15.0 Alliance Wars Update Discussion Thread

Summoners!

Our 15.0 Update is just about a week away, and with it, it's bringing a huge change to Alliance Wars! Check out everything you need to know about the Brand New Map, Scoring Changes, and new boosts in the Loyalty Store here: http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/17902/15-0-alliance-wars-update/

Comments

bluezero

Man my whole alliance is in utter disbelief on this new aw system. War is total trash now. we just lost our war over diversity points. We had the win in hand. This is the stupidest thing y'all have ever add in this EFFIN game. if you all at Kabam are genuinely happy with this product in aw you should be fired. This is ridiculous!

nuggz

AW is supposed to be a competition.
Who does the best skill wise.

And you think making to where the winner is decided by who places what is now considered the worst defense is right?

Congratulations for utilizing all the champs in the game for placement purposes to win war due to diversity.

Sure, over all you did worse skill wise, but you win for bringing in all your third string players off the bench to compete in an aw win!!!! Wooohooo.

Cheers to an aw win, where boring fights and less skilled players can still make out with a win!!!

No need to practice anymore, just open as many random af crystals as u can and rank them all!!!!!!

kikobob

This is a hot topic at the moment and for good reason; AW has changed so that the alliance who has the most diverse champs and higher rated of these champs wins. The reason that this is a bad change in my and probably many other people's opinion is that the skill and point system on offense has been removed as now defender kill points do not matter. Instead the points rely on defence (provided both sides clear).

The issue that has caused many people to request rank down tickets is there is little to no point in a champion being a good defender anymore. The statement says rank down tickets will only be issued if a champion changes and it no longer functions the way it used to. Instead the environment people used these champions in has changed and the champion no longer serve a purpose to the individual despite still serving a purpose to the alliance as a whole. Whether Kabam gives out rank down tickets is ultimately up to them however they should still be trying to work better with the player base in order to fix AW so at least the majority of the player base is happy with the changes.

I believe the idea behind this new war system was to create more variety in AW maps instead of them being stale with everyone placing the same champs on the same nodes in every war. The solution was promising but still needs fixing. I have a few suggestions that maybe would introduce some variety to wars without making them boring:
Portals- These can be exciting there is no need to make them another path that has a different animation. Instead they could transfer you to a random outlet (obviously each portal would only have one outlet so everyone doesn't have to go on the same path) that is unknown until you take it and is random each map
Nodes- Add some more interesting nodes like some of the ones from act 4/5. Also why do they have to be the same every war? there could be a pool that each node is picked from each time.
Diversity- A big issue currently! Instead of making a point system for having different champs you can have a quota for each class that needs to be filled or a limit of the same class and maybe a limit of the same champ (currently the effective limit is 1)
Defender kills- These really need to come back.

I hope that this post is both read and taken into consideration in the coming weeks.

Sha59

As i have previously said.

Noone will be happy with whatever method they come up with.

First Set of AW Complaints

Why do we have to spend nearly 2 odins on MD, their are too many mystics teams
We where matched against another high alliance, there is no way we can win
AW is boring, not worth the rewards
Nodes are too hard, some of them are just not fair (massive power gain nodes, thorns, slashed tyres)
Spending to get 100% is ridiculous its a battle of wallets

So they sit down and make some changes, rightly or wrongly for better or worse.

If you guys are losing by defender diversity, get organised and place 50 different champs per BG. Its not rocket science, its not hard. It is however time consuming.

During our past war with MMX, i believe each BG leader spend 2-3 hours working out the D, double and triple checking it.

Unfortunately AW isnt working correctly, so it was a royal waste of time to be honest but it needed to be done to win these wars.

The maps are easier to complete, so of course more alliances wil 100% you, but it also is saving you money because its easier.

With all the other changes they have made recently to almost force people to spend, GM Crystal, introducing 6* champions and so on, its a nice welcome break!

Qwerty

congrats kabam. in an effort to allegedly stop players from wanting to feel discouraged in continuing to fight a node, you've discouraged your entire community from playing war all together.

GroundedWisdom

Sha59 wrote: »

As i have previously said.

Noone will be happy with whatever method they come up with.

First Set of AW Complaints
Why do we have to spend nearly 2 odins on MD, their are too many mystics teams

We where matched against another high alliance, there is no way we can win

AW is boring, not worth the rewards

Nodes are too hard, some of them are just not fair (massive power gain nodes, thorns, slashed tyres)

Spending to get 100% is ridiculous its a battle of wallets

So they sit down and make some changes, rightly or wrongly for better or worse.

If you guys are losing by defender diversity, get organised and place 50 different champs per BG. Its not rocket science, its not hard. It is however time consuming.

During our past war with MMX, i believe each BG leader spend 2-3 hours working out the D, double and triple checking it.

Unfortunately AW isnt working correctly, so it was a royal waste of time to be honest but it needed to be done to win these wars.

The maps are easier to complete, so of course more alliances wil 100% you, but it also is saving you money because its easier.

With all the other changes they have made recently to almost force people to spend, GM Crystal, introducing 6* champions and so on, its a nice welcome break!

I agree with most of this. Diversity is the new metric. The majority of Players against it have many Champs available. It's not difficult at all to shift focus. Whether by principle or not, it doesn't make sense to lose by not applying the existing paradigm. I'm not sure what further changes will be made, but I'm pretty sure Diversity will still be here. Personally, I'm all for it. I don't want to play a mode where it's fully elective, but the same few Champs are used everytime. That's not really elective at all. The real issue is it's change. People may have to use Champs they are not used to using. I understand that people are upset, but it's really not a bad thing. It's just different. Nothing can stay the same forever. Certainly not when issues arose from the old system. It's just change. The game is always changing, and it's been long-overdue for some change in Wars.

unknown

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World Eater

If I am wrong, I am wrong, but in story quests, using a portal doesn't use any energy, right? Why do I have to use 1 energy to use a portal in AW?

Juggerneyks

@MikeHock , portals use energy in quests

World Eater

My mistake; I just checked. Nobody's perfect. Thanks, @Juggerneyks

unknown

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chunkyb

drowsyhero34 wrote: »

If everyone puts in the maximum number of champs in terms of diversity, then the deciding metric will end up being defender rating. This will give a decisive advantage to the higher ranked alliance and should mean the higher ranked alliance will win every time. Every. Single. Time.

Also means whoever gets the newest champs the fastest has a distinct advantage.

unknown

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Kpatrix

If there was a cap diversity points and a metric to counter it with defender kills, it could be a good system. Since the maximum number of champs is 106 or 7, if it was capped at 100 that would even the playing field a little bit and maybe stop the debate over who is automatically going to win, maybe also the increase diversity points to 150 and defender kill points to 50.

3 defender kills=1 unique champion. So you could use either your best defenders and try to balance out a lesser diversity or go for max diversity. It would be even better if this was done on a per bg basis, as 1 & 2 bg wars have a much easier time of maxing diversity anyway.

This also keeps skill in the equation. Just another random thought that could be expanded on.

MagicBenton

JJW wrote: »

Hey folks -

Please keep the tone civil. I know for a fact that they are listening to us.

I have some assurances that the Alliance War design team is carefully considering the next round of changes, and I suspect that such consideration may delay the changes themselves. Please be patient and play the current paradigm. The last thing you want are changes pushed out that are half-thought out.

Oh, you mean that thing they just did this past week? For the 2nd time in a row? Yeah, I won't hold my breath...

unknown

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Raganator

Kabam - your game team decision makers are idiots.

Phantom

chunkyb wrote: »

Diversity for the win!

If we miss out on points for not having diverse defenders, shouldn't Kabam miss out on profit for stuff like this?

Ron_H

Micklownick wrote: »

what happened to this game....we lost too...we explored more... killed more... dominated in every way but diversity...this game isnt even fun anymore...thanks kabam... SMH

Lol we lost our first war in our win streak aswell.. to an alliance that gave us 2x the amount of defence kills then we gave them.
Ridiculous when a fighting game isnt about skills anymore.. skill is the core of any fighting game.

RagamugginGunner

JJW wrote: »

Hey folks -

Please keep the tone civil. I know for a fact that they are listening to us.

I have some assurances that the Alliance War design team is carefully considering the next round of changes, and I suspect that such consideration may delay the changes themselves. Please be patient and play the current paradigm. The last thing you want are changes pushed out that are half-thought out.

If this version of AW is well thought out I'd hate to think was a half-thought KABAM idea would be. I have zero faith in the design team, who have shown time and time again that they do not play the game and understand how it works, to fix this debacle.

Kpatrix

JazzyJeff1981 wrote: »

Defender diversity is stiff functioning improperly... My opponent just scored more than the possible number of points, just like before.

Unless it was more than 150, it's an acknowledged bug and will be fixed whenever possible. It's in the announcements.

Antman2000me

I am very displeased with the new war format. I am on a fairly high lv alli. Most every player spends time and resources building their offense (aq and war) and their defense (5 for war). Almost every players top champs are found in these groups. I have worked hard and took my time to select my defense. Since i never get many of the super champs from crystals I have to grind in the arena. I finally got Dorm, Mordo, and Hood for my defense all from the arena and all top defenders that work with MD (that has been kicking my butt by other players). I used most of my saved loyalty and units to unlock MD4 all for my defense as many others in my alli have. With this new set up it is now basically useless. We lost the last war due to lack of diversity because we mostly built our defense off of what worked. This is a drastic change that is unfair. Players should be given derank tixs (at the least among other things) since we all need to basically rebuild all our defense to reflect the diversity that is required to be successful. We should also be compensated as well with items to change our mastery based on the investments made to unlock MD in particular.
Ex. My defense with MD4 was Dorm, hood mordo hyperion and cable. All 4 star. I have players in my BG that have MD5, 5 star mordo, Hood, Magik and Mordo so it's now pointless for me to have the same champs or MD now as well considering the primary reason I unlocked it was for war defense.

DD2

chunkyb wrote: »

This set up is ridiculous.

At least change the name from war to something more fitting.

Calculator wars? No attack needed! Computer instantly scans rosters and spits out a winner.

Trashcan wars? Whoever has the most unique trash wins?

Phantom

Antman2000me wrote: »

I am very displeased with the new war format. I am on a fairly high lv alli. Most every player spends time and resources building their offense (aq and war) and their defense (5 for war). Almost every players top champs are found in these groups. I have worked hard and took my time to select my defense. Since i never get many of the super champs from crystals I have to grind in the arena. I finally got Dorm, Mordo, and Hood for my defense all from the arena and all top defenders that work with MD (that has been kicking my butt by other players). I used most of my saved loyalty and units to unlock MD4 all for my defense as many others in my alli have. With this new set up it is now basically useless. We lost the last war due to lack of diversity because we mostly built our defense off of what worked. This is a drastic change that is unfair. Players should be given derank tixs (at the least among other things) since we all need to basically rebuild all our defense to reflect the diversity that is required to be successful. We should also be compensated as well with items to change our mastery based on the investments made to unlock MD in particular.
Ex. My defense with MD4 was Dorm, hood mordo hyperion and cable. All 4 star. I have players in my BG that have MD5, 5 star mordo, Hood, Magik and Mordo so it's now pointless for me to have the same champs or MD now as well considering the primary reason I unlocked it was for war defense.

Huh. Sounds familiar.

"It's not really fair to be penalized for who you use. Is it? Nightcrawler and Hyperion are two of the most overused defender in the game, among some others such as Magik and Dormammu. I don't care. They're overused for a reason, and that reason is that they're freaking awesome. I'm fortunate enough to have both. I've ranked both of them up to be some of my top champs. How is it fair for my alliance to be penalized because of someone I decided to use? Either I don't use them, and I go grab some random three star that hadn't been placed, which leads to a boring War, or I do use them, which might be the difference in whether my alliance wins or loses.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of rank down tickets. And I'll disregard the fact that Kabam won't give out rank downs for people who say that they only used a champ for thorns nodes. But I can't ignore the fact that we get penalized for using literally anyone we use that's good in placement. That's impossible for me to overlook. As I said before, the difference between your alliance winning or losing may be just a few hundred points in a tight match. If someone in your alliance has only a couple r5 champs, and one of them is a Nightcrawler for Defense, they can't place them if they want to come out on top of those super tight matches. If we're going to keep Defender Diversity, then lots of rank down tickets must be issued. And, as has been stated many times, that could screw up the game. We weren't meant to be able to reverse our rank up decisions. That's one of the biggest factors of the game. Choose wisely or forever regret it. But this time, the regret isn't self-inflicted. It's from Kabam. I don't have the best Nightcrawler in my alliance. That means I can't place him, or it hurts my team. I only ranked him up for defensive purposes, but now I can't use him without costing my alliance points.

That's why Defender Diversity needs to go. We can't place the people we ranked up for placement. We either need rank down tickets, which messes up the game, and is not a great idea, or we need this bogus scoring aspect gone. Let's make it happen. Do that, and War can go back to its mediocre self again. Let's get going."

Kabam, I'm not the only one noticing how Diversity messes things up. Everyone who has those select few awesome Defenders has ranked them up for Defensive use. Now they can't even use them. It's not fair. If someone ranks up Hyperion to r5 for defense, and t4cc cats are still rare for them, but now they can't use him in War because another alliance member has a better version of him (such as a duped Hyperion), they've thrown their resources into a trash can. And you're the ones that put that trash can there. Just fix it. Please. You already listened and found a fix to the no defender placement issue (from what I've heard, we'll see if it works), so just take it a step further and restore War to its former, mediocre glory.

PeterStreit

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Hey All,

Thank you for the feedback on Alliance Wars and the recent changes that we made to the Mode!

We’ve made some further adjustments to the mode following the first week of Alliance Wars, and we’re not done yet! We had a set of goals from the get go to make Alliance Wars more fun, engaging, varied, and to address a lot of the concerns that you all had brought up over the course of Alliance Wars existence in game.

We agree we haven't hit those goals yet, but we expect this process to require some iteration based on data collection and feedback.

We're continuing to plan more adjustments and changes, and will be sure to update you all as we make progress. Thank you for your patience as we work to make Alliance Wars the best that it can be!

We are in limbo waiting for more changes to AW. Please let us know what your plans are.

DD2

JJW wrote: »

Hey folks -

Please keep the tone civil. I know for a fact that they are listening to us.

I have some assurances that the Alliance War design team is carefully considering the next round of changes, and I suspect that such consideration may delay the changes themselves. Please be patient and play the current paradigm. The last thing you want are changes pushed out that are half-thought out.

I want to agree with you because you're a smart dude, but how can you trust them with anything these days? What good has come out of this game since January besides the change to arenas?

Other than CONSTANT bugs, glitches, and sketchy AI changes that cost us a ton of units (and get worse and worse every month), and a bunch of direct and indirect nerfs that shift goal posts and destroy the worth of our rosters (12.0, AW 2.0, 6*s), what is there to look forward to and how can we trust them with any decisions?

Kabam can't be dumb. They know how to make a great addictive game but it's like they're so blinded by financials that they can't see that they're ruining this awesome game.

Diversity is a terrible idea. Not all champs are created equal! You design them Kabam. You know it yourself! Why are you making us waste our valuable resources on ineffective champions? No one wants to do it, ever!

Badrose

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I agree with most of this. Diversity is the new metric. The majority of Players against it have many Champs available. It's not difficult at all to shift focus. Whether by principle or not, it doesn't make sense to lose by not applying the existing paradigm. I'm not sure what further changes will be made, but I'm pretty sure Diversity will still be here. Personally, I'm all for it. I don't want to play a mode where it's fully elective, but the same few Champs are used everytime. That's not really elective at all. The real issue is it's change. People may have to use Champs they are not used to using. I understand that people are upset, but it's really not a bad thing. It's just different. Nothing can stay the same forever. Certainly not when issues arose from the old system. It's just change. The game is always changing, and it's been long-overdue for some change in Wars.

So, after spending months in arenas grinding for the best champs, using every resources to upgrade them (why not, real money), now we have to sit there using our worst champs in order to win because you (and kabam) like to see diversity on the battleground? Don't you understand how stupid is it? It's a war against another ally, our best champs vs. their best champs.

And speaking about diversity, aren't you tired to see the same stupid champs in AQ day after day after day for a whole year? Why don't they change that?

DD2

Can someone even explain how diversity is even remotely relevant to effectiveness?

You can have all the diversity you want, if my champs crush yours, it doesn't matter who's more diverse. Diversity is such a worthless and meaningless metric.

RagamugginGunner

I guess if is didn't have any maxed 4* or 5* champs and was in tier 8 I wouldn't be too upset about diversity either.

GroundedWisdom

Badrose wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I agree with most of this. Diversity is the new metric. The majority of Players against it have many Champs available. It's not difficult at all to shift focus. Whether by principle or not, it doesn't make sense to lose by not applying the existing paradigm. I'm not sure what further changes will be made, but I'm pretty sure Diversity will still be here. Personally, I'm all for it. I don't want to play a mode where it's fully elective, but the same few Champs are used everytime. That's not really elective at all. The real issue is it's change. People may have to use Champs they are not used to using. I understand that people are upset, but it's really not a bad thing. It's just different. Nothing can stay the same forever. Certainly not when issues arose from the old system. It's just change. The game is always changing, and it's been long-overdue for some change in Wars.

So, after spending months in arenas grinding for the best champs, using every resources to upgrade them (why not, real money), now we have to sit there using our worst champs in order to win because you (and kabam) like to see diversity on the battleground? Don't you understand how stupid is it? It's a war against another ally, our best champs vs. their best champs.

And speaking about diversity, aren't you tired to see the same stupid champs in AQ day after day after day for a whole year? Why don't they change that?

We're not going up against 4, 5, or 6 of the same Champs in AQ. Even the argument for RTTL is one specific Quest with 3 sets of varying difficulties. It's not the same.
There is more to the game than AW, and a Champ's usefulness is not limited to AW alone. That may be the opinion that some have based on how they play. They still have the Champs they Grinded for and Ranked. It just means we will have to use others as well, instead of a BG full of the same Champs. The number one argument is people don't want to use "garbage" Champs. The reason they consider them garbage is based on the application in the old system. We saw a similar change with the "God Tier". Reason being, regardless of popular opinion, they didn't likely design the game with over 100 Champs, just so it can revolve around a few. Diversity is about evening the playing field in War so that it's not about who has the same few Champs, and people can use a range of them. Whether the populous considers them garbage or not, they're meant to be used.