Platinum 1 are a huge red flag.

And these players that switch back and forth mostly stay together when they bounce between their two alliances.

Very easy to track.

What is your alliance? Are you all tanking wars in the offseason to lower your rating?

Kabam cannot do anything to “shell” alliances until they
#1 fix their horrible matchmaking system
#2 punish alliances for tanking in offseason to lower rating.

All shell alliances are doing is dropping their rating so they don’t get screwed in the horrible matchmaking and not having to drop every war in offseason because that’s what the game has come too.

I bet your dropping wars in offseason and complaining about Shell alliances

No, we don’t tank in the off season. All we do is tell people to save their boosts and items for the season.

Shell alliances aren’t simply the ones who tank during the off season; they’re the alliances who switch back and forth between 2 that have a good war rating while 1 is run by their alt accounts to match and purposely lose during the season to finish at the bottom of the rankings.

That way when they switch back, they have a war rating of 2300+ when they are a P1/Master level alliance. They face Gold 1/P3 opponents all the way to the top without real opposition. At the end of the season they switch back to their other alliance that just purposely lost every war of the season.

LoPresti

Shell alliances is cheating? I thought it was just a tactical way to game the system.

Is tanking during off-season also considered cheating?

In any case, yes, it sucks and this must be stopped by Kabam. But I don't think punishment is in order, it's not really clear that this is considered cheating.

Colinwhitworth69

I almost never see posts about AW being a positive thing. Seems more a cause for frustration and anger, to be honest.

ThatGuy214

I am not sure what they can do at the moment about shells alliance. Because it is not against terms of service to change your alliance.