What should happen with AW?

I wonder. Ever since AW existed it has gone through waves of bugs, flaws, abusable system failures and weaknesses and consistent cause for frustration.
After season 1, where piloting was the winning strategy to later the seasons where defenders remaining decided and collusion between alliances was able to manipulate matchmaking... to season 8, when matchmaking was supposed to be fair, only that tier 1 teams still didn’t just match tier 1 opponents. Up to Kabam systems failing to match at all, yet Kabam not taking responsibility for it...to season 9 with the great prospect of exact same rewards as before, yet a map full of nodes that guarantee max unit spending on boosts and potions. And the alliances are to trust that the ever failing matchmaking system will then miraculously work. Would it not be better for the sake of a happy community to just abandon the AW mode until a really fair and balanced map/reward system is being put in place? I think only the community itself can make such a step possible, by simply not participating in it. Or what do you think? Any suggestions how to get the contest AW mode fair and balanced and actually interesting from a reward perspective again?

Comments

Maximus_Spankerson

For “most competitive mode with unprecedented rewards” it was a another colossal blunder by Kabam. In reality, did you expect anything different? Do you remember how Labyrinth of Legends was rolled out, with select few able to complete initial pass through before Kabam closed down the content and added dulled global and decreased enrage timer? This is just typical of them and expecting anything different is naive.

As for war, anything but a bracket playoff system and appropriate rewards is just RNG. I hope they make throw right.

MaRvEl_MoNsTeR

Rewards need to be adjusted to match the level of time and money it takes to compete. With new maps coming as well as nodes I can’t understand how we will not be getting better rewards for season 10. That right there needs to be addressed.

Many teams have stopped pushing in war due to the unbalanced work/reward issue for a couple seasons. Add to that the issues with match making and just general bugs in the game and even I at times feel like AW is a waste of time.

Kabam has been slow on the compensation for known issues that cost even more money and stress on our part. Another reason players have gone to casual ally’s and put AW aside.

Lormif

except you dont have to complete this. It is not like other modes. you can quit when you feel you did enough.

Ultra8529

Unhelpful comment since the point is that Kabam should improve rewards to cost ratio if they want people to participate.

The premise is that kabam wants people to participate in AW and not ignore it, and if so they should listen to suggestions where they are made.

If kabam does not want people to participate in AW, then by all means disregard the wave of comments.

Lormif

Except your comment does not make any sense. Again stuff like story, AQ, events, all things where you need to 100% to get the rewards, if they increase in difficulty they need to access the rewards. But the entire purpose of AW is differnt. You play until you cannot play anymore and the team that plays more gets the win. Making it more difficult does not change that methodology, or how the rewards are dolled out.

Now rewards should, and have, increased over time with the rest of the game, but that is a different argument.

Hulksmasshh

Kabam already stated that this coming season will have the same rewards and then the following season will have updated rewards. If you think the harder map is not worth the rewards fighting for then you (or alliance) don’t have to go 100%. I don’t like the idea of map difficulty increase without reward increase which is why I certainly won’t be going 100%. Your question about “from a rewards perspective” has already been answered.

MirageNoir

I don’t think it has been answered as it’s yet uncertain the new rewards will be compensating enough for new map difficulty. And it’s not the first time rewards have been pushed back. New rewards and map should have been out since season 8 yet keep getting delayed and delayed.

RoOOts

I thought the map right now was okay. With some potions you could 💯% against comparable strong alliances. I just lost all the interest in it because of the bad rewards. I mean over the whole season it could happen that 3 your of champs died. But healing 3 5*R5 champs up means: you need about 15 gold potions, which also means you needed at least
about 3000 glory, what again accounts for about 3000 T5b splitter. and thats exactly what i and most of my ally mates got as the reward for the whole season. So for me, its not about the map or the difficulty, i lost interesst. its just about the diminishing return. even if you just have to heal 3 champs all the reward ist gone. why should u waste my time for this?

So making the map even harder, what i don't have a interest in, they would have to explode the rewards to make me courious. The way they try to push it, ill think i have to find a new ally which accepts the math and does not participate in war.

Ultra8529

"You play until you cannot play anymore" - says it all about your mentality and level in the game I suppose. Don't know any alliance in the top tiers who aren't really doing 100% regardless how hard the map is.

Lormif

And the fact that you think that they will be that tough shows your mentality and level in the game I suppose. I am in gold1/plat, and I am not worried about the difficulty, I will complete it fairly easily just as I did the current map.

RagamugginGunner

If they stopped AW seasons, and just broke up the season rewards into the win rewards I would be so much happier with the game.

Ultra8529

You just contradicted yourself. If you are completing the map 100% then it is not a question of "play until you cannot play anymore".

Also Gold 1/Plat explains it all

Lormif

umm, yes it is... If I am completing the map 100% then I have litterally played until I cannot play anymore....

Again, you are not making any sense. I guess maybe you are in a lower tier alliance and just cannot keep up.

Ultra8529

So if the baseline is 100% then how is it the case that difficulty does not affect you nor justify increased rewards for the increased effort?

You cannot have it two ways. What is your premise? (1) Go for 100% each war; or (2) Not bother with 100% each war, jut go as far as you can?

Lormif

Again, your comment does not make any sense.. You are trying to pin a multitude of options down to just two. This is known as a false dilemma fallacy.

for instance I go as far as I can, currently that is 100%, in the next map it will more than likely still be 100%.

Ultra8529

I guess your alliance just does not seem to have a clear direction then. Same cannot be said of the alliances at the top, which aim will be to 100% in all cases, regardless of difficulty. That is when the cost and difficulty matters.

I guess that is why you say difficulty does not matter to you.

Good to know!

hurricant

AW is fine, but seasons ruined the game

Lormif

You make a lot of false assumptions.... Most top alliances clear with little resources, death is not typically an option, but they are also the players who can kill the best content without deaths as well. This will not matter much to them.

SiriusBreak

Wait, what? No, not in competitive AW. Not. At. All. Quitting halfway through because you got K.O.ed, is a great way to get a swift kick out of your current Alliance. Stopping is NOT an option when 29 others are relying on you to do your part. Where you got such a concept is beyond me. Perhaps because you don't compete full swing? Or perhaps the level at which you currently play doesn't require full exploration to possibly win. At a certain point, that's no longer the case. You think those who are in mid to upper tier Alliances throw in the towel when they get K.O.ed? Nope. Not if they want to stick with their Alliance anyway.

Realistically speaking, increased rewards would increase incentive to play more competitively. As it currently stands, there's been a noticeable shift to focus on AQ over AW. This isn't going to get any better until they provide us with a boost to the rewards of AW. Heck, just the singular War rewards being boosted would be a BIG step in the right direction. A step that would bring some of the drive to fight competitively back. Sure there's those who will keep at it regardless, but that's beside the point. The end point is to make it so the majority will want to go at it full swing.

In higher tier war, it's not the Alliance that plays MORE that wins. It's the Alliance that performs BETTER and earns more points is the winner. Maps are always 100% explored across all the 3 BGs in my Alliance in AW. Always. Also, if the Alliance doesn't complete at least X% (something like 70-85%) of overall exploration, they won't get full rewards for participation either. So no offense, but it is your comment that doesn't make much sense here.

Sure, you can get SOMETHING just for participation (even just placement). However, without completion, and effort, you won't get all that you could've. Just base 'participation' does in fact give something, but that's hardly worth tying up 5-8 champs for 24 hours if you don't plan to compete/complete. Not to mention, if you continually lose, your Alliance will drop in rating and tier. Lower war tier = less/lower rewards. Simple as that. AQ also functions similar. Less work = less stuff, some work = some stuff, and full exploration = the most you can get. However, there's no longer a tier system thanks to the introduction of Peak Milestones.

Perhaps you took the participation comment too literally. Perhaps that's what lead too such a shortsighted conclusion. Without looking at the grand scheme, yes, simply entering AW does give you SOMETHING as previously stated. However at this point, even full on participation with the intent to win is becoming less worth the time/effort. That's the long and the short of it. The general point of this.

Pointing out the fact you can get something from simple participation is detouring from the grand scheme, which is the focal point of this thread. Which also overlooks the consequences one could face by simply putting in half effort in various Alliances. It also detours from the spirit of a war. You fight to win. Not just enter to collect. I'm sure there's Alliances with such a mentality, but that's hardly the general consensus of what 'participation' in an Alliance War is all about.

MaRvEl_MoNsTeR

Lormuf, except someone needs to keep you scrubs in place lol

Evangelionlovr

Also there was significant cheating this season:

MaRvEl_MoNsTeR

I’m not sure if it was cheating. Someone had said that alliance rating played a big part this season. If you look at second / third place they both played smaller ally’s, but their rating is low too. Most of them are in the 4-500k mark.

We came in first and didn’t face those guys, but did match with last season top 10 ally’s. So not sure if they added alliance rating into this seasons match making or they got “lucky”.

There were some alliances we faced that def had some strange fights that I’m sure someone reported. But most got docked so Kabam was aware.

Escouts

Not sure if it's been said but. Three star war and five star and so on.

DNA3000

I don't see how that's possible. The thing to keep in mind is that it is the players that decide how much to spend on war. Whether the players spend astronomical amounts on war, or zero on war, the war system would give out the exact same amount of rewards. Thirty players are going to get the master 1 rewards, because there must be a top alliance no matter what. No matter what players do, there's going to be a first place, and a second place, and so on.

If players want to spend less collectively, all they have to do is spend less, and collectively the rewards for players is exactly the same. But players don't want to spend less no matter what they claim, they spend what they want to spend, and what they want to do is spend whatever it takes to beat all of the other alliances they can realistically beat. Not only do I not see an easy way to change that, I think if you actually tried you'd get more complaints than there are now. After all, there's a trivial way to reduce spending on war to zero: ban potions and revives. That would force players to not spend, but I think that would make war even more intolerable to more players.

In fact it is the very existence of high seasonal rewards that triggered more spending on war, and increasing the rewards would only continue that trend upward. Make the rewards worth even more, and players will spend even more effort to get them, and try to restrict them from doing so and they'll complain. You can't make the rewards worth more than players are willing to spend, when players are willing to spend whatever it takes to get those rewards.

MaRvEl_MoNsTeR

I’m not saying that. I’m saying that if you look at the player landscape right now there is a high percentage of players that don’t see AW as “worth” it and thus not spending money on boosts and so on. Or shoot, not playing AW at all.

Rewards need to be adjusted. It’s been forever since they have and this shorter season with longer down time in between means we actually get less rewards than the old system in the same time frame.

Add to this the new map, there needs to be better rewards. It’s total BS that we won’t get adjusted rewards until season 11.

Greywarden

Wars are being matched on prestige. Plenty of threads on this proving it and if you look through the leaderboard it’s even more obvious.

A possible fix is to leave match making solely on prestige but increase the number of champs being calculated into that number, say instead of 5 do 10.

Then you could give an additional point multiplier to both alliances based on the prestige of that matchup so that a 8.5k prestige group destroying everyone in gold and platinum 3 doesn’t wind up finishing the season in top 3....

Ultra8529

With prestige wars Kabam has introduced a new way to bump up weaker alliances by giving them easy access to top tier rewards. All this under the ostensibly legitimate guise of AW Season rewards. At the same time, the real top alliances are facing the toughest alliances in the game over and over again for what is, relative to their progression, scraps.

MaRvEl_MoNsTeR

Is it prestige or rating? Because some of the ally’s getting “easy” wars are up there in AQ meaning their prestige is high but their ranking is low.

Like back in the day where folks were selling 1/2/3* to lower ally rating

Greywarden

It seems to be mainly prestige. My group sits in the top 15 aq and has only faced top 10 aq alliances in war. Average +\- has been +50/-15

Lormif

You are confusing optional with required. I realize you want to complete it because the other side wants to complete it. And I understand that not completing it may result in a loss. But that is still an option. In any other mode competition is required, not an option.