**KNOWN AW ISSUE**
Please be aware, there is a known issue with Saga badging when observing the AW map.
The team have found the source of the issue and will be updating with our next build.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Please be aware, there is a known issue with Saga badging when observing the AW map.
The team have found the source of the issue and will be updating with our next build.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
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15.0 Alliance Wars Update Discussion Thread
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I don't know how else to put it. Sounding like a broken record...
The 15.0 War changes... THIS. ISN'T. FUN. Your proposed changes won't change anything in the higher tiers. The people who were blasting through like a hot knife thru butter, will continue to do so. It will *STILL* be a "Game of Rosters" rather than a war where the better-skilled team prevails. "Wallet Wars", there's a better name for it...
Brian Grant hitting the nail on the head yet again
@GroundedWisdom, meet @GroundedWisdom:
When talking about strategy in terms of Defender Kills, yes. The most popular Champs are placed because they garner the most Kills. Kills accumulate and force the opponent to try themselves to death. Two different references.
Coincidentally, I had a crazy thought yesterday. What if the opposite was true? We reward alliances for exploration. Why? Because we judge the alliance that can kill more defenders as being better than the one that can kill less defenders.
Suppose I were to flip that. Consider the short path Venom. There's an easy way to kill him: explore the whole map and take out the buff nodes. And there's a hard way: go straight at him. Suppose we were to make a map with ten short paths that led to the boss in the middle. And each path had a boss buff. The boss is worth 20000 points at the start. But each path you complete reduces the value of the boss by 1000 points. So an alliance that kills the boss after only taking out five paths gets 15000 points while an alliance that kills the boss after only taking out two paths gets 18000 points. A single player that runs straight to the boss and kills it gets 19000 points.
But what about the rest of the players? We still give points for kills so the other players can still score points by completing their paths. But the order of completion matters. The earlier you kill the boss - while it is buffed harder - the more points you get.
To add a layer of strategy and make things more interesting we could make the AW map kind of look like a smaller AQ map. There are ten paths with two fights - a "normal" fight and then the buffing node fight - and then a miniboss. The more buffs the miniboss has when you kill it, the more points you can get. And because the paths are short, it is possible to get to the boss and kill it without anyone else having to wait long before starting their paths.
Repeat that three times. Paths, miniboss, paths, miniboss, paths, miniboss, paths, final boss. If we also actually told both sides what the current score was (we currently don't) then we add an element of strategy. If you clear all the paths and kill the first miniboss and then you see the other side get more points, you know you have to catch up. You can take more risks and try to down the second miniboss while more nodes are up to gain ground. Each side can jockey for the lead by taking increasingly higher risks and trying to kill the boss with more nodes up, right up to the final boss.
Instead of rewarding players for 100% sweeping the map and then killing the boss, we can reward players for trying their best to extract the most points per stage by fighting the boss with the most nodes up they can still deal with.
Meanwhile, how do we encourage the other side to keep fighting no matter what? We change the AW rewards so that the rewards you get - whether you are getting the winning side rewards or the losing side rewards - scale with the stage you reach. You get a certain amount of rewards for each miniboss you kill and then full rewards for killing the final boss. Notice that even a totally outmatched alliance can still try to at least reach the end and get full rewards by coordinating their efforts and eliminating every single buff node before taking on the boss nodes. They will in effect have a much easier fight than their opponent, they will still lose, but they still have something to play for.
There's also some additional strategy on the defense side. If you know which buffs are on which paths, that could influence your strategy for prioritizing certain paths for stronger defenses. But we can do even better and play some games with the nodes. Suppose one of the nodes buffs the boss with energy gain. That's a valuable buff in many cases - like placing Magik on the boss node - so you would want to defend it strongly. But if there is still some diversity penalty in place (I'm setting that aside for now) do you place strong but non-unique defenders on the buff node to protect it, forfeiting the points, or do you place a unique defender there and let the other side kill it, knowing that you've just gained points because they are killing it before taking down the boss.
In fact, do you actually your strongest champs on the boss nodes or on the buff nodes? After all, if the other side can't kill the buff nodes the boss nodes is all the stronger, but if they can kill all the buff nodes it won't matter as much what you place on the boss node. The meta gaming is more complex than the current AW and I think it matters which tier you are in. Some tiers will try to maximize boss scores by bypassing (temporarily) many buff nodes (so their strength doesn't matter as much), some will try to weaken bosses enough to guarantee 100% completion.
Note: there are energy balancing and timezone coordination issues to work out with this idea logistically. I'm just presenting the combat half of the idea. And there's a lot of details that would need to be worked out. But I think this does address two very difficult problems simultaneously: how to give weaker alliances a reason to fight to the end, and how to give stronger alliances a way to separate themselves by skill (and roster strength).
I'm afraid @GroundedWisdom above disagrees with you. You need to take it up with him: I've quoted him and highlighted the appropriate statements in context above. That @GroundedWisdom specifically stated that there was little strategy both when placing defenders and also on the attacking side. It is the attacking side, and only the attacking side, that can say "Okay, boys. Do we stop trying and take a Loss, or keep trying and take a Loss?"
I'm not trying to be rude here, but many of the players commenting here play at high levels of AW. In AW 14.0, even the best champs that could be predicted in a certain spot on the map (outside of boss node) had become ineffective. We would plan our attack expecting to see Magik or Dorm or NC etc and if we were right, they would die quickly. Surprising the attackers (some call this strategy) with an unexpected defender in a strategic location created more issues and affected the war.
I'm sure there are wars and levels where players stop cold at a 5/50 duped dorm, but that's not the concern of the majority of players. Your perspective is your own and nobody will be able to change that, but you can at least understand that the majority of us have a different perspective and you don't really need to tell us all how that's wrong when you don't have the same experiences as we do. Perhaps this was a problem at low tiers of War, but it was not at high tiers. Personal experiences DO matter when discussing the meta of a video game.
You're looking for a contradiction in two totally separate conversations out of context. The argument is that Defender Kills are needed for strategy. There is not much strategy involved in setting up a roadblock where the opponent is forced to give up and lose, or keep trying and lose. There is also not much strategy in placing multiples of the same Champs who gain the most Kills. The argument of strategy comes mainly from the side that is accumulating said Wins through cornering the opposition, and it usually references the opponent and how they need to strategize. Lose or lose, is not a strategy. I support the removal of Defender Kills. I'm afraid we have different definitions of strategy. Where there is no possible outcome that can lead to a Win, strategy is irrelevant.
Sorry, but I'm fully capable of discussing the meta of a game regardless of what Tier I'm in. I'm quite intelligent and I have the ability to understand entire systems, and not just the top, middle, or bottom.
in fact defender kills was one of the funnest things about war. it was always a fun talking point after a war "my juggs got 8 defender kills that war sweet!" it made war way more fun and engaging not unfair, thats just ludicrous.
I disagree. This debate is going somewhere. You're incorrectly assuming my goal is to get you to change your mind. That is not my goal. I'm not here to force anyone to agree with me. My goal is to highlight the errors I perceive in your arguments and present counter-arguments that other readers will find convincing, and that goal extends to any devs that might be reading. You and I are one small set of proxies for the players that like the current system and the players that don't. I believe it is useful for the devs and other players to see how those two positions stand up under scrutiny.
The question you have to ask is do you believe you are representing the side of the players that like the system well, and do you believe it serves their interests to continue to create arguments in support of it. I'm only posting because I believe I'm representing my side reasonably well. If I thought I wasn't, I'd stop.
This is not a place to call others out, and it's not a space to fight. You can always disagree with each other, but do so in a respectful manner.
I can infer that there were such players. There are players that have expressed the opinion that any element of the game that grants too high of a benefit to players possessing certain champions is unfair to the players who don't have them and do not play the game in a way that allows them to build larger rosters as quickly as they would like it.
So it is logical to assume that there are players that find certain champions, in particular top ranked Magik, Iceman, etc, too difficult to fight with their rosters and thus getting killed by those champions in AW was "unfair." I'm not saying I agree, just that it is likely such players exist. It is worth noting that many players called Dave's event "unfair" because they did not possess strong power control champs, and some players called the spiderman event unfair because they did not possess strong evade-neutralizing champs (even though that wasn't even really necessary).
It is their right to want what they want just as it is our right to want what we want. It is the responsibility of the devs to arbitrate between competing players when they cannot make both groups happy simultaneously. We all prefer they side with us, of course, but we can judge objectively whether they are fairly judging between different groups across the entire game. Sometimes this side should win, sometimes that side should win. In this case, in the only head to head competitive element of the game, I think it is logical that the players that desire strong competition should win.
Yeah, thats true. But thats more of our daily "I want what that player has but don't want to work towards it or put in the same effort"
Not a bad idea. You could have it scale up with tiers.
I'm sure such players exist, but some players might genuinely believe that "requiring" certain roster configurations is intrinsically unfair. But even if they genuinely believe it, that doesn't mean that opinion should be catered to by the devs.
I believe the best arguments assume the best of intentions of the opposing viewpoint, because if you can argue against a viewpoint even when extending the best possible benefit of the doubt to it, that means your position must be a very strong one.
Or to put it another way, I don't like winning because of tie-breakers. I'd rather win because I beat their best with my best.
I think we are well aware that those players do exist. Typically new players or our more casual players.
Unfortunately, this new war system seems to cater to such players.
The competitive and end-gamers ask for one thing in war and seem to be the ones now being ignored.
Even if they were in the majority, I would still think it was unfair to take away the one part of the game that catered to a sizeable minority of the playerbase. In fact, I might defend it even more, because then it would look like bullying.
I think the game should roughly reflect the proportions of the community (and the future prospective community). If the majority want head to head competition, the game should probably evolve to have most of the content include some head to head competition. If the majority don't want head to head competition, then head to head competition should be limited to only a few areas of the game.
My point is that it currently exists in only one part, so we should all strive to protect that one small part. Even if you believe you are in the majority and don't want it, you should try to protect the tiny part of the game that caters to that small minority just to ensure the game continues to attract a wider playerbase. It is the responsibility of the majority to see to it the minority isn't extinguished under their boot.
@DNA3000 thoughts on my proposed idea?
or ... they could re-instate defender kill points anytime both alliances fully 100% the map.
Hmm. This might not be practical, but what if we let players decide. How about we put Darwin in the driver's seat and have the two kinds of AW compete.
Reinstate the 14.0 AW but keep the 15.0 AW. During matchmaking let players pick which AW they want to participate in. We have two buttons: "Enter standard war (15.0)" and "Enter expert war (14.0)." If alliances like the current version they can pick it. If the alliances prefer the previous iteration they can pick that. Kabam could then see how the playerbase splits. If everyone picks 14.0, then we know. If everyone picks 15.0, then we know. If the playerbase splits roughly in half both ways, maybe that justifies keeping both around and letting players sort themselves into the high and low competition brackets.
i like that idea
If majority chose 14.0 and a small portion selected 15.0 than obviously 15.0 players could climb through the tiers at a much faster pace, less competition. Eventually 14.0 players would catch on to this and would jump into 15.0 and we could see a 12 mil alliance possibly rolling over a 5 mil alliance. Than the complaining would start on the threads.
Or we could just see that small portion of player base choosing 14.0, climb the tiers for a while and at some point Kabam would eliminate 14.0 or 15.0. Than naturally those alliances who climbed the tiers are gonna go on a massive losing streak.
Pure guessing game on my end, but some of it seems very likely.
good points .... best to just get rid of diversity / reinstate defender kill points / make more interesting nodes - keep Alliance War competitive with skill playing an important factor in who wins.
I'm assuming that both would be kept around only if both had a viable number of participants: if either version did not attract enough alliances then it would be shut down.
I'm also assuming that the "expert" version would have slightly higher rewards commensurate with having harder competition. It is not like AW rewards are great in the first place, so awarding the expert version slightly higher rewards shouldn't be too unbalancing. The difference should not be so high that people who prefer the 14.0 AW would feel compelled to participate in a version they despise.