**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
15.0 Alliance Wars Update Discussion Thread
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Comments
@Kabam Miike
Can you give us more information on what you mean by changes, and what else will be worked on.
I haven't seen anything being elaborated on in regards too;
Node difficulty
Reward changes
And most importantly, you had mentioned that diversity would eventually mean that the champs we are now placing will become more usefull than what they were prior. Does that mean the previous useless champs will be getting bumped on abilities, or nodes in aw will grant extra abilites to what we call useless champs. Like nodes that give a champion the ability to evade, heal, unstoppable, etc...
the same
Stop saying that already. It is 100% not true. It's not a matter of opinion either. Certain Champs are better at attacking and certain champs are much harder to kill than others. This is a fact, and not debatable. There is a reason why people have trouble fighting Dormammu and not Kamala Khan, and why people bring Starlord to offense instead of Colossus. If it weren't true then people would just rank up Champs based on whether they liked the character or not. Or rank up at random. Every champ can be used in arena equally. What sets one apart from the other is their ability to be effective in other areas of the game. They are not all created equal, nor are the all equally useful.
The whole point of Alliance Wars is to prevent the opponent from killing your Boss in each battlegroup, and to kill the opposing alliance's Bosses. If this were not the case then they wouldn't award 20,000 points for a Boss kill (a great deal more than anything else in AW). Therefore, in AW, any champ that is harder to kill, and/or causes you to use more items, is MORE useful than a Champ who doesn't. And any champ who allows you to more easily defeat the opponents' defenders is MORE useful than a Champ that doesn't. A Champ that does neither is inherently LESS useful. The problem is rewarding people (via diversity points) for bringing poor, non-useful, defenders to AW. If you are going to do that then you've completely changed the mode and eliminated one of the two objectives. If you want to keep that, fine, but call it something else...it sure isn't Alliance WARS.
I think most players would agree that not all champs are equally useful for all tasks. GroundedWisdom is making the argument that we were judging "usefulness" based on number of kills and you seem to be at least nominally agreeing with him on that point: that the point of AW was to get kills so of course kills are what matters. GroundedWisdom is suggesting that players simply need to adjust to the new meta where kills aren't the point of AW.
I would argue that kills don't have to be the point of AW, and that isn't at the heart of most players' complaints. Suppose I were to change the scoring so that defenders got points not for kills but for damage dealt to the attackers. The more damage the defender inflicted the more points the defending alliance got. This is a different kind of meta and it changes things. For one thing, it actually changes the values of the attackers. Wolverine is not as good of an attacker in this new meta because even if he kills everything and even if he ends the fight at full health he could have given a ton of points to the enemy. Iceman becomes an even better defender now because even if he dies he deals a lot of damage right up front which guarantees him at least a few points.
This is a different AW than 14.0. Kills are no longer counted. But there is still the idea that players can engage with the game. We can think about attackers and choose what we think are the best attackers based on real choices we arrive at by looking at the capabilities of the champions. There is actual skill and strategy for picking and placing defenders. In this hypothetical the point of AW would no longer *necessarily* be about killing anything in particular, and some players would complain about the change, but I don't think people would be complaining to the extent they are now, or about the same things they are now.
That's what I meant when I said above points don't matter, at least not in this context. I think players are genuinely upset about basically being told your thoughts and your ideas and your choices don't matter anymore when it comes to defense placement. There is one correct way to place, and it has nothing to do with your opinion about how the champions work. I don't think AW is "supposed" to be about kills, but it is supposed to be about something. Something the players are supposed to be involved with. If the alliance leader is making a spreadsheet and telling everyone exactly what defenders to place, that can't be right. We took the play out of gameplay.
I'm not so much disagreeing with you as trying to make the point there's a deeper problem here that goes beyond what war used to be and what our opinions about what an alliance war should be focused on. I'm saying 15.0 isn't focused on the wrong thing, but on nothing.
I just managed to take out a Nightcrawler boss where pre v15, I would congratulate myself registering even 10 hits. I wonder in addition to the above, why was the nodes made easier?
I have a theory. I believe that Kabam perceived that AW had a problem where alliances were getting matched up against other alliances that were so much stronger than them or alternatively higher skilled than them that when they went on attack it was basically hopeless. Attacking players would run into nodes that they not only couldn't kill, but so obviously couldn't kill that they just gave up.
This is worse than just losing because this can become a progressive problem. When a player gives up it hurts the entire battle group. Soon the members of that battlegroup are less likely to push hard when they keep discovering their efforts are wasted because someone else just gives up. Soon it is whole allliances that are being discouraged from competing in AW because too often the whole thing falls apart too quickly. And the more of these alliances that stop competing, the more that the remaining alliances that are competing become stronger on average. You are statistically more likely to run into a juggernaut because all the push overs are sitting on the sidelines. And then you start giving up.
So the problem - as I'm theorizing Kabam saw it - was that players were being discouraged too strongly when on attack, and this was causing a chain reaction of progressive non-participation or half-hearted participation. Kabam felt that win or lose, it would be better if at least the attacking side managed to finish the attack phase most of the time. That way they would at least be encouraged to push on and see what the final result would be.
Three things stand in the way. First: if the attackers are running into three Nightcrawlers, two Magiks, and a Juggernaut, the odds of them being stopped cold rise substantially. Not many defenders are strong enough to be singularly scary, but everyone is placing a disproportionate number of them. Second: some nodes just straight up kill players. Thorns, slashed tires, etc. These nodes can kill a path dead and stop further progress. And third, if you are pretty good in general but there's a few things you have trouble defeating and you run into one, you're roadblocked. It isn't easy for someone else to help you, especially if you only need help with that one node. Plus, you don't want players to give up voluntarily because they think someone better will come along.
Now look at 15.0. The nodes are easier, so it is less likely attackers will get stopped. There are more "cross over points" so players can trade or help paths. There is a huge penalty for placing more than one of any strong defender that can show stop a path. And defender kills are taken away, so players have no incentive to give up while they still have live attackers, so they don't stop in a path voluntarily. I believe the unstated goal is to make sure attackers finish most of the time. And if you are doing everything possible to help players finish on attack, seems obvious that scoring is going to be a lot closer than it was before, especially with defender kills gone. Of course, you can just tell players that there's a "tie breaker" so that's not a problem.
I think the whole "players were giving up" thing wasn't a lie, but it was only a small part of the problem. I think the real problem is one they didn't want to express out loud: they wanted everyone to "win" just one side more than the other.
thank god someone who finally makes sense. i feel like im trying to teach calculus to new born babies most of the time talking in these forums i was beginning to think i was the only logical thinker that the trolls didnt chase away yet
Actually testing and/or playing the game could help shine light on the fact that this wasn't an actual widespread issue that needed a fix.
I think that they made it easier on purpose to force everyone to go 100%.
I'm not endorsing Kabam's actions, just presenting a theory as to why they would make the changes they did.
I will say it is hard for any of us to actually know if this was an actual problem or not, or what Kabam was datamining that suggested to them this was a problem, because by definition if this problem was happening it wouldn't be visible to us, because affected alliances become essentially "invisible" to the rest of the alliances participating in alliance war.
There's no question in my mind that they tried to fix a bad haircut by setting it on fire. But I'm not willing to say the problem itself didn't exist. It is just that no problem was worth these changes.
The example thrown forth by them was an attacker losing one champ and then stopping because they didn't want to hurt the alliance.
I agree with you that no problem was worth these fixes. But I also feel like we're missing the actual motivation for these changes. Idk what that motivation is, but none of this follows logic as far as how it's being presented imo. It feels like a problem-reaction-solution sorta thing but maybe I'm crazy.
Well, as I said above, I believe what we were presented was a piece of a larger problem I outlined in that post.
No, I'm not saying defender usefulness is based on kills at all. I'm saying it is based on their ability to prevent the opponent from getting to (and ultimately killing) the Boss, which is 1 of the 2 objectives in a war. That's why we have 2 components of AW...placement and attack. Electro is super easy to beat, but if you face him with the wrong champ on certain nodes you could take a lot of damage and it hinders your progress towards the Boss...way more than someone like Hawkeye does. Therefore he's more useful for AW defense. But by incentivizing the placement of poor (or less useful) defenders through diversity points they are eliminating 1 of the 2 components of AW (trying to stop the opposition through defender placement). You are partially right, in that the allocation of points or scoring method doesn't matter, but only up until it does something so drastic as to render an entire element of the mode moot (which it has done, as you correctly point out). They don't need to bring back defender kills at all, nor am I arguing for that. There are plenty of other ways to fix this.
You and I have a very similar viewpoint in that they've taken away half of the gameplay in this mode.
I think it is even worse than that. I think attacking and defending are opposite sides of the same coin. When we take away the defensive side, we are also reducing (albeit not eliminating) the attacking side gameplay. Although many AW tiers are still facing defenses that not every player can just sweep aside or spend past, it is true that AW is in general easier for attackers than before. That automatically means that attack phase is less competitive than before.
In the very highest tiers of AW the strongest alliances will probably "fill in" their diverse defenses, and even a maximally diverse defense will still be pretty strong. A 5* ranked up Luke Cage is still not a pushover. But because defenses are weaker, and because I believe it is intentional that attackers are going to fully explore more often than before, there's less competition on attack. Attack becomes less competition and more participation.
It won't happen instantly everywhere, but under the current rules I believe 90% of the defensive side strategy was taken away by 15.0, and at least half the attack side competition will also be nullified over time as alliances evolve to become maximally diverse (again: assuming these rules persisted). So I think 15.0 takes away not half the gameplay, but about 70% of the competitive gameplay.
Miike Spicer is trying to spin it like we actually have input and that they are actually listening.
We have continually lost/won by less than 700 points every time, it's too easy, the formula is flawed and it's getting old very quick.
It just blows my mind that a game centered around winning and losing fights, has taken away the penalty for losing a fight. As a player since day 1, this decision makes all of 12.0 look mild. What was kabam thinking?
Marvel Participation of Champions?
What I'm saying is the extremity of such opinions left a whole host of Champs on the bench, so-to-speak. I'm aware of the concept of good Attackers/Defenders. To imply that the rest are useless and that Ranking depends solely on AW usefulness highlights the problem created. The point of Diversity is to encourage people to use a more diverse Roster. Now, it's not the concept of good/bad Defenders that I am pointing out. It's the result of taking that idea to the extreme. As in, to the point of BGs full of said Champs, and regarding the rest as useless. Now, they may have had diminished usefulness in the old system, but that more unilateral value is the point of making Diversity present. It's about creating a platform where we are using a more full Roster. I know what people mean by saying good/bad. What I'm saying is the changes are related to the hyperfocus on that. It's a more unilateral way of looking at Champs. I don't see that as a bad thing when the extremity has caused subsequent issues that inevitably happen when Players try to maximize Rewards and secure their position. Unfortunately, prolonged use of that system affects the paradigm as a whole.
War is easy now. Nodes are less powerful. 100% exploration is easy for most alliances. Whether you think that's a good or bad change is irrelevant; that's just how it is. War is easy. Most alliances can get the maximum possible points that they can on offense very consistently. That means that almost every alliance gets the same amount of offensive points.
If we all get the same number of offensive points, it comes down to defensive points. There's only two ways to get defensive points: Rating and Diversity. This means that the bigger alliance wins every time. Let me explain.
If a 5 million alliance that has awesome fighting skills faces a 7 million alliance with those same skills, the 7 million group will win every time. They'll both get the maximum offensive points, so it's down to Rating and Diversity. The 7 million alliance obviously has better rating. They also have more champs. If they have more champs, they also have more Diversity. The bigger alliance will always win if both alliances have the same skill level. That's not fair. The size of your account should never determine whether you're better than another alliance.
Now, let's say that the 5 million alliance faces another 5 million alliance. It'll still come down to Rating and Diversity. The Rating will be about the same, so that's out of the equation. It's all down to Diversity.
If the win is determined solely from Diversity, another problem is generated. Placing a duplicate champion could cost your team the win, right? Then what about the champs that ARE overused, and for good reason? Some champs are naturally better defenders. If they're better defenders, people will rank them up for defense. Duh. So if everyone who has Nightcrawler, Hyperion, Dormammu, Magik, and Spider-Man (Symbiote, Classic, and Stark), not all of them can even use them. Only one person per alliance can. Everyone else can't use the person they ranked up for a specific reason. They have to turn to other champions, who aren't ranked up, because they aren't good defenders. Which generates yet another problem!
People can't rank up everyone. They invest in good champs and leave the others to collect dust, and that's if they didn't sell them. If they can't use good champs, which I already explained is problematic, they have to turn to champs that are bad, and therefore left unranked and leveled. If everyone is placing their rank one level one four stars and three stars, then that's all people will be fighting against in Alliance Wars. No one can place their good champs, so everyone places bad champs. If everyone places bad champs, other alliances will face those bad champs. Think back to the reason Diversity was demanded to begin with: It's boring to face multiple versions of the same champs like Nightcrawler and Magik. Now I ask you, what's more boring, facing a Nightcrawler, or pummeling a 3 star in 10 hits? Now, some would say Nightcrawler, and others, including myself, would say facing 3 stars. I'd think that more would say 3 stars, but even if I'm wrong, and it's a 50-50 split, that's still awful. If 50% of your base doesn't like something, you probably shouldn't push it forward.
Now, there's one more point I'd like to make, because I've seen you say something so many times to people who complain about not being able to place who they want, and it makes me want to punch something.
"It's not like you can't use the champs outside of defense."
That is the most idiotic statement I've ever heard. I'm sorry, but it is. People want rank down tickets because their champs can't be used for what they ranked them up for. You're saying that, because you can still use them elsewhere, RDTs aren't justified. That's just moronic. RDTs were issued when champions were nerfed. Is that unjustified? You can still use the champs, even if not for the reason you ranked them up (they're good). Now, I don't like RDTs. I really don't. Rank ups are permanent, and I think that being able to reverse them isn't a good idea. But if Diversity stays, RDTs have to come in. We can't use who we want without being punished. That's a problem. You can agree or disagree, but the idea that RDTs shouldn't be issued because it's possible to use someone means that they shouldn't be justified when Nerfs are done, which isn't true in the slightest.
Again, I fully respect your point and it is valid, I just think it's a bad idea because of the amount of change it will make to prestige.
Bring def kills back, check scores w/o considering diversity first. See if there's a tie, only then go up to check diversity.
That way diversity can become only a "tie breaker"
Say w/o diversity an alliance scores 100, another does 120, then the later is the winner. No matter if the former have 70 points in diversity n the later have 40. But if both scores 100 w/o diversity, then the former will be the winner!
But to make this work we need def kills back
Exactly. As I said, I am not a fan of RDTs. Rank ups are always meant to be permanent. But Kabam has made it so we can't use who we ranked up in some cases. I don't think RDTs should be sent out. I'd much rather have Diversity removed. But it has to be one or the other. They can't nullify the point of our rank ups without letting us reverse that decision.
my counter argument for this is that if progression in the game stopped at r4 5* champs then i feel you would be right, however we already know very soon we will be able to r5 5* champs as well as not too long after that 6* champs are coming. also there are new champs introduced every month with the majority of them topping prestige in there class so i feel all you guys against rdt will not effect the game as bad as your thinking, and whats more unfair the chance that rdt will be used as unintended or that guys with little resources used all there resources to rank up strictly defense champs to help there ally win wars and now they have champs that they only intended for that reason wasting away on that bench while at the same time they will need to rank different champs now to win wars again so they are using up twice the resources for half the purpose