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%,
Portals require the same amount of energy that taking a step would. If another Summoner has already made it to that portal, that doesn't require any energy. If you take the portal to a place another player has already been, it will not cost energy. But if you're the first one to get there, and take the portal to somewhere another player has not been, then it will cost energy.
if you dont want 100% exploration upgrade the other nodes too
if you want a skill decision who win add defenderkills, maybe with just 10 points per kill.
this may help to avoid that Wars are decided on rating and diversity, our last 5 Wars was with full diversity (150) and both alliances explore 100% so that the rating decided who wins what leads to better masteriers decide over the win or who has more 5* rank4, from the 5 Wars 3was decided with less then 50 points but the enemy have a lot more defender kills.
They use more Suicides masteries what lead to more rating and more suicide def kills, but only rating is important so they win...
We understand how they can impact wars, but what I've gotten a lot of Private Messages about and have now seen posts of is that players are concerned that they will continue to 100% the map, and that Defender kills would fix this. This is what we're trying to avoid, a case where an Alliance is able to 100% Explore the map very easily, and even less so should it be possible for both Alliances to fully explore their opponent's maps.
We're working towards this, and will continue to make more iterations if we think that they are necessary.
If you guys understand how defender kills impact wars then why is Diversity the tie breaker and not defender kills?
If all things being equal then the alliance who did it better should win.
I don't think I'm the only one when I say I just don't see where you're headed with all this and you could save me and a lot of people some time by letting us in on the master plan and how you intend on getting there.
If there are more changes that need to be made, just like the last couple weeks, we'll make more further revisions.[/color]
This is scary... We are REALLY TIRED of you revisioning stuff while we have to adapt spending resources and money. You promised that our now useless characters would have been useful again. Please explain how this "new" war make them useful, thanks.
Dunno if it’s funny or sad that kabam doesnt understand how defender kills can impact war.
We understand how they can impact wars, but what I've gotten a lot of Private Messages about and have now seen posts of is that players are concerned that they will continue to 100% the map, and that Defender kills would fix this. This is what we're trying to avoid, a case where an Alliance is able to 100% Explore the map very easily, and even less so should it be possible for both Alliances to fully explore their opponent's maps.
We're working towards this, and will continue to make more iterations if we think that they are necessary.
We have usually been able to 100% our opponents maps in the old war system. Even with all the magiks, dorms, juggs, nightclub, etc. Most top 100 alliances have. How is this new design supposed to stop that?
That's a fair Question! The goal is to make the map more engaging and difficult so that where you place which Defenders is a conscious decision that you have to think about. If we find that you guys are all still 100%ing this Map, then it means that we need to make further revisions.
We're not through with this, and we plan on keeping a close eye on this next round. If there are more changes that need to be made, just like the last couple weeks, we'll make more.
More engaging and difficult? You completely removed thorns, slashed tires, start with power nodes, and the ability to place repeat defenders that were difficult to beat previously.
Diversity should be a multiplier for defense kills. More diverse defense gets a higher multiplier, thus more points for kills. It adds a little strategy back, at least. Do we go for a strong defense and get more, less valuable, kills, or a diverse one which will get fewer kills, but more points for each. That took me 30 seconds to come up with, so I'm sure it could be improved but damn does it sound better than the current system and it gets that diversity metric included?
Sounds good, until you try to put real numbers on such a suggestion and meta-game it out in your head. I can't think of a way to do that which works. Most of the time, I come up with a system that encourages racking up the maximum number of kills and screw the multiplier, or a multipler so low you might as well place the maximum diversity defense and hope for a lucky kill or just count on the miniboss kills.
If I may present a not quite accurate but illustrative mathematical analogy. Using linear scoring and proportional multipliers means the tradeoff between kills and multipliers looks like a line - a linear graph. Lines can only slope one way, to the left or to the right. And that means the best ("highest") point on the tradeoff curve is either absolute far right or absolute far left. Which means you'll be driven to either maximum diversity or completely ignoring diversity. To design the tradeoff so that it is perfectly level and all points are equally high is virtually impossible, and worse if all points are equally good then nothing stops players from going back to 14.0 placement and putting ten Magik's everywhere.
If you want players to move towards some happy middle ground, the extreme left and the extreme right must be worse than the middle. The tradeoff "math" has to look like an upside down horseshoe. Linear scoring can't really do that. You always end up with a flat, straight line.
Here's a simple algorithm, and I think it would work reasonably well at encouraging placement of interesting champs (ones which might get kills -- i.e. interesting on the offense side too):
Divide the number of kills by the number of that champ.
(Easy to describe, but complicated in practice. It can be tweaked -- e.g. sqrt of the number of that champ, or some other function -- but I'm not sure that'd improve matters.)
So if an alliance places 3 Magiks and totals 15 kills by Magik, they get 5 points. If they place 1 Magik and she gets 5 kills, and 1 Yondu and he gets 1 kill, and 1 Venom, who gets 1 kill -- they get 7 points. This doesn't force you not to use the same champ -- if it really is by far your best choice for a node, it might make sense; but it strongly encourages placement of interesting or unique champs. To be honest, I think this would lead to use of synergy teams to buff unique defenders, so most nodes would be relatively easy -- but harder nodes might offer some interesting fights.
None of this will help unless the map is made a bit harder, though.
EDIT: to be clear, I agree with you that linear models are likely not to provide a balance. The point of this proposal is that it's a (multiplicative) inverse, which produces a different shape. I suspect it'd need some tweaks, but that something based on this could support multiple strategies including some balanced strategies. I also agree with you that there are other approaches which could work -- my point was that modifying kills based on diversity of defenders can probably be workable.
The problem with this system is that in any given tier of AW, there are a lot of defenders that don't really get any kills. Then there are a few that get just a couple. And there are a very few that get a lot. One property that the original system had but your system lacks is the notion of an assist. If you place a strong defender that deals a lot of damage but doesn't get the kill, you could still ultimately benefit from that if the next defender finished the attacker off. So imagine the case where you place a bunch of Icemen all over the place and then unique strong defenders immediately after each Iceman on those paths. The Icemen might not get any kills, but you don't actually want them to. You want them to soften up the attackers and then have the unique champions after them finish them off. They get the kill, they are unique, they get the most points. It still encourages you to place a lot of copies of Iceman on the map.
Maybe that's a good thing. Under the right circumstances that could add a kind of tactical thinking to placement, but I point it out to demonstrate that there are a lot of weirdness to scoring that can happen if you tie uniqueness to kill directly, because in actual play it often isn't the champ you screw up against that kills you, it is the next one.
I'm also concerned about the way the numbers work. I acknowledge you point out that your proposed formula may need to be tweaked, but let's say you think Magik can get three kills. If we place one Magik we get three kills. If we place two Magiks we get six kills by we divide by two and end up with three points again - same as before. No matter how many Magik's we place we get the same amount of defensive kill points. But Magik is also a potential path-stopping champ: she can theoretically wipe out an attacker and terminate that path. So she is worth placing a lot of, because in this case there's no penalty for doing so. There's no advantage either, but it is always better to place a Magik than a defender that won't get a kill. It is sometimes worth placing a defender that can also get kills. But even then that is likely to be very situational.
My concern with this issue is that while it encourages a larger variety of champions than now, it doesn't seem to encourage more variety than 14.0, and it also encourages consistent placement of the same champs on the same nodes to get the same kill pattern. That might cause map placement to become monotonous again.
It is better than what we have now and probably better than what we are getting in the next iteration, but it still needs work to become competitive with what 14.0 was already offering players.
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.
That is tantamount to saying that if a basketball team plays too good defense it is not fair to the offense of the opposing team because the first team's offense doesn't have to work as hard as the second team's offense. That perverts the definition of what a competition is when both sides control both offense and defense.
Portals require the same amount of energy that taking a step would. If another Summoner has already made it to that portal, that doesn't require any energy. If you take the portal to a place another player has already been, it will not cost energy. But if you're the first one to get there, and take the portal to somewhere another player has not been, then it will cost energy.
Mike, I'd like to make one point about energy to show that we actually have less than we did with the old maps.
In the old maps we got a new point of energy every 1.5 hours. Since there was a max of 5 energy, that meant that it took 7.5 hours to fill the meter. Now that it only takes 1 hour per energy, we hit max energy in 5 hours.
The problem is sleep. Since the war lasts 24 hours, almost everyone is going to go to sleep at some point. Most people need around 7 hours of sleep, so the old system had no waste for most people. The new system will waste at least a couple of energy for most people.
The same thing is true for work. Someone who works an 8 hour job, plus a little time for commuting, would lose 1 or 2 energy with the old system. With the current system, that same person would lose about 4 energy.
When you announced the new maps, changing the timer to 1 hour and the map size to 150% bigger sounded like an even trade. However, it isn't. Going from 7.5 hours to fill the meter to 5 hours to fill the meter causes people to waste more energy.
Could the team consider making the max energy level higher?
Dunno if it’s funny or sad that kabam doesnt understand how defender kills can impact war.
We understand how they can impact wars, but what I've gotten a lot of Private Messages about and have now seen posts of is that players are concerned that they will continue to 100% the map, and that Defender kills would fix this. This is what we're trying to avoid, a case where an Alliance is able to 100% Explore the map very easily, and even less so should it be possible for both Alliances to fully explore their opponent's maps.
We're working towards this, and will continue to make more iterations if we think that they are necessary.
We have usually been able to 100% our opponents maps in the old war system. Even with all the magiks, dorms, juggs, nightclub, etc. Most top 100 alliances have. How is this new design supposed to stop that?
That's a fair Question! The goal is to make the map more engaging and difficult so that where you place which Defenders is a conscious decision that you have to think about. If we find that you guys are all still 100%ing this Map, then it means that we need to make further revisions.
We're not through with this, and we plan on keeping a close eye on this next round. If there are more changes that need to be made, just like the last couple weeks, we'll make more.
so what you're saying if this band aid fix doesn't work, then you're going to be to crank up the difficulty on the next band aid fix?
if that's the route they really want to go (keeping the skill removed from AW with no defender kill points), they're going to need to add Labyrinth of Legends nodes to AW tier 1 --- it'll still suck though since higher defender rating will still always win at high competitive levels.
Exactly. In old war, it wasn’t the nodes that typically stopped people. It was the defender. A status immune she hulk isnt that tough. A status immune duped spidey or max md magik/juggs is. That’s where kills came from generally.
I hope Kabam just gets to the point where they add ridiculous op nodes so alliances can barely get 30% completion. Then maybe all the bitchin will stop but then again it probably won't lol
For two weeks you guys have been doing your extensive research and I can't believe you still haven't figure it out. You made the nodes harder, kudos to you guys at least now some of the nodes are more challenging. You drop the points for defender diversity. Nice. But what bothers me is this changes nothing. We are a tier 2 9.3M alliance and we will continue to lose our wars against those 12, 13 million or even higher alliances because they simply have a much higher defender rating than us. We can go back to the old system and ignore the defender diversity system but at the end of the day, we are still gonna get run over because it is still zero points for defender kills.
I made a post about this asking for Kabam's advice to mid-tier alliances who have thus far climb up the tiers with a combination of skills, units and tactical defensive placement. We have in the past beaten alliances with much higher defender rating than us because we have a much better defense and were also able to plow through their defense with lesser deaths. Now what do we do when we face the same alliance again? We can have the same more defender kills and we can still plow through their defense with minimal deaths but they are gonna win in the end because they have a higher defender rating and defender diversity points if we decide to field our old school defenders.
If we decide to go for max diversity we will lose because of defender rating. Either way we lose. I know I'm probably gonna get warn for tagging but hey @Kabam Miike, how do you suggest us mid-tier alliances deal with this? Do we simply pray to god and hope our opponents mess up? Because now we don't have a say anymore in the outcome of the war. It is entirely up to our opponents even if we 100% explore all 3 battle groups.
I hope Kabam just gets to the point where they add ridiculous op nodes so alliances can barely get 30% completion. Then maybe all the bitchin will stop but then again it probably won't lol
I think you're missing the point, getting 100% was something we did regularly in the old map. It took skill, coordination, and even items. But if our opponents did it too, we could count the kills and say we did better. I want to face strong defenses, and for my defense to be tough. That was the fun challenging part of the game. Without it, I won't keep playing much longer. I know, I know, people will just say go ahead and quit then.
I'm not new to War. I've been organizing them since they started. I'm not getting into personals. Which this is. When you have a Player Base that encompasses all levels and everyone plays the same system, you can't devalue the issues that exist by simply saying, "Git gud".
In a head to head competition yes you absolutely can. There is nothing else to say. You lose, you learn, you try again. You don't claim the win because you spent more for your cleats. Jeez.
Spending is really irrelevant because the larger metric is the Defender Rating. If Players want to finish the Map and choose to spend, that has always been an option. There's never been a penalty for that. The penalty was from trying and getting KO'd. When the opponent has a strong enough Roster, those numbers add up greatly. To the point of making a Win impossible no matter what was chosen for strategy.
The way to increase rating is to spend. New high pi champs, more rank up materials. Money rules here, and the more they do, or don't do, and the more they say, or don't say, I'm thinking this is the idea. Drive new champ revenue up by forcing people to stay ahead of the curve to win a war while those behind have no shot despite skill level.
Enjoy AQ 2.0.
Disagree. People can advance without spending. In fact, many Players have Resources expiring because they are selective with who they Rank. Resources that are meant to be used. Totally their prerogative. It's still not absolutely necessary to spend. All that does is speed up the process.
I hope Kabam just gets to the point where they add ridiculous op nodes so alliances can barely get 30% completion. Then maybe all the bitchin will stop but then again it probably won't lol
I think you're missing the point, getting 100% was something we did regularly in the old map. It took skill, coordination, and even items. But if our opponents did it too, we could count the kills and say we did better. I want to face strong defenses, and for my defense to be tough. That was the fun challenging part of the game. Without it, I won't keep playing much longer. I know, I know, people will just say go ahead and quit then.
I understand your point but I also get theirs. They want more champs to be used in wars and diversity is the right move for that.
Now if anything they could bring back defender kills but only give us 5 points for each kill. They would also bump defender diversity back up if they did that though.
Dunno if it’s funny or sad that kabam doesnt understand how defender kills can impact war.
We understand how they can impact wars, but what I've gotten a lot of Private Messages about and have now seen posts of is that players are concerned that they will continue to 100% the map, and that Defender kills would fix this. This is what we're trying to avoid, a case where an Alliance is able to 100% Explore the map very easily, and even less so should it be possible for both Alliances to fully explore their opponent's maps.
We're working towards this, and will continue to make more iterations if we think that they are necessary.
We have usually been able to 100% our opponents maps in the old war system. Even with all the magiks, dorms, juggs, nightclub, etc. Most top 100 alliances have. How is this new design supposed to stop that?
That's a fair Question! The goal is to make the map more engaging and difficult so that where you place which Defenders is a conscious decision that you have to think about. If we find that you guys are all still 100%ing this Map, then it means that we need to make further revisions.
We're not through with this, and we plan on keeping a close eye on this next round. If there are more changes that need to be made, just like the last couple weeks, we'll make more.
At the risk of being repetitive, please explain how map changes are going to accomplish this. You say you want players to think about which defender to place on which node. But what the node does or where it is doesn't matter directly. What matters to the players is "if I place this defender here, what will the result be: good for me, or not good for me."
How do you expect a player to make that decision? Under 14.0, that question had an easy answer: place the defender that will get the most kills. Kills give points, and the more kills the defender gets the greater the chance the defender will also blockade the path. That's logical. That's how we made our decisions.
You say Kabam is adjusting the nodes to make them harder. No matter how easy they are or how hard they are, what should the players be thinking about which defender is better or worse? The only thing we can possibly think in 15.0 is "try to place a defender that can stop a player dead. If that can't happen, then it doesn't really matter what we place." But trying to stop an attacker from continuing to try to attack is your stated reason for removing defender kills. If we aren't allowed to compel an attacker to stop attacking, if we don't get points for defender kills, what's left to judge?
Kabam's position seems to be that if the nodes are harder, then it will matter which defenders get placed. But it only matters if being harder matters. And in 15.0, "harder" only matters if you stop the attacker cold. If you just kill him a couple times, that doesn't affect the war.
A defender isn't better because it hits harder or because he has a difficult to evade special attack or because he regenerates health. That's incidental. A defender is better if it helps us win a war. A defender has one and only one way to ultimately do that. Change the score. We don't get points when it kills an attacker. We only get points if the entire attacking alliance gives up on that path. Short of that, the only points we get is on placement. Nothing about the defender capabilities affects placement points.
great job everyone now you got kabam to make wars even harder which will not only result in diversity still being the deciding factor as well as it costing more to win. i mean without defender kills it really sucks that the maps going to be harder now.
Not exactly AW related...but I would highly recommend coming up with something new beyond the monotonous monthly events. AW has kept people engaged, but even with the changes you will lose a lot of people if you don't come up with something. Especially when you have admitted Act 6 is not in the works.
great job everyone now you got kabam to make wars even harder which will not only result in diversity still being the deciding factor as well as it costing more to win. i mean without defender kills it really sucks that the maps going to be harder now.
Think about it. It's not an accident. The whole goal was to increase revenue via AW.
When the opponent has a strong enough Roster, those numbers add up greatly. To the point of making a Win impossible no matter what was chosen for strategy.
Surely that's the point of War? That the stronger alliance will win? Or are you so blinded by your own contrariness that you can't see that?
great job everyone now you got kabam to make wars even harder which will not only result in diversity still being the deciding factor as well as it costing more to win. i mean without defender kills it really sucks that the maps going to be harder now.
Think about it. It's not an accident. The whole goal was to increase revenue via AW.
Our goals were to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging and fun. We've said this before. I know you're going to believe whatever you want to believe, but I promise you, that was not at all our goal here.
When we removed Defender kills, it's because we didn't want players to simply give up after a fight. Not playing should never be the optimal strategy. We wanted everybody to fight for the very last node. Stuck because your Alliance mate couldn't take down the link to the node in front of you? Well fight it anyways! See if you can take it down!
We've said before that getting this mode to where we want it to be will be an iterative process. So if there are more iterations that need to be made, we will. But first, we've got to get through a few days of War until we can see how this is working out.
great job everyone now you got kabam to make wars even harder which will not only result in diversity still being the deciding factor as well as it costing more to win. i mean without defender kills it really sucks that the maps going to be harder now.
Think about it. It's not an accident. The whole goal was to increase revenue via AW.
Our goals were to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging and fun. We've said this before. I know you're going to believe whatever you want to believe, but I promise you, that was not at all our goal here.
When we removed Defender kills, it's because we didn't want players to simply give up after a fight. Not playing should never be the optimal strategy. We wanted everybody to fight for the very last node. Stuck because your Alliance mate couldn't take down the link to the node in front of you? Well fight it anyways! See if you can take it down!
We've said before that getting this mode to where we want it to be will be an iterative process. So if there are more iterations that need to be made, we will. But first, we've got to get through a few days of War until we can see how this is working out.
@Kabam Miike would love to see you respond to @DNA3000 's well written and thought out posts, rather than ones like you responded to above
great job everyone now you got kabam to make wars even harder which will not only result in diversity still being the deciding factor as well as it costing more to win. i mean without defender kills it really sucks that the maps going to be harder now.
Think about it. It's not an accident. The whole goal was to increase revenue via AW.
When we removed Defender kills, it's because we didn't want players to simply give up after a fight. Not playing should never be the optimal strategy. We wanted everybody to fight for the very last node. Stuck because your Alliance mate couldn't take down the link to the node in front of you? Well fight it anyways! See if you can take it
Nobody is stopping after 1 fight. If they really can't kill the defender, they don't deserve to win. It's a war. You play to win the game!
great job everyone now you got kabam to make wars even harder which will not only result in diversity still being the deciding factor as well as it costing more to win. i mean without defender kills it really sucks that the maps going to be harder now.
Think about it. It's not an accident. The whole goal was to increase revenue via AW.
Our goals were to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging and fun. We've said this before. I know you're going to believe whatever you want to believe, but I promise you, that was not at all our goal here.
When we removed Defender kills, it's because we didn't want players to simply give up after a fight. Not playing should never be the optimal strategy. We wanted everybody to fight for the very last node. Stuck because your Alliance mate couldn't take down the link to the node in front of you? Well fight it anyways! See if you can take it down!
We've said before that getting this mode to where we want it to be will be an iterative process. So if there are more iterations that need to be made, we will. But first, we've got to get through a few days of War until we can see how this is working out.
Your first two paragraphs contradict each other. Removing defender kills and adding diversity make AW much more boring and too similar to AQ. There is no competition now because the winner is already pre-determined. There is simply no acceptable version of AW that doesn't involve defender kills.
IMO this update changes nothing except the amount of money spent on pots due to more KO's. They need a tie breaker as 100% exploration and 100% diversity will always mean the team with the highest defender rating will win. No skill reward at all
Really I don't understand how this has to be so complex. It seems like such a simple concept.
Why not just have 3 point metrics: exploration, boss kills and defender kills.
Whoever clears the the map while doing it in style wins.
Maybe I'm over simplifying things, but I know for a fact that they are over complicating things.
But that’s the thing. You can still not permit the same defenders per bg and have this metric. This whole theory that they don’t want people to “give up” by counting defender kills is really nonsensical at this point. If the other alliance 100%’s the map...you have to 100% the map to win. The only way it makes sense is if the less than skilled alliance believes that even if they 100% the map they willl lose on defender kill points.
But what this doesn’t answer is the obvisou: why would an alliance that knows the war winner will come down to defender rating and the other alliance is stuffed with 5* r4 champs, meaning they will automatically win, have any motivation to keep fighting?
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.
The difference would be HOW that 100% was achieved @Kabam Miike Was the 100% achieved by item use by lower skill or lower ranked champs? Or was it achieved with no items/low kills. With defender kills you have to be careful of your paths and super attentive to what champs are placed. I'm all for the diversity metric but not without defender kills. If you took the nodes In a more specialized direction where less used champs could be highlighted more it would make it more fun. Honestly flat markups of health and attach and unblockable specials are pretty boring. But if spider Gwen were unblockable and unstunnable it would at least be interesting. Or have curse nodes like act5. Anything more interesting than "power gain is now 2.0 instead of 1.5". Yawn.
You are focusing on "what" too much. A lot of top tier alliances will 100% no matter what. It is the how you win that makes it fun. Watching an alliance waste 20 lives on one node while being behind in exploration was exciting. A lot of times you wouldn't know if you won or lost it was so close. Now we just run the map like it's a daily quest. We will do the same after the change.
Skill matters. Strategy matters. I think that's been lost in some attempt to make us use Luke cage or abom more often. The most skilled alliance should win. Not the biggest. Not the most diverse. And right now and after tomorrow the most skilled stands a good chance of losing. I hope you can see that.
Comments
if you dont want 100% exploration upgrade the other nodes too
if you want a skill decision who win add defenderkills, maybe with just 10 points per kill.
this may help to avoid that Wars are decided on rating and diversity, our last 5 Wars was with full diversity (150) and both alliances explore 100% so that the rating decided who wins what leads to better masteriers decide over the win or who has more 5* rank4, from the 5 Wars 3was decided with less then 50 points but the enemy have a lot more defender kills.
They use more Suicides masteries what lead to more rating and more suicide def kills, but only rating is important so they win...
If you guys understand how defender kills impact wars then why is Diversity the tie breaker and not defender kills?
If all things being equal then the alliance who did it better should win.
I don't think I'm the only one when I say I just don't see where you're headed with all this and you could save me and a lot of people some time by letting us in on the master plan and how you intend on getting there.
This is scary... We are REALLY TIRED of you revisioning stuff while we have to adapt spending resources and money. You promised that our now useless characters would have been useful again. Please explain how this "new" war make them useful, thanks.
More engaging and difficult? You completely removed thorns, slashed tires, start with power nodes, and the ability to place repeat defenders that were difficult to beat previously.
The problem with this system is that in any given tier of AW, there are a lot of defenders that don't really get any kills. Then there are a few that get just a couple. And there are a very few that get a lot. One property that the original system had but your system lacks is the notion of an assist. If you place a strong defender that deals a lot of damage but doesn't get the kill, you could still ultimately benefit from that if the next defender finished the attacker off. So imagine the case where you place a bunch of Icemen all over the place and then unique strong defenders immediately after each Iceman on those paths. The Icemen might not get any kills, but you don't actually want them to. You want them to soften up the attackers and then have the unique champions after them finish them off. They get the kill, they are unique, they get the most points. It still encourages you to place a lot of copies of Iceman on the map.
Maybe that's a good thing. Under the right circumstances that could add a kind of tactical thinking to placement, but I point it out to demonstrate that there are a lot of weirdness to scoring that can happen if you tie uniqueness to kill directly, because in actual play it often isn't the champ you screw up against that kills you, it is the next one.
I'm also concerned about the way the numbers work. I acknowledge you point out that your proposed formula may need to be tweaked, but let's say you think Magik can get three kills. If we place one Magik we get three kills. If we place two Magiks we get six kills by we divide by two and end up with three points again - same as before. No matter how many Magik's we place we get the same amount of defensive kill points. But Magik is also a potential path-stopping champ: she can theoretically wipe out an attacker and terminate that path. So she is worth placing a lot of, because in this case there's no penalty for doing so. There's no advantage either, but it is always better to place a Magik than a defender that won't get a kill. It is sometimes worth placing a defender that can also get kills. But even then that is likely to be very situational.
My concern with this issue is that while it encourages a larger variety of champions than now, it doesn't seem to encourage more variety than 14.0, and it also encourages consistent placement of the same champs on the same nodes to get the same kill pattern. That might cause map placement to become monotonous again.
It is better than what we have now and probably better than what we are getting in the next iteration, but it still needs work to become competitive with what 14.0 was already offering players.
That is tantamount to saying that if a basketball team plays too good defense it is not fair to the offense of the opposing team because the first team's offense doesn't have to work as hard as the second team's offense. That perverts the definition of what a competition is when both sides control both offense and defense.
Mike, I'd like to make one point about energy to show that we actually have less than we did with the old maps.
In the old maps we got a new point of energy every 1.5 hours. Since there was a max of 5 energy, that meant that it took 7.5 hours to fill the meter. Now that it only takes 1 hour per energy, we hit max energy in 5 hours.
The problem is sleep. Since the war lasts 24 hours, almost everyone is going to go to sleep at some point. Most people need around 7 hours of sleep, so the old system had no waste for most people. The new system will waste at least a couple of energy for most people.
The same thing is true for work. Someone who works an 8 hour job, plus a little time for commuting, would lose 1 or 2 energy with the old system. With the current system, that same person would lose about 4 energy.
When you announced the new maps, changing the timer to 1 hour and the map size to 150% bigger sounded like an even trade. However, it isn't. Going from 7.5 hours to fill the meter to 5 hours to fill the meter causes people to waste more energy.
Could the team consider making the max energy level higher?
Exactly. In old war, it wasn’t the nodes that typically stopped people. It was the defender. A status immune she hulk isnt that tough. A status immune duped spidey or max md magik/juggs is. That’s where kills came from generally.
I made a post about this asking for Kabam's advice to mid-tier alliances who have thus far climb up the tiers with a combination of skills, units and tactical defensive placement. We have in the past beaten alliances with much higher defender rating than us because we have a much better defense and were also able to plow through their defense with lesser deaths. Now what do we do when we face the same alliance again? We can have the same more defender kills and we can still plow through their defense with minimal deaths but they are gonna win in the end because they have a higher defender rating and defender diversity points if we decide to field our old school defenders.
If we decide to go for max diversity we will lose because of defender rating. Either way we lose. I know I'm probably gonna get warn for tagging but hey @Kabam Miike, how do you suggest us mid-tier alliances deal with this? Do we simply pray to god and hope our opponents mess up? Because now we don't have a say anymore in the outcome of the war. It is entirely up to our opponents even if we 100% explore all 3 battle groups.
Link to my original post: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/23837/assistance-needed-how-do-we-play-alliance-wars#latest
I think you're missing the point, getting 100% was something we did regularly in the old map. It took skill, coordination, and even items. But if our opponents did it too, we could count the kills and say we did better. I want to face strong defenses, and for my defense to be tough. That was the fun challenging part of the game. Without it, I won't keep playing much longer. I know, I know, people will just say go ahead and quit then.
Disagree. People can advance without spending. In fact, many Players have Resources expiring because they are selective with who they Rank. Resources that are meant to be used. Totally their prerogative. It's still not absolutely necessary to spend. All that does is speed up the process.
Now if anything they could bring back defender kills but only give us 5 points for each kill. They would also bump defender diversity back up if they did that though.
At the risk of being repetitive, please explain how map changes are going to accomplish this. You say you want players to think about which defender to place on which node. But what the node does or where it is doesn't matter directly. What matters to the players is "if I place this defender here, what will the result be: good for me, or not good for me."
How do you expect a player to make that decision? Under 14.0, that question had an easy answer: place the defender that will get the most kills. Kills give points, and the more kills the defender gets the greater the chance the defender will also blockade the path. That's logical. That's how we made our decisions.
You say Kabam is adjusting the nodes to make them harder. No matter how easy they are or how hard they are, what should the players be thinking about which defender is better or worse? The only thing we can possibly think in 15.0 is "try to place a defender that can stop a player dead. If that can't happen, then it doesn't really matter what we place." But trying to stop an attacker from continuing to try to attack is your stated reason for removing defender kills. If we aren't allowed to compel an attacker to stop attacking, if we don't get points for defender kills, what's left to judge?
Kabam's position seems to be that if the nodes are harder, then it will matter which defenders get placed. But it only matters if being harder matters. And in 15.0, "harder" only matters if you stop the attacker cold. If you just kill him a couple times, that doesn't affect the war.
A defender isn't better because it hits harder or because he has a difficult to evade special attack or because he regenerates health. That's incidental. A defender is better if it helps us win a war. A defender has one and only one way to ultimately do that. Change the score. We don't get points when it kills an attacker. We only get points if the entire attacking alliance gives up on that path. Short of that, the only points we get is on placement. Nothing about the defender capabilities affects placement points.
Think about it. It's not an accident. The whole goal was to increase revenue via AW.
Surely that's the point of War? That the stronger alliance will win? Or are you so blinded by your own contrariness that you can't see that?
Our goals were to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging and fun. We've said this before. I know you're going to believe whatever you want to believe, but I promise you, that was not at all our goal here.
When we removed Defender kills, it's because we didn't want players to simply give up after a fight. Not playing should never be the optimal strategy. We wanted everybody to fight for the very last node. Stuck because your Alliance mate couldn't take down the link to the node in front of you? Well fight it anyways! See if you can take it down!
We've said before that getting this mode to where we want it to be will be an iterative process. So if there are more iterations that need to be made, we will. But first, we've got to get through a few days of War until we can see how this is working out.
@Kabam Miike would love to see you respond to @DNA3000 's well written and thought out posts, rather than ones like you responded to above
Why not just have 3 point metrics: exploration, boss kills and defender kills.
Whoever clears the the map while doing it in style wins.
Maybe I'm over simplifying things, but I know for a fact that they are over complicating things.
Nobody is stopping after 1 fight. If they really can't kill the defender, they don't deserve to win. It's a war. You play to win the game!
Your first two paragraphs contradict each other. Removing defender kills and adding diversity make AW much more boring and too similar to AQ. There is no competition now because the winner is already pre-determined. There is simply no acceptable version of AW that doesn't involve defender kills.
IMO this update changes nothing except the amount of money spent on pots due to more KO's. They need a tie breaker as 100% exploration and 100% diversity will always mean the team with the highest defender rating will win. No skill reward at all
But that’s the thing. You can still not permit the same defenders per bg and have this metric. This whole theory that they don’t want people to “give up” by counting defender kills is really nonsensical at this point. If the other alliance 100%’s the map...you have to 100% the map to win. The only way it makes sense is if the less than skilled alliance believes that even if they 100% the map they willl lose on defender kill points.
But what this doesn’t answer is the obvisou: why would an alliance that knows the war winner will come down to defender rating and the other alliance is stuffed with 5* r4 champs, meaning they will automatically win, have any motivation to keep fighting?
The difference would be HOW that 100% was achieved @Kabam Miike Was the 100% achieved by item use by lower skill or lower ranked champs? Or was it achieved with no items/low kills. With defender kills you have to be careful of your paths and super attentive to what champs are placed. I'm all for the diversity metric but not without defender kills. If you took the nodes In a more specialized direction where less used champs could be highlighted more it would make it more fun. Honestly flat markups of health and attach and unblockable specials are pretty boring. But if spider Gwen were unblockable and unstunnable it would at least be interesting. Or have curse nodes like act5. Anything more interesting than "power gain is now 2.0 instead of 1.5". Yawn.
You are focusing on "what" too much. A lot of top tier alliances will 100% no matter what. It is the how you win that makes it fun. Watching an alliance waste 20 lives on one node while being behind in exploration was exciting. A lot of times you wouldn't know if you won or lost it was so close. Now we just run the map like it's a daily quest. We will do the same after the change.
Skill matters. Strategy matters. I think that's been lost in some attempt to make us use Luke cage or abom more often. The most skilled alliance should win. Not the biggest. Not the most diverse. And right now and after tomorrow the most skilled stands a good chance of losing. I hope you can see that.