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

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danielmath

80 deaths in tier 6 here and neither alliance finished 100%.
how does that compare to a usual offseason war? we've never 100% an offseason war i don't believe
Definitely way higher then usual I’ve been putting defenders in who normally aren’t great simply because it’s off season and they are still getting a good few kills

ya, it always takes some time for people to get used to the new nodes, the reaction to these changes are the same everytime the map gets changed

Sensei_Maat

Back to the old days.
Where allies take 6, 7 or 8 paths only and intentionally give up exploration to get the clears.

Kabam have certainly made it clear they do not want wars to be 100% exploration and decided on deaths.
They clearly want exploration to be a factor

Sensei_Maat

So we won.
1 bg war
Boss kill = 1 (us) - 0 (them)
Exploration = 96.9 (us) - 82.5 (them)
Deaths = 36 (us) 49 (them)

Gamer

80 deaths in tier 6 here and neither alliance finished 100%.
how does that compare to a usual offseason war? we've never 100% an offseason war i don't believe
Definitely way higher then usual I’ve been putting defenders in who normally aren’t great simply because it’s off season and they are still getting a good few kills
ya, it always takes some time for people to get used to the new nodes, the reaction to these changes are the same everytime the map gets changed

I’m just not liking the tunel vision node with this nasty combination one it plus put a domino one there not many options to counter it not that all node is bad there is a lot of them ther is great all one part 1 was mangers obviously ikow that’s part is probably the esay where part5 might be the hardest.

danielmath

80 deaths in tier 6 here and neither alliance finished 100%.
how does that compare to a usual offseason war? we've never 100% an offseason war i don't believe
Definitely way higher then usual I’ve been putting defenders in who normally aren’t great simply because it’s off season and they are still getting a good few kills
ya, it always takes some time for people to get used to the new nodes, the reaction to these changes are the same everytime the map gets changed
I’m just not liking the tunel vision node with this nasty combination one it plus put a domino one there not many options to counter it not that all node is bad there is a lot of them ther is great all one part 1 was mangers obviously ikow that’s part is probably the esay where part5 might be the hardest.

ya there's always a hardest path, same as every map

Gamer

80 deaths in tier 6 here and neither alliance finished 100%.
how does that compare to a usual offseason war? we've never 100% an offseason war i don't believe
Definitely way higher then usual I’ve been putting defenders in who normally aren’t great simply because it’s off season and they are still getting a good few kills
ya, it always takes some time for people to get used to the new nodes, the reaction to these changes are the same everytime the map gets changed
I’m just not liking the tunel vision node with this nasty combination one it plus put a domino one there not many options to counter it not that all node is bad there is a lot of them ther is great all one part 1 was mangers obviously ikow that’s part is probably the esay where part5 might be the hardest.
ya there's always a hardest path, same as every map

True I’m not saying this map is only bad ther can be improved in personal don’t think tunel vision bad. If node like oscillation and agersiv fury wasn’t there. The defender wil. Just stay blok In aromer phess and stake like 8 Fur Hens my suggestion is if ther like to hav tunel vision stil removes oscillation. And leav it what it is then it wil stil be challenging but not overflod in dead I’m had a okay figth with ghost but forget tune vision because ther had 10 stake of fury so really didn’t hav a Nick with me he wil deal with it okay but again luck my figth was only a Ironman IW but with flow that was a bit brutally.

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LaBiGit

No fun, only stress and pain. Check the global chat rooms. People are promoting their alliances for being AQ only. You guys need to format your user experience department.

Kabam Karma

Hey everyone. I'm sorry for the lack of dev presence on this thread. It’s been a crazy few days for us and we have been working on finishing up our roadmap blog posts. I’ve tried to read through most of this thread but there was a LOT of information to digest. So here’s my attempt at a summary post, but I’m sorry if there were things that I’ve overlooked.

This update doesn’t sit well with the roadmap we just released, what gives?
Unfortunately, the work that has gone into the Season 19 update has been going on for months, while the roadmap was created more recently. Something we are going to do is make updates to AW such that it falls in line with our goals with MCOC moving forward. Expect to see more regular updates to AW in the coming weeks to address the issues we’ve outlined to the community.

The new blue background is too bright!
We’re changing the theme for the Challenger map.

Hidden nodes on minis?
Hidden nodes are gone. We don’t think the current implementation of hidden information makes the mode more interesting for players. We’re removing hidden nodes from this version of the map and will not add it back into AW until we come up with a design that we’re happy with.

Map difficulty and tuning.
Overall, we want to be a lot quicker with tuning on AW content. While we tend to tune Defense Tactics each Season, we don’t update the map as often. We want to do a better job of this moving forward.
Map tuning includes the potency of specific Buffs and also Buff combinations on nodes
For Defense Tactics, this is our first attempt at adding an Attacker Component, one thing that we want to do moving forward is to increase the potency of the Attack Buff and get this into a state where using the corresponding Attackers will feel like a net positive.

Before we go into Season 19, we are committed to making updates to the new map in order to tune down some of the new buffs and challenges we’ve put out. While we may not be able to act on all of this feedback, we will be making faster, more regular adjustments between Seasons to ensure that maps remain challenging and interesting, but on a level of difficulty more fair and less stressful for players.

Please post your concerns for specific nodes and buffs here: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/205508/alliance-war-season-19-node-combination-feedback

Thank you everyone for your comments thus far. We hear your frustrations with the map. Changes will come soon.

DianaPrince

Not a single word about one of the main problems. Rewards! The unfair (one of the biggest ever made) buff for platinum, gold, silver ... I’m thinking that kabam doesn’t read a single post here, so sad

Stagedear85

Hey everyone. I'm sorry for the lack of dev presence on this thread. It’s been a crazy few days for us and we have been working on finishing up our roadmap blog posts. I’ve tried to read through most of this thread but there was a LOT of information to digest. So here’s my attempt at a summary post, but I’m sorry if there were things that I’ve overlooked.

This update doesn’t sit well with the roadmap we just released, what gives?
Unfortunately, the work that has gone into the Season 19 update has been going on for months, while the roadmap was created more recently. Something we are going to do is make updates to AW such that it falls in line with our goals with MCOC moving forward. Expect to see more regular updates to AW in the coming weeks to address the issues we’ve outlined to the community.

The new blue background is too bright!
We’re changing the theme for the Challenger map.

Hidden nodes on minis?
Hidden nodes are gone. We don’t think the current implementation of hidden information makes the mode more interesting for players. We’re removing hidden nodes from this version of the map and will not add it back into AW until we come up with a design that we’re happy with.

Map difficulty and tuning.
Overall, we want to be a lot quicker with tuning on AW content. While we tend to tune Defense Tactics each Season, we don’t update the map as often. We want to do a better job of this moving forward.
Map tuning includes the potency of specific Buffs and also Buff combinations on nodes
For Defense Tactics, this is our first attempt at adding an Attacker Component, one thing that we want to do moving forward is to increase the potency of the Attack Buff and get this into a state where using the corresponding Attackers will feel like a net positive.

Before we go into Season 19, we are committed to making updates to the new map in order to tune down some of the new buffs and challenges we’ve put out. While we may not be able to act on all of this feedback, we will be making faster, more regular adjustments between Seasons to ensure that maps remain challenging and interesting, but on a level of difficulty more fair and less stressful for players.

Please post your concerns for specific nodes and buffs here: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/205508/alliance-war-season-19-node-combination-feedback

Thank you everyone for your comments thus far. We hear your frustrations with the map. Changes will come soon.

you can start by removing defensive tactics if you read thru these post 95% of the people here hate them and the ones you remove were no concern at all, remove flow don't even tune it just remove it all together also siphon can go also, im sure if you remove defensive tactics the community will be happy then we can start working with tuning nodes combination, I know you guys are trying but I don't think you guys are listening 95 % of the people hate flow and siphon but in the note you said"The Grandmaster has removed Dodge and Crush from the pool of Defense Tactic choices. " no one hated those we were ok with those nodes the lease popular defensive tactics are FLOW & Siphon if you think im not being honest check the forums.

Serious_786

The only sad thing for us(gold 1 and below Alliances) is that we've been neglected. Like in tier 6-9 literally every node is Annoying and more punishing than ever and The rewards are still the same... I mean we were complaining about in previous difficulty and you guys said that you will buff the rewards and make the worth our Efforts but Now what you guys did you buffed rewards for platinum and Above Allys and Threw us in the Corner.

Now we are not getting any motivation for playing cuz It's not possible for us to complete without using items and Using items and taking that much stress as a leader/officer is not worth for those stupid rewards.

I hope you guys will either buff the rewards or will nerf wars.

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Jmille85

I’m in a Gold 2 alliance that is pushing Gold 1 and I have got to say these war changes are extremely disheartening.... After all the talks about listening to player feedback and making changes that will reward the player THIS is the new AW map released.. I should have known after seeing the Reward Buffs that we’re so highly anticipated turned out to be so extremely disappointing except platinum and up alliances who were the only ones to get meaningful reward changes... So for the players that are in Gold 1-3 we all basically got an incredibly harder AW map with barely any changes in rewards... I’m not sure how this is Kabam’s idea of changing AW for the better because this honestly makes me want to quit AW... if it wasn’t worth the trouble and stess before it DEFINITELY isn’t now...

Antônio87

I'm all for changes as long as they don't sacrifice fairness just to make people happy.

I fully agree.

TheCoverGirl

I wont post anything negative as I usually try to keep my posts upbeat and factual, however I am not pleased with the new alliance wars changes. The nodes are far too hard and static. Entire paths are the same global node making it seem like a lazy design. An example for this war is Human Torch should realistically be tough but never wipe another players entire team... I'm sorry. It's just not enjoyable. I expected much better from Kabam. 3/10

Destroy4589

Absolutely no mention about the rewards lol. The current rewards for lower tiers don't justify these excessively ridiculous nodes. You want us to play harder nodes, then stop being stingy with rewards and actually reward players appropriately and not just your whales

Paddo

I guess we should be glad that this season does not take in to account the feedback that has been given. But it doesn't sit well at all to me. So regarding the respons I still have a lot of questions.

1. First off, players have been giving feedback way before a certain YouTuber got sick of his alliance. This was really the direction you were going in if there wasn't a big outrage ?
3. If you were aware that this season was not going to make players happy, and it did not take in account recent promises for the future, the best way to communicate it was to just announce it with no mention of this not really being the direction of the future? You did not forsee this kind of reaction knowing what players did not like about current wars?
4. If this takes months of planning, why did you not test the nodes!? Maybe it's not possible to try every node combination with every champion.. But popular ones like Korg and Doom? Isn't that a major part of designing something, testing how it works? Some players already saw these problems of it being impossible just by looking at the nodes, shouldn't a developer have more insights then players?
5. The reward upgrade is, unlike the season 19, a part of the plans for the future. There was also a lot of displeasure because only the top 300 alliances got a decent change, while alliances in platinum 4 and lower barely see there rewards changed. This is not going te be addressed? Because of we just get this one response after a whole lot of days, and you ignore it, it really feels like you are not going to address it. Do you feel like the changes made to rewards is now enough to make it worthwhile for all players?

Paddo

I guess we should be glad that this season does not take in to account the feedback that has been given. But it doesn't sit well at all to me. So regarding the respons I still have a lot of questions.

1. First off, players have been giving feedback way before a certain YouTuber got sick of his alliance. This was really the direction you were going in if there wasn't a big outrage ?
3. If you were aware that this season was not going to make players happy, and it did not take in account recent promises for the future, the best way to communicate it was to just announce it with no mention of this not really being the direction of the future? You did not forsee this kind of reaction knowing what players did not like about current wars?
4. If this takes months of planning, why did you not test the nodes!? Maybe it's not possible to try every node combination with every champion.. But popular ones like Korg and Doom? Isn't that a major part of designing something, testing how it works? Some players already saw these problems of it being impossible just by looking at the nodes, shouldn't a developer have more insights then players?
5. The reward upgrade is, unlike the season 19, a part of the plans for the future. There was also a lot of displeasure because only the top 300 alliances got a decent change, while alliances in platinum 4 and lower barely see there rewards changed. This is not going te be addressed? Because of we just get this one response after a whole lot of days, and you ignore it, it really feels like you are not going to address it. Do you feel like the changes made to rewards is now enough to make it worthwhile for all players?
a certain youtuber....
he is not Voldemort....
you can say his name...
LOL

I guess I wanted to stress that it was just one person, one YouTuber. I know Seatin has the biggest following, but he still is just one of many YouTubers. My point is that feedback was already there and talked about regularly before Seatin quiting his alliance.

Ostenabira

New node 23... OMG, what a pain in the ass. A new good reason to stop playing alliance war.

Speeds80

Let’s remember that a seasons rewards For someone in say gold 3 where my relaxed 30m vet alliance has ended up by not caring. is now about the same as I can earn in a week of modoks labs... or a few days worth of effort in eq or a week of effort in aq, for considerably less (pretty much zero) items or boosts needed
Spend your units on revives everyone, boost for the bosses everyone, use your glory on potions... oh wait nah, let’s just not

Chrisco66

The fact that kabam is letting us “test” this in the off season is a good thing. But just throwing this at us without kabam knowing how difficult the interactions between certain defenders combined with nodes is what baffles me. Not meant to be negative and thank you for responding to us but the ratio of rewards vs difficulty is WAY disproportioned

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Thecurler

AW feedback has been consistently given for years. The gripes and issues we have pre-date the “feedback thread” by a long way. But they were never listened to. If they had been we wouldn’t be in the situation we are now that has a whole game mode almost everyone hates and doesn’t give anywhere near the level of rewards required to justify the effort and pain it takes. Kabam have been deaf to the community on this for so long. You can’t blame the Season 19 issues on the development being “pre Dev diary” because our concerns and issues have long been ignored. By all means go ahead with the little tweaks and awful rewards. You may still keep a huge cross section playing it. It really just isn’t worth it for me.

Sums it up perfectly.

Negative feedback on Flow (and defence tactics in general) goes back over 3 months.

At the same time this feedback is being given, decisions are made to keep flow, make the map and nodes more difficult while designing potentially more annoying defence tactics.

It's baffling to be honest. They may well push more item use at the top but for those who aren't interested in competing for the top prizes and bragging rights, the game mode isn't worth the hassle at all.

Greywarden

Initially I was a bit hyped for this thread and then I realized if the community needs to point out node combos with champs that SEVERELY limit counter play then there’s a different issue that needs to be discussed. How was it not obvious during development that things like ebb and flow intercept/tenacity, rapid metabolism or oscillate aggression fury tunnel vision are incredibly limiting. Taking a node and stacking another node on top that counters how you should fight the first node is terrible design.

We’re being asked to not take tactics into account. Why not? If you’re pushing them on us and these nodes are this ridiculous how is it not fair to assume they’ll be even worse with tactics.

Making these nodes easier for low tiers isn’t the answer either. There are people with huge rosters that can’t counter some of the stuff you created.

Take a step back and realize that new nodes on a new map is what needs to get fixed and MAYBE implement tactics some other season.

Amadeo01

Initially I was a bit hyped for this thread and then I realized if the community needs to point out node combos with champs that SEVERELY limit counter play then there’s a different issue that needs to be discussed. How was it not obvious during development that things like ebb and flow intercept/tenacity, rapid metabolism or oscillate aggression fury tunnel vision are incredibly limiting. Taking a node and stacking another node on top that counters how you should fight the first node is terrible design.

We’re being asked to not take tactics into account. Why not? If you’re pushing them on us and these nodes are this ridiculous how is it not fair to assume they’ll be even worse with tactics.

Making these nodes easier for low tiers isn’t the answer either. There are people with huge rosters that can’t counter some of the stuff you created.

Take a step back and realize that new nodes on a new map is what needs to get fixed and MAYBE implement tactics some other season.

Couldn't agree more with this. I wanted to post in the node combination thread as well but since they are saying that they're only looking at node combos and tactics, I feel like that really misses the mark. For example, window of opportunity alone is one thing. Add in flow and it's a whole other beast. Can't just disregard that... But that's what they're asking for. Doesn't make sense to me.

Pizzabeat

Was watching @TheKiryu upload about the new war map. He was fighting a mysterio on node 23 w/ quake and the nodes were tunnel vision, aggression prowess and oscillate.

Isn’t it supposed to be aggression fury on node 23? Or did I miss an update? According to the original AW post its aggression fury across all tiers. Prowess is loads easier to deal with than fury when you throw on those other nodes. Find it strange that tier 1 has it easier than the lower tiers in that respect 😆