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

TomieCzech

DNA3000 wrote: »

TomieCzech wrote: »

Both alliances explored practically 100% without any problems, mine actually did 0.5% better job, yet mine cocked up on placement by 7 defenders, so we lost the war from the very beginning. Both alliances had 2 boss kills.

While I sympathize with the diversity scoring problem, technically speaking you didn't lose the war from the start because you only had two boss kills. The other alliance had a 776 point advantage at the start but that was surmountable with a third boss kill.

I would be curious to see what the defender kill stats were for this war: would that have made a difference if they had counted.

I guess I forgot to mention - it was only 2 group war. I thought it was apparent from the screen shot - 100% exploration with 100 kills for both alliances....

TomieCzech

andrade5184 wrote: »

Vanitelia wrote: »

the logic isn't there. If allies are getting away with placing 3 star champs to. Wet diversity requirements, then it takes away from building rosters worth anything. The new system still wont get me to use rank up resources on champs like Luke Cage and IP.

139 to 20. Just think about that. Their entire squad died almost 5 times completing a map we had no trouble with. We took out their Spidey with left mini still up in our big just to get some simblance of a challenge. It's sad man.

maybe kabam should stop giving you such easy wars. our last 30 wars we have been the underdog by alliance rating yet we still managed to claw are way up to 2k rating

Then alliances would be selling off their useless champs, such as 1,2 and 3* to get their rating lower and the diversity would suffer from it LOOOOL I don't know what it should be, I don't have the data. Kabam does.

TomieCzech

DNA3000 wrote: »

TomieCzech wrote: »

"Diversity will be just a small amount of points - a tiebreaker..." Tiebreak my A**

Actually, evidence suggests that it is in fact behaving that way. Unintentionally but not entirely unexpectedly, it is also helping to generate ties in the first place in combination with the new scoring system.

Whoever designed the new scoring system apparently is unfamiliar with Nash equilibrium. The system contains a very strong and very nasty attractor to a bad equilibrium point: the maximal diversity point. It tends to encourage weaker but more diverse defense, which increases the likelihood for maximal exploration, which increases the odds of a close score, which increases the probability that the diversity score will become the deciding factor. And as players come to realize this as being a problem it encourages them to lock their defense strategy into perpetuating the problem indefinitely because no change in strategy can differentially improve matters. That's basically the textbook definition of a Nash equilibrium, for budding game theorists out there.

This should have been a predictable flaw.

As much as you made my head spin, I totally understand and agree. For those who passed out from the spinning - it's just really fancy way of saying - Kabam did a bad bad job and came up with a game design that is fundamentally not functional, so now they have to fix it, having very little idea about how, because they came up with this the first place, so we're all F^%#ED.

UC439

chunkyb wrote: »

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.

same here. Won't be ranking up anything past 3/30 until it gets fixed!

UC439

Huluhula wrote: »

Hail @Seatin

hail @Seatin

chunkyb

The more wars fought, the more obvious the problems with this setup. I'm holding out hope that this was just another forced beta test. The concept is misguided. The implementation is extremely bad. The data and feedback are showing you exactly that.

I see handfuls of players walk away every day. Sure, drops in the bucket. But the drops are multiplying. I can't see how this setup benefits kabam either. If you're dead set on diversity, add it as a scoring category in aw 1.0 and scrap the rest of this trash. Just don't make it so heavy as to be a deciding factor.

Dr_ARCHer

Once an alliance have reached a maximum diversity, then what matters would be purely defenders ratings.

So alliances with maximum diversity would want only players with good defenders rating, and not necessarily skilled players. Some players have taken to ranking up the meh champs just so to give their alliances a better defenders rating.

Thestoryteller6

Jaffacaked wrote: »

Thestoryteller6 wrote: »

Jaffacaked wrote: »

Thestoryteller6 wrote: »

DD2 wrote: »

Thestoryteller6 wrote: »

Look at Brian Grant's old AW videos. Look at how many times he says, I'm not sure who's on this node. The unblockable S2 is a good one. Could be Punisher, could be Dr. Strange, could be Hood. The enemy could pick from all the champs in the game, so why didn't they pick the "99.1" choice?

For the unblockable S2 node, good choices would be DS, Hood, etc..

Here comes the important part:

THERE IS NO DIVERSITY IN THE UNBLOCKABLE S2 NODE!

Only the BEST get chosen for that node (the best that they have).

So say in a random map there's 5 enhanced s2 nodes, the TOP champ for that node goes there.

Assuming DS is the best there (I'm just picking a random champ), 5 players all bring DS to put them on there. And if they don't have DS, they'll go down the line to the second best.

It is entirely possible to build an in depth game with diverse choices.

Diverse in this context means different instead of effective. There might be a diverse set of champs that are good for the S2 node, but under 1.0, smart players won't bring a diverse set for the sake of it, they'll choose the best.

This is factually incorrect. The best did NOT get chosen for that node, because there was no best. All 3 were completely viable options. Brian was up against alliances that were swimming in Punishers, Hoods and Doc Stranges. They had so much choice. If only 1 was the best, that best would always get chosen. And yet, there were 3 popular choices.

Another example is the Outlast/Optimist/Plagued Mind node. Mordo was a popular choices, but also Juggernaut, Dormmamu, Magik and Nightcrawler. Again, the alliances he faced had practically every champion in the game to choose from and yet, we saw a variety of champions on this node.

So the argument that only one champion is the best, and all other will be excluded, is clearly wrong.

And it doesn't just happen in this game. StarCraft: three races, all different, all effective. Street Fighter: many different characters are effective. Civilisation: many factions, all different, all effective. Football (soccer): many teams, many players, many positions, many formations, many effective possibilities. Boxing: uppercuts, jabs, roundhouses, all effective. MMA: striking, grappling, both effective.

I'm not trying to be nice to Kabam for the heck of it. I just want a fun game, and having many different viable strategies is fun to me.

Your taking g his 99.1% champ comment completely out of context now, that comment was between 2 champs as an example an your using it out of context an equating it to the alliance. Different people would chose out of around 3 of the best options for a enhanced sp2 node based on who they think is best for it, however they always choose out of the same few champs as they are best suited for that node

Nope, if the logic is that between 2 champs there is only one best, then by that logic, between 3 champs there is only one best. And between 4 champs there is only one best. And between 100 champs there is only one best.

It's clear that there isn't just one best. There were 3 equally good options. So if there can be 3 equally good options there can be 4 equally good options. And 5. And 6.

The point is, it is perfectly possible to balance a game so there is a range of equally good options. It had been done for many games, in AW 1.0 it was done to a very, very, very limited degree. So to say it is impossible to have any kind of diversity (as he is saying) is untrue.

Not at all because you can't always apply the same logic to multiple options as you can between 2 because your adding exponentially more factors than just deciding between 2.

An in this instance just because there are 3 good options it doesn't mean there must 5 or 6 or 7 and ....

Sigh. It's really simple. He insists that in any competitive game, there is only one best champion for anything. It doesn't matter whether you think there are only 3 good options or 8 good options. As long as there is a single example of a situation where there is any more than one best champion, his logic cannot possibly be correct.

Rvz

you need to reverse AW. i would rather do mystic wars every day of the week compared to the shitshow we have going on now. Not sure if this would even help, you have done so much damage to this game and lost all credibility

Thestoryteller6

Indrick781 wrote: »

Thestoryteller6 wrote: »

Jaffacaked wrote: »

Thestoryteller6 wrote: »

DD2 wrote: »

Thestoryteller6 wrote: »

Look at Brian Grant's old AW videos. Look at how many times he says, I'm not sure who's on this node. The unblockable S2 is a good one. Could be Punisher, could be Dr. Strange, could be Hood. The enemy could pick from all the champs in the game, so why didn't they pick the "99.1" choice?

For the unblockable S2 node, good choices would be DS, Hood, etc..

Here comes the important part:

THERE IS NO DIVERSITY IN THE UNBLOCKABLE S2 NODE!

Only the BEST get chosen for that node (the best that they have).

So say in a random map there's 5 enhanced s2 nodes, the TOP champ for that node goes there.

Assuming DS is the best there (I'm just picking a random champ), 5 players all bring DS to put them on there. And if they don't have DS, they'll go down the line to the second best.

It is entirely possible to build an in depth game with diverse choices.

Diverse in this context means different instead of effective. There might be a diverse set of champs that are good for the S2 node, but under 1.0, smart players won't bring a diverse set for the sake of it, they'll choose the best.

This is factually incorrect. The best did NOT get chosen for that node, because there was no best. All 3 were completely viable options. Brian was up against alliances that were swimming in Punishers, Hoods and Doc Stranges. They had so much choice. If only 1 was the best, that best would always get chosen. And yet, there were 3 popular choices.

Another example is the Outlast/Optimist/Plagued Mind node. Mordo was a popular choices, but also Juggernaut, Dormmamu, Magik and Nightcrawler. Again, the alliances he faced had practically every champion in the game to choose from and yet, we saw a variety of champions on this node.

So the argument that only one champion is the best, and all other will be excluded, is clearly wrong.

And it doesn't just happen in this game. StarCraft: three races, all different, all effective. Street Fighter: many different characters are effective. Civilisation: many factions, all different, all effective. Football (soccer): many teams, many players, many positions, many formations, many effective possibilities. Boxing: uppercuts, jabs, roundhouses, all effective. MMA: striking, grappling, both effective.

I'm not trying to be nice to Kabam for the heck of it. I just want a fun game, and having many different viable strategies is fun to me.

Your taking g his 99.1% champ comment completely out of context now, that comment was between 2 champs as an example an your using it out of context an equating it to the alliance. Different people would chose out of around 3 of the best options for a enhanced sp2 node based on who they think is best for it, however they always choose out of the same few champs as they are best suited for that node

Nope, if the logic is that between 2 champs there is only one best, then by that logic, between 3 champs there is only one best. And between 4 champs there is only one best. And between 100 champs there is only one best.

It's clear that there isn't just one best. There were 3 equally good options. So if there can be 3 equally good options there can be 4 equally good options. And 5. And 6.

The point is, it is perfectly possible to balance a game so there is a range of equally good options. It had been done for many games, in AW 1.0 it was done to a very, very, very limited degree. So to say it is impossible to have any kind of diversity (as he is saying) is untrue.

Not exactly. You're confusing viable with best. DS, Hood, Punisher, Dormammu were all viable. Like there is a best champ to handle that node, OG Vision. There are other viable champs like Daredevil and Stark Spidey, but only one best.

You're confusing war offence with defence, and confusing the fundamental issue at hand. This chap insists that in any competitive game there can only be one best champion for anything. Thetefore there it is impossible to have diversity unless players are forced to have diversity. Therefore it's not even worth trying.

The unblockable s2 node makes it clear that there is not one best champion to place on the node, there are at least 3.

Therefore, it is perfectly possible to have diversity without resorting to this diversity point sham.

Right now, duped OG Vision may be the best option to handle that node. But if there can be more than one best option to place on that node, it must be possible to tweak other champions till there are other best options to handle the node.

In any case, it doesn't really matter. The point that diversity can and does exist in tons of well-blanaced games is so obvious that I'm sure the developers are well aware of it, and they're the only ones who count.

Thestoryteller6

DNA3000 wrote: »

TomieCzech wrote: »

"Diversity will be just a small amount of points - a tiebreaker..." Tiebreak my A**

Actually, evidence suggests that it is in fact behaving that way. Unintentionally but not entirely unexpectedly, it is also helping to generate ties in the first place in combination with the new scoring system.

Whoever designed the new scoring system apparently is unfamiliar with Nash equilibrium. The system contains a very strong and very nasty attractor to a bad equilibrium point: the maximal diversity point. It tends to encourage weaker but more diverse defense, which increases the likelihood for maximal exploration, which increases the odds of a close score, which increases the probability that the diversity score will become the deciding factor. And as players come to realize this as being a problem it encourages them to lock their defense strategy into perpetuating the problem indefinitely because no change in strategy can differentially improve matters. That's basically the textbook definition of a Nash equilibrium, for budding game theorists out there.

This should have been a predictable flaw.

Great analysis. Does removing defender kills also add to this, because now there's a way for a weaker alliance to match a stronger alliance in exploration and attacker kills?

Sha59

In the last week

MMX lost to AH
Core lost to Malaysia

lesser more organised alliances are beating so called bigger alliances, im just picking out the top 2 examples, however there are more.

All due respect to both alliances, neither one would of beaten MMX or Core under the old system.

Sure this system needs tweaking slightly, but for everyone calling for the end of Diversity and rank down tickets for useless mystics. you are so far off base.
You honestly telling me its more fun facing 10+ Magiks, 10+ Dorm, 10+ Iceman, throw in a few other mystic champs and maybe the odd NC and there is your AW D in a nutshell.

It was the era of power control attacking champs, and if you where not lucky enough to have a decent 5* R3/R4 or 4* R5 power control Champ.

Magik, Vision, Hawkeye?, Voodoo you where pretty screwed.
or a GP to stop limbo.

The entire game meta was back to using the same 10 champs in AW AQ. which kabam has constantly said that did not want to happen.

Is AW easier? Sure it is but the nodes are easier so even with the same MD defences as before honestly with these nodes, alot more alliances could 100% the map.

Very interested to see what changes Kabam make..

Acanthus

Sha59 wrote: »

In the last week

MMX lost to AH
Core lost to Malaysia

lesser more organised alliances are beating so called bigger alliances, im just picking out the top 2 examples, however there are more.

All due respect to both alliances, neither one would of beaten MMX or Core under the old system.

Come on now, you know that MMX lost cause they didn't know to place with suicides/boosts at that time and CORE didn't even really bother to place for diversity (~130 diversity). If they do it properly they would never lose to smaller alliances like that.

G-Hun-Gear

Any word on when defender diversity will be correctly calculated through all battle groups combined?

EL_Rojo44

I`m for Diversity but it should not dictate the whole war... They need to bring defensive kills back. That would bring the skill aspect back into war...

DD2

Sha59 wrote: »

You honestly telling me its more fun facing 10+ Magiks, 10+ Dorm, 10+ Iceman, throw in a few other mystic champs and maybe the odd NC and there is your AW D in a nutshell.

You know what was more fun?

Suiting up with your buddies and waging war against another alliance using champs that you put your blood, sweat, and tears into.

Getting a knot in your stomach after clicking "fight", wondering who you'll really go up against and if your choice of attacker was the right one.

Hands shaking, knowing that it's not just a quest or arena fight, knowing full well that any screws up mean giving points to the other team.

Watching in real-time with pleasure as your bad ass defenders turn the opposition into dust.

Watching with nervously with your team on LINE wondering who's going to take it. Was it enough? They don't seem like they're moving? Will they make a last minute rush? Everyone be on guard! Will they break through our defenders and heal up for the boss?? Watching down to the wire who's strategy paid off and who's didn't.

THAT WAS WAR.

What we have now is a participation trophy for lazy leeches.

Snizzbar

DD2 wrote: »

Sha59 wrote: »

You honestly telling me its more fun facing 10+ Magiks, 10+ Dorm, 10+ Iceman, throw in a few other mystic champs and maybe the odd NC and there is your AW D in a nutshell.

You know what was more fun?

Suiting up with your buddies and waging war against another alliance using champs that you put your blood, sweat, and tears into.

Getting a knot in your stomach after clicking "fight", wondering who you'll really go up against and if your choice of attacker was the right one.

Hands shaking, knowing that it's not just a quest or arena fight, knowing full well that any screws up mean giving points to the other team.

Watching in real-time with pleasure as your bad ass defenders turn the opposition into dust.

Watching with nervously with your team on LINE wondering who's going to take it. Was it enough? They don't seem like they're moving? Will they make a last minute rush? Everyone be on guard! Will they break through our defenders and heal up for the boss?? Watching down to the wire who's strategy paid off and who's didn't.

THAT WAS WAR.

What we have now is a participation trophy for lazy leeches.

This. THIS.
Bravo sir.

R4GE

DD2 wrote: »

Sha59 wrote: »

You honestly telling me its more fun facing 10+ Magiks, 10+ Dorm, 10+ Iceman, throw in a few other mystic champs and maybe the odd NC and there is your AW D in a nutshell.

You know what was more fun?

Suiting up with your buddies and waging war against another alliance using champs that you put your blood, sweat, and tears into.

Getting a knot in your stomach after clicking "fight", wondering who you'll really go up against and if your choice of attacker was the right one.

Hands shaking, knowing that it's not just a quest or arena fight, knowing full well that any screws up mean giving points to the other team.

Watching in real-time with pleasure as your bad ass defenders turn the opposition into dust.

Watching with nervously with your team on LINE wondering who's going to take it. Was it enough? They don't seem like they're moving? Will they make a last minute rush? Everyone be on guard! Will they break through our defenders and heal up for the boss?? Watching down to the wire who's strategy paid off and who's didn't.

THAT WAS WAR.

What we have now is a participation trophy for lazy leeches.

THIS! No comment will top it. That is what made AW so great

TBJ1118

DD2 wrote: »

Sha59 wrote: »

You honestly telling me its more fun facing 10+ Magiks, 10+ Dorm, 10+ Iceman, throw in a few other mystic champs and maybe the odd NC and there is your AW D in a nutshell.

You know what was more fun?

Suiting up with your buddies and waging war against another alliance using champs that you put your blood, sweat, and tears into.

Getting a knot in your stomach after clicking "fight", wondering who you'll really go up against and if your choice of attacker was the right one.

Hands shaking, knowing that it's not just a quest or arena fight, knowing full well that any screws up mean giving points to the other team.

Watching in real-time with pleasure as your bad ass defenders turn the opposition into dust.

Watching with nervously with your team on LINE wondering who's going to take it. Was it enough? They don't seem like they're moving? Will they make a last minute rush? Everyone be on guard! Will they break through our defenders and heal up for the boss?? Watching down to the wire who's strategy paid off and who's didn't.

THAT WAS WAR.

What we have now is a participation trophy for lazy leeches.

So much THIS. My favorite portion of the game just disappeared

Mcord11758

DD2 wrote: »

Sha59 wrote: »

You honestly telling me its more fun facing 10+ Magiks, 10+ Dorm, 10+ Iceman, throw in a few other mystic champs and maybe the odd NC and there is your AW D in a nutshell.

You know what was more fun?

Suiting up with your buddies and waging war against another alliance using champs that you put your blood, sweat, and tears into.

Getting a knot in your stomach after clicking "fight", wondering who you'll really go up against and if your choice of attacker was the right one.

Hands shaking, knowing that it's not just a quest or arena fight, knowing full well that any screws up mean giving points to the other team.

Watching in real-time with pleasure as your bad ass defenders turn the opposition into dust.

Watching with nervously with your team on LINE wondering who's going to take it. Was it enough? They don't seem like they're moving? Will they make a last minute rush? Everyone be on guard! Will they break through our defenders and heal up for the boss?? Watching down to the wire who's strategy paid off and who's didn't.

THAT WAS WAR.

What we have now is a participation trophy for lazy leeches.

This sums up why it was my favorite aspect of the game

WOK

@DD2 , it's like you took a ride into my thoughts and sorted through all the other nonsense and put together a thing of beauty! LOL

Well done Sir!!!

chunkyb

Well said @DD2
And what happens now is that I begrudgingly put bad defenders in. Never even look at the defense thru the 24 hrs of attack. Don't care what happens with the other alli, because they're not really playing against us. Barely speak about war other than a random "hey clear that link pls" because people are so bored with war that they forget we're attacking. 100% everything with no happiness/pride about it. Sit and wait for results. Collect rewards with zero fanfare. Never get excited in chat about pulling a win. No "way to go" passed around for hard fought victories or overcoming the challenge of a node/champ/tough alli. It's the ho-hummiest thing in the gaming world. I get infinitely more excited when a catalyst quest gives me more than 100 shards.

Schodiac

I believe that Rank down tickets are in order since our new defense teams will be based on mostly diversity instead of Defender kills.

Schodiac

As for myself, I have spent a lot of time and money specifically on my defense team

R4GE

Schodiac wrote: »

I believe that Rank down tickets are in order since our new defense teams will be based on mostly diversity instead of Defender kills.

Please don't derail this thread with thoughts of RDT's.

Mcord11758

Only rational I can see for rank down tickets is rank 4 5* champs like juggs, antman, Cyclops. People who have ranked these champs have now wasted their t2 alpha. There is no making up for that

IAmNotUrMom

Mcord11758 wrote: »

Only rational I can see for rank down tickets is rank 4 5* champs like juggs, antman, Cyclops. People who have ranked these champs have now wasted their t2 alpha. There is no making up for that

If only Juggernaut or Antman could be used as a part of a special team that boosts critical damage for things like the Labyrinth of Legends. One can only dream...

unknown

This content has been removed.

Mcord11758

IAmNotUrMom wrote: »

Mcord11758 wrote: »

Only rational I can see for rank down tickets is rank 4 5* champs like juggs, antman, Cyclops. People who have ranked these champs have now wasted their t2 alpha. There is no making up for that

If only Juggernaut or Antman could be used as a part of a special team that boosts critical damage for things like the Labyrinth of Legends. One can only dream...

So you are saying they are worth 4 t2a just for the synergy?

I use a 2* antman and it does what is needed to raise my starlord attack over 2100. Hardly worth ranking the 5*

LocoMotives

IAmNotUrMom wrote: »

Mcord11758 wrote: »

Only rational I can see for rank down tickets is rank 4 5* champs like juggs, antman, Cyclops. People who have ranked these champs have now wasted their t2 alpha. There is no making up for that

If only Juggernaut or Antman could be used as a part of a special team that boosts critical damage for things like the Labyrinth of Legends. One can only dream...

If only synergy was the same no matter if the champ is 2/35 or 4/55. One can only reason...