Alliance War Season 19: Updates to Path Identities and New Nodes! [ June 30]

Summoners,

After his defeat at the hands of the Summoner and Carina, the Grandmaster has been an elder without a calling. Despite the problems and conflicts that the Grandmaster and The Collector have caused, they are still Carina’s family, and she loves them very much.

Instead of banishing them to a far off land, she’s worked with her council to create a plan to keep the two of them busy, and out of trouble.

The Universal Gamesman

Carina knows that a game with changing rulesets and unpredictable pieces is the perfect distraction to keep En Dwi Gast out of trouble. Under her supervision, The Grandmaster will transform Alliance Wars into his tournament, where he seeks the strongest Alliances every season to crown as his victors!

Recreating the Battlefield

The Grandmaster has never been shy about wanting to mould the Contest to his vision, and making sure his presence is noticed. He’ll be starting with the Maps on which you fight.

So first, we’re going to take a look at the new Nodes, Path Identities, and Layouts of the Grandmaster’s New Maps. All Map Changes will take effect on June 24th!

New Maps

First, we've got 2 Brand New Maps! One for Alliances playing on Easy and Normal, and one for Alliances playing on Intermediate, Hard, Challenger, and Expert. If you'd like to take a closer look, we've attached the High-Resolution versions of these maps to this post.

These new more simplified Maps eliminate Portals and bring the entire Battlegroup back together and key points throughout the Map.

Easy and Normal:

Intermediate, Hard, Challenger, and Expert:

New Local Nodes

The Grandmaster has crafted the following nodes for Alliances on the Intermediate, Hard, Challenger, or Expert Maps.

Path Identities

If you like to plan ahead, the Grandmaster is happy to provide you with a list of all buffs on all nodes across the Maps. There are lots to look at, so we've attached the lists of Nodes in the next post.

Matchmaking Updates

The Grandmaster wants to ensure that his tournament stays as competitive as possible. To do so, he is updating the parameters of Matchmaking. Matchmaking will now emphasize your Alliance's War Rating above all else. This will ensure that Alliances vying for the crown will be competing against other top Alliances.

This will be a big adjustment for a lot of Alliances. Currently, many Alliances are either have an inflated War Rating or a Deflated War rating due to the current system. To expedite the process of Alliances finding their "true" War Rating, we will be reducing every Alliance's War Rating by 50%. This will affect every Alliance in-game and will accelerate the rate at which Alliance's find their true position faster because of the concentrated War Ratings of all Alliances.

The Change to Matchmaking and the War Rating reduction will occur on July 8th.

What's Next?

There's still so much to reveal about Season 19 and beyond. Next week, we'll cover:
- Reward Changes
- Defense Tactics and Attack Tactics
- Alliance War Solo Events

Remember, Alliance Wars Season 19 Starts on July 7th, and there will be no war starting on July 5th!

Stay tuned for more information on everything else about Season 19!

Comments

Mcord11758

If you have the same war rating as someone twice your size, your war rating is a fiction that needs to be corrected

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GroundedWisdom

When an Alliance is matched with another 2 and 3 times its size that's over before it starts.
No it’s not it’s when your facing someone much higher or lower war rating that it’s the problem

A different War Rating with similar Prestige means the strengths of the Allies are in proximity. I don't know why people keep acting like it's just some arbitrary number. It actually determines the limitations of your Alliance. Categorically and numerically. There's only so much an Alliance can do based on what they're using. It's not just random numbers. Your total strength depends on what you're working with and the limit to your skills is connected to that.

GroundedWisdom

If you have the same war rating as someone twice your size, your war rating is a fiction that needs to be corrected

Really? Fiction. They must have artificially inflated it. Oh, wait. It went up based on how they performed in their Wars. If you have the same and your Rating is twice their size, then they're doing as well as you with what they have to work with. Sorry about the Ego.

Mcord11758

I am fine with the alliance I run with having our rating cut in half. I am comfortable in what will happen next. Let water find its level. I am not scared of facing other alliances at the same war rating regardless of alliances rating. Sink or swim and earn the rewards you receive

Kpatrix

If you have the same war rating as someone twice your size, your war rating is a fiction that needs to be corrected
Really? Fiction. They must have artificially inflated it. Oh, wait. It went up based on how they performed in their Wars. If you have the same and your Rating is twice their size, then they're doing as well as you with what they have to work with. Sorry about the Ego.

“What they have to work with”

This is the entire issue. If the ratings are the same then they should be facing each other, period.

If the two alliances don’t belong in a match together then they shouldn’t have the same rating.

The system has been broken by matching on prestige for too long, and now it’s time for a hard reset.

What they have to work with should not be considered in any criteria for establishing rating, multiplier, and rank rewards. It’s all about how each alliance stacks up against the totality of the rest, not sub brackets inside of sub brackets based on prestige. It’s all about effective map clearing with fewer deaths than your opponent.

It will be interesting to see what the offensive tactics are. If they are anything like incursion hacks it could make for some really fun wars. I think giving the players some kind of a bump would be great to offset some of the ridiculous new nodes and hidden minis. I can’t wait to see what they have there, hopefully it won’t be as much of a let down as this announcement seems to be.

GroundedWisdom

What they have to work with is in proportion with what they're being Matched with. That's the whole point of that. Not what they could do in an unfair Match. That's what this is all about. People feel entitled to overpower them.

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Pulyaman

I said someone has to care because I'm literally the only one speaking up for the people whose Season is going to be a slaughter because of Matches that are over before they start. That's why. If you're taking that personally, that's not on me. If you care too, speak up for it. That's about all I have to say on that. I don't just side with majorities for the sake of it. Something that isn't right is not right, regardless of the numbers.
You are literally the only one speaking up? Nice. Shows you only read your comments. lol
Sorry. I know you agreed with me. You went silent. Lol. You're on the same page too.
I was sleeping. lol. But, another thing is that there is no use arguing with someone who is not seeing the big picture. When someone says, someone has to suffer, you know they don't want fair. So, I will wait for the season to start because right now, all we do is rehash the same thing.
Let’s not act like grounded is seeing it from anyone’s POV but his own, I gave examples of the unfair system we’ve just moved on from and he acts like that’s perfectly fair.
But I agree, let’s wait for the changes to come into play, let kabam collect their data and I’m sure it’ll be fairer for everyone in the long run.
The halved war ratings likely means it’ll get resolved quickly, and we don’t even know what the exact matchmaking formula is, other than it taking war rating into account primarily which it always should’ve done, it’s possible it won’t allow the absurd mismatches anyways and let those that climbed far higher than they should’ve down gently.
You did not give an answer regarding your war rating and the matches where you were matched in prestige, but huge difference in war rating last season.
Please take a look in this thread. You’ll see plenty of examples of how it worked.

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/193114/alliance-war-matchmaking-unfair-merged-threads

Rewards weren’t the ONLY issue with that matchmaking.
We were ridiculously outmatched in many wars. We had to use a looot of items while only going boss kill to earn the most points possible to not drop more than 1 bracket/tier. Just going boss kill was difficult.
Many wars (as you who defend this say) we didn’t even need to wait for the other alliance to start playing. We went boss kill directly because we knew it would be a bloodbath even like that (let alone full exploration). This went on for seasons.

That’s what we went through.
We know how this alliances will feel. But we also know, with this change, no alliance will ever have to feel that again.

Two things.
First, that thread was actually started because of the kind of unfair matches we have been talking about, similar war rating, huge difference in alliance and prestige ratings. So, it kinda proves my point that changing things abruptly affects a lot of alliances.
Second, You have people saying that they have had these unfair match ups where they had to face much tougher alliances all these seasons,without actually giving a single screenshot of the alliances they faced. Because, as you say, if you had all these unfair matches all these years, I want to look at the war rating of those matches.Because, from what I saw on those posts, every time someone posted that they were unfairly matched, the response was that the war ratings match and you deserve this because of years of unfair match ups.

GroundedWisdom

When an Alliance is matched with another 2 and 3 times its size that's over before it starts.
No it’s not it’s when your facing someone much higher or lower war rating that it’s the problem
A different War Rating with similar Prestige means the strengths of the Allies are in proximity. I don't know why people keep acting like it's just some arbitrary number. It actually determines the limitations of your Alliance. Categorically and numerically. There's only so much an Alliance can do based on what they're using. It's not just random numbers. Your total strength depends on what you're working with and the limit to your skills is connected to that.
It shouldn’t matter if their strength of the allies is the same war rating is the only thing that should matter you shouldn’t get to benefit from more points without earning it

When they're overpowered beyond having a chance, it matters. The whole point of War is a competition between two Alliances that each have a chance at winning, and are granted those Wins based on how they perform within the War. I have no idea where the concept that War Rating trumps whether they can actually win or not, but that's absolutely a justification. What's the point of Wars where one side has no way in hell of beating the other? Why fight? I'm talking literally no chance regardless of how skilled they are. The numbers alone don't lie. You take the limits of what one is working with versus the limits of another and compare them, knowing there is no possible way to win given Node increases, difference in Champs, Ranks, CR, no way to win. I'm telling you in no uncertain terms the War is decided before it's fought. You can keep asserting that the WRP is the only thing that matters, but all that translates to is, they don't have the right to have as many as we do because we could beat them in an unfair Fight. Bully mentality. Nothing to do with a fair system at all. Just entitlement based on Ego.

GroundedWisdom

Setting up Matches that cannot be won by one side is NOT in the spirit of fair competition, no matter what the reasons are.

Sensei_Maat

Here is a couple of threads from back two years ago when i first tarted talking about this prestige bubble system and the implications it wiuld have.
It has continued and here are the problems.
Little allies all the way up in high tiers where they dont belong.

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/61676/war-matchmaking-does-take-ally-rating-into-account#latest

This second thread contains more actual data to see

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/75680/war-matchups-war-system-issue#latest

It wasnt until i presented the data here i could get people to believe me it was a thing.
And now it is the issue i knew it would be. And people are complaining we are looking to fix it

Sensei_Maat

There was also another thread where i had drawn up a graphic showing the bubble system in effect. Will look back and try and find that too later today when i get a chance

GroundedWisdom

Tell the people who decided to throw the system out of whack Tanking and shifting Allies all the time. They're the reason something had to intervene.

GroundedWisdom

Which was before they decided to freeze Ratings. The system was a mess. Something had to be done. Even now it's only partly frozen. Anything under Tier 5 is still taking place, albeit at half the rate. As long as Seasons are connected to the off-season, people will try to manipulate any advantage they can. Murphy's Law of MCOC. Wherever something can go wrong...

Pulyaman

@Sensei_Maat I have read through both threads and I do have some observations, but I don't want to engage in this thread any longer mainly because this thread could be better used for discussing the node and map changes by Kabam. I am still not sure that this is the way to go in terms of matchmaking, but I will wait till season starts. Cheers

GroundedWisdom

Yeah I'm with you. I've made all the points I can make. Might as well just wait it out at this point. I like the new layout, though. Nice change.

Onmix

I said someone has to care because I'm literally the only one speaking up for the people whose Season is going to be a slaughter because of Matches that are over before they start. That's why. If you're taking that personally, that's not on me. If you care too, speak up for it. That's about all I have to say on that. I don't just side with majorities for the sake of it. Something that isn't right is not right, regardless of the numbers.
You are literally the only one speaking up? Nice. Shows you only read your comments. lol
Sorry. I know you agreed with me. You went silent. Lol. You're on the same page too.
I was sleeping. lol. But, another thing is that there is no use arguing with someone who is not seeing the big picture. When someone says, someone has to suffer, you know they don't want fair. So, I will wait for the season to start because right now, all we do is rehash the same thing.
Let’s not act like grounded is seeing it from anyone’s POV but his own, I gave examples of the unfair system we’ve just moved on from and he acts like that’s perfectly fair.
But I agree, let’s wait for the changes to come into play, let kabam collect their data and I’m sure it’ll be fairer for everyone in the long run.
The halved war ratings likely means it’ll get resolved quickly, and we don’t even know what the exact matchmaking formula is, other than it taking war rating into account primarily which it always should’ve done, it’s possible it won’t allow the absurd mismatches anyways and let those that climbed far higher than they should’ve down gently.
You did not give an answer regarding your war rating and the matches where you were matched in prestige, but huge difference in war rating last season.
Please take a look in this thread. You’ll see plenty of examples of how it worked.

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/193114/alliance-war-matchmaking-unfair-merged-threads

Rewards weren’t the ONLY issue with that matchmaking.
We were ridiculously outmatched in many wars. We had to use a looot of items while only going boss kill to earn the most points possible to not drop more than 1 bracket/tier. Just going boss kill was difficult.
Many wars (as you who defend this say) we didn’t even need to wait for the other alliance to start playing. We went boss kill directly because we knew it would be a bloodbath even like that (let alone full exploration). This went on for seasons.

That’s what we went through.
We know how this alliances will feel. But we also know, with this change, no alliance will ever have to feel that again.
Two things.
First, that thread was actually started because of the kind of unfair matches we have been talking about, similar war rating, huge difference in alliance and prestige ratings. So, it kinda proves my point that changing things abruptly affects a lot of alliances.
Second, You have people saying that they have had these unfair match ups where they had to face much tougher alliances all these seasons,without actually giving a single screenshot of the alliances they faced. Because, as you say, if you had all these unfair matches all these years, I want to look at the war rating of those matches.Because, from what I saw on those posts, every time someone posted that they were unfairly matched, the response was that the war ratings match and you deserve this because of years of unfair match ups.

You’re right. I posted the link to the wrong thread.
https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/179826/flawed-match-making/p4
You’ll see many charts in the thread showing the matchups and standings.

By using prestige, alliances could only match against a certain range of alliances. Making any bracket (let’s say P3) way harder than it was. We have 10.7 prestige alliances in P3 as well as 6.2k.
That disparity shouldn’t exist. Because the 6.2k couldn’t contend with any/all the alliances in P3 and, if they are gonna be in the same bracket, they should.
There’s a 10.4k prestige alliance stuck in P4 that would definitely beat the 6.2k in P3. But they couldn’t ever match.

You will never hear me say that this won’t affect alliances. It will. For sure. But the system needs to correct itself.
Every alliance should have the possibility of matching against any alliance in the same bracket/tier. Not just a select range.

GroundedWisdom

That's the problem. Nothing says they should. People are still looking at it like a system that hasn't existed since Defender Kills were present, and there was one Leaderboard and no Seasons. A Season is an entirely different ball game altogether.

Sensei_Maat

That's the problem. Nothing says they should. People are still looking at it like a system that hasn't existed since Defender Kills were present, and there was one Leaderboard and no Seasons. A Season is an entirely different ball game altogether.

No.
Just no.

Before seasons it would be perfectly reasonable for matches to based on prestige as each war was stand alone and had no overall impact on anything or anyone else.
Since seasons and everyone competing to see who is the best and for the highest place on the leaderboard wars are no longer standalone and your results have direct effect on other alliances.
You cant say you deserve the number 100 spot cus you only fought 10 mil allies.
There would be hundreds of allies lower than you who are better. And would beat You they fought you.
Bubbles and pools dont work on an overall leaderboard rewards system

GroundedWisdom

People are competing for the most Points within a month. Not fighting every Alliance on the way to the top. It's essentially a month-long Arena. I'm not opposed to considering larger Allies as 6*s and awarding them more Points, but this idea that you have to beat everyone out who is in your Bracket is illogical and doesn't represent the actual system.

Sensei_Maat

Seasons are to determine which alliance is the best as per initial announcement regarding seasons

Not who wins the most wars. Not who is the best in their class.
WHO IS THE BEST

GroundedWisdom

The best in War. Measuring their performance in War. Within that, there are metrics to determine how they perform. That doesn't mean the best must be the highest Rated and must be the same Alliance every Season. Not by default. You have a scoring metric from beginning to end, and the Alliance that scores the most Points at the end of the Season is the "best".

GroundedWisdom

Everyone has the same scoring metric, and yes, an Alliance that is lower in Rating can perform better than an Alliance that is higher Rated. It all depends on how they perform in their Wars, not whether you can obliterate them or not. If you want to do better, you perform better in your own Wars and earn more Points. Not a hard concept to grasp.

GroundedWisdom

As for your point, the only way to tell would be to switch places. I'd bet dollars to seashells if they had the Accounts of the 30 Mil, they could do just as well as they did with the Accounts of the 5 Mil. Same Nodes. Same increase in opponents. Fire power is lower but so is their opposition.

Sensei_Maat

As for your point, the only way to tell would be to switch places. I'd bet dollars to seashells if they had the Accounts of the 30 Mil, they could do just as well as they did with the Accounts of the 5 Mil. Same Nodes. Same increase in opponents. Fire power is lower but so is their opposition.

doesnt quite work like that.
i have an account where my war attackers are 5/50 4* and 3/45 5*. and i fight defenders of 3/45 5* and the occasional 5*. in t6/t5
lemme tell you those wars are much much easier then on my main account where my attackers are 5/65 5* and we are fighting defenders of 5/65 and r2 6*. also t5/t6 wars
300% extra attack and HP is much much bigger numbers making for much much harder fights.

but besides that, what makes an ally the best is also everything put in to grow your account.
you can't just rock up and be the best straight away. you need to spend the time. put in the effort of building an account worthy of being the best.
thats how the game is designed and how it is supposed to work.

@DragonBloodÆ it''s hard not to argue with someone when they are just so clearly wrong. and it totally bewilders me and i am unable to comprehend how some people see things the way they do.

Mr_Platypus

As for your point, the only way to tell would be to switch places. I'd bet dollars to seashells if they had the Accounts of the 30 Mil, they could do just as well as they did with the Accounts of the 5 Mil. Same Nodes. Same increase in opponents. Fire power is lower but so is their opposition.
doesnt quite work like that.
i have an account where my war attackers are 5/50 4* and 3/45 5*. and i fight defenders of 3/45 5* and the occasional 5*. in t6/t5
lemme tell you those wars are much much easier then on my main account where my attackers are 5/65 5* and we are fighting defenders of 5/65 and r2 6*. also t5/t6 wars
300% extra attack and HP is much much bigger numbers making for much much harder fights.

but besides that, what makes an ally the best is also everything put in to grow your account.
you can't just rock up and be the best straight away. you need to spend the time. put in the effort of building an account worthy of being the best.
thats how the game is designed and how it is supposed to work.

@DragonBloodÆ it''s hard not to argue with someone when they are just so clearly wrong. and it totally bewilders me and i am unable to comprehend how some people see things the way they do.

It’s hard but it’s not like he will ever see anything from anyones perspective but his own so best to try not to feed him, something I forgot for a while.

Pulyaman

Seems to be that the majority of the problem comes from shell alliances and people selling off their champs to deliberately get easy wars. With these kind of leaches existing in the game, I am wondering if we will ever get a system which could be fair. I am seeing the top alliances in the last season have 1 member out of 30, where did they go? We all know what's happening. Wonder if we could start assigning war prestige to each account for war like champ prestige for aq. If you place Master this season, even if you move alliances, the points will follow you, and the alliance war prestige could be based on that. Anything I am missing? @Sensei_Maat @GroundedWisdom ?

Sensei_Maat

Seems to be that the majority of the problem comes from shell alliances and people selling off their champs to deliberately get easy wars. With these kind of leaches existing in the game, I am wondering if we will ever get a system which could be fair. I am seeing the top alliances in the last season have 1 member out of 30, where did they go? We all know what's happening. Wonder if we could start assigning war prestige to each account for war like champ prestige for aq. If you place Master this season, even if you move alliances, the points will follow you, and the alliance war prestige could be based on that. Anything I am missing? @Sensei_Maat @GroundedWisdom ?

i wouldn't say the majority of the problems are coming from those two issues, but yes a large amount is. its a much bigger problem up the top then anywhere else.
the biggest problem is people will always find any potential exploit to gain any advantage they can and ruin any system they can for others.
why can't people just play the game in the spirit of the game.
i have seen the idea of a "war prestige" or individual war rating suggested before.
the problem being that implementation would be very difficult.
if done correctly it could work very well but the biggest things to overcome would be
1. how to approach it when alliances run 1 or 2 bg wars. it is possible that they again would recruit 10 people with low war prestige to lower their average war prestige and then run 2 bg wars using the other 20 and getting easier matches.
2. people may find it hard to get a spot in strong allies. if you have been in a weak ally and are looking to grow you may be rejected by allies purely because having you will drop their war rating down and potentially reduce available rewards.
3. if someone retires from a long stinit in top allies and drops down to a low ally to chill will the rest of that low ally become negatively impacted by much harder war matches due to having this one new member?
there may also be other issues,
but if done right it could work but i see it as full of many potential problems/exploits.

unknown

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