**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.

Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.

15.0 Alliance Wars Update Discussion Thread

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Comments

  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,189 ★★★★★
    Huluhula wrote: »
    I'm not going any further into it. I've shared my thoughts. The comment about it being too competitive and covetous is just my opinion, and it's based on the reactions of Players, and the tactics used within the system that are....questionable. Not the actual content itself. The rest I'm not debating. I've said enough.
    The entire point of PVP in any game is competition testing your mettle vs your opponents... it’s called alliance WAR not alliance friendship circle.

    When people will look for any avenue to maintain their position and win, such as organizing with other Allies to take over a Tier, or when they create Shell Allies to harvest Shards so they can covet their position with as many Top Tier Champs, or when they are outraged at the fact that they could possibly lose, that's too competitive in my books. Has nothing to do with the actual War itself. It's a fight against other Allies. I'm well aware of that. It's where Players take it that is too competitive.
  • HuluhulaHuluhula Posts: 263
    Huluhula wrote: »
    I'm not going any further into it. I've shared my thoughts. The comment about it being too competitive and covetous is just my opinion, and it's based on the reactions of Players, and the tactics used within the system that are....questionable. Not the actual content itself. The rest I'm not debating. I've said enough.
    The entire point of PVP in any game is competition testing your mettle vs your opponents... it’s called alliance WAR not alliance friendship circle.

    When people will look for any avenue to maintain their position and win, such as organizing with other Allies to take over a Tier, or when they create Shell Allies to harvest Shards so they can covet their position with as many Top Tier Champs, or when they are outraged at the fact that they could possibly lose, that's too competitive in my books. Has nothing to do with the actual War itself. It's a fight against other Allies. I'm well aware of that. It's where Players take it that is too competitive.
    What’s stopping them from doing any of that now?
  • AnonymousAnonymous Posts: 508 ★★★
    It's supposed to be competitive, that's why it's a fighting game lol.
  • AnonymousAnonymous Posts: 508 ★★★
    I've made friends with many people from other allies through various wars. Taking over a tier has nothing to do with organizing allies, it has to do with your skills and your rosters, basically what this game has promoted the last 2 years I've been playing. I've lost many close wars and won close wars, as well as many blowouts. All of it was very interactive, fun, and enjoyable. They have taken that spirit out of the game entirely by way of "diversity."
  • XroxfistXroxfist Posts: 18
    P
    WOK wrote: »
    @GroundedWisdom , you admit that the new system needs work, and I strongly believe the system should have been worked on before it was ever released. You begin with,
    "What I said is I'm for Diversity and the removal of Defender Kills", which has been already implemented, yet you end with
    "I wouldn't suggest making Defender Kills a significant metric because it contradicts the idea of Diversity. That will be the bigger focus. If at all, introduce it as a small metric. Say, 5-10 Points per Kill". Please elaborate so that I don't misunderstand it to be a contradiction of your repeated statements.

    @GroundedWisdom "Here are the issues I see that existed in the previous War schematic, and I will not go into whether they were issues or not because that seems to be the source of a great deal of argument. These are my views on what problems existed, and what the actual changes were set out to do has been stated by staff".

    "Whether they were issues or not" somewhat confuses me, because if you state you saw issues/problems, that is what they are, no? Or are you trying to imply that in fact they are issues but would rather not debate with someone who sees otherwise?

    1. I will admit I am one who never really "dug deep" into the points calculations and have little to no knowledge of how significant defender kills actually were towards a victory or loss. IMO, monopoly on tiers seems a bit exaggerated. As far as some alliances being overmatched, who is to shoulder the responsibility? Seems to me that it could have been avoided if the developers chose to make adjustments to the match making portion of AW. Both matchmaking process and the "overpowering defense" were created by Kabam and not the players. All we did was adjust our strategy to best maximise the benefits laid out in front of us just as we are trying to do with Diversity.

    Defender kills was actually a true tie breaker as it only mattered in the closest of wars. It took multiple extra kills to make up for a single percent. Like ten as a percent was around 900 points just below. It also rewarded good play. It needs to come back. As it stands now max everything and clear both sides the higher rating wins every time. If you want competition there no longer is any as you have already lost going against a higher rated opponent who has much higher characters than you.
  • XroxfistXroxfist Posts: 18
    Xroxfist wrote: »
    P
    WOK wrote: »
    @GroundedWisdom , you admit that the new system needs work, and I strongly believe the system should have been worked on before it was ever released. You begin with,
    "What I said is I'm for Diversity and the removal of Defender Kills", which has been already implemented, yet you end with
    "I wouldn't suggest making Defender Kills a significant metric because it contradicts the idea of Diversity. That will be the bigger focus. If at all, introduce it as a small metric. Say, 5-10 Points per Kill". Please elaborate so that I don't misunderstand it to be a contradiction of your repeated statements.

    @GroundedWisdom "Here are the issues I see that existed in the previous War schematic, and I will not go into whether they were issues or not because that seems to be the source of a great deal of argument. These are my views on what problems existed, and what the actual changes were set out to do has been stated by staff".

    "Whether they were issues or not" somewhat confuses me, because if you state you saw issues/problems, that is what they are, no? Or are you trying to imply that in fact they are issues but would rather not debate with someone who sees otherwise?

    1. I will admit I am one who never really "dug deep" into the points calculations and have little to no knowledge of how significant defender kills actually were towards a victory or loss. IMO, monopoly on tiers seems a bit exaggerated. As far as some alliances being overmatched, who is to shoulder the responsibility? Seems to me that it could have been avoided if the developers chose to make adjustments to the match making portion of AW. Both matchmaking process and the "overpowering defense" were created by Kabam and not the players. All we did was adjust our strategy to best maximise the benefits laid out in front of us just as we are trying to do with Diversity.

    Defender kills was actually a true tie breaker as it only mattered in the closest of wars. It took multiple extra kills to make up for a single percent. Like ten as a percent was around 900 points just below. It also rewarded good play. It needs to come back. As it stands now max everything and clear both sides the higher rating wins every time. If you want competition there no longer is any as you have already lost going against a higher rated opponent who has much higher characters than you.

    It’s like signing up for the war and without doing anything having someone go. Congrats you won or sorry you lost before you’ve fought.
  • AnonymousAnonymous Posts: 508 ★★★
    Xroxfist wrote: »
    Xroxfist wrote: »
    P
    WOK wrote: »
    @GroundedWisdom , you admit that the new system needs work, and I strongly believe the system should have been worked on before it was ever released. You begin with,
    "What I said is I'm for Diversity and the removal of Defender Kills", which has been already implemented, yet you end with
    "I wouldn't suggest making Defender Kills a significant metric because it contradicts the idea of Diversity. That will be the bigger focus. If at all, introduce it as a small metric. Say, 5-10 Points per Kill". Please elaborate so that I don't misunderstand it to be a contradiction of your repeated statements.

    @GroundedWisdom "Here are the issues I see that existed in the previous War schematic, and I will not go into whether they were issues or not because that seems to be the source of a great deal of argument. These are my views on what problems existed, and what the actual changes were set out to do has been stated by staff".

    "Whether they were issues or not" somewhat confuses me, because if you state you saw issues/problems, that is what they are, no? Or are you trying to imply that in fact they are issues but would rather not debate with someone who sees otherwise?

    1. I will admit I am one who never really "dug deep" into the points calculations and have little to no knowledge of how significant defender kills actually were towards a victory or loss. IMO, monopoly on tiers seems a bit exaggerated. As far as some alliances being overmatched, who is to shoulder the responsibility? Seems to me that it could have been avoided if the developers chose to make adjustments to the match making portion of AW. Both matchmaking process and the "overpowering defense" were created by Kabam and not the players. All we did was adjust our strategy to best maximise the benefits laid out in front of us just as we are trying to do with Diversity.

    Defender kills was actually a true tie breaker as it only mattered in the closest of wars. It took multiple extra kills to make up for a single percent. Like ten as a percent was around 900 points just below. It also rewarded good play. It needs to come back. As it stands now max everything and clear both sides the higher rating wins every time. If you want competition there no longer is any as you have already lost going against a higher rated opponent who has much higher characters than you.

    It’s like signing up for the war and without doing anything having someone go. Congrats you won or sorry you lost before you’ve fought.

    That's exactly what happened in our current war, the other alliance said congrats to us, they messed up diversity. We still have like 6 hours left and we'll both get 100% easily.
  • unknownunknown Posts: 378
    GREAT! 5 minis with the same 3 attackers on a much bigger map, means more revives needed! No defender kill points! BIG SPENDERS WIN EVERY WAR!!! FUNNN!!!!!

    Bigger map doesn't mean that you'll be having more fights. There will be just as many Defenders as there were before.

    ok, just as many defenders. But defender kills, in combo with 5 mini bosses means $$ wins every war. No more skill. Good job killing wars.

    The amount of items that any user can use remains the same, so every Alliance Member can still only Revive/Heal 15 times. This hasn't changed. Additionally, 5 Minibosses doesn't mean that any one person will be taking on more than 1.

    The goal with the removal of Defender kills wasn't to increase the use of Potions or Revives, but to relieve the feeling of defeat that comes with taking one shot at a defender, losing, and feeling that you're now helping the other Alliance, so you stop playing, even though you have 2 perfectly good attackers still there.

    And that's why they call it alliance wars and not player wars. If you can't kill a defender with one hero, then another member of the alliance backing you up finishes it off. That's why it's call alliance wars, cause the alliance gets the win, not just one individual player. So while I understand your comment, it's an invalid point since this isn't single player wars.
  • unknownunknown Posts: 378
    Sorgis wrote: »
    Can you confirm that you've experimented with champs like Magik and Dormammu at 5/5 MD to balance the changes?

    Good luck getting a response or an answer on that question. That's the type of question that the clintons kill people over...
  • Bmf420Bmf420 Posts: 161
    edited September 2017
    It doesn't matter what you say or how you say it. If you want a great blueprint on how to take a game from great to garbage just follow kabams.blueprint. I have no idea who came up with this drastic change to wars but they clearly had no knowledge of the game or the community. If it wasn't broken why the hell would you fix/break it. I think they're actually trying to destroy alliances all together. Aq is ok story and events are ok but wars were awesome and now they just suck. Kabam clearly doesn't care how we feel about this setup. This is worse then the whole 12.0 mess.They at least tried to listen to us then. Whoever decided to take away defender kills needs to be fired or put on the support team lol. I couldn't imagine a worse punishment. Defense means absolutely nothing now every fight is easy.
  • ApacheApache Posts: 558 ★★
    If war is still like this till December I won’t be playing. What a complete joke this game has become
  • These are my views on what problems existed, and what the actual changes were set out to do has been stated by staff.

    I don't think many if anyone is debating what problems the devs believe existed, or what the devs did to address them. Almost the entirety of the discussion surrounding the AW changes has revolved around a) were those problems significant enough to address, b) are the changes the devs made reasonable ways to address those problems, c) what the side effects are of those changes, and d) taken as a whole, does the new AW system present a reasonable alliance competition platform.



  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,189 ★★★★★
    edited September 2017
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    These are my views on what problems existed, and what the actual changes were set out to do has been stated by staff.

    I don't think many if anyone is debating what problems the devs believe existed, or what the devs did to address them. Almost the entirety of the discussion surrounding the AW changes has revolved around a) were those problems significant enough to address, b) are the changes the devs made reasonable ways to address those problems, c) what the side effects are of those changes, and d) taken as a whole, does the new AW system present a reasonable alliance competition platform.



    Just separating the two. Meaning, I'm owning my thoughts and not adding conjecture as to what their intentions were.
  • Speeds80Speeds80 Posts: 2,008 ★★★★
    That's true it's a classic example of kabam overcompensating a small issue that a few peoplePerceive as a problem, exactly like 12.0 when they turned the god tier champs Into Worse than kamala, and turned willpower into nothing, small tweaks were justified but they used an a bomb
  • hurricanthurricant Posts: 515 ★★★
    Another war we lost because of defender rating. Played great. Few deaths. Doesn't matter. The other alliance had higher rating. War is not fair and it's not fun. @Kabam Miike @Ad0ra_
  • VerguldVerguld Posts: 128
    @Kabam Miike This new war is horrible. It's no longer a skill based. It's way to easy to 100%. The alliance with the higher defender rating will win all the time now. How was this new war thought thru? We all ranked up champs that were great for defense. Now we are all trying to adapt to this new war and have to rank up worthless champs and we are not receiving any type of compensation for this.
  • JRock808 wrote: »
    If you had killed that last defender you would have won.

    Actually, when I look at those scores it seems the OP's alliance had the diversity advantage, and the other alliance won due to one more attacker kill and the associated exploration score (and slightly higher defender rating, but the old war also gave points for defender rating). If we remove diversity scoring they just would have lost by more.

    No matter how bad the current system is, you can't blame every close loss on the new system. If nothing else, it just undermines the valid claims against the system if the devs perceive that many of the complaints are not based in the real properties of the system, or if players are so irrationally angry that nothing they do will change that, so nothing should be done.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    edited September 2017
    Verguld wrote: »
    @Kabam Miike This new war is horrible. It's no longer a skill based. It's way to easy to 100%. The alliance with the higher defender rating will win all the time now.

    At the highest tiers that is probably true much of the time. It isn't true in the lower tiers yet. But even if it never gets there, I believe AW will evolve towards that direction even in lower tiers, just because the incentive to diversify is strong and lower tier AW has fewer high rank defenders - so diversity means lowering difficulty on attack. The push is towards diverse and weaker defenders, commensurately higher attacker performance, and wars decided more strongly by diversity scores.

    I don't think this is 100% unintentional either. Their explicit stated goal of encouraging attackers to continue to fight by lowering the penalties on attackers that die inevitably means attackers will complete the map more often, and I believe the devs want attackers to complete the map more often. But the side effects of pushing for that don't seem to have been well thought out. I believe the devs think things that are mathematically impossible and game theoretically nonsensical about how the players are likely to react over time to the new scoring system. Players have to act against their own interests to make the system work in the way I believe they think it will. They can only do that out of ignorance, and ignorance doesn't last forever in a competitive environment. It gets weeded out over time.
  • R4GER4GE Posts: 1,530 ★★★★
    Lower tiers may not feel it at this moment. But they will if/when they start to climb the tiers. Eventually they will see the problems
  • linux wrote: »
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    [snip]
    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.

    Honestly, this post confuses me. First because I'm having to guess what some of the words are intended to mean (I'm guessing you mean "equitable" when you say "unilateral") and second because when I parse the sentences I get meanings that I am having trouble believing I got right. It sounds like you are saying that a major problem with 14.0 alliance war was that players were focusing too much on placing the champions that would get them the most points, and 15.0 is designed to fix that problem.

    That is so absurd of a thing to say that I can only conclude I am reading it wrong, or currently experiencing a stroke.

    Option 3: you're taking trolling seriously.

    I'm not accusing anyone in this thread of trolling. However, I will say that while the best thing to do to trolls is to ignore them, there are those of us who grew up during the golden age of the internet that have learned to confront trolls on their own turf. I don't respond emotionally to trolls. I ask them to explain themselves like I'm asking a comedian to explain the joke.

    If they are not a troll, they will try. If they are a troll, it will drive them crazy. Trolls want to throw grenades. They won't want people to bring them back and ask them to autograph them.
  • Mcord11758Mcord11758 Posts: 1,249 ★★★★
    Like like the disastrous trash that is diminishing returns and challenger rating this **** war is here to stay. We need to get over it or leave
This discussion has been closed.