**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
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15.0 Alliance Wars Update Discussion Thread
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I believe if my ideas are good ideas they will survive anyone else's opposing ideas. It is my job to try to make more sense than the opposition, but it is up to the reader to decide if I have succeeded.
Besides, in a week I'm likely to say something a bunch of people will think is idiotic, and the shoe will be on the other foot.
Is there someone out there that can tell me a valid reason, on any node, that spider Gwen would be placed on defense but for "diversity?"
The fun of AW is totally gone in my eyes... seeing AW 100% completion all the time is just boring.
Defender kills needs to be back. Until it is, Kabam will be viewed as a greedy, self-centered entity who doesn't care for its customer database.
Bring the fun back to your community. You had a great game going here and your greed will be your demise.
If they want diversity then they should lower the points for it and make it factor not a deciding factor as it is now. Alliances are losing because of it even when they out rate and out explore the opposition and that doesn't really make sense to me.
There's a lot of bad champions and a lot of champions who aren't good at defense and I really dont want to put them just for the sake of diversity because they are terrible champions or terrible defenders but that's exactly what kabam wants us to do.
Diversity doesn't necessarily stop other alliances from putting a lot of the same champions in, I'm still seeing tons of nightcrawlers, Hyperion, dorm, etc so that hasn't really changed it just gives them less point in that which is what some people were tired of seeing in the old system and yet some are still doing it so what's the point.
They caught us all off guard with this new map, and given us zero tools to adjust our champions to said map. Alot of people ranked up champions, bought offers for their defenders and they just threw it all away in favor of sweeping changes that is universally hated by just about everyone.
If they want this to work the whole point system needs to changes, readd defender kills, add attacker diversity, shrink the map, cut portal costs, cut the points down on defender diversity, readd hidden information, maybe give down rank tickets, maybe add another attacker and defender slot.
This whole system and layout is pretty terrible and I am not enjoying running it, it seems like more of a chore to me with all of the waiting and checking in that goes into it and the fact it's leagues easy than the last version for the most part.
Also it's still buggy mess of a game which occasionally makes it downright unplayable, in addition to the servers being sub par considering how many outages they've had lately which also makes the wars frustrating and annoying in addition to being kinda of unfun.
I really hope they listen to us and actively use all the input we give to make their adjustments to the war and game in general.
(Screenshots were sent to chat by two different people) I just edited them
Give every alliance a set number of... whatever, credits, or something, to spend in war.
The first time you place any defender it costs 1 credit. The next time you place that defender in the same war or BG, it costs 2 credits. The third time it costs 4 credits, or whatever. And so on.
So the more of the same defender you place, the more expensive it gets, and the fewer overall defenders you can place. The more diverse your roster, the more overall defenders you can place. So you might place all Magiks, but only be able to cover half the nodes. Or you could place a completely diverse team of defenders and cover them all.
This would create a tradeoff - the less diversity you have, the stronger your roster, but the more ground you give up.
At the start of every war, credits reset, and every alliance always starts with the same number.
Not at all. I personally think diversity in itself isn't a problem. If they fixed their champs and made them all viable, for example, we'd see diversity. It's just that diversity points is such a lazy and flawed way of implementing diversity. I don't mind diversity at all. I do mind diversity POINTS and the lack of defender kills.
We wouldn't see diversity if they buffed the **** ones, we'd still see the same 4 or 5 top champs littered all over AW.
The BESSSSSST champs get chosen, doesn't matter if champ A is 20% better than champ B or 1% better, everyone will choose champ A.
It's an all or nothing concept. There's no diversity involved.
If they buffed Kamala, Iron Patriot, Hullkbuster, Shehulk and Spidey Gwen so much that they became the best defenders, EVERYONE would be grinding hard for them and AW would be littered with them just like Mystics, NCs, and Hypes were in 1.0.
Diversity doesn't exist in a competitive game. The best float to the top and everyone picks them.
But then how do you explain that there are several top champs in the game, and not just one? Nightcrawler came after Magik but both are considered viable on defence.
If there are ways to make more than one champ viable, then there are ways to make more than a handful of champs viable.
Add to that the ability of nodes to influence abilities and sure, you could have many more champs that are useful on defence in different ways.
It is very clear what the rules are at present, so I suggest people adapt and plan as a team who to bring or u will lose and deserve too.
We are in middle of war and our opponent has brought 8 dorm, multiple spider, NCs and juggs in defence. We will beat boss without any item use and they will lose. Is basic stupidity to set that defence under these rules
Kabam can give us 50 great defenders tomorrow, but only the TOP choices get chosen.
There's a hierarchy. The best get picked. If **** champs were suddenly buffed into the best defenders, those formerly **** champions would be flooding AW just like NC, hype, and the mystic class, and we wouldn't get diversity there either.
Diversity doesn't exist. Diversity implies picking a wide variety of champs regardless of effectiveness.
If you pick based on effectiveness, which any smart player will, diversity doesn't exist if you extrapolate that to everybody. Everybody will be going for the most effective.
If you asked 100 players to choose between 2 GREAT champions, and they could only pick one, and one scored 99/100 for effectiveness and the other scored 99.1/100, EVERYBODY would pick the 99.1 champ if they had the choice. 100 players would choose the 99.1 champ and 0 would choose the 99.0 champ. It's all-or-nothing strategy.
David Sirlin has written a series of really good articles called Balancing Multiplayer Games. I'm sure the developers are familiar with them and it would really help to try and apply some of his concepts.
How can you expect equal representation when they're not all equal?
Answer is, you can't. In a free system where effectiveness matters, the best get chosen. In an artificially constrained system you'll get diversity (like AW 2.0), but it will break your game and make it meaningless.
Effectiveness matters the most and it should. Anything else is just a waste of time.
If there is only one top champion, and every player would pick him, then why did players facing top alliances that had nearly every single champ in the game wonder about which character they would facing on any particular node?
Look at Brian Grant's old AW videos. Look at how many times he says, I'm not sure who's on this node. The unblockable S2 is a good one. Could be Punisher, could be Dr. Strange, could be Hood. The enemy could pick from all the champs in the game, so why didn't they pick the "99.1" choice?
It is entirely possible to build an in depth game with diverse choices. Look at Street Fighter and how many characters show up in a tournament. Everyone is allowed to pick any character they like, so why doesn't everyone keep picking the same character?
For the unblockable S2 node, good choices would be DS, Hood, etc..
Here comes the important part:
THERE IS NO DIVERSITY IN THE UNBLOCKABLE S2 NODE!
Only the BEST get chosen for that node (the best that they have).
So say in a random map there's 5 enhanced s2 nodes, the TOP champ for that node goes there.
Assuming DS is the best there (I'm just picking a random champ), 5 players all bring DS to put them on there. And if they don't have DS, they'll go down the line to the second best.
Diverse in this context means different instead of effective. There might be a diverse set of champs that are good for the S2 node, but under 1.0, smart players won't bring a diverse set for the sake of it, they'll choose the best.
This is factually incorrect. The best did NOT get chosen for that node, because there was no best. All 3 were completely viable options. Brian was up against alliances that were swimming in Punishers, Hoods and Doc Stranges. They had so much choice. If only 1 was the best, that best would always get chosen. And yet, there were 3 popular choices.
Another example is the Outlast/Optimist/Plagued Mind node. Mordo was a popular choices, but also Juggernaut, Dormmamu, Magik and Nightcrawler. Again, the alliances he faced had practically every champion in the game to choose from and yet, we saw a variety of champions on this node.
So the argument that only one champion is the best, and all other will be excluded, is clearly wrong.
And it doesn't just happen in this game. StarCraft: three races, all different, all effective. Street Fighter: many different characters are effective. Civilisation: many factions, all different, all effective. Football (soccer): many teams, many players, many positions, many formations, many effective possibilities. Boxing: uppercuts, jabs, roundhouses, all effective. MMA: striking, grappling, both effective.
I'm not trying to be nice to Kabam for the heck of it. I just want a fun game, and having many different viable strategies is fun to me.
Your taking g his 99.1% champ comment completely out of context now, that comment was between 2 champs as an example an your using it out of context an equating it to the alliance. Different people would chose out of around 3 of the best options for a enhanced sp2 node based on who they think is best for it, however they always choose out of the same few champs as they are best suited for that node
Nope, if the logic is that between 2 champs there is only one best, then by that logic, between 3 champs there is only one best. And between 4 champs there is only one best. And between 100 champs there is only one best.
It's clear that there isn't just one best. There were 3 equally good options. So if there can be 3 equally good options there can be 4 equally good options. And 5. And 6.
The point is, it is perfectly possible to balance a game so there is a range of equally good options. It had been done for many games, in AW 1.0 it was done to a very, very, very limited degree. So to say it is impossible to have any kind of diversity (as he is saying) is untrue.
Let's see what happens
Not at all because you can't always apply the same logic to multiple options as you can between 2 because your adding exponentially more factors than just deciding between 2.
An in this instance just because there are 3 good options it doesn't mean there must 5 or 6 or 7 and ....
A lot of us are expecting this announcement, as just about everyone is unhappy with the current and proposed setup. Another week of broken wars is not going to go over well, and some may choose not to participate as it's not balanced.