15.0 Alliance Wars Update Discussion Thread

Summoners!

Our 15.0 Update is just about a week away, and with it, it's bringing a huge change to Alliance Wars! Check out everything you need to know about the Brand New Map, Scoring Changes, and new boosts in the Loyalty Store here: http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/17902/15-0-alliance-wars-update/

Comments

xdethsquadx

JUST PLEASE GIVE US RANK DOWN TICKETS FOR THIS REASON:
QUID PRO QUO- EVERY ALLY WILL PUT THE "BEST CHAMP" ON THE "RIGHT NODES," MEANING EVERY MAP WILL HAVE THE SAME DEFENDERS IN EVERY SLOT. YOU MADE AW INTO AQ, WHICH IS ALREADY TOO REPETATIVE. IF YOU ALLOW US TO REALLOCATE SOME RESOURCES FROM OUR SAY SPIDEYS INTO OUR LUKE CAGES, THE FIGHTS MAY BE A BIT HARDER AND MORE FUN. WHEN NO ONE IS GONNA USE ANY RESOURCES TO RANK UP HORRIBLE UNPLAYABLE CHAMPIONS, THEY WILL STICK R3 4*S ALL OVER THE MAPS LIKE THEY DO NOW. JUST LET US RETOOL OUR NOW WORTHLESS CHAMPS. YOUD MAKE MOST OF US SHUT UP COMPLETELY IF YOU'D JUST GIVE US LIKE 5.

chunkyb

That's not a theory, it's an observation. And since everyone grows (and some at different rates), it doesn't mean anything when it comes to war. War is not war and this observation does not help it become war. No one that enjoys the competitive nature of war wants to compete to see who has the highest numbers.

RagamugginGunner

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Brr762 wrote: »

Without defender kills, defender rating is still going to be the deciding factor.

Shared this theory in another Thread. Rather than retype it, I'm just going to post a screenshot.

Wrong.

DNA3000

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Voluntaris wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Twunt wrote: »

The end all summary of this will be that you are making Defender rating and Diversity the two tie breakers. Doesn’t matter how you allocate the points. If both teams explore 100%, no skill required. The one with the higher Defender rating (now you lowered diversity points) will win. How can you have two variables to determine winners? That’s a sloppy formula.

The point of the map changes is that we want you guys to emphasize your Defenders again. Prevent the other team from getting 100% exploration.

...and those upgraded nodes do not do that. We'll still easily 100% the map.

Removing Defender Kill Points has removed skill from Alliance War. Resulting in a boring, uncompetitive alliance quest 2.0.

I can see where you're coming from.

If the idea is that you think you'll still be able to 100% clear this map as it is now, how would defender kills have made a difference?

I can take that information to the team and see what they think.

Consider this. Let's assume the new rules are in force, and let's say you are not the first player to place defenders. Some defenders are already placed. You are thinking about which of your defenders to place. You have a defender that is likely to be a very strong defender when placed on a certain node. But that defender has already been placed, so that defender would not be a unique defender. If you place that defender, you will get 50 points for that defender. If it is defeated the attacker gets 50 points for the kill regardless of how much effort they put into killing it and the net value of that placement to your alliance is zero, plus a few points for rating.

If you place something else that is unique but not a particularly good defender you will get 100 points for that placement. Even if you concede that the other side is likely to kill it you will still net 50 points, plus rating. In other words, the worst case scenario for placing the weak unique defender is identical to the best case circumstance for placing the strong non-unique defender.

Now, I haven't specifically stated how weak the weak defender is or how strong the strong defender is. Notice it doesn't matter. No matter how strong the strong defender is the best case scenario is that node is worth 50 points. The worst case scenario for the weak defender is just as good: 50 points. It could be better.

Now this ignores the secondary side effect points you can get or fail to get if you fail to complete a path. But if we assume both sides are equally good at clearing paths to a first order approximation that isn't important. It *can* change things, but isn't *likely* to consistently change things.

But let's say I'm wrong, and in fact under the new system the players discover that in fact it is worth just ignoring the diversity score and stacking Magiks into the defense, because they can show-stop the attackers. Well then diversity points become irrelevant. Although this system is a little better than the previous one it is trying to aim for a balance point that is honestly very difficult to hit because it is balancing on a point. What I think you have done is created a system where if, for a given AW tier and alliance strength, a defender has a good chance of completely stopping a path in its tracks then it is worth ignoring the diversity points. For all other champions it is not worth duplicating and you should go for diversity points. The system is still a binary either-or system, it is just that the binary decision is different for a select few champions.

Defender kill points added some grey area to the system. In the current system a defender that the other side defeats is worthless. A defender that stops the other side cold is worth duplicating. There's no in-between. The original system had an intermediate value. A defender that generates three kills is worth more than a defender that generates no kills. A defender that generates ten kills is worth more than a defender that generates three kills. In the grand scheme of things, many different defenders had different values. In the 15.0 system there were two kinds of defenders: worth placing on boss node, and largely worthless (except for diversity points, for which every champion had the same value). In your new system, there are three kinds of defenders: boss worthy, path stopper, worthless.

So long as the value of a defender is binary - it can be defeated or it cannot be defeated - you will have a system with no happy medium. You will have a system where there is only one good placement solution. We need a system with shades of grey in valuing defenders, so players actually think about what the best choice is based on their own evaluation of how "grey" that defender is. If you don't award defender kills, how else do you intend to value, in a non-binary way, the value of two different champs. Because right now, that's the only way to distinguish them. Killed or not killed.

If you need a TL;DR for the devs, it is this. In the current system, ignoring rating points for now, players have two choices. Place a defender that will either earn you zero points or 50 points, or place a defender that will earn you either 50 points or 100 points. Which one would you choose?

Is that the choice they intended to offer?

Huluhula

xdethsquadx wrote: »

JUST PLEASE GIVE US RANK DOWN TICKETS FOR THIS REASON:
QUID PRO QUO- EVERY ALLY WILL PUT THE "BEST CHAMP" ON THE "RIGHT NODES," MEANING EVERY MAP WILL HAVE THE SAME DEFENDERS IN EVERY SLOT. YOU MADE AW INTO AQ, WHICH IS ALREADY TOO REPETATIVE. IF YOU ALLOW US TO REALLOCATE SOME RESOURCES FROM OUR SAY SPIDEYS INTO OUR LUKE CAGES, THE FIGHTS MAY BE A BIT HARDER AND MORE FUN. WHEN NO ONE IS GONNA USE ANY RESOURCES TO RANK UP HORRIBLE UNPLAYABLE CHAMPIONS, THEY WILL STICK R3 4*S ALL OVER THE MAPS LIKE THEY DO NOW. JUST LET US RETOOL OUR NOW WORTHLESS CHAMPS. YOUD MAKE MOST OF US SHUT UP COMPLETELY IF YOU'D JUST GIVE US LIKE 5.

Yeah but then how will kabam milk the whales?

chunkyb

RagamugginGunner wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Brr762 wrote: »

Without defender kills, defender rating is still going to be the deciding factor.

Shared this theory in another Thread. Rather than retype it, I'm just going to post a screenshot.

Wrong.

Agreed. It's a very bad assumption that denies simple logic and the basic workings of the game tbqh.

RebusUI

Ok you increase the difficulty of the map.
You’ve been working on this second version for how long? How about revamp the REWARDS... you’ve screwed AW with first version and this version... at least make the REWARDS worth it... other than that I’m very disappointed!!!

GroundedWisdom

Sorry you disagree. I stand by my theory.

unknown

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DNA3000

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Twunt wrote: »

The end all summary of this will be that you are making Defender rating and Diversity the two tie breakers. Doesn’t matter how you allocate the points. If both teams explore 100%, no skill required. The one with the higher Defender rating (now you lowered diversity points) will win. How can you have two variables to determine winners? That’s a sloppy formula.

The point of the map changes is that we want you guys to emphasize your Defenders again. Prevent the other team from getting 100% exploration.

That is too "all or nothing." If you want players to emphasize defenders, you need to give them a reason to value defender A over defender B. Right now, there's no way to do that except in the extreme case where one defender is easily killed and the other one cannot be killed at all. If one defender is harder to kill, "harder to kill" has no real value.

The devs should be able to answer this question: if champion A is harder to kill than champion B, even if both are eventually killed, what incentive are we giving to the players to place champion A over champion B. Because right now in many war tiers there is no such incentive. It doesn't affect the outcome of the war. Even in tiers where it does affect the outcome of the war eventually, it doesn't do so directly enough to strongly encourage competitive placement.

GroundedWisdom

SmokinSurfer wrote: »

This makes Defender Rating more valuable. So we when are an 8M rated alliance and we face a 10M alliance, we know that they get a huge advantage just for being higher rated. How can we justify this?

It's the system balancing out the Matches. Now, it won't be an exact Match, but eventually the Matches will be more appropriate to our Rating. We will still see some mismatches while it balances. My theory is that eventually the Matches and Allies will be in a Tier within their own range.

Huluhula

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Sorry you disagree. I stand by my theory.

And that is absolutely your right and you can preach it day and night but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s never going to be accepted. WAR should 100% be based off skill level. I.e. your ability to out maneuver your oppents placement and strategy I.e your ability to out think your opponent and catch them off guard or force them to fight something so hard they either have to step up their game and improve their skill or die trying

RagamugginGunner

That last comment from Miike about no knowing how defender kill would change the scoring really scares me. If the dev team has such little understanding of the game how can they possibly make content that the players like? I really hope he was just feigning ignorance there.

LeNoirFaineant

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

NevvB wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Brr762 wrote: »

Without defender kills, defender rating is still going to be the deciding factor.

Shared this theory in another Thread. Rather than retype it, I'm just going to post a screenshot.

So what youre saying is... the strong get stronger and the weaker allis will never have a chance of catching up.

Sounds very fun! Great
/s

No. What I'm saying is Defender Rating adds a mechanic that reflects Ranking Champs. The point of the game is to advance our Rosters by Ranking. One of the things it will do is balance the overpowered Matches. The other aspect is people will advance in part by advancing their Accounts, and in turn, Allies.

This is wrong on so many levels. To lose a war in which you outplayed and outkilled your opponent because they had more bad defenders with higher pi is garbage. But even if I granted your point, as long as they allow alliance jumping for easy wars this natural progression that you posit won't work. It'll just mean that low alliances have even less chance than they did before in their mismatches. @GroundedWisdom

Brr762

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Brr762 wrote: »

Without defender kills, defender rating is still going to be the deciding factor.

Shared this theory in another Thread. Rather than retype it, I'm just going to post a screenshot.

Right now in higher tiers (not sure about lower tiers) both alliances will still 100% explore, get three boss kills, and place 50 unique defenders per bg so the win is going to frequently come down to which alliance placed higher defenders which I think we can all agree is not how wars should be won (if it was rare then ehh it happens).

Or another way of looking at it. An alliance can’t make up for one duplicated defender by defender rating so they’ll still have to place 50 unique defenders which means lower quality defenders so people will use less items.....

GroundedWisdom

Huluhula wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Sorry you disagree. I stand by my theory.

And that is absolutely your right and you can preach it day and night but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s never going to be accepted. WAR should 100% be based off skill level. I.e. your ability to out maneuver your oppents placement and strategy I.e your ability to out think your opponent and catch them off guard or force them to fight something so hard they either have to step up their game and improve their skill or die trying

That's not skill from the perspective you're talking about. That's overpowering the opponent by placing multiple Champs that gain the highest Kills, and forcing them to lose by their own effort. We will have to disagree on this one. It's seen as skill for the winning team, but the ones who have to lose from trying aren't seeing it the same. It's just a safe way to win everytime.

Speeds80

It's not enough mike, another important change needed is portals to stop requiring energy, i took path 2 yesterday and played all day and could not get to the miniboss before I needed to sleep, nobody wants to check in twice as much for war as they used to. if we couldn't see class and minibosses it might almost be hard enough again to prevent 100%,

GroundedWisdom

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

NevvB wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Brr762 wrote: »

Without defender kills, defender rating is still going to be the deciding factor.

Shared this theory in another Thread. Rather than retype it, I'm just going to post a screenshot.

So what youre saying is... the strong get stronger and the weaker allis will never have a chance of catching up.

Sounds very fun! Great
/s

No. What I'm saying is Defender Rating adds a mechanic that reflects Ranking Champs. The point of the game is to advance our Rosters by Ranking. One of the things it will do is balance the overpowered Matches. The other aspect is people will advance in part by advancing their Accounts, and in turn, Allies.

This is wrong on so many levels. To lose a war in which you outplayed and outkilled your opponent because they had more bad defenders with higher pi is garbage. But even if I granted your point, as long as they allow alliance jumping for easy wars this natural progression that you posit won't work. It'll just mean that low alliances have even less chance than they did before in their mismatches. @GroundedWisdom

That's the other part of the equation that I haven't considered. The Shell Allies are a separate issue, but the agreements to peck off certain Allies may be curbed. If the Matches become more appropriate, there won't be many left in their range to peck off.

winterthur

Kabam Miike wrote: »

The point of the map changes is that we want you guys to emphasize your Defenders again. Prevent the other team from getting 100% exploration.

Maybe a repeat point from me. I thought the way to block 100% exploration is defender kills points, giving points to opponent when attacker dies.

Huluhula

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Huluhula wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Sorry you disagree. I stand by my theory.

And that is absolutely your right and you can preach it day and night but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s never going to be accepted. WAR should 100% be based off skill level. I.e. your ability to out maneuver your oppents placement and strategy I.e your ability to out think your opponent and catch them off guard or force them to fight something so hard they either have to step up their game and improve their skill or die trying

That's not skill from the perspective you're talking about. That's overpowering the opponent by placing multiple Champs that gain the highest Kills, and forcing them to lose by their own effort. We will have to disagree on this one. It's seen as skill for the winning team, but the ones who have to lose from trying aren't seeing it the same. It's just a safe way to win everytime.

“Overpowering” I’ve lost several times in war and never Once felt overpowered, I always tell myself “today I just wasn’t good enough” and that’s why I play this game the thrill of improving myself, growing within the game, learning new strategy or ways to beat champs that certain people say are “too hard to kill” that’s what made this game and more specifically war so exciting to me it was actually challenging and rewarded people with the most skill, not the best collection.

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Brr762 wrote: »

Without defender kills, defender rating is still going to be the deciding factor.

Shared this theory in another Thread. Rather than retype it, I'm just going to post a screenshot.

That's not a theory. That is an observation. If the alliances with higher rated defenders win more wars than they lose, the tier sorting algorithm will sort them into higher tiers, and by definition everyone else into lower tiers, with alliance defender rating acting indirectly by affecting the win/loss record. That's a given.

The problem is, there's no good justification for making that change. If the devs arbitrarily started giving additional points to alliances with defensive champions that were taller, you could say the exact same thing. The height of the champions was "balancing" the alliances into a new configuration, and eventually the taller alliances would be matched up with other taller alliances and their scoring would become more even. Growth would come from alliances growing their rosters, acquiring an increasingly large percentage of the tall champions.

The fact that we could make that observation doesn't make it a good thing to happen.

Gabbros

-You guys need to put a cap to diversity. It should not be 50 defender diversity points possible per bg. Make it 35/50 defenders per bg or something. I understand that you guys want people to place less mystic defenders or allow other champions to be used more, but honestly whether a champion is viable or great for defense really depends on the nodes and champions' abilities and effects. Instead of playing around with points and the map, I would like to see more creativity/changes that really consider node effects and champions together.

Today's update DOES NOT consider expert tier or top alliances. If the difficulty of the nodes are indeed similar or comparable to the previous map...many will still go for very high exploration or 100% regardless of your node changes. Unless there is a cap to diversity, high rated alliances will still be FORCED to fully diversify their defense. Meaning...the r4 dormamus or type alike we ranked and possibly spent to acquire will become obsolete. The only thing that has changed is that wars may cost more, now that difficulty of nodes got bumped back up again.

-The biggest reason, in my opinion, majority of AW lovers object the removal of defender kills points is because Alliance War is supposed to be a WAR between two alliances. Therefore, there needs to be some type of factor which measures and rewards players' PERFORMANCE.

-Boosts and masteries should not affect defender rating... Defender rating DOES NOT reflect champions' abilities. It is just a number you guys created for marketing purposes. People should not have to change their masteries or boost up to gain an advantage.

unknown

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NevvB

Dunno if it’s funny or sad that kabam doesnt understand how defender kills can impact war.

FAL7EN

Don't cry about diversity. Cry about defender rating lol

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Brr762 wrote: »

Without defender kills, defender rating is still going to be the deciding factor.

Shared this theory in another Thread. Rather than retype it, I'm just going to post a screenshot.

That's not a theory. That is an observation. If the alliances with higher rated defenders win more wars than they lose, the tier sorting algorithm will sort them into higher tiers, and by definition everyone else into lower tiers, with alliance defender rating acting indirectly by affecting the win/loss record. That's a given.

The problem is, there's no good justification for making that change. If the devs arbitrarily started giving additional points to alliances with defensive champions that were taller, you could say the exact same thing. The height of the champions was "balancing" the alliances into a new configuration, and eventually the taller alliances would be matched up with other taller alliances and their scoring would become more even. Growth would come from alliances growing their rosters, acquiring an increasingly large percentage of the tall champions.

The fact that we could make that observation doesn't make it a good thing to happen.

It's actually a good thing from my perspective. Advancing in War Tiers is a reflection in part, of advancing in the game. I don't want to argue too much about it. That's my opinion.
It's still a theory because we haven't seen enough results to call it an observation. That will be seen over time.

JRock808

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Brr762 wrote: »

Without defender kills, defender rating is still going to be the deciding factor.

Shared this theory in another Thread. Rather than retype it, I'm just going to post a screenshot.

That's not a theory. That is an observation. If the alliances with higher rated defenders win more wars than they lose, the tier sorting algorithm will sort them into higher tiers, and by definition everyone else into lower tiers, with alliance defender rating acting indirectly by affecting the win/loss record. That's a given.

The problem is, there's no good justification for making that change. If the devs arbitrarily started giving additional points to alliances with defensive champions that were taller, you could say the exact same thing. The height of the champions was "balancing" the alliances into a new configuration, and eventually the taller alliances would be matched up with other taller alliances and their scoring would become more even. Growth would come from alliances growing their rosters, acquiring an increasingly large percentage of the tall champions.

The fact that we could make that observation doesn't make it a good thing to happen.

It's actually a good thing from my perspective. Advancing in War Tiers is a reflection in part, of advancing in the game. I don't want to argue too much about it. That's my opinion.
It's still a theory because we haven't seen enough results to call it an observation. That will be seen over time.

What you want is another AQ. Your prestige gives you points there. Skill should give points in war.

And the fact you think matches will even out shows how little you must play war because every war I've done in the last month has been .5 mil difference at best, 4 mil at worst. Always us on the lower side, because it didn't matter, we won plenty, and have won since. It's just not any fun whatsoever.

Huluhula

@GroundedWisdom “Overpowering” I’ve lost and won several alliance wars and never once felt “overpowered” if I lose I don’t blame anyone but myself for not being good enough to overcome the obstacle/s in front of me. That’s what made this game and war so thrilling the idea that I wasn’t good enough yet to figure out how to overcome a certain champ/node combo it inspired me to continue playing to keep striving to get better and better this game.

Viper1987

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Brr762 wrote: »

Without defender kills, defender rating is still going to be the deciding factor.

Shared this theory in another Thread. Rather than retype it, I'm just going to post a screenshot.

This is awful. It basically suppprts the notion pay to win because if you spend, you will always have higher rated champs or more higher rated champs. This completely excludes strategy altogether and isn’t that more or less what war is? A strategic maneuver of how to defeat your opponent? You’re making this a numbers game when it’s much more. It’s like saying you guys have 100 people fighting and we have 90 so you automatically win. In war, you could strategize and have those 90 guys defeat the 100.

unknown

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