Alliance War Shared Information Issue
Ebbtide
Member Posts: 292 ★★
This Alliance War Season my team has run into a persistent issue of fighting teams that are connected Alliances. The Alliances all share a name, word, a variation on a pattern or some other connection, that allow you to immediately know they are connected to other Alliances, with some even listing this in their information.
Unfortunately, this gives them access to potential knowledge of Alliance War setups from prior team battles. To give an example, fictional alliance Alpha Heroes is connected to Beta Heroes. Beta Heroes has fought the team Omega Villains, and has just done so. Now, in matchmaking, Alpha Heroes has to fight Omega Villains. Alpha Heroes can ask in their family chat if any of them have battled Omega Villains, with Beta replying yes.
With knowledge of things like hidden defenders, diversity values and whether or not that Alliance used items like boosts, heals and even revives if necessary, Alpha Heroes can quickly determine how much effort they'd need to do with the battle, or if it's out of reach. Also, knowing the potential hidden defenders is a huge advantage over their opponent, as they can know what fighters to use ahead to avoid being trapped.
This issue is even worse when those teams have streamers on them, as they post videos of an opponents entire defense, while conveniently hiding their own from the video to avoid conflict with their Officers and Leader over giving away their information. Not only can this be used for their own team or family alliance, but for literally anyone and any team who checks their channel. This would allow anyone to then know Omega Villains defenders without even being connected to the 'Something' Heroes group, yet leave Omega Villains completely unprepared for their opponents map.
This has happened to us a few times this season. We have to guess and prepare ahead of each fight, alerting each other to someone having recoil, or bleed and poison, or if someone has Willpower or not. We have to slowly decipher the map. But other teams have known ahead of time what we have. Any progress we'd make in the Season would be lost because we'd then fight one of their family Alliances, who would easily be shared our information, while we had to go into our fights blind. My team is not in the higher end of the game, nor are we close to that, but we've repeatedly been close to moving upwards, only to encounter yet another family alliance from a team we just fought, who easily know exactly what to expect on certain nodes.
My suggestion for this is to remove player names on maps, along with Alliance Names until the end of the War. Instead, replace player names with a number, 1-10, representing the 10 in a BG. This can be the order players join, or even a random value for each, so that all that is shown is a number. It requires the same sort of effort, of playing the fight and informing teammates about what #7 has mastery wise, or if someone's champion was a lower or higher value.
On the mystery nodes the names of players is hidden, but because people can count to 5, they can decipher that only 4 of Player X are displayed, so they must be on the hidden nodes. This would allow teams with prior battle information to know that in another fight Omega Villains used Player X's Domino on that hidden node ahead. This gives an unfair advantage that could be removed if player names aren't displayed. Because of Diversity, battlegroups need limit who they use, and likely go with the best version of that option, which again limits who they can place and where to potentially hide them. Much of the opponent information is hidden from the scoring side, so removing all player names would seem consistent with that setup.
The same could be done with Attackers, so that you cannot tell who is fighting with what trio. The only issue here is that anyone cheating would be hard to identify. You would be lacking their in-game name to report, so it might be better to show player names on the attack (though this would give away their Alliance - this would need to be looked at for reporting reasons).
I believe this would benefit all alliances, from the very bottom, to the competitive top, so that they all would be able to setup their defense without concern that any effort they put into it is already known before the first fight. This affords all players the same blindness into a war, instead of giving some teams an unfair advantage with shared information.
Unfortunately, this gives them access to potential knowledge of Alliance War setups from prior team battles. To give an example, fictional alliance Alpha Heroes is connected to Beta Heroes. Beta Heroes has fought the team Omega Villains, and has just done so. Now, in matchmaking, Alpha Heroes has to fight Omega Villains. Alpha Heroes can ask in their family chat if any of them have battled Omega Villains, with Beta replying yes.
With knowledge of things like hidden defenders, diversity values and whether or not that Alliance used items like boosts, heals and even revives if necessary, Alpha Heroes can quickly determine how much effort they'd need to do with the battle, or if it's out of reach. Also, knowing the potential hidden defenders is a huge advantage over their opponent, as they can know what fighters to use ahead to avoid being trapped.
This issue is even worse when those teams have streamers on them, as they post videos of an opponents entire defense, while conveniently hiding their own from the video to avoid conflict with their Officers and Leader over giving away their information. Not only can this be used for their own team or family alliance, but for literally anyone and any team who checks their channel. This would allow anyone to then know Omega Villains defenders without even being connected to the 'Something' Heroes group, yet leave Omega Villains completely unprepared for their opponents map.
This has happened to us a few times this season. We have to guess and prepare ahead of each fight, alerting each other to someone having recoil, or bleed and poison, or if someone has Willpower or not. We have to slowly decipher the map. But other teams have known ahead of time what we have. Any progress we'd make in the Season would be lost because we'd then fight one of their family Alliances, who would easily be shared our information, while we had to go into our fights blind. My team is not in the higher end of the game, nor are we close to that, but we've repeatedly been close to moving upwards, only to encounter yet another family alliance from a team we just fought, who easily know exactly what to expect on certain nodes.
My suggestion for this is to remove player names on maps, along with Alliance Names until the end of the War. Instead, replace player names with a number, 1-10, representing the 10 in a BG. This can be the order players join, or even a random value for each, so that all that is shown is a number. It requires the same sort of effort, of playing the fight and informing teammates about what #7 has mastery wise, or if someone's champion was a lower or higher value.
On the mystery nodes the names of players is hidden, but because people can count to 5, they can decipher that only 4 of Player X are displayed, so they must be on the hidden nodes. This would allow teams with prior battle information to know that in another fight Omega Villains used Player X's Domino on that hidden node ahead. This gives an unfair advantage that could be removed if player names aren't displayed. Because of Diversity, battlegroups need limit who they use, and likely go with the best version of that option, which again limits who they can place and where to potentially hide them. Much of the opponent information is hidden from the scoring side, so removing all player names would seem consistent with that setup.
The same could be done with Attackers, so that you cannot tell who is fighting with what trio. The only issue here is that anyone cheating would be hard to identify. You would be lacking their in-game name to report, so it might be better to show player names on the attack (though this would give away their Alliance - this would need to be looked at for reporting reasons).
I believe this would benefit all alliances, from the very bottom, to the competitive top, so that they all would be able to setup their defense without concern that any effort they put into it is already known before the first fight. This affords all players the same blindness into a war, instead of giving some teams an unfair advantage with shared information.
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Comments
The best thing you can do in AW is put your best defense out there. Most defenders aren't a huge issue for alliances now and most defenders have decent counters.
There isn't anything in the rules saying there can't be a family of alliances either. Our alliance seems to match against SIN6 family of alliances constantly. We've won some and lost some. I'd rather Kabam focus on cheating than this.
OP, you can mitigate some of the problems by having multiple defence teams setup per battlegroup for each of the unique global buffs. Then place rotating different defenders per hidden nodes. Our battlegroup has three different setups platinum 3, t2-3 wars. One for flow, siphon and dodge. Then each officer takes a turn setting up defenders so it’s usually more random.
But the problem you describe isn’t uncommon with shared information in many “group” like events across games.
As far as I can tell, the only really interesting information it is possible to tell another alliance about a common opponent is hidden node placement. Things like how much items or effort are used isn't even really possible to know with certainty, nor does it give a lot of strategic information even if you know because alliance effort often depends on the probability of winning. If an alliance is way ahead they might stop using items and coast. If it is a close war they might start spending. Changing tactics based on what you *think* an alliance is going to do is more likely to hurt you than help you.
Since it is impossible to actually know what your opponent knows about you unless they straight up tell you in the warroom, I think the OP is seeing shadows. Even when the map was entirely hidden this didn't happen with any measurable frequency I'm aware of, and these days it is bordering on ludicrous effort. If I wanted to track defense placement for all of our historical opponents in every alliance war I would go play Eve Online or become a tax accountant.
Also, in my opinion it was a major victory for players to move from hidden maps to almost completely non-hidden maps. I wouldn't want to encourage the devs to start hiding information again.
This makes life a little more difficult for alliances that aren't doing the crazy tracking you think is happening, but doesn't affect any alliance actually doing that sort of tracking, because that tracking data allows you to de-anonymize the map.
Only insane players would attempt to do this, but no more insane than what's being suggested already.
In the situation I'm talking about, one of the Alliances was a Platinum 3 Alliance last season that had fallen down to Gold 1 and was working to get to Platinum 4. Another was a Gold 1 last Season that was working to also break into Platinum 4. Another was a Gold 2 that was aiming for Gold 1. They have several others that are scattered around the similar levels (Gold to Platinum). This means they face, as a family, many other alliances in those brackets, allowing them to then have knowledge to benefit them from various encounters.
These examples were just of the groups that went down. Others in their family went up. The drops were due to changes in players, shifts in battlegroups that required reworking, and even things like unlucky fight drops. In the battles we had where we beat them, it was victory by under 100 points, where 2 of their fights they had dropped.
I'm aware of this because I know people on their teams, and was informed of the amount of information they kept. It is so that if a team drops from a desired Tier and encounters a known team, they can quickly bounce back, regaining a multiplyer.
What amazes me is that the uninformed here feel the need to post, with the attitude of "it doesn't happen to me, so it doesn't happen." That's like saying you've never experienced something, so it doesn't exist period. Nope. Not at all. Never. How privileged of you.
I'm speaking from knowledge of people who have played there, and knowing this is what made me post about it. If players names are not displayed above fighters on the map and during the fight, and the Alliance names are not revealed until after the war ends, this would prevent the problem I'm describing, ensuring that each new war is a surprise for both teams.