**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
15.0 Alliance Wars Update Discussion Thread
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I never said I work for them. I don't have to work for them to have an understanding of the overall design of the game. I have the same information as everyone else. I'm just not swayed by one specific way of playing. Which means I can look at it with a more detached view. Theories and opinions are exactly why we're here. To discuss them. The metrics are significant. While some focus on Ranking certain Champs alone, there is still a value to everything else. At the end of the day, Diversity means focusing on other Champs in War, and War is only one aspect of the game. Ranking anything has never been worthless overall. It is progression.
I know I'm asking a question unlikely to be directly answered, but by what possible metric could you be thinking that the war is getting "closer" to anything? I'm struggling to figure that out. The players that wanted diversity at any cost already have that: they cannot be getting anything closer to that goal. The players that want direct competition don't have that, and cannot get it so long as attack performance is not valued in the points calculation. The changes are fiddling around with secondary things like map difficulty and progress-side points that only indirectly value attacker performance and cannot distinguish between alliances with comparable map exploration capability.
Is there really a large contingent of players that is saying they are fine with no defender kills and no attacker performance per node equivalent, fine with diversity deciding matches before they begin, fine with assignment-based battlegroup placement, fine with roster rating escalation in defense driving AW, but just think the nodes need tweaking? If so, where are they?
I know the precepts of the religion of iterative number tweaking, better than most. Kabam seems to be taking it on faith that if they don't want to change these numbers, but do want to change those numbers, then there always exists a set of numbers that will fix a problem, even if the problem is that players actually want you to change the first set of numbers. Like if players complain about a champions damage but you don't want to change the damage, there exists a buff to armor rating that will compensate for that.
I feel, and I believe many players feel the same way but can't express it in the same way, that I'm debating religion with Kabam, not game design. Kabam believes religiously that there exists a set of numbers you can put on the nodes that will make players accept the current implementation of highly valued defense diversity, even if their specific complaint is that they don't want defender diversity to decide wars. They think if they keep changing them, they will get "closer" to the right numbers and then finally get close enough to be successful.
There are no such numbers. This is not difficult to prove. The frustrating part is that even though these kinds of changes are completely incompatible with the primary set of complaints about Alliance War, there seems to be no acknowledgement of that fact. Kabam seems to want to claim the changes will address those complaints without actually making any changes that have any chance to address those complaints. I think players would rather be told what they want is no longer what Kabam wants war to be, then be told that in spite of what they know to be true they should just wait and see because the changes eventually will help them.
Couldn't agree more. It's basically:
Users: bring back defender kills
Kabam: Ok guys, we will make diversity by bg now
Users: bring back defender kills
Kabam: ok, ok, we will set diversity at a lower value
Users: bring back defender kills
Kabam: alright we hear you, we will make the nodes harder
Users: bring back defender kills
Kabam: we have listened to the feedback and we are almost at our goal. this is good.
Users: bring back defender kills
Kabam: ok, we will make diversity count per bg
Users: bring back defender kills
Kabam: alright, we will lower diversity points
Users: bring back defender kills
Kabam: got it, we are going to make the nodes harder
Users: bring back defender kills
Kabam: we have listened to your feedback and the game is where we want it to be. this is good.
Feel free to show us your progression to show us your understanding of the game and that you share the same struggle as whats being mentioned. While everyone shares their issues and shows actual proof of flaws with screen caps and states other facts that we all agree on you consistently ramble on and on with opinions and theories. After 96 pages you are well aware you are pestering people and seem to be doing so intentionally while being the sole person arguing with everyone.
The game has never been about just one thing. You are cherry picking one thing and claiming it is the defining metric for game progress. Yes, there is a leaderboard that ranks players based on champion rating. There is also a strongest team leaderboard, an alliance war rating leaderboard, and we now have a legends rating leaderboard. And while there is an alliance leaderboard that ranks based on rating, the AQ points system is based on prestige. Higher prestige places you on higher difficulty maps that generate higher points. The game has always ranked players and alliances in different ways for different contexts.
Different parts of the game appeal to different kinds of players and have different ways to measure and encourage progress. A good game designer should know this and embrace and enhance this. Failing to understand the importance of this is the first step to making an insular and brittle game and an insular and brittle player community surrounding it.
You are, however, attempting to sway people to accept just one specific way of playing. You are attempting to make the argument that since the entire rest of the game is based around player rating (a statement I do not accept to be true) then alliance war should reflect that same metric, granting advantages to higher rating that override the results of direct competition.
You are arguing for diversity, by claiming it serves homogeneity.
We had several high level champs we DIDN'T place in order to NOT be screwed by Diversity, including a few r4 5*. We already know how to increase our PI's bro. It just can't be done overnight, and we're not exactly keen on ranking champs we DO NOT use regularly just because Kabam changed the rules in a way that THEY ASSUMED would be more fun, but is actually horrible.
Also, Miike has stated several times that Boosts to NOT affect your champs once war goes into attack phase. Using boosts does absolutely nothing, unless it's a bug, in which case Kabam will eventually fix it. If it isn't a bug, and they've retracted their "Boosts don't help in war placement", they need to state that officially.
Correct. There are different focuses. There is also a misconception that there is only one way to play, and the rest is useless. Which is what I am commenting on. Reason being the discussion is about Diversity and the need to focus on other Champs. The old system was rewarding one way of playing alone. Rank the most kills, and dominate Wins. That's not at all accommodating to different ways of playing.
Only a select group of Champs. The basis for my comments is to say that Ranking more Champs has never been a bad thing. It's overall progression. Not the same as personal goals. Therein lies the problem. By limiting the system to a preferred way to play, inundation of the same Champs only, it forces others into playing the same way. The Rewards follow, positions in Tiers follow, and Ranking choices follow. I'm sorry, but progression is not a bad thing. Ranking more Champs instead of leaving them on the bench is not a bad thing. Rating and other metrics are not useless. That is the point I'm making.
But by no means should our rank 5 options be solely for defense based on diversity. "I have to r5 this champ because its the only one I have for diversity in my group." Thats unfair to all players when you no longer have a choice on who to r5. Many of us want our rank up to be by our own decision on usefulness through out the game.
Same case with 5* champs.
You're free to make that point, I'm just wondering why you are quoting me to make it, then completely ignoring every word I typed while making it. I'm not going to follow suit.
This statement is half false, and half meaningless. There was never a misconception that there is only one way to play alliance war, because there always was, and still is, only one way to play alliance war. You play to win. You place defenders and then deploy attackers in the best possible way that will cause you to defeat the opposing alliance. In that sense the statement is false: there was no such misconception, because it is not a misconception. It is the truth.
It is meaningless in the sense that it implies the situation has changed in 15.0. It has not. There is still only one optimal way to deploy defense, and all others are "meaningless" in the same way that alternate defense placement was meaningless in 14.0. Kabam can say there is now a balance between defensive strength and diversity score and other players can parrot it, but that doesn't make it a true statement. This would be a trivially easy statement to prove true, if it was true. Simply provide a single strategic thinking example. So far, no one has done such a thing.
This statement is half false, and the other half is also false. The discussion is not, and has never been about "diversity" as a concept. The discussion has always been about the way diversity was being encouraged. In that sense, the statement is false. The statement is also false in the sense that no discussion has revolved around the need to focus on other champs, because in 15.0 no other champs are being focused on. The current implementation of AWD doesn't offer any way to evaluate defenders except a) in the same way as 14.0, which generates the same recommended defenders as 14.0, and b) in terms of diversity score, which only encourages players to place different champions without regard to what they are.
No one can name a single champion that is being "focused on" in 15.0 that wasn't being focused on in 14.0, minus newly released champions. 15.0 doesn't encourage players to focus on anyone, except the champions that were already being focused on in 14.0.
This statement is misleading in that it implies the goals of AW have changed. According to Kabam itself, the goals of AW are not supposed to have been changed. The goal of AW is to generate the most kills, have the most opposing attackers stopped by defenders, and "dominate wins."
But it is doubly frustrating in that no one in the thread has been able to explain what "different ways of playing" means to AW. There's no new way of playing that AW is currently accommodating. By your own prior statements you claim that the game has always rewarded ranking up the most champions to build rating. That means any encouragement to do so in AW is not accommodating a "different way of playing" by definition.
No one else is saying anything different, which is why this is also a frustrating statement to make. This implies someone else is arguing the opposite to justify the position, which is an implicit strawman. You can rank up anyone you want and there were benefits of doing so in both 14.0 and 15.0. But what you seem to fail to understand is that 15.0 doesn't encourage anyone to rank up more champions than 14.0 does because you can only place five defenders. Once my five are ranked up, what does ranking up others do to help me or my alliance? It doesn't. Yes, every single player is ranking up champions different from each other, but there's no diversity encouragement to an individual player. Once they rank up the five best defenders factoring in diversity score, no more rankups can help them.
This is actually the best possible argument against the current system. You keep accusing 14.0 of possessing this limitation, but 15.0 has an even worse limitation. Everyone is being forced to play AW in one and only one one way.
Please listen to what I'm saying. I've made this point multiple times, and you either haven't seen it or chosen to ignore it. Please pay attention this time.
Your statement is correct. War is all about progressing your roster and ranking up champions. That's what you do in order to win now, whether you like it or not. It's just how the system works. You've made that point, and it's correct.
But that doesn't make the system itself good.
Think about it. All War takes anymore is the progression of overall roster size. It does take skill, too, of course, but difficulty has been reduced, and less skill is required now, and most alliances meet the skill level it takes to win every match.
For argument's sake, let's just assume two alliances have the same skill level. They can both 100% complete all three Battlegroups. Most alliances can do this, so it's not too far-fetched of an assumption. One of the two alliances has a rating of 9 million. The other has a rating of 6 million. Obviously, the 9 million rated alliance has a more progressed roster overall. They have more ranked up champions, hence the higher rating. Since they have more ranked up champions, they have a more diverse roster at their disposal.
The War is over. The 9 million alliance wins. Every time.
As you've said about War:
I'm not taking your quote out of context, either. You've stated several times that War is all about "overall progression", and you're completely correct. It is all about progression. Since offense is very commonly completed flawlessly, it always comes down to defense, which is "overall progression". There's a point at which offensive skill is no longer useful. To explain, if I have the ability to beat a 10k opponent, and you have the ability to beat a 20k opponent, we'll both be able to beat a 5k opponent. Your surplus of skill is not useful. But since War is always coming down to defense, which is solely based on "overall progression", it doesn't matter if the 6 million rated alliance is 82 times more skilled than the 9 million rated alliance. If the 9 million alliance barely squeaks out the offensive completion while the 6 million alliance got it with ease, the 6 million alliance gets no advantage for their extra skill. Instead, it's all down to defensive points, which is, again, "overall progression". The 9 million alliance will destroy the 6 million alliance, even if the 6 million alliance has 82 times the skill of that alliance. If War always
comes down to defense, and defense comes down to progression, the Transitive Property (ooh, big math words) obviously shows that War always comes down to progression. Progression, not skill. In most cases, skill is irrelevant. All you have to do is reach that point where skill doesn't matter, and it's only progression. If it's only progression, the bigger alliance wins every single time. That's an objective statement. You can't debate that. You can debate whether it's a good idea or not, but you can't debate that the bigger alliance will always win, so long as they hit that skill point, which isn't hard to do anymore.
Can we have a civil debate now? I don't think anything I said was too heated or rude. Let's talk.
I nearly spat out my drink, thanks
Kabam has been provided with factual information from a wide range of players.
Yet nobody from the team has given us a word about our issues. We don't want to hear about your iterations and we don't want to hear your scripted responses.
I'm going to respond to the points and that's about all I'm going to say for now. It's become a dissection of whatever I comment, and just as I've said before, it's a cyclical argument because people want Defender Kills back.
1. The Prestige System determines AQ rewards. The Prestige Race was created by the Players. Not the game itself. The idea of only Ranking for Prestige has always been elective.
2. There is only one objective in War, and that is to win. The misconception is that the only way to do that is to Rank the same Champs over and over, and amass KOs. So much so that it's labeled skill, and any other concept is seen as "lacking skill". That is the only way that is accepted because that is what was most effective in the old system. The end result of that was a limited system for eveyone else.
3. The concept of Diversity has been questioned in spades in this discussion, and my comments were originally in response to someone implying that I made their point by saying Ranking determines winning. The removal of Defender Kills is actually one thing that is encouraging Diversity because it no longer supports the drive to maximize the most Kill Points with the same Champs. They're also revising Nodes to encourage this as well. If the argument is that Defender Kills are the defining solution, I don't agree with that.
4. The statement is not misleading because the goals haven't changed. What has changed is the way Players achieve those goals. War has, and will always be about winning. However, when you make it about a few select Champs, you handicap the entire process.
5. People have most definitely been saying so. As per the argument for Ranking "garbage Champs". The current metric actually does encourage using other Champs because it's no longer about an overpowering Defense based on KOs. It's also necessary to Rank to adjust to the changes. Which varies entirely based on what is coordinated for Allies, Nodes, etc.
6. That's not a plausible argument for 14.0 at all. Using a diverse range of Champs is not at all as limited as chasing after the same Champs.
That's all I'm getting into. It's really becoming a back-and-forth that's not getting anywhere. Inevitably people will disagree with me because they don't agree with the changes. I can accept that. I'm just not getting raked over the coals for having a different opinion.
Fair enough. But so long as statements are made by anyone that I can prove to be false about a subject I believe is important to discuss, I will continue to demonstrate them to be false to as many readers as possible. That's true whether that is another player, a moderator, or a developer.
Every catagory of point accumulation in aw can be a considered a controlled variable. Except defender rating.
In any given war match up, any alliance can max all the points available, again, with the exception of defender rating.
We need another variable that is less controlled to determine a war winner.
This isn't hard to understand.
The beat around the bush responses and lack of information to our real concerns is getting old!
I have made many suggestions for returning attacker node performance metrics to AW that do not involve adding defender kills back to scoring that at least some players have agreed would be valid steps to addressing the problems associated with removing defender kills in the first place (I am not the only player to have made such suggestions). That is a priori proof that the problem is not a blind desire for defender kills, but rather a recognition that their removal creates an underlying problem that should be addressed in some way that does not have to be the reinstatement of defender kills.
People react negatively when they are accused of doing something they are not actually doing. Perhaps that is something that should be avoided in general.
If we can't get defender kills back then give us some other points to offset defender rating.
It's impossible for an alliance to beat an opponent that has a fairly higher offset alliance rating.
Win or lose, wars cannot be determined by this point system.
It's a war, a battle, not an eligante show case
I wasn't arguing your suggestions. In fact, I wasn't even commenting to you. I was addressing the responses to my comments. There is some reason you feel inclined to comment.
As for Defender Kills, that's the number one thing being commented over and over in this Thread.
Technically speaking alliances can maximize defender rating by ranking up all of their placed defenders, and deciding to place defenders with the highest possible ratings.
Games make changes to the rules all the time to emphasize one thing over another. Basketball was considered to be too tactically defensive of a game so they added the shot clock. Teams were now compelled to attempt to shoot at a higher rate. But the shot clock didn't penalize offense or defense: it forced both sides to play within a smaller margin of time. The shot clock can benefit defenses who can force turnovers. It also obviously encourages strong offense. It is a fair change to the game that encourages competition, not reduces it.
Someone could argue that the shot clock forces players to only play in one way: by shooting for points. Before you could win by simply preventing the other team from ever getting a good shot, ever, and scoring one shot more. But that's clearly the wrong perspective on the shot clock. The shot clock changed the nature of the competition, but it forced both offense and defense to play harder and more continuously.
Imagine if every player on a basketball team was assigned a specific spot on the court, and could only shoot from that spot only. And imagine if the reason given for this rule change was that it was felt players were taking too many two point shots and not enough three point shots, so this would increase the diversity of shot selection. Now every kind of shot would be taken in the game because teams would basically be forced to. The point guards would only be shooting long range three point shots. Guards might only be shooting from the flanks. Centers would only shoot from the free throw line or under the basket.
This might have the effect of "diversifying" the shot selection of a game, but it wouldn't make the *game* more diverse or interesting. It would make the game extremely boring because shots are now dictated.
Defender diversity points and defender rating points are not bad because they are not under the control of the alliances. The problem with them is that their very nature is to try to achieve something no one interested in AW competition wants: diversity in the individual placement of defenders at the expense of making AW itself more monotonous. In trying to make AW more diverse, the changes dictate diversity in a way that is ironically not diverse.
An alliance can max all their diverse champs doesn't mean their rating will be high enough to win the war.
So again we need another scoring system that can balance out the ratings. Many allainces can beat an opponent with higher pi's but that doesn't matter anymore.
I'm not against diveristy.
But yes all the points are controlled and by that i mean they have a cap. Which if there's a cap then we will hit it. So all points are maxed out with the exception of defender rating. I also don't have a problem with that either. But it shouldn't be the tie breaker in a war. That's just letting the more inflated allaince win. Even if both teams have there very highest maxed out diversified champs placed. There will still be one with a higher/lower rating to determine the outcome. Which leaves no balance in actual game playing abilities, "skill"
lol another bull **** loss for the books! Thanks Kabam!