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

OhGodYes

I'm just sooo bored with war now. There use to be strategy and excitement over how well a defense was placed. Now it legitimately doesn't matter where you put anyone other than maybe the mini bosses. War is way too easy now. At the beginning of my MCOC journey, war was what kept me interested in the game. Why did you make nodes easier? Many of us were fine with slash tires and thorns. We had to strategize on which summoner would go that line and which champs to bring in. I'd rather the nodes be a little tougher than easier letting the best team win.

WorkingAsIntended

I'll put this up as constructive feedback. Instead of scraping this completely why don't you use this aq style war as th new "bases" mechanic and put war back to the old format until further tested? That would be interesting. Revamp a few changes into the game bam. Bases are here no coming soon banner. Other then that both war and aq seem long and boring. I'm currently logging in less and less. Completing his cycle of aq/aw and taking a massive break. The competitive atmosphere is completely gone. Your basically fighting uninteresting fights in every aspect of war and aq to the point it doesn't matter. Skill being completely irrelevant.

unknown

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PeacockJazz

@Kabam Miike We could really use an update about any tweaks that will be made to alliance war scoring and when we can expect the Diversity score to go back to alliance wide as it was intended. It is really hard to plan for an entire alliance when we don't know what to plan for and the longer it goes, the more people will rank up champs that might not even be needed if there are changes. This thread is spiraling and an update would help.

andrade5184

i guess its time to quit playing war since every war we get is vs a much higher rated alliance which makes it impossible to win since everyone is getting 150 diversity points no matter what. must be nice being a 12 million rated ally since you guys always get free rewards cause for some reason thats all my under 9 million rated ally is put up against. when do we get the edge its been at least 30 wars in a row that we have been the under dog total bs

Tex_10000

This diversity of heroes in the war came to create a great injustice to those who lost too much time in winning heroes in the arena simply to position themselves in the war. There were members who spent items like cc4 and c4 on many heroes because they were useful in war. There were members to BUY CC4 promotion packs thinking of raising heroes for war, that is, and a big disrespect for users who mostly spent money thinking about war. Kabam from one moment to another changes the rules of the game without thinking about the prejudice that can cause the users of this game? Solve this please so as not to damage the members who spent time in the arena and MONEY, to get heroes and raise heroes of position for today do not serve anything in the war, I think that tickets to demote heroes that are no longer useful would be nothing fair.

LocoMotives

I'm not against diversity totally as some seem to be, but my suggestion is to have diversity points equivalent to a defender kill. That way if your defender is a duplicate and does not get a single kill, then a diverse defender is more valuable. Then if an ally places 5 NC in a single bg versus a talented opponent who doesn't struggle vs NC, then they are penalized for using him. It adds in some risk/reward without completely de-valuing the best defenders, still features diversity, and allows for defensive strategy.

FAL7EN

I hope they never change it lol

Kabam Miike

PeacockJazz wrote: »

@Kabam Miike We could really use an update about any tweaks that will be made to alliance war scoring and when we can expect the Diversity score to go back to alliance wide as it was intended. It is really hard to plan for an entire alliance when we don't know what to plan for and the longer it goes, the more people will rank up champs that might not even be needed if there are changes. This thread is spiraling and an update would help.

Sorry guys, but we can't offer any more information until we have it. You guys know this. We're working with the team and are gathering information to share from you to them, and vice versa. Changes will not be made in a rush, and as we have said before, this will be an iterative process.

Fabi

Kabam Miike wrote: »

PeacockJazz wrote: »

@Kabam Miike We could really use an update about any tweaks that will be made to alliance war scoring and when we can expect the Diversity score to go back to alliance wide as it was intended. It is really hard to plan for an entire alliance when we don't know what to plan for and the longer it goes, the more people will rank up champs that might not even be needed if there are changes. This thread is spiraling and an update would help.

Sorry guys, but we can't offer any more information until we have it. You guys know this. We're working with the team and are gathering information to share from you to them, and vice versa. Changes will not be made in a rush, and as we have said before, this will be an iterative process.

How long do u need for this new AW? 1 day?
Just bring the old AW back...and u have enough time for make a complete new AW, what u can Test than

JRock808

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Changes will not be made in a rush, and as we have said before, this will be an iterative process.

Was the first version not entirely rushed? There is no denying it felt that way. When simple math uncovered a problem days before launch and it went live anyway, it just felt.. rushed.

Essentially we are beta testing it now. That sort of upfront communication would have gone a long way towards stemming this tide of rebuke. Perhaps the rewards should be adjusted to not punish players for testing. Consumables could be given out or made cheaper to aid those in testing.

Amonthir

Kabam Miike wrote: »

PeacockJazz wrote: »

@Kabam Miike We could really use an update about any tweaks that will be made to alliance war scoring and when we can expect the Diversity score to go back to alliance wide as it was intended. It is really hard to plan for an entire alliance when we don't know what to plan for and the longer it goes, the more people will rank up champs that might not even be needed if there are changes. This thread is spiraling and an update would help.

Sorry guys, but we can't offer any more information until we have it. You guys know this. We're working with the team and are gathering information to share from you to them, and vice versa. Changes will not be made in a rush, and as we have said before, this will be an iterative process.

Can you ask the team if they will have an answer in regards to whether diversity is going Alliance-wide for next War cycle before Matchmaking starts?

Kabam Miike

Amonthir wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

PeacockJazz wrote: »

@Kabam Miike We could really use an update about any tweaks that will be made to alliance war scoring and when we can expect the Diversity score to go back to alliance wide as it was intended. It is really hard to plan for an entire alliance when we don't know what to plan for and the longer it goes, the more people will rank up champs that might not even be needed if there are changes. This thread is spiraling and an update would help.

Sorry guys, but we can't offer any more information until we have it. You guys know this. We're working with the team and are gathering information to share from you to them, and vice versa. Changes will not be made in a rush, and as we have said before, this will be an iterative process.

Can you ask the team if they will have an answer in regards to whether diversity is going Alliance-wide for next War cycle before Matchmaking starts?

It will not be. I'll be sure to let you know before it changes back.

IAmNotUrMom

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Amonthir wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

PeacockJazz wrote: »

@Kabam Miike We could really use an update about any tweaks that will be made to alliance war scoring and when we can expect the Diversity score to go back to alliance wide as it was intended. It is really hard to plan for an entire alliance when we don't know what to plan for and the longer it goes, the more people will rank up champs that might not even be needed if there are changes. This thread is spiraling and an update would help.

Sorry guys, but we can't offer any more information until we have it. You guys know this. We're working with the team and are gathering information to share from you to them, and vice versa. Changes will not be made in a rush, and as we have said before, this will be an iterative process.

Can you ask the team if they will have an answer in regards to whether diversity is going Alliance-wide for next War cycle before Matchmaking starts?

It will not be. I'll be sure to let you know before it changes back.

Thanks. This will actually help us start to plan BGs and who to place earlier as a result.

EDIT: I know I joke from time to time, but I legitimately do appreciate the honest and timely feedback regarding the diversity question.

Amonthir

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Amonthir wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

PeacockJazz wrote: »

@Kabam Miike We could really use an update about any tweaks that will be made to alliance war scoring and when we can expect the Diversity score to go back to alliance wide as it was intended. It is really hard to plan for an entire alliance when we don't know what to plan for and the longer it goes, the more people will rank up champs that might not even be needed if there are changes. This thread is spiraling and an update would help.

Sorry guys, but we can't offer any more information until we have it. You guys know this. We're working with the team and are gathering information to share from you to them, and vice versa. Changes will not be made in a rush, and as we have said before, this will be an iterative process.

Can you ask the team if they will have an answer in regards to whether diversity is going Alliance-wide for next War cycle before Matchmaking starts?

It will not be. I'll be sure to let you know before it changes back.

Thanks, I appreciate the quick and direct response on that particular question! Hope they can get you more info regarding other changes soon.

mostlyharmlessn

I think we are all pretty much being told to suck it up buttercup by Kabam here.

The only reason anything at all happened with 12.0 is because many heavy spenders and top alliances were so angered by it Kabam feared for their fiscal health. These changes have not triggered similar outrage, it's just flat out making people leave or start retiring/slow down the amount they play.

When I look at simply how many alliance invites I get out of the blue it tells me that things are getting bad with alliances again. I have not seen this much activity since 12.0 looking to recruit players that have a decent PI and certain AQ map experience. Alliances getting broken up that have had the same core players for over 2+ years are finding themselves with major gaps in their teams.

We have been consistently ignored when it comes to reimbursement for mastery's that are not longer relevant due to the debacle which is AW now. We have basically been told all the time you spent grind arenas for strong AW defenders and the resources you invested in them are all for nothing now.

Then again what do we expect really? We keep just accepting the obvious bugs that should be caught before releases. We keep playing and trying to make the best out of what we have to work with. We keep accepting what is being done to a game we all love trying to grab onto the hope that things will get better.

Mcord11758

Lol man yeah keep up with the thorough analysis and just drop it when it's ready. I mean it's not like the geniuses that brought us war 2.0 didn't leave gaping holes in the scoring system that the player base identified prior to its release. I mean with that level of attention to detail all players should rest comfortably that this game is in good hands.

chunkyb

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

I think we are all pretty much being told to suck it up buttercup by Kabam here.

The only reason anything at all happened with 12.0 is because many heavy spenders and top alliances were so angered by it Kabam feared for their fiscal health. These changes have not triggered similar outrage, it's just flat out making people leave or start retiring/slow down the amount they play.

When I look at simply how many alliance invites I get out of the blue it tells me that things are getting bad with alliances again. I have not seen this much activity since 12.0 looking to recruit players that have a decent PI and certain AQ map experience. Alliances getting broken up that have had the same core players for over 2+ years are finding themselves with major gaps in their teams.

We have been consistently ignored when it comes to reimbursement for mastery's that are not longer relevant due to the debacle which is AW now. We have basically been told all the time you spent grind arenas for strong AW defenders and the resources you invested in them are all for nothing now.

Then again what do we expect really? We keep just accepting the obvious bugs that should be caught before releases. We keep playing and trying to make the best out of what we have to work with. We keep accepting what is being done to a game we all love trying to grab onto the hope that things will get better.

All very true. Can only vote with my wallet now.

unknown

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R4GE

Kabam Miike wrote: »

PeacockJazz wrote: »

@Kabam Miike We could really use an update about any tweaks that will be made to alliance war scoring and when we can expect the Diversity score to go back to alliance wide as it was intended. It is really hard to plan for an entire alliance when we don't know what to plan for and the longer it goes, the more people will rank up champs that might not even be needed if there are changes. This thread is spiraling and an update would help.

Sorry guys, but we can't offer any more information until we have it. You guys know this. We're working with the team and are gathering information to share from you to them, and vice versa. Changes will not be made in a rush, and as we have said before, this will be an iterative process.

This is actually making things worse. War changed, forced us to make changes. We know more changes are coming that could counter the changes we just made. It kind of leaves players in a complete state of loss on what they should or shouldn't do.

DD2

Kabam,

Do us and yourself a giant favor and scrap diversity completely.

It is doesn't make any sense and completely destroys the spirit of competition altogether.

Diversity alliance wide (or even per BG) is straining relationships within alliances.

This is a team game and it's awesome, but it's not fair to tell members who just pulled a great champion not to rank them up because another member already has them. Not only that but they're told to rank up a useless character. This doesn`t feel good for anybody, and ranking up champions that are otherwise useless in the game for no apparent reason other than getting more arbitrarily determined "diversity points" makes no sense.

You're screwing everyone who spent a ton of time and money ranking up great defenders and you're screwing everyone when you force them to upgrade poor ones, and you're making AW placement and recruitment a giant chore. And AW isn't fun. And winners aren't picked based on merit, but luck and who they happened to have on their roster.

Diversity doesn't make any sense. You just flipped the game on it's head and rendered everyone's champions worthless. You can't have a game where all champions are considered equal, when they were never equal from the start.

Qwerty

diversity is a good thing in this game, it was so boring fighting NCs, spidermen, magiks and juggernauts on every node in the old war.

that said, the new iteration of war needs to have that competitive spirit. at the moment it's nothing more than a coin flip which is straight up stupid. given the current situation of war, we should just be able to submit our teams, and see which defender/diversity rating is higher and award the wins/rewards to that team.

R4GE

Qwerty wrote: »

diversity is a good thing in this game, it was so boring fighting NCs, spidermen, magiks and juggernauts on every node in the old war.

that said, the new iteration of war needs to have that competitive spirit. at the moment it's nothing more than a coin flip which is straight up stupid. given the current situation of war, we should just be able to submit our teams, and see which defender/diversity rating is higher and award the wins/rewards to that team.

It might as well have a forfeit button so you could just end it and find a new war.In the higher tiers its obvious at the start of attack phase who is gonna be the winner. Its just a waste of time

DD2

Qwerty wrote: »

diversity is a good thing in this game, it was so boring fighting NCs, spidermen, magiks and juggernauts on every node in the old war.

You can't force diversity because not all champs are created equal.

that said, the new iteration of war needs to have that competitive spirit.

It doesn't because of diversity, and it's the reason they took out defender kills because no smart person would place a weak defender if it's going to cost them kill points.

Diversity = REMOVAL OF COMPETITION

No one is foolish enough to bring a weak champ if they're not the most effective for "diversity reasons". If you cram diversity down our throats it devalues the strong champs and ruins the spirit of competition and tanks the game.

Everyone needs to stop asking for diversity because they don't really quite grasp how damaging it is to this game.

We've seen many times throughout history what forced equality does to people and countries. It doesn't work and it never has. There's no motivation to work.

RagamugginGunner

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Amonthir wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

PeacockJazz wrote: »

@Kabam Miike We could really use an update about any tweaks that will be made to alliance war scoring and when we can expect the Diversity score to go back to alliance wide as it was intended. It is really hard to plan for an entire alliance when we don't know what to plan for and the longer it goes, the more people will rank up champs that might not even be needed if there are changes. This thread is spiraling and an update would help.

Sorry guys, but we can't offer any more information until we have it. You guys know this. We're working with the team and are gathering information to share from you to them, and vice versa. Changes will not be made in a rush, and as we have said before, this will be an iterative process.

Can you ask the team if they will have an answer in regards to whether diversity is going Alliance-wide for next War cycle before Matchmaking starts?

It will not be. I'll be sure to let you know before it changes back.

Are you still planning on making it alliance wide? I've spent enough time on a spreadsheet for this stupid diversity that doing it again for only a few wars makes me never play AW again.

chunkyb

Haven't ranked anyone since this thing started other than a 5* I was already planning on ranking. Certainly won't be ranking any champs for the sake of diversity.

I saw the alpha offer and laughed. When I saw similar offers in the past, it might have been hard to resist.. And I've bought various t4 packages in the past so I could save some time and get some champs upped.

Now I'm in no rush at all. If resources come, they come. If they don't, they don't. My roster can sit stagnant and it won't really bother me. Why rank anyone when things change so drastically? I've got what I need for now. This might be the side effect you didn't expect with this war silliness.

LocoMotives

DD2 wrote: »

Qwerty wrote: »

diversity is a good thing in this game, it was so boring fighting NCs, spidermen, magiks and juggernauts on every node in the old war.

You can't force diversity because not all champs are created equal.

that said, the new iteration of war needs to have that competitive spirit.

It doesn't because of diversity, and it's the reason they took out defender kills because no smart person would place a weak defender if it's going to cost them kill points.

Diversity = REMOVAL OF COMPETITION

No one is foolish enough to bring a weak champ if they're not the most effective for "diversity reasons". If you cram diversity down our throats it devalues the strong champs and ruins the spirit of competition and tanks the game.

Everyone needs to stop asking for diversity because they don't really quite grasp how damaging it is to this game.

We've seen many times throughout history what forced equality does to people and countries. It doesn't work and it never has. There's no motivation to work.

Diversity will exist in some manner moving forward, there's no way they roll it back completely so you should probably get used to that. You keep making up analogies about why diversity is bad, but diversity itself is not a bad thing. The bad things are removing d kills and the map being too easy. The problem is the scoring system that makes diversity (and defender rating) the deciding factor in way too many wars.

It would be great if it was implemented within the old scoring system. Some allies/players don't have the OP defenders; but now they could bring a diverse defense for extra points, keep deaths down, and win the war. I think it would've been a great ADDITION, but they messed that up by making it the focus. Diversity can't stand alone in a competitive game, it creates boredom and complacency.

DNA3000

DD2 wrote: »

Thestoryteller6 wrote: »

But then how do you explain that there are several top champs in the game, and not just one? Nightcrawler came after Magik but both are considered viable on defence.

Kabam can give us 50 great defenders tomorrow, but only the TOP choices get chosen.

There's a hierarchy. The best get picked. If **** champs were suddenly buffed into the best defenders, those formerly **** champions would be flooding AW just like NC, hype, and the mystic class, and we wouldn't get diversity there either.

Diversity doesn't exist. Diversity implies picking a wide variety of champs regardless of effectiveness.

If you pick based on effectiveness, which any smart player will, diversity doesn't exist if you extrapolate that to everybody. Everybody will be going for the most effective.

If you asked 100 players to choose between 2 GREAT champions, and they could only pick one, and one scored 99/100 for effectiveness and the other scored 99.1/100, EVERYBODY would pick the 99.1 champ if they had the choice. 100 players would choose the 99.1 champ and 0 would choose the 99.0 champ. It's all-or-nothing strategy.

The solution to that design problem is to design your champions so that they cannot be judged linearly. 99.1 beats 99 because that's an obvious linear scale. It is possible to design the champs so that there are no linearly "top" defense champs. But that is hard to do, and extremely difficult to retrofit into an existing game.

In Alliance War the problem is that in a sense when we look at the strategic part of the war (not the twitch fighting part) only one side gets a "move" - the defense gets to place defenders on different nodes many with sizeable synergy advantages. You see power gain and attack bonus, and you tend to think "Magik" for example. When only one side gets a move, obviously there is only one min/max equation. That's one of the reasons why I mentioned my theory-crafted idea yesterday: it basically offers the attacking side a "move" that alters that min/max equation. The defenders now have to place defenders without knowing how the other side will pick debuffs, and because that's an unknown there is now no way to know what the optimal solution is. Technically speaking, there is one given how the other side will ultimately pick buffs. But it is unknowable, so the defenders have to pick defense champs with imperfect knowledge.

That imperfect knowledge is another way to beat the optimization problem. Here, 99.1 still beats 99, but you've taken away the ability to know who is the 99.1 and who is the 99. You've blurred the value computation so really good champs are still good, but you only know that the champ is a 70 to 99 champ depending on what the other side does. Even a significantly less powerful defender that tends to score between 50 and 80 can still be better in the right circumstances.

@Thestoryteller6 mentioned Sirlin's articles. I'm not a big fan of those personally because I think they tend to sidestep a lot of critical detail, but in one article he mentions design space. I prefer to think of move-space: the game should create a space within which the players move and the best games create the most interesting move-space. Alliance War doesn't have good move-space because the initial space is static and then only one side gets to landscape it. If one side gets to shape the ground (the attacker, with global debuffs) and the other side gets to arm it (with defenders) and each side can't see what the other is doing, that creates a much more complex move-space that cannot be trivially min/maxed. That's the solution to the "there is no diversity" problem. In a sense, the defenders are presenting a solution to the "best possible" equation, but the attackers are rewriting the equation they have to solve in secret.

Greywarden

Diversity in its current state shifts what are deemed as useless champs.

Pre AW 2.0 Champs like Joe Fixit, KK, IP had little use in the game.

Post AW 2.0 Champs like Joe Fixit, KK, IP replace champs like Rhino, Spiderman and Mordo (if there is a higher ranked one already in your group) and now make them have little use in the game. Sure you can always bring these champs that I'm giving as an example to some other piece of content but that isn't why you ranked them up.

The one key thing to note here is that we put so much into those Pre 2.0 champs in terms of money, catalysts and time that having them now be of little use is aggravating. Putting that same amount of money, catalysts and time into these Post 2.0 champs solely for the sake of diversity just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

KaraKartalOley

Great job Kabam, you ruined AW!

The outcome of every single war is known before it even starts...100%vs100%, all 3 bosses down etc. Our last 5 wars was just like this, boring as hell!

I am all ok with def diversity but how the hell can something like this be the decisive factor in winning or losing a war?

Keep on ignoring your player base Kabam, soon there'll be no-one left to ignore.