Brian Grant hitting the nail on the head yet again
When the biggest Kabam supporter of the youtubers is ripping AW you know something is wrong.
Brian Grant is not so much a big Kabam supporter as he is more of a live and let live player that likes challenges. He doesn't tend to hate what other players hate so he doesn't complain as much about the same things other players complain about. He actually doesn't complain a lot in general, but not because he thinks everything is great.
That's true. He has a much different view than many on the changes Kabam adds, which is why his views on AW are so telling.
ALL the youtubers are ripping on AW. It has to have a negative impact on Kabam when so many thousands of people keep seeing "AW's broken" videos every week.
To be intellectually fair, it is more likely that a youtuber would dislike the new system than the average player, because youtubers are a self-selected group of people that are motivated to share their successes and failures to an audience. Those people are exactly the kinds of people that would tend to prefer a less routine and more dynamic game than the average player. For example, the impression I get is that Brian Grant doesn't so much hate the new version of AW as he is bored by it. He discontinued recording AW because he doesn't find the attack phase interesting. There's nothing interesting to comment about in terms of who is placing what where, or what he has to think about to defeat it. Having watched his last AW stream, it seemed to me it was as interesting to him as recording his alliance duel event commitment.
Nothing to talk about and not much to think about might actually be something some players want: a less difficult war. But of course that is likely to be exactly the opposite of what a streamer would want, even among a group of streamers that have different opinions in all other respects.
I have to specifically add that I'm not saying youtubers are only interested in what will help support their channel. I'm saying the kind of personality that would make a channel is the kind that would tend to want a less passive game all around. Even if they stopped streaming, I think they would still want a more dynamic AW.
Spreading the word that one of the game's biggest features is boring has to have a negative impact on the game. The other night Joel was talking about with all defenders being equal, no champs outside of the god tier attackers are desirable. That leads to less desire to grind arenas for champs and shards. Today is a great example. Mephesto is the next god-tier defender but defenders don't matter anymore so many probably won't grind for him.
I'm sure it is not something anyone at Kabam wants to happen. It is a black mark when your most visible players don't think something. In a sense, we all are a part of that visible portion of the playerbase you don't want to specifically antagonize.
I was only commenting on the fact that sometimes a group of people who appear to represent a wide range of players might have something that connects them into a smaller segment than it first appears, and we should always be careful about assuming that any specific subset of us accurately represents what the entire playerbase as a whole wants.
AW is boring and many players are quitting.
The point is not how many buffs you place on a node, in higher tiers we're used to find hard nodes!
The point is: in which way the system you designed does reward the effort?
I understand what made you come out with Defenders diversity, some more fine-tuning must be needed there, but for god's sake, bring back Defender's kills, that's a great indicator for a player's fighting skills - and hide defenders' classes. It's part of the defensive strategy.
Starting to see less and less responses each day here, wondering if people just gave up.
I think it's that most of us just think of AW as another weekly calendar with random rewards. Sometimes it is higher, sometimes it's lower. Very little faith in it being fixed quickly as long as they remain steadfast on the new direction.
You'll see more activity here when they realize it's hurting revenue instead of helping it and announce defender kills returning.
Oh, and you want to know why some people gave up after dying to a defender? It's not that they felt they could not do it, it's that they can't afford it!
This is 53 days worth of loyalty.. shave off a couple weeks if you win a lot of wars. This is about 1/6th of my champs health. Useless. 3900 heal.. useless.
Make consumables reasonable and people will use them.
heard lots of comments about diversity and defender kills completely agree that defender kills MUST feature in some way.
haven't thought this one through completely, but have the beginning of an idea that might help. (still not sure how to fine tune the points).
combine defender diversity and kills into a single measure.
you only get diversity points for defenders that get kills. Max diversity in a bg would be 50, but only if EVERY defender got a kill.
So, at the end of the war, list all champs that got at least one kill, remove the duplicates, count the number of champs left.
Example: BG2 defenders/kills
3 magiks placed, 2 magiks got kills, 1 diversity
2 cables placed, 0 cables got kills, 0 diversity
1 SM placed, 1 SM got kills, 1 diversity
etc.
PS, as far as balancing ...
my first instinct is to return defender kills as a scoring item, but let diversity points count 10 times more.
2 magik placed, 10 kills total between them.
100 points for 1 unit of diversity,
+ 100 points for defender kills (10 defender kills @ 10 points each)
200 points total
1 wolvie placed, 1 kill and 1 hulk placed 1 kill
200 points for 2 units of diversity.
thoughts?
obviously point level needs tweaking, but i see a strategy of trying to weigh how many of a certain defender. and the importance of getting at least 1 kill.
will introduce skill as a valuable element in war again. dying even ONCE gives the other team points,.
Defender diversity just makes no sense at all to me and I'd rather see it removed.
"Diversity, where we want you to have the option to make use of your entire roster while being forced to only use what others aren't using." That makes no sense when your forced out of making your own choices on defenders
I don't get why thousands of ppl are complaining about war so much. Ive now had 6 ppl from my ally quit cause of war. Kabam seems to think this new war set up is awesome. And everyone knows they never mess anything up. There always listening to everyone's thoughts and suggestions. Bugs getting fixed constantly. There on top of everything. They know what there doing.
Why did the game team alter the recovery after using a special? I get you need make money but altering the mechanics of the game? If that isn't cheating the players then i don't know what is.
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
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.
Guess I completely understand what he meant by “you think you’ll still be able to 100% clear this map as it is now” lol
Now that it appears the "unable to move/do anything for a second or two after special" bug has been resolved .... lets get back to pushing for skill based Alliance War with defender kill points to return!
Now that it appears the "unable to move/do anything for a second or two after special" bug has been resolved .... lets get back to pushing for skill based Alliance War with defender kill points to return!
#BringBackDefenderKillPoints
Woah dude, one thing at a time they’re not used to getting much accomplished let them savor this
heard lots of comments about diversity and defender kills completely agree that defender kills MUST feature in some way.
I think calling it "defender kills" masks the issue, because it makes it seem like we are rewarding the mere placement of a defender. That makes it easy to dismiss. But in fact, defender kills are not about defenders alone. Defender kills are a way to reward good attackers
I think most players interested in a competitive alliance war would agree that ultimately, the winner should be the alliance that performs the most effective attack. How do you judge the best attack?
First and foremost, we look at boss kills. Most of the time the alliance with more kills wins. That seems reasonable. But because there are only three bosses, the war can end in a tie. Three to three, zero to zero, whatever.
If it is a tie, we need a way to distinguish the better attacker. We can then go to attacker kills and exploration, which are actually two ways to reward the same thing: moving through a node. Attacker kills are really just a way of saying a node with a defender sitting on it is worth more than an empty node, but it is really all exploration. Whichever alliance explores more of the map, factoring in some nodes are more valuable, wins.
But this can *also* still end in a tie, or a very close war. We would still like a way to distinguish a 100% three boss kill vs 100% three boss kill performance. And the most logical way to do that is to consider the attacker performance for each node. Instead of just giving points for killing a node in an all or nothing way, we can grant points based on how good the attacker performance was for each node. Defender kills are a way to do that. In effect, defender kills are mathematically identical to reducing the amount of points the attacker gets every time the attacker is defeated. It can even go negative. Attackers are incentivized to attack better.
More importantly, alliance defense gets rewarded not directly for placing "good defenders" but for stopping attackers from scoring points. The focus is on being good attackers and preventing alliances from being good attackers. The focus is on attack where it should be.
When we remove defender kills and do not replace them with anything we create a situation in which we state that an attacker that takes a hundred defeats to kill a node is just as good as an attacker that takes zero defeats. We are saying we are not going to judge the attacker performance at all, except in the binary sense of all or nothing, you defeat the node or you don't. That removes a way to judge competition.
This shouldn't be a surprise. Logically, if you do not want to discourage players from attacking no matter how bad their attacking performance, you are saying you don't want to judge attacker performance. And that is tantamount to saying you do not want attacking to be a competitive activity.
This really comes down to whether you want alliance wars to be. I think all this talk about "defender kills" has masked the fact that in reality, "defender kills" represents a way to judge and reward attackers while defender diversity and defender rating points are in reality a way to get points just for placing a defender. Defender kills are an active thing, defender rating and diversity points are a passive thing. When someone says we shouldn't just get handed points for placing a Magik, we don't. We never got points for placing anything. We never really got points for "defender kills." The attacker lost points for being a poor attacker. We should have called them "attacker performance penalty points" because that is what they really are.
I just wish they would release the wars as described instead of us finding bugs that end up screwing us over and then they act like it's no big deal. They sure do fix things that affect their bottom line, but these last few war "update" failures show they don't give two **** about their players who make plans based on release notes only to find out the release notes don't match the release. If that's not fraud I don't know what is.
An Alliance War Solution that does not include Defender Kill Points
I think you will like this.
I had a thought about Diversity this morning, and single-dimension consideration of Alliance War - that is the dimension of maximizing points.
As I wrote previously, the problem with AW is that there is a Constrained Choice problem, wherein Alliance Officers are forced by circumstance to adopt a strategy designed to achieve maximum points. In the current state, that requires a maximization of diversity, defender pi, maximum # of defenders, etc. - which reduces to a single strategic option.
I understand and am in agreement with the goal of increasing the diversity selection of champions, and increasing the utility of a larger plurality of champions than is presently available.
Obviously, there is some substantial resistance within Kabam to Defender Kills as an adequate cost in the alliance war. Defender kills are a deterrence that, essentially concentrate defender selection - which is, I presume, the sticky bit.
So, I will nominate a suggestion for an alternative.
Rather than include Defender Diversity in the SCORE calculation (50 points, 125 points - it doesn't matter) you should consider including Defender Diversity in the REWARD calculation.
I will provide a couple of scenarios, and then summarize.
There are 4 strategies presented in both scenarios:
MM = Max Diversity, Min Quality
HG = High Diversity, Good Quality
GH = Good Diversity, High Quality
MH = Min Diversity, High Quality
Scenario 1: Represents the Status Quo ~ Placement, Diversity, Kills, Rating
For this example the following equation:
Point Spread = placement*(X1-Y1)+diversity*(X2-Y2)+kills*(X1-Y1)+rating*(X1*Q1-Y1*R1)
Where
X1, Y1 = # Defenders placed A, B
X2, Y2 = # DIVERSE Defenders placed A, B
Q1, R1 = Quality Defenders placed A, B (Aka average PI rating)
Per the current point structure, for two roughly evenly matched alliances, depending on diversity spread (which is dictated generally by expected quality) the point spread is overall pretty low.
I expect this is consistent with a volume of complaint posts you have seen.
Even though the current status quo has shallower point gaps between Alliance A & B, the Constrained Choice problem remains. The only viable strategic choice is to maximize diversity at the expense of quality.
For this example I have removed Diversity points from the scoring model, and I have added a second model, Rewards Multiplier.
Point Spread = placement*(X1-Y1)+kills*(X1-Y1)+rating*(X1*Q1-Y1*R1)
Rewards Multiplier = base * N * diversity.
Where
base = standard tier rewards
N = Kabam Modifier
Diversity = X2/X1
Allow me to point out several obvious conclusions.
1) The removing the Diversity from the score calculation increases the point gap between Winners & Losers, which increases variability of outcome.
2) The psychological result of increased point gap is that users do not perceive that they barely won or barely lost, a condition that leads them to assume unfair rules.
3) The strategic emphasis places the greatest likelihood of winning along the 3rd and 4th strategies (GH & MH).
4) If winning is the War is the desired outcome, then the dominant strategy is MH, Minimum Diversity, High Quality.
Along the right side of Scenario 2 you will see a rewards multiplier scheme. For the purposes of this explanation I will use a 50% multiplier, but I've included a couple of other for your benefit.
The following graphic assumes a Tier 6 Alliance in War.
At Tier 6 the base victory rewards are: 238 x 5* shards, 266 x 4* shards, 4240 loyalty.
At Tier 6 the base participation rewards are: 112 5* shards, 168 4* shards, 5450 gold, 4240 loyalty.
Along the left you will see the 4 possible strategies I have provided, along with the corresponding Rewards Multiplier.
As you can see whether you Win or Lose, the dominant strategy is MM, Maximize Diversity, Minimum Quality.
This might not be obvious.
We now have two competing dominant strategies, and a gradient between them.
Alliance leaders will need to select a strategy based on preferences that are not strictly dictated by score. By rewarding alliances for diversity even if they lose you are providing two competing incentives, and this could lead to multiple strategic selections.
Weaker alliances with low skill may choose an MM strategy to maximize the Rewards of an expected loss.
Moderate alliances with poor organization may choose a GH strategy to make best use of a limited roster.
Moderate alliances with better organization may choose a HG strategy to maintain higher rewards but try to compete for a win.
High ranking alliances may opt for an MM strategy to maximize rewards
Ultra competitive alliances may opt for an MH strategy to maximize their chance to win at the expense of some reward gain.
Most importantly, this brings a crucial element of choice to Alliance War.
Moreover, this also absolves a large contingent of alliances from the (frankly unpleasant) activity of loading 30 member's champions into a spreadsheet to pick out 150 defenders.
As you can see whether you Win or Lose, the dominant strategy is MM, Maximize Diversity, Minimum Quality.
There is a fundamental flaw with your analysis, and it is that you independently analyze the reward results for winning and losing, but winning and losing are not independent of the placement strategy. Let's look at this from the perspective of min/maxing the placement strategy. Let's use your reward tables again:
Here we see that the minimum diversity strategy when it wins offers a certain level of rewards. In a combat-driven scoring system (which I'm assuming you are presupposing because you have eliminated diversity points) this is the strategy that has the best possible chance of actually winning. Fighting an opponent alliance of roughly equal skill and roster strength you'd expect this strategy to win about half the time. So your expected return on this strategy is about (I'm going to focus on the 5* shards just to reduce the number of comparisons) 356 * 0.5 + 114 * 0.5 = 235 5* shards.
If I change my strategy to a higher diversity strategy and my opponent doesn't change strategy I will most likely lose more often than I win. Let's say I go to the "good diversity" strategy. That would offer 438 * 0.5 + 140 * 0.5 = 289 5* shards if I could somehow hold my 50/50 winning percentage. But that seems unlikely. For this strategy to actually increase my rewards I need to win more than 32% of the time. If I do, I should always do this. If I don't, I should never do this.
For your numbers, the winning percentage requirement to make shifting strategy make sense are about 25% for high diversity and about 19% for max diversity. There is a definitely break even point for each strategy, and depending on how the alliance evaluates that chance, quantitatively or qualitatively, there is a single optimal strategy.
But there is another facet to the problem that is subtle but very nasty. Your rewards depend on tier and your tier ultimately depends on your win/loss record. The equilibrium state is actually for the average alliance at any tier to roughly win about half the time. Any strategy that reduces your win percentage will eventually change your tier until your win percentage becomes 50/50. You can't employ a strategy that causes you to win only 30% of the time, because you cannot consistently win only 30% of the time. You will drop a tier if you consistently keep losing, and then your win percentage will eventually start to rise again. So the meta question becomes: is it better if you use the maximum diversity placement strategy and drop a tier, but still earn more rewards than if you were winning half the time in the higher tier because the bonus is higher than the tier loss.
This is a problem because you do not want to encourage alliances to drop tiers and *gain* rewards for doing so. That's a metagaming nightmare and would generate a whole new set of complaints.
As you can see whether you Win or Lose, the dominant strategy is MM, Maximize Diversity, Minimum Quality.
There is a fundamental flaw with your analysis, and it is that you independently analyze the reward results for winning and losing, but winning and losing are not independent of the placement strategy. Let's look at this from the perspective of min/maxing the placement strategy. Let's use your reward tables again:
Here we see that the minimum diversity strategy when it wins offers a certain level of rewards. In a combat-driven scoring system (which I'm assuming you are presupposing because you have eliminated diversity points) this is the strategy that has the best possible chance of actually winning. Fighting an opponent alliance of roughly equal skill and roster strength you'd expect this strategy to win about half the time. So your expected return on this strategy is about (I'm going to focus on the 5* shards just to reduce the number of comparisons) 356 * 0.5 + 114 * 0.5 = 235 5* shards.
If I change my strategy to a higher diversity strategy and my opponent doesn't change strategy I will most likely lose more often than I win. Let's say I go to the "good diversity" strategy. That would offer 438 * 0.5 + 140 * 0.5 = 289 5* shards if I could somehow hold my 50/50 winning percentage. But that seems unlikely. For this strategy to actually increase my rewards I need to win more than 32% of the time. If I do, I should always do this. If I don't, I should never do this.
For your numbers, the winning percentage requirement to make shifting strategy make sense are about 25% for high diversity and about 19% for max diversity. There is a definitely break even point for each strategy, and depending on how the alliance evaluates that chance, quantitatively or qualitatively, there is a single optimal strategy.
But there is another facet to the problem that is subtle but very nasty. Your rewards depend on tier and your tier ultimately depends on your win/loss record. The equilibrium state is actually for the average alliance at any tier to roughly win about half the time. Any strategy that reduces your win percentage will eventually change your tier until your win percentage becomes 50/50. You can't employ a strategy that causes you to win only 30% of the time, because you cannot consistently win only 30% of the time. You will drop a tier if you consistently keep losing, and then your win percentage will eventually start to rise again. So the meta question becomes: is it better if you use the maximum diversity placement strategy and drop a tier, but still earn more rewards than if you were winning half the time in the higher tier because the bonus is higher than the tier loss.
This is a problem because you do not want to encourage alliances to drop tiers and *gain* rewards for doing so. That's a metagaming nightmare and would generate a whole new set of complaints.
So let's discuss some assumptions.
First, under the current meta winning the war is an imperative. There are no downsides to losing. Ergo all preferences are for a maximization strategy.
However, under a quality/diversity tradeoff paradigm where the former maximizes your chance to win while the latter maximizes the potential reward gain, you have decision space to move and you have competing preferences. When you have competing preferences, you cannot strictly employ a maximization strategy unless one preference is absolute. And here, I am suggesting War be structured so that there is more than one preference possible.
Second, you are correct regarding Tier Rewards being a base element, and one that shifts the reward scale. I very much have this in mind. So yes there is a strong incentive to WIN and increase tier, however some strategic solutions - including allowing a LOSS - actually creates something important here: Uncertainty.
The #1 problem at the moment is that the preference structure, rules, and choices lead to a single strategic option, which in and of itself removes uncertainty. Knowing what my opponent will prefer, I can confidently delete strategic alternatives.
However, since the opponent has both potential and a degree of preference to allow a lose, they are more likely (that is likely at all) to choose a random strategic preference. Rather than a single alternative, there are now many. Obviously some with greater rewards than others.
By moving Diversity to the Rewards Calculation, and also by including a Kabam Modifier - I have also included a tuning mechanism so that Kabam can shift the decision-space. The probability that an opponent will select a particular option needs to be sufficiently distributed across the options such that you cannot necessarily predict the choice made by the opponent.
Comments
I'm sure it is not something anyone at Kabam wants to happen. It is a black mark when your most visible players don't think something. In a sense, we all are a part of that visible portion of the playerbase you don't want to specifically antagonize.
I was only commenting on the fact that sometimes a group of people who appear to represent a wide range of players might have something that connects them into a smaller segment than it first appears, and we should always be careful about assuming that any specific subset of us accurately represents what the entire playerbase as a whole wants.
Again all kabam is doing is making war winners based on defender rating.
Defender rating is the only thing breaking ANY TIES .... we all max out the points in every other catagory.
Stop pretending like your not reading and understand.
The current bugs will now decide the winners. AW is finally hard, but not for a good reason
Everyone moved here http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/24117/dash-back-after-special-not-working-merged-threads#latest
Alright thx
Kinda reminds me of Major Payne when he'd break your finger to make you forget about your missing leg.
Oh and one guy joined the wrong BG and placed 3 dupes so this AW is lost before it even started. Hurrah diversity! Hurrah Kabam!
haven't given up
Diversity Parade "Wars" are boring/non-competitive/winner known at start of match/Alliance Quest 2.0
#BringBackDefenderKillPoints
AW is boring and many players are quitting.
The point is not how many buffs you place on a node, in higher tiers we're used to find hard nodes!
The point is: in which way the system you designed does reward the effort?
I understand what made you come out with Defenders diversity, some more fine-tuning must be needed there, but for god's sake, bring back Defender's kills, that's a great indicator for a player's fighting skills - and hide defenders' classes. It's part of the defensive strategy.
I think it's that most of us just think of AW as another weekly calendar with random rewards. Sometimes it is higher, sometimes it's lower. Very little faith in it being fixed quickly as long as they remain steadfast on the new direction.
You'll see more activity here when they realize it's hurting revenue instead of helping it and announce defender kills returning.
This is 53 days worth of loyalty.. shave off a couple weeks if you win a lot of wars. This is about 1/6th of my champs health. Useless. 3900 heal.. useless.
Make consumables reasonable and people will use them.
haven't thought this one through completely, but have the beginning of an idea that might help. (still not sure how to fine tune the points).
combine defender diversity and kills into a single measure.
you only get diversity points for defenders that get kills. Max diversity in a bg would be 50, but only if EVERY defender got a kill.
So, at the end of the war, list all champs that got at least one kill, remove the duplicates, count the number of champs left.
Example: BG2 defenders/kills
3 magiks placed, 2 magiks got kills, 1 diversity
2 cables placed, 0 cables got kills, 0 diversity
1 SM placed, 1 SM got kills, 1 diversity
etc.
PS, as far as balancing ...
my first instinct is to return defender kills as a scoring item, but let diversity points count 10 times more.
2 magik placed, 10 kills total between them.
100 points for 1 unit of diversity,
+ 100 points for defender kills (10 defender kills @ 10 points each)
200 points total
1 wolvie placed, 1 kill and 1 hulk placed 1 kill
200 points for 2 units of diversity.
thoughts?
obviously point level needs tweaking, but i see a strategy of trying to weigh how many of a certain defender. and the importance of getting at least 1 kill.
will introduce skill as a valuable element in war again. dying even ONCE gives the other team points,.
"Diversity, where we want you to have the option to make use of your entire roster while being forced to only use what others aren't using." That makes no sense when your forced out of making your own choices on defenders
I suspect that there are very few in the community that want diversity in any form at all.
I think this loss of freedom is a key reason.
#BringBackDefenderKillPoints
Woah dude, one thing at a time they’re not used to getting much accomplished let them savor this
I think calling it "defender kills" masks the issue, because it makes it seem like we are rewarding the mere placement of a defender. That makes it easy to dismiss. But in fact, defender kills are not about defenders alone. Defender kills are a way to reward good attackers
I think most players interested in a competitive alliance war would agree that ultimately, the winner should be the alliance that performs the most effective attack. How do you judge the best attack?
First and foremost, we look at boss kills. Most of the time the alliance with more kills wins. That seems reasonable. But because there are only three bosses, the war can end in a tie. Three to three, zero to zero, whatever.
If it is a tie, we need a way to distinguish the better attacker. We can then go to attacker kills and exploration, which are actually two ways to reward the same thing: moving through a node. Attacker kills are really just a way of saying a node with a defender sitting on it is worth more than an empty node, but it is really all exploration. Whichever alliance explores more of the map, factoring in some nodes are more valuable, wins.
But this can *also* still end in a tie, or a very close war. We would still like a way to distinguish a 100% three boss kill vs 100% three boss kill performance. And the most logical way to do that is to consider the attacker performance for each node. Instead of just giving points for killing a node in an all or nothing way, we can grant points based on how good the attacker performance was for each node. Defender kills are a way to do that. In effect, defender kills are mathematically identical to reducing the amount of points the attacker gets every time the attacker is defeated. It can even go negative. Attackers are incentivized to attack better.
More importantly, alliance defense gets rewarded not directly for placing "good defenders" but for stopping attackers from scoring points. The focus is on being good attackers and preventing alliances from being good attackers. The focus is on attack where it should be.
When we remove defender kills and do not replace them with anything we create a situation in which we state that an attacker that takes a hundred defeats to kill a node is just as good as an attacker that takes zero defeats. We are saying we are not going to judge the attacker performance at all, except in the binary sense of all or nothing, you defeat the node or you don't. That removes a way to judge competition.
This shouldn't be a surprise. Logically, if you do not want to discourage players from attacking no matter how bad their attacking performance, you are saying you don't want to judge attacker performance. And that is tantamount to saying you do not want attacking to be a competitive activity.
This really comes down to whether you want alliance wars to be. I think all this talk about "defender kills" has masked the fact that in reality, "defender kills" represents a way to judge and reward attackers while defender diversity and defender rating points are in reality a way to get points just for placing a defender. Defender kills are an active thing, defender rating and diversity points are a passive thing. When someone says we shouldn't just get handed points for placing a Magik, we don't. We never got points for placing anything. We never really got points for "defender kills." The attacker lost points for being a poor attacker. We should have called them "attacker performance penalty points" because that is what they really are.
An Alliance War Solution that does not include Defender Kill Points
I think you will like this.
I had a thought about Diversity this morning, and single-dimension consideration of Alliance War - that is the dimension of maximizing points.
As I wrote previously, the problem with AW is that there is a Constrained Choice problem, wherein Alliance Officers are forced by circumstance to adopt a strategy designed to achieve maximum points. In the current state, that requires a maximization of diversity, defender pi, maximum # of defenders, etc. - which reduces to a single strategic option.
I understand and am in agreement with the goal of increasing the diversity selection of champions, and increasing the utility of a larger plurality of champions than is presently available.
Obviously, there is some substantial resistance within Kabam to Defender Kills as an adequate cost in the alliance war. Defender kills are a deterrence that, essentially concentrate defender selection - which is, I presume, the sticky bit.
So, I will nominate a suggestion for an alternative.
Rather than include Defender Diversity in the SCORE calculation (50 points, 125 points - it doesn't matter) you should consider including Defender Diversity in the REWARD calculation.
I will provide a couple of scenarios, and then summarize.
There are 4 strategies presented in both scenarios:
MM = Max Diversity, Min Quality
HG = High Diversity, Good Quality
GH = Good Diversity, High Quality
MH = Min Diversity, High Quality
Scenario 1: Represents the Status Quo ~ Placement, Diversity, Kills, Rating
For this example the following equation:
Point Spread = placement*(X1-Y1)+diversity*(X2-Y2)+kills*(X1-Y1)+rating*(X1*Q1-Y1*R1)
Where
X1, Y1 = # Defenders placed A, B
X2, Y2 = # DIVERSE Defenders placed A, B
Q1, R1 = Quality Defenders placed A, B (Aka average PI rating)
Per the current point structure, for two roughly evenly matched alliances, depending on diversity spread (which is dictated generally by expected quality) the point spread is overall pretty low.
I expect this is consistent with a volume of complaint posts you have seen.
Even though the current status quo has shallower point gaps between Alliance A & B, the Constrained Choice problem remains. The only viable strategic choice is to maximize diversity at the expense of quality.
Scenario 2: Placement, Kills, Rating = Score, Diversity = Points Multiplier
For this example I have removed Diversity points from the scoring model, and I have added a second model, Rewards Multiplier.
Point Spread = placement*(X1-Y1)+kills*(X1-Y1)+rating*(X1*Q1-Y1*R1)
Rewards Multiplier = base * N * diversity.
Where
base = standard tier rewards
N = Kabam Modifier
Diversity = X2/X1
Allow me to point out several obvious conclusions.
1) The removing the Diversity from the score calculation increases the point gap between Winners & Losers, which increases variability of outcome.
2) The psychological result of increased point gap is that users do not perceive that they barely won or barely lost, a condition that leads them to assume unfair rules.
3) The strategic emphasis places the greatest likelihood of winning along the 3rd and 4th strategies (GH & MH).
4) If winning is the War is the desired outcome, then the dominant strategy is MH, Minimum Diversity, High Quality.
Along the right side of Scenario 2 you will see a rewards multiplier scheme. For the purposes of this explanation I will use a 50% multiplier, but I've included a couple of other for your benefit.
The following graphic assumes a Tier 6 Alliance in War.
At Tier 6 the base victory rewards are: 238 x 5* shards, 266 x 4* shards, 4240 loyalty.
At Tier 6 the base participation rewards are: 112 5* shards, 168 4* shards, 5450 gold, 4240 loyalty.
Along the left you will see the 4 possible strategies I have provided, along with the corresponding Rewards Multiplier.
As you can see whether you Win or Lose, the dominant strategy is MM, Maximize Diversity, Minimum Quality.
This might not be obvious.
We now have two competing dominant strategies, and a gradient between them.
Alliance leaders will need to select a strategy based on preferences that are not strictly dictated by score. By rewarding alliances for diversity even if they lose you are providing two competing incentives, and this could lead to multiple strategic selections.
Weaker alliances with low skill may choose an MM strategy to maximize the Rewards of an expected loss.
Moderate alliances with poor organization may choose a GH strategy to make best use of a limited roster.
Moderate alliances with better organization may choose a HG strategy to maintain higher rewards but try to compete for a win.
High ranking alliances may opt for an MM strategy to maximize rewards
Ultra competitive alliances may opt for an MH strategy to maximize their chance to win at the expense of some reward gain.
Most importantly, this brings a crucial element of choice to Alliance War.
Moreover, this also absolves a large contingent of alliances from the (frankly unpleasant) activity of loading 30 member's champions into a spreadsheet to pick out 150 defenders.
Diversity needs to go.
#BringBackDefenderKillPoints
There is a fundamental flaw with your analysis, and it is that you independently analyze the reward results for winning and losing, but winning and losing are not independent of the placement strategy. Let's look at this from the perspective of min/maxing the placement strategy. Let's use your reward tables again:
Here we see that the minimum diversity strategy when it wins offers a certain level of rewards. In a combat-driven scoring system (which I'm assuming you are presupposing because you have eliminated diversity points) this is the strategy that has the best possible chance of actually winning. Fighting an opponent alliance of roughly equal skill and roster strength you'd expect this strategy to win about half the time. So your expected return on this strategy is about (I'm going to focus on the 5* shards just to reduce the number of comparisons) 356 * 0.5 + 114 * 0.5 = 235 5* shards.
If I change my strategy to a higher diversity strategy and my opponent doesn't change strategy I will most likely lose more often than I win. Let's say I go to the "good diversity" strategy. That would offer 438 * 0.5 + 140 * 0.5 = 289 5* shards if I could somehow hold my 50/50 winning percentage. But that seems unlikely. For this strategy to actually increase my rewards I need to win more than 32% of the time. If I do, I should always do this. If I don't, I should never do this.
For your numbers, the winning percentage requirement to make shifting strategy make sense are about 25% for high diversity and about 19% for max diversity. There is a definitely break even point for each strategy, and depending on how the alliance evaluates that chance, quantitatively or qualitatively, there is a single optimal strategy.
But there is another facet to the problem that is subtle but very nasty. Your rewards depend on tier and your tier ultimately depends on your win/loss record. The equilibrium state is actually for the average alliance at any tier to roughly win about half the time. Any strategy that reduces your win percentage will eventually change your tier until your win percentage becomes 50/50. You can't employ a strategy that causes you to win only 30% of the time, because you cannot consistently win only 30% of the time. You will drop a tier if you consistently keep losing, and then your win percentage will eventually start to rise again. So the meta question becomes: is it better if you use the maximum diversity placement strategy and drop a tier, but still earn more rewards than if you were winning half the time in the higher tier because the bonus is higher than the tier loss.
This is a problem because you do not want to encourage alliances to drop tiers and *gain* rewards for doing so. That's a metagaming nightmare and would generate a whole new set of complaints.
So let's discuss some assumptions.
First, under the current meta winning the war is an imperative. There are no downsides to losing. Ergo all preferences are for a maximization strategy.
However, under a quality/diversity tradeoff paradigm where the former maximizes your chance to win while the latter maximizes the potential reward gain, you have decision space to move and you have competing preferences. When you have competing preferences, you cannot strictly employ a maximization strategy unless one preference is absolute. And here, I am suggesting War be structured so that there is more than one preference possible.
Second, you are correct regarding Tier Rewards being a base element, and one that shifts the reward scale. I very much have this in mind. So yes there is a strong incentive to WIN and increase tier, however some strategic solutions - including allowing a LOSS - actually creates something important here: Uncertainty.
The #1 problem at the moment is that the preference structure, rules, and choices lead to a single strategic option, which in and of itself removes uncertainty. Knowing what my opponent will prefer, I can confidently delete strategic alternatives.
However, since the opponent has both potential and a degree of preference to allow a lose, they are more likely (that is likely at all) to choose a random strategic preference. Rather than a single alternative, there are now many. Obviously some with greater rewards than others.
By moving Diversity to the Rewards Calculation, and also by including a Kabam Modifier - I have also included a tuning mechanism so that Kabam can shift the decision-space. The probability that an opponent will select a particular option needs to be sufficiently distributed across the options such that you cannot necessarily predict the choice made by the opponent.