Please Clear this Up Once and for All - Alliance War Defense Boosts

Can we please clear this up once and for all? I know this has been discussed before, but I can't seem to find the official discussion that I saw. There's still a lot of confusion about whether Alliance War Defender rating is affected by Champion Boosts. Most of the confusion comes in by the fact that when you do use a boost when you place your defense, that the boosted PI shows throughout the War. My understanding has always been that this was a visual bug only, and that boosts do not affect your defender rating, and therefore the points you earn at the conclusion of a War. I'd either like confirmation from one of the Kabam support team, or a link to such an "official" confirmation. While I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this, the only answer I'll accept as true at this point is from an official member of Kabam. There's too much difference of opinion on this for me to accept anything other than that.

Comments

Jlw12

@Kabam Vydious any update on this?

little_known

I think the boost's should either be made to work for the entirety of the war if placed while active or made to not affect PI and defender rating - we should not have to spend units and resources purely to inflate the score.

Its bad enough we can work out who wins the war before it starts yet alone having to pay / use resources just to keep things on a level playing field when it has zero effect on the game play or skill required to complete.

One side forgets to boost - swap defender rating scores at the start and if you see your smaller then don't even try - or at least try and use no items. How is this fun or fair? It sucks when you lose even if your alliance has more skill but at least we are no longer wasting items on a loss.

G-Hun-Gear

This hasn’t been cleared up by now, has it?

Leeck

Rektor wrote: »

mutamatt wrote: »

actually i thought you guys knew that, which is why boosts have been offered like crazy in all of the recent deals. id bet boost sales have skyrocketed since the new AW came out, among those in the most competitive alliances. this is because people are using them when placing defense, NOT because people are using them to increase stats when actually playing.

It’s insane. People are being forced to spend thousands of units per month to cover their ass just in case an opponent uses boosts to inflate their defender rating and wins the war because of that tiebreaker.

So if everyone’s doing it (and everyone at the top is), then defender rating still ultimately comes down to prestige and synergy only instead of prestige, synergy, masteries, and boosts. So what’s the point?

Forcing spenders to buy things they don’t want to buy usually results in resentful spenders not spending on other things they’d normally want to buy.

Not really, the are war matching 8m vs 10m alliance, boost doesnt help.

AegonT

Leeck wrote: »

Rektor wrote: »

mutamatt wrote: »

actually i thought you guys knew that, which is why boosts have been offered like crazy in all of the recent deals. id bet boost sales have skyrocketed since the new AW came out, among those in the most competitive alliances. this is because people are using them when placing defense, NOT because people are using them to increase stats when actually playing.

It’s insane. People are being forced to spend thousands of units per month to cover their ass just in case an opponent uses boosts to inflate their defender rating and wins the war because of that tiebreaker.

So if everyone’s doing it (and everyone at the top is), then defender rating still ultimately comes down to prestige and synergy only instead of prestige, synergy, masteries, and boosts. So what’s the point?

Forcing spenders to buy things they don’t want to buy usually results in resentful spenders not spending on other things they’d normally want to buy.

Not really, the are war matching 8m vs 10m alliance, boost doesnt help.

Alliance rating doesn't mean that much. It's pretty easy to imagine an alliance with a 2m deficit winning a war.

Right now the suicide/boost stuff is probably confined to the top 100 alliances or so. But this stuff has a way of trickling down so it'll only get more common as time passes.

mutamatt

welp guys this looks like this is going the way of pure skill, and any other legitimate question. taken to the black hole of questions that is the game team.

im glad someone brought this up, as i think the dominance of defender rating in war right now is the single biggest issue in the game.

i know you say 100% clears should become less common, but the issue is that no matter how hard you fight, you cannot win if the other team matches you in exploration. and it is due to application of a boost that is supposed to help performance but is only being used to inflate the defender rating to game the system.

bring back defender kills and this all goes away.

mutamatt

the new war was released on 8/30 and the top tier alliances figured this out on 9/1 probably. it is now the end of October. if you guys had a presence with the people who are most competitive in this game, you could be more proactive in keeping this game healthy

Kabam Vydious

Hey guys-

Still working on getting information for this. We aren't ignoring the question or setting it aside, we are waiting to get you that solid update on the matter. Please keep in mind that we can't give you much of an update if we don't have the information to provide it.

I'm sorry it's taken this long, please bear with me a bit longer on it.

Rektor

Kabam Vydious wrote: »

Hey guys-

Still working on getting information for this. We aren't ignoring the question or setting it aside, we are waiting to get you that solid update on the matter. Please keep in mind that we can't give you much of an update if we don't have the information to provide it.

I'm sorry it's taken this long, please bear with me a bit longer on it.

For the love of god, defender rating needs to be prestige + synergy only.

Many people hate suicide masteries but are forced to switch when placing defense because it inflated defender rating. Then they have to pay to turn them off. Or even worse, they’re forced to use them because hey can’t afford to pay to switch their full offensive/defensive masteries 3x a week. Miike said kabam’s goal is to allow for individuality in masteries and not force everyone to use the same build like the old willpower build.

And speaking of can’t afford to pay, boosts shouldn’t inflate defender rating. Really. Literally burning a pile of money each month to buy and use boosts to inflate PI but they never actually get used by our champs.

I would prefer a new item in the store called PI inflator that lasts 15 min while you place your defense and does nothing else. This way it’s exactly like boosts currently are except I don’t have to live with the knowledge that I just wasted money on something I didn’t even get to use for its intended purpose.

If we’re going to continue to suffer with no defender kills, can we suffer without feeling forced to pay for things that serve no purpose? If I give you my money, I’d like to actually be able to use what I pay for.

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming

@Kabam Vydious any updates on this yet?

GbSarkar

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming wrote: »

@Kabam Vydious any updates on this yet?

What update do you want? This thing is 100% intentional. They already claculate team rating based on prestige+synergy only (for team rating lb) yet they didn't apply this to war as well after so much time

hungama01

Dont ask for update... u might not be getting the answer for next 6 month atleast.

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming

GbSarkar wrote: »

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming wrote: »

@Kabam Vydious any updates on this yet?

What update do you want? This thing is 100% intentional. They already claculate team rating based on prestige+synergy only (for team rating lb) yet they didn't apply this to war as well after so much time

Eventually they have to address the issues being caused by calculating masteries and boosts into defender rating. All I'm after is a basic acknowledgment that this is happening. I've already had 2 posts deleted and got these bars from being rude in past posts, I'm to invested to not get an answer now.

Kabam Vydious

Hey gang -

First off, thank you for your patience while we took some time getting back to all of you with this information. We wanted to make sure the information we were providing here was as accurate as possible, and we've confirmed with several people on our team in order to ensure this is the case.

Now as for the main question at hand, the AvA defender rating score is affected by boosts. So any boosts active at the time the defending team was created will be taken into account when calculating the defender PI score. Boosts activated after the user has joined the quest will not affect the defender PI score.

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming

Kabam Vydious wrote: »

Hey gang -

First off, thank you for your patience while we took some time getting back to all of you with this information. We wanted to make sure the information we were providing here was as accurate as possible, and we've confirmed with several people on our team in order to ensure this is the case.

Now as for the main question at hand, the AvA defender rating score is affected by boosts. So any boosts active at the time the defending team was created will be taken into account when calculating the defender PI score. Boosts activated after the user has joined the quest will not affect the defender PI score.

@Kabam Vydious thank you for addressing this and providing a definitive answer. My next question is if this should be happening. What this does is allow alliances willing to spend the units on the 30% boosts to have a significant advantage over any alliance that does not. If ISO8A and MMXIV matched up and they both used the same exact boosts and had the same defender rating except for one point, then the team with the one point higher defender rating will win.

This is also removing the use of defender diversity as a tie breaker which @Kabam Miike has stated is the purpose of it.

Defender rating should have a role in the overall score of AW to reward those who have invested the time and/or money in ranking up different champions to the highest rating that they can, but it shouldn't be the only determining metric of the winner. If it continues to be the sole defining metric of the winner, then the larger alliance will always win, defender effectiveness is not being measured at all in the current state of alliance war, unless the other alliance isn't able to 100% the map, which is not a problem for the top tier of alliance war.

World Eater

Kabam Vydious wrote: »

Hey gang -

First off, thank you for your patience while we took some time getting back to all of you with this information. We wanted to make sure the information we were providing here was as accurate as possible, and we've confirmed with several people on our team in order to ensure this is the case.

Now as for the main question at hand, the AvA defender rating score is affected by boosts. So any boosts active at the time the defending team was created will be taken into account when calculating the defender PI score. Boosts activated after the user has joined the quest will not affect the defender PI score.

Wow, that's pretty disconcerting. What possible purpose does this serve? Sure seems like a way to increase boost sales and item use just to inflate defender ratings, one of the tie-breakers in higher tier wars.

Acanthus

We didn't ask you whether they affect the rating - we knew it did long ago. The question was if this is intentional or not

Raganator

You haven't all noticed that Kabam has been including more boosts with their recent offers? It's all just a way to make more money on AW. There is no logical explanation or justification to allowing it to boost defender rating other than: Make sure you boost so you have a better shot at winning that 100% to 100% AW.

Stewman

Kabam Vydious wrote: »

Hey gang -

First off, thank you for your patience while we took some time getting back to all of you with this information. We wanted to make sure the information we were providing here was as accurate as possible, and we've confirmed with several people on our team in order to ensure this is the case.

Now as for the main question at hand, the AvA defender rating score is affected by boosts. So any boosts active at the time the defending team was created will be taken into account when calculating the defender PI score. Boosts activated after the user has joined the quest will not affect the defender PI score.

RIP Alliance War

MSRDLD

Stewman wrote: »

RIP Alliance War

Curious... How does a Mod confirming what many of us have known or suspected for quite some time change anything? All this does is now spread the knowledge to others so it is no longer quite so secret, although as previously stated, all the top alliances knew this long ago.

Wars have been a shade of themselves for months now ever since the change. This doesn't change that.

rage1224

Kabam Vydious wrote: »

Hey gang -

First off, thank you for your patience while we took some time getting back to all of you with this information. We wanted to make sure the information we were providing here was as accurate as possible, and we've confirmed with several people on our team in order to ensure this is the case.

Now as for the main question at hand, the AvA defender rating score is affected by boosts. So any boosts active at the time the defending team was created will be taken into account when calculating the defender PI score. Boosts activated after the user has joined the quest will not affect the defender PI score.

To summarize, your initial answer was that after the boosts expire, PI returns to normal. We said that's not what's happening. Then you say it's a visual glitch. So we say, no it's not, it's affecting the outcome of Wars. So you reply, well that's not how it's meant to work, so maybe it's broken, let me check with the team. Then you finally come back and say it does affect the outcome of the war, and that's what it's meant to do.

Do you see the problem here? How do we trust anything that we're told here? Are all of the support team's answers just best guesses, or just most of them?

WOK

I dont even know where to begin nor want to waste my energy with a response to this entire situation.
Im going to advocate within my alliance an idea that's been realized before and should have been repeated sooner.
The actions of our irrelevant small group wont even be noticed Im sure, but thats not even a concern for me atm. I Can no longer sit here and continue to tolerate and enable this type of exploitative and unprofessional business practice.

CosmicZen

if my alliance all put a 30% Green health/damage boost, an orange attack boost, and a greater health boost on my champs before placing: We will win by default with a 100% clear despite all 30 of us placing the same 5 champs... ? Is my math correct? Mystic wars 2.0 have returned?

Stewman

[

MSRDLD wrote: »

Stewman wrote: »

RIP Alliance War

Curious... How does a Mod confirming what many of us have known or suspected for quite some time change anything? All this does is now spread the knowledge to others so it is no longer quite so secret, although as previously stated, all the top alliances knew this long ago.

Wars have been a shade of themselves for months now ever since the change. This doesn't change that.

I simply replied to a mod that alliance wars are dead.
While I appreciate them confirming what we already knew (even tho it was like pulling teeth, because obviously the mods don't play the game in the top tiers)
@rage1224 synopsis is spot on.

I refuse to pay a cover charge to every war by changing masteries and buying boosts just for a CHANCE at winning.

Kpatrix

CosmicZen wrote: »

if my alliance all put a 30% Green health/damage boost, an orange attack boost, and a greater health boost on my champs before placing: We will win by default with a 100% clear despite all 30 of us placing the same 5 champs... ? Is my math correct? Mystic wars 2.0 have returned?

Quick answer is no. Diversity is worth way more than defender rating. The only time boosts will give you an edge is if you are going full diversity and using the highest pi of each individual champ placed.

The boosts increase your defense rating which is the deciding factor if both groups have equal diversity and exploration/boss kills.

RagamugginGunner

Kabam Vydious wrote: »

Hey gang -

First off, thank you for your patience while we took some time getting back to all of you with this information. We wanted to make sure the information we were providing here was as accurate as possible, and we've confirmed with several people on our team in order to ensure this is the case.

Now as for the main question at hand, the AvA defender rating score is affected by boosts. So any boosts active at the time the defending team was created will be taken into account when calculating the defender PI score. Boosts activated after the user has joined the quest will not affect the defender PI score.

This is terrible.

unknown

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roastedbagel

mutamatt wrote: »

i hope your response to this issue is that you will directly seek out the feedback of those in highly competitive alliances. if there is something broken with the game, it will have been figured out in those circles first, trust me. so here we are, reaching out asking for a voice with your dev team. not asking to be catered to, but more offering our help and opinions so that you can retain top end players and this game we all love has a long and successful life.

Well they originally did this when alliances came out, and had a dev in MMX for this very reason - to get immediate, direct feedback on the types of issues that higher alliances/super-active alliances are privvy to. But you can probably guess what happen next once it was "discovered" that there was a dev in the alliance...Therefore they ended the program pretty quickly, and it's been **** ever since.

If the community wasn't filled with a bunch of whiny children conspiracy theorists this could have been a successful thing and numerous bugs/issues/etc. that are discovered could have been responded to much quicker...but no...the community is what ends up being their own worse enemy

I give kudos to Kabam for trying that out in the beginning, it's been a difficult road re: bugs since then as we all can attest to.

roastedbagel

Cable wrote: »

@Adora
Is this how the game team is fixing alliance wars that we discussed at NYCCC? By making AW a pay to win system?? This is disgraceful as to even before starting the attack phase of AW an alliance can tell if they are going to win or not based on defense rating of opposing alliance. So now if an alliance doesn’t use boost to raise their defender rating they lose. What a complete joke!

I mean it's been like this since the new AW....apparently for your alliance nothing changes really lol...it's just that you're just now finding it out.

unknown

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