Integrity of the Contest (Again)

HungaryHippo

In the video I can no longer post, you can see clearly that this user is creating a shell alliance for the upcoming NEXT season of alliance war, he openly speaks about it. Shell alliances are no stranger to the contest but when it effects many alliances, something should be done. Kabam is quick and efficient when it comes to docking alliances who pilot in AW, which I commend them for. However, in season 34, a shell alliance reached third place as well as second place and achieved rewards that other alliances were more deserving of. When you start at the bottom of Tier 1, you face easier opponents as opposed to alliances like the defending war champs. The defending war champs are on the high end of the war rating spectrum and they defeat most if not all alliances that come their war. They are really deserving of rank 1. However when Kabam does nothing to these shells who have easier wars and swap out the following season, the integrity of the contest is compromised. Something needs to be done about these shells or something regarding matchmaking needs to be done, along with maybe resetting the points of alliance war rating, but I do believe that is kicking the can down the road.

@Kabam Zibiit , a response to this issue would be greatly appreciated

HungaryHippo

I guess I can't name specific alliances, so I have to keep it vague. Still, this is an issue that needs to be solved rather than deleted

Psyure

Would like to hear the official response from Kabam on this. Gotta have people prep shell alliances too before it’s penalized I guess.

Mauled

Yeah would be nice to be dealt with as one of the top 3 last season are prime suspects. A rather well known alliance drops off the face of the earth every other season and then get a nice easy ride of P2-1 alliances for 3/4 of their matches the next.

Demonzfyre

So... You want to prevent people from switching alliances?

Unknown

This content has been removed.

HungaryHippo

Demonzfyre said:

So... You want to prevent people from switching alliances?

Is it switching alliances when all 30 members move to another ally just with a different name and lower war rating?

Unknown

This content has been removed.

HungaryHippo

Zan0 said:

HungaryHippo said:

Demonzfyre said:

So... You want to prevent people from switching alliances?

Is it switching alliances when all 30 members move to another ally just with a different name and lower war rating?

But how would you stop that happening without stopping other people from actually swapping alliances?

So let the integrity of the contest suffer due to a loophole? What these alliances are doing is plain disingenuous

SandeepS

I find it better when solutions are posted rather than problems. That way it saves kabam some thinking power and they just need to say yes or no.

For this specific problem, I dont see any solution. People move alliances. Anyone can create and choose to lose. Tough one.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

SummonerNR

Kabam has already taken steps to address some of this a while back.

War Rating frozen during off-season for higher tiers, defeating the point of sandbagging/losing matches in the off-season.

Perhaps what we believe is a bug (maybe it still is, but maybe it might just be a good thing), is the vastly reduced +/- change in wars happening this season.
So instead of “shell'ing” out everyone back-n-forth between 2 alliances every season to accomplish sandbagging one of them one season in prep for next season. Maybe having reduced +/- will negate that somewhat (top alliances will not be able to move up as much as in seasons past above those standing still).

SummonerNR

…but maybe best solution is to create ROUND-ROBIN seasons of bracketed/ranked groups of 13 teams each.
Top 13 all play each other once (12 wars).
Next bracket down would be teams 14-26 (by current War Rating as of season start).
Then another of teams 27-39.
Etc.

Lowest xx (?) amount of teams in each bracket would probably fall down to next lower bracket come the next season. Etc.

There would have to be a new type of Season Enlistment where you indicate in advance that your team is still going to participate in wars for that upcoming season. To accommodate for teams disbanding between seasons, etc.

winterthur

SummonerNR said:

…but maybe best solution is to create ROUND-ROBIN seasons of bracketed/ranked groups of 13 teams each.
Top 13 all play each other once (12 wars).
Next bracket down would be teams 14-26 (by current War Rating as of season start).
Then another of teams 27-39.
Etc.

Last place of 13 (guaranteed using this format) is 9k T3A, 11.4k T6B, 6-Star Nexus, 40k 6-Star shards, 4x 25% T5CC Selector, 3 T5BC.

So, 29 members move out and this alliance charges money for 29 willing to pay to be confirmed with that reward. Legit?

SummonerNR

winterthur said:

SummonerNR said:

…but maybe best solution is to create ROUND-ROBIN seasons of bracketed/ranked groups of 13 teams each.
Top 13 all play each other once (12 wars).
Next bracket down would be teams 14-26 (by current War Rating as of season start).
Then another of teams 27-39.
Etc.

Last place of 13 (guaranteed using this format) is 9k T3A, 11.4k T6B, 6-Star Nexus, 40k 6-Star shards, 4x 25% T5CC Selector, 3 T5BC.

So, 29 members move out and this alliance charges money for 29 willing to pay to be confirmed with that reward. Legit?

1-13 seeding wouldn’t be guaranteed to finish in top 13th and above place. War Points would still be used for season standings.
Although I can see that instead of straight % based tiers for War Tier multipliers, each bracket would all have to be at same multiplier.

Such as 1-13 all at 6.0 multiplier for example. Then say 14-26 at 5.7x. Then 5.5x, 5.3x, etc.
Then as you go down, many brackets would start to fall together into same multipliers, similar to existing %-based ranges.

If a bunch of scrubs all “buy” their way (ie, swap members) into a top-13 alliance, they probably wouldn’t be able to get many wins, and would actually end up season points-wise below teams in the next bracket down.
(would still end up high on points than they really should because of being in higher multiplier, but that scenario with moving into a high WR alliance already exists today anyways).

DNA3000

winterthur said:

SummonerNR said:

…but maybe best solution is to create ROUND-ROBIN seasons of bracketed/ranked groups of 13 teams each.
Top 13 all play each other once (12 wars).
Next bracket down would be teams 14-26 (by current War Rating as of season start).
Then another of teams 27-39.
Etc.

Last place of 13 (guaranteed using this format) is 9k T3A, 11.4k T6B, 6-Star Nexus, 40k 6-Star shards, 4x 25% T5CC Selector, 3 T5BC.

So, 29 members move out and this alliance charges money for 29 willing to pay to be confirmed with that reward. Legit?

Legit? No. But against the terms of service of the game? Questionable. Kabam can, at any time, rule against any player or group of players if they feel they are doing things contrary to the spirit of the game. However, proving that this happened would be non-trivial, short of a confession.

Shells in general exist in the grey area between being not strictly prohibited and also not keeping with the spirit of the competition. However, to resolve the issue, Kabam has to find a way to narrowly define the scope of what the want to block in a way that they could actually detect and prove it was happening. As much as everyone here can spot guilty people just like that, the game operators cannot rely upon such judgments. Because of that, it is more likely that Kabam will look for systemic ways of addressing the problem (for example, freezing rating during the off season was one way to systematically block ratings jockeying during the off season without having to detect or discipline such activity).

Doing so in a way that won't have weird side effects is not going to be easy.