Why AW Seasons Was a Bad Idea...

Now don't get me wrong. I think they needed to up the rewards and make AW more enticing to alliances to participate. But I don't think the seasons was a good idea. All this does is encourage all the top players in lower level alliances to leave and consolidate power with an even smaller group of alliances. It also encourages alliances to kick players to improve their alliance tier. This makes the alliance experience less enjoyable and more like a job. The point of the alliances should be to progress and advance as a group. This has turned almost into a free-for-all.

They need to replace the alliance seasons to make it more individual achievement based. For example the MVPs of each alliance gets a higher amount of rewards win or lose. And make the rewards more attainable quicker. Maybe make them weekly like in AQ and they can be ranked like AQ as well.

These are just some thoughts from an officer tired of losing good team members. Take it for what it's worth.

Comments

thanks4playing

As much as I am enjoying the level of competitive play that AW seasons has brought, I do agree with the OP. AQ changes should have been announced at the same time or shortly after, with rewards that are comparable to or even better than AW seasons.

Also, the first season is way too long. Hopefully subsequent seasons will be much shorter. Otherwise the rewards from AW seasons may not be worth it.

Palanthrax

Ghostspider231 wrote: »

Now don't get me wrong. I think they needed to up the rewards and make AW more enticing to alliances to participate. But I don't think the seasons was a good idea. All this does is encourage all the top players in lower level alliances to leave and consolidate power with an even smaller group of alliances. It also encourages alliances to kick players to improve their alliance tier. This makes the alliance experience less enjoyable and more like a job. The point of the alliances should be to progress and advance as a group. This has turned almost into a free-for-all.

They need to replace the alliance seasons to make it more individual achievement based. For example the MVPs of each alliance gets a higher amount of rewards win or lose. And make the rewards more attainable quicker. Maybe make them weekly like in AQ and they can be ranked like AQ as well.

These are just some thoughts from an officer tired of losing good team members. Take it for what it's worth.

I agree with you to a point, but the MVP system isn’t a reliable way to determine anything.

thanks4playing

MVP should factor in attack bonus (if it doesn't do this already). And attack bonus should scale from regular fights, to mini bosses, to final boss. Within regular fights, it should also scale from tier since nodes get more difficult.

Deadbyrd9

Progressing as a group involves cutting off the weak links in order to get stronger and a quicker pace. Those weak links won’t progress as fast but if they slow the progress of an alliance then they should be removed. Everyone in the alliance should want the best rewards possible and do what’s necessary to get there

Danicb94

Ghostspider231 wrote: »

They need to replace the alliance seasons to make it more individual achievement based.

is ALLIANCE WAR! the whole alliance deserve the same prizes

Deadbyrd9

Lmao. Making alliance war individual based makes 0 sense. Why not just remove alliances all together and make aq individual based. That removes working as a team to get rewards. No one wants to see the meta changed

DNA3000

Ghostspider231 wrote: »

They need to replace the alliance seasons to make it more individual achievement based.

I can understand why you think this might address the problem with people leaving alliances for stronger ones, but it is fundamentally nonsensical to make the rewards for an alliance event based on individual performance. That makes it not an alliance event any more, but simply another individual performance event.

And it has the potential to create far worse nightmares for officers. Right now, everyone in the alliance is working together to get the same rewards. If you create a situation where the player that does the most in an alliance war gets more rewards than his fellow alliance members, you put every alliance member in direct competition with each other. Now, how do you fairly place AW defenders, knowing some nodes get more kills? How do you assign paths, knowing some paths are easier and some are harder, some are shorter and some are longer? How do you prevent players from literally kill-stealing nodes to try to grab as much credit as possible.

No alliance reward should ever place alliance members in competition with each other.

NastyEfnNate

Here we go with the MVP again. No they shouldn’t get anything extra. Some paths it’s impossible to get the MVP no matter what. Just stop the posts already with mvp should get extra. Using items increases the percentage as well so being mvp could just mean u sucked more than others and had to use items

unknown

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NastyEfnNate

My_Superior wrote: »

AW seasons are not as “fun” as Kabam intended them to be. I’m in an alliance right now that I really enjoy playing with but since seasons began we have become much more cutthroat in terms of encouraging players to spend... Oh wait... Hmmmm.

Lmao that was your decision to enforce this upon the alliance. If u don’t want to spend then find an alliance that doesn’t encourage spending. There’s many that don’t spend

unknown

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Waldo

My_Superior wrote: »

AW seasons are not as “fun” as Kabam intended them to be. I’m in an alliance right now that I really enjoy playing with but since seasons began we have become much more cutthroat in terms of encouraging players to spend... Oh wait... Hmmmm.

If you have to ‘spend’ you’re not gonna do great in seasons anyhow.

unknown

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LocoMotives

Seasons have worked exactly as Kabam hoped. Players using items to progress even with no chance of winning as the points count toward overall rewards. It was a stroke of genius on their part.

But as a player, I’ll agree it has made war less fun for me as every war is always “don’t die and clear the map” where we used to be able to take a break here and there.

KhanMedina

I actually like that my team will keep trying to clear even if we probably won't win. I always gave my best effort (without using my credit card), and it was frustrating when other people would say before the war even starts "This is a mismatch guys, don't take it seriously" and we still almost win because other alliance was slackers.

Reviving and healing doesn't have to cost real money. People just have to stop spending units and glory on nonsense if they can't handle their lanes without items.

Ghostspider231

My point with the individual based awards within the Alliance War system was to reward stronger players and to encourage them to stay within weaker alliances giving a greater balance to the rewards system. A stronger player may not want to go to a stronger alliance when they won't be getting as high of a rewards boost. It doesn't have to be MVPs. It could be based on total points earned for the alliance- exploration, attack bonus etc.

KhanMedina

Ghostspider231 wrote: »

My point with the individual based awards within the Alliance War system was to reward stronger players and to encourage them to stay within weaker alliances giving a greater balance to the rewards system. A stronger player may not want to go to a stronger alliance when they won't be getting as high of a rewards boost. It doesn't have to be MVPs. It could be based on total points earned for the alliance- exploration, attack bonus etc.

I'd suggest weak alliances that want to keep their strong players devise their own incentive programs for that, like no donations or something. Don't give everyone in the game a reason to play selfishly though. I saw that when skirmish rewards came out and officers would put their Thors, Caps, and Wolvies on boss nodes because they thought they'd get a lot more gold for getting kills, but thankfully the alliance I'm in now doesn't do that noob stuff.

DNA3000

My_Superior wrote: »

NastyEfnNate wrote: »

My_Superior wrote: »

AW seasons are not as “fun” as Kabam intended them to be. I’m in an alliance right now that I really enjoy playing with but since seasons began we have become much more cutthroat in terms of encouraging players to spend... Oh wait... Hmmmm.

Lmao that was your decision to enforce this upon the alliance. If u don’t want to spend then find an alliance that doesn’t encourage spending. There’s many that don’t spend

It wasn’t my decision; it was our decision, made in response to the introduction of Alliance War Seasons. There were two choices to be made; Try for the best rewards possible or ignore the season rewards all together. Either way the game becomes less enjoyable because we either A, impose more stress on the players, or B, miss out on rewards that we could have obtained. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Our alliance took the third option: play as many wars as possible win or lose for points (before we only did two a week), try harder to clear the map but don't overspend to get the win every time. It is still a work in progress, but we are trying to find a reasonable balance between option one and option two.

Patchie93

DNA3000 wrote: »

My_Superior wrote: »

NastyEfnNate wrote: »

My_Superior wrote: »

AW seasons are not as “fun” as Kabam intended them to be. I’m in an alliance right now that I really enjoy playing with but since seasons began we have become much more cutthroat in terms of encouraging players to spend... Oh wait... Hmmmm.

Lmao that was your decision to enforce this upon the alliance. If u don’t want to spend then find an alliance that doesn’t encourage spending. There’s many that don’t spend

It wasn’t my decision; it was our decision, made in response to the introduction of Alliance War Seasons. There were two choices to be made; Try for the best rewards possible or ignore the season rewards all together. Either way the game becomes less enjoyable because we either A, impose more stress on the players, or B, miss out on rewards that we could have obtained. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Our alliance took the third option: play as many wars as possible win or lose for points (before we only did two a week), try harder to clear the map but don't overspend to get the win every time. It is still a work in progress, but we are trying to find a reasonable balance between option one and option two.

I agree my alliance is doing the same went from 2 wars to 3 a week. We don't make people spend and just encourage everyone to do their best. We win some lose some. Not expecting to get super high rewards but think gold 1/2 is about where we belong

VandalSavage

Ghostspider231 wrote: »

Now don't get me wrong. I think they needed to up the rewards and make AW more enticing to alliances to participate. But I don't think the seasons was a good idea. All this does is encourage all the top players in lower level alliances to leave and consolidate power with an even smaller group of alliances. It also encourages alliances to kick players to improve their alliance tier. This makes the alliance experience less enjoyable and more like a job. The point of the alliances should be to progress and advance as a group. This has turned almost into a free-for-all.

They need to replace the alliance seasons to make it more individual achievement based. For example the MVPs of each alliance gets a higher amount of rewards win or lose. And make the rewards more attainable quicker. Maybe make them weekly like in AQ and they can be ranked like AQ as well.

These are just some thoughts from an officer tired of losing good team members. Take it for what it's worth.

I've played games where members within an alliance do essentially compete among themselves (e.g. the top scorer gets the best prize). However, that only works if the game play supports it.

For it to work here, the maps would have to be totally redesigned to remove any strategic cooperation among the members. The redesigned map would not have paths that are more difficult than others so all paths would be the same and people won't be allowed to place defenders -- otherwise, there would be paths with varying difficulty.

There was an idea suggested a while back in the old forum that does have alliance mates competing against each other. The idea was basically a merger of AQ and Stars Wars Galaxy of Hero's Pit Raids.

You basically fight a boss character (let's use Ultron but it can be anything). This Ultron has essentially a massive ton of health and the event last, for example, 24 hours just like AQ. Players keep attacking this boss over and over again scoring points. Each fight is timed, like 6 minutes, so the goal for individual players is to score as many points as possible in a short period of time. The number of fights a player can have in this 24 hour event can be limited to let's say 5 per 24 hours; otherwise, it would be a grind fest like trying to score 5 million in the 2-star arena every day because alliances would only want players who can score a ton. Since the player is limited to 5 heroes, the more skillful among the group would typically score more points. And unlike AQ/AW, there is no restriction on the number of players that can attack the boss at the same time. So there's no waiting nor trying to "box each other out".

The alliance score is the sum of all the individual players' points taken together and this impacts the individual rewards. The players are ranked by points with the top scorer getting the best prize. The magnitude of the rewards depends on whether the group as a whole outscored the other alliance. In other words, the top scorer of the winning team gets better rewards than the top scorer of the losing team.

That is just an example.

DNA3000

Ghostspider231 wrote: »

My point with the individual based awards within the Alliance War system was to reward stronger players and to encourage them to stay within weaker alliances giving a greater balance to the rewards system. A stronger player may not want to go to a stronger alliance when they won't be getting as high of a rewards boost. It doesn't have to be MVPs. It could be based on total points earned for the alliance- exploration, attack bonus etc.

I think everyone understands your point fine. The problem is you cannot do that without creating even more problems, and that's separate from the illogic of focusing on individual performance in an activity explicitly intended to reward group effort.

Plus, if you believe rewarding a single individual for individual performance by some metric, no matter what that metric is you have to assume that you would then lose your second strongest player, because if you need bribery to keep your top player, there's every reason to believe your second best player has the same mindset. And while you've created an incentive for your top player to stay, you've also created an equally large incentive for your second best player to leave - because he could now become the top player in a slightly lower alliance.

The problem is not the method of choosing the rewarded player. It doesn't matter how you choose. What matters is one player will get substantially more players than all the others, and it would then encourage the other players to try to beat each other to get that reward to the detriment of working together, or leave the alliance and find one where they can get that reward. It has nothing to do with how you pick the player to receive the bonus reward. It has to do with pitting alliance members against each other for a reward period.

The_Grandmaster

Currently in Gold 1 bracket and every war we are having to use some items whether they come from glory or units items are spent. My problem is That the season is so long and the rewards are close to on par with what I get from finishing Uncollected event quest. I can finish that with less items used and there will be 2.5 of them for every Season of AW so to me the rewards are just not even worth it. I am one of the only people in my alliance that thinks like this so we continue to go hard every war. They want us to use potions before a fight if we are below half health so we can have a high attack rating which makes sense but to me is too extreme and clearly genius work by Kabam to have people use items even when they may not have needed too. Seasons will end up being the most profitable idea Kabam has come up with beside maybe the 300 UNIT uncollected crystals

The_Grandmaster

Hopefully after this 1st season is over everyone will realize that it wasn't worth the time, money spent for the rewards and things will change. The only people that Seasons will benefit greatly are the top 1% whales to whom money doesnt matter

Knightarthus

Individual rewards in AW & AQ would cause a lot bigger problems. Players will leave if you don’t place their defenders on premium nodes for example. Competitiveness is the name of the game if you don’t want people to leave your alliance up your game. Cut the weak links or settle for lesser performers. Eventually you will have a semi stable team who is satisfied with the status queue of the alliance anyway.

Born

I am in top tier war and Item use is extremely low. We always face the Whales and have some of our own. Total deaths to clear all battle groups is often less than 10-15. And we have even had alliances take us for 6 deaths total. I very rarely need to use items, sometimes a few health potions here and there purchased from the glory store but nothing like what it use to be like with the previous war structure.

Buck_Bleedstone

Those competitive tensions have always existed in alliances. Some players will leave when they want a more competitive environment, while others will leave when it gets too intense because they want something more laid back. The only constant is change. Just make sure the fit is right for you. There are many options at most levels of the game.

Tropical_Chris

I personally like AW Seasons.

Sure, it introduces friction and conflict in some alliances right now, but that’s to be expected IMHO. AW Seasons introduced some really enticing rewards. And most alliances right now have already operate in a certain way pre-seasons. With Seasons, they’d have to rethink how they operate - whether you spend more, or you sacrifice AQ or whatnot.

But all this friction would just be momentarily. As to how fast frictions would be resolved would differ from one alliance to another.

If you find your alliance changes to an alliance you no longer enjoy, then part ways civally and move on.

It doesnt mean that if your alliance chose to operate in a certain way, that most alliances would do. That’s just your silo.