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

KamalaWantsToPlayToo

Kabam Miike wrote: »

When we removed Defender kills, it's because we didn't want players to simply give up after a fight. Not playing should never be the optimal strategy. We wanted everybody to fight for the very last node. Stuck because your Alliance mate couldn't take down the link to the node in front of you? Well fight it anyways! See if you can take it down![/quote]

Yeah but Miike does it sound like most of us actually wanted this?

Does your alliance suck and people don't move when they should? Find a new one

Not able to take down that mini-boss node without a couple KO's? Run arenas for better champs. Run AQ for rank up materials. Complete quests for more shots at better champs. Work harder. Try harder.

You're absolutely right in that not fighting should never be an optimal strategy.

You're absolutely right in that everyone should fight for the last node.

It's a competition though. It's a war. There will be winners and losers. There will be frustration. There will be KO's.

But that's why it was FUN!

You all have taken any and all risk out of AW. Without risk it's just straight up boring and there are 85 pages of people saying this over and over.

LegionDestroier

Kdog76 wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Voluntaris wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Twunt wrote: »

The end all summary of this will be that you are making Defender rating and Diversity the two tie breakers. Doesn’t matter how you allocate the points. If both teams explore 100%, no skill required. The one with the higher Defender rating (now you lowered diversity points) will win. How can you have two variables to determine winners? That’s a sloppy formula.

The point of the map changes is that we want you guys to emphasize your Defenders again. Prevent the other team from getting 100% exploration.

...and those upgraded nodes do not do that. We'll still easily 100% the map.

Removing Defender Kill Points has removed skill from Alliance War. Resulting in a boring, uncompetitive alliance quest 2.0.

I can see where you're coming from.

If the idea is that you think you'll still be able to 100% clear this map as it is now, how would defender kills have made a difference?

I can take that information to the team and see what they think.

The difference would be HOW that 100% was achieved @Kabam Miike Was the 100% achieved by item use by lower skill or lower ranked champs? Or was it achieved with no items/low kills. With defender kills you have to be careful of your paths and super attentive to what champs are placed. I'm all for the diversity metric but not without defender kills. If you took the nodes In a more specialized direction where less used champs could be highlighted more it would make it more fun. Honestly flat markups of health and attach and unblockable specials are pretty boring. But if spider Gwen were unblockable and unstunnable it would at least be interesting. Or have curse nodes like act5. Anything more interesting than "power gain is now 2.0 instead of 1.5". Yawn.

You are focusing on "what" too much. A lot of top tier alliances will 100% no matter what. It is the how you win that makes it fun. Watching an alliance waste 20 lives on one node while being behind in exploration was exciting. A lot of times you wouldn't know if you won or lost it was so close. Now we just run the map like it's a daily quest. We will do the same after the change.

Skill matters. Strategy matters. I think that's been lost in some attempt to make us use Luke cage or abom more often. The most skilled alliance should win. Not the biggest. Not the most diverse. And right now and after tomorrow the most skilled stands a good chance of losing. I hope you can see that.

Well said, diversity is great, but without defender kills it's a terrible idea. All of AW is a terrible idea without defender kills.
Imagine real war without acknowledging the work the defenders have done for your country? There would be no value in what they have done so why would anyone strive for excellence defending their country if they would just be forgotten?

andrade5184

Kabam Miike wrote: »

JRock808 wrote: »

andrade5184 wrote: »

great job everyone now you got kabam to make wars even harder which will not only result in diversity still being the deciding factor as well as it costing more to win. i mean without defender kills it really sucks that the maps going to be harder now.

Think about it. It's not an accident. The whole goal was to increase revenue via AW.

Our goals were to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging and fun. We've said this before. I know you're going to believe whatever you want to believe, but I promise you, that was not at all our goal here.

When we removed Defender kills, it's because we didn't want players to simply give up after a fight. Not playing should never be the optimal strategy. We wanted everybody to fight for the very last node. Stuck because your Alliance mate couldn't take down the link to the node in front of you? Well fight it anyways! See if you can take it down!

We've said before that getting this mode to where we want it to be will be an iterative process. So if there are more iterations that need to be made, we will. But first, we've got to get through a few days of War until we can see how this is working out.

how bout giving us some better rewards for our troubles while you figure out how to make war the best for kabam

Kabam Miike

DNA3000 wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Anonymous wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

NevvB wrote: »

Dunno if it’s funny or sad that kabam doesnt understand how defender kills can impact war.

We understand how they can impact wars, but what I've gotten a lot of Private Messages about and have now seen posts of is that players are concerned that they will continue to 100% the map, and that Defender kills would fix this. This is what we're trying to avoid, a case where an Alliance is able to 100% Explore the map very easily, and even less so should it be possible for both Alliances to fully explore their opponent's maps.

We're working towards this, and will continue to make more iterations if we think that they are necessary.

We have usually been able to 100% our opponents maps in the old war system. Even with all the magiks, dorms, juggs, nightclub, etc. Most top 100 alliances have. How is this new design supposed to stop that?

That's a fair Question! The goal is to make the map more engaging and difficult so that where you place which Defenders is a conscious decision that you have to think about. If we find that you guys are all still 100%ing this Map, then it means that we need to make further revisions.

We're not through with this, and we plan on keeping a close eye on this next round. If there are more changes that need to be made, just like the last couple weeks, we'll make more.

At the risk of being repetitive, please explain how map changes are going to accomplish this. You say you want players to think about which defender to place on which node. But what the node does or where it is doesn't matter directly. What matters to the players is "if I place this defender here, what will the result be: good for me, or not good for me."

How do you expect a player to make that decision? Under 14.0, that question had an easy answer: place the defender that will get the most kills. Kills give points, and the more kills the defender gets the greater the chance the defender will also blockade the path. That's logical. That's how we made our decisions.

You say Kabam is adjusting the nodes to make them harder. No matter how easy they are or how hard they are, what should the players be thinking about which defender is better or worse? The only thing we can possibly think in 15.0 is "try to place a defender that can stop a player dead. If that can't happen, then it doesn't really matter what we place." But trying to stop an attacker from continuing to try to attack is your stated reason for removing defender kills. If we aren't allowed to compel an attacker to stop attacking, if we don't get points for defender kills, what's left to judge?

Kabam's position seems to be that if the nodes are harder, then it will matter which defenders get placed. But it only matters if being harder matters. And in 15.0, "harder" only matters if you stop the attacker cold. If you just kill him a couple times, that doesn't affect the war.

A defender isn't better because it hits harder or because he has a difficult to evade special attack or because he regenerates health. That's incidental. A defender is better if it helps us win a war. A defender has one and only one way to ultimately do that. Change the score. We don't get points when it kills an attacker. We only get points if the entire attacking alliance gives up on that path. Short of that, the only points we get is on placement. Nothing about the defender capabilities affects placement points.

Your question: How do you expect a player to make that decision?

The answer is that this still hasn't changed. Those defenders you're placing are still getting kills. Even if your defender doesn't stop a Summoner dead in their tracks, if you manage just one kill, you are still improving your defense in war.

That kill means that you are making them either use another champion to continue to compete, or use a revive/potion (of which there is a limited amount they can use every war). If they lose again, they have to make that choice again. So while that kill no longer grants you points, to say that there is no easy answer to your questions is not true. You still want to place your best defender for the situation/node that gets Kills, because Kills reduce your opponent's ability to move forward.

Just because there are no longer points awarded for a Defender Kill doesn't mean there is no value in defense. Reducing the Champions and offense that your Opponent has at their disposal is a victory. Every time you reduce your opponent's ability to output in the War, it's a victory.

Basically, just like before, you're trying to halt or negatively impact your Opponent's ability to progress, rather than have them award you points. The goal of defense hasn't changed: Exhaust your opponent's Champions and ability to proceed.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Born

So basically you have created a system where allys won’t be able to calculate if they will win or lose until the time runs out?

Defender kills was the way it was calculated in the old system. A team was able to see if they were being out skilled, and make the decision to stop when they ran out of attackers and spend no items cause if they pushed through, they would lose on kills.

Now we have a situation where the result is an uknown until the end as there is no way to accurately calculate the other teams defender rating. So this gives the allys a reason to keep pushing, reviving, healing to clear the map in a hope that their defender rating is higher.

Born

Very smart.

RagamugginGunner

Born wrote: »

So basically you have created a system where allys won’t be able to calculate if they will win or lose until the time runs out?

Defender kills was the way it was calculated in the old system. A team was able to see if they were being out skilled, and make the decision to stop when they ran out of attackers and spend no items cause if they pushed through, they would lose on kills.

Now we have a situation where the result is an uknown until the end as there is no way to accurately calculate the other teams defender rating. So this gives the allys a reason to keep pushing, reviving, healing to clear the map in a hope that their defender rating is higher.

Actually this system is much easier to determine the winner. The higher rated alliance always has the advantage. The dev team clearly doesn't understand that they haven't done anything to prevent alliances to 100% the map so it'll all come down to defender rating. The latest "explanation" just shows how far from the mark they truly are.

ThebigBient

ok here is an idea that will make kabam money and players happy. Re implement DK’s and decrease the cost of pots and revives. Let’s face it, they are way overpriced and the MAIN reason players were not encouraged to go further in the previous version. Not these other reasons stated. It’s just waaay to expensive! 30$ to revive your team one time? No thanks.

Now I know this is an idea that is unlikely to get implemented but it takes a little bit of faith. Faith in the fact that if you lower prices, you will actually end up making more sales that wouldnt normally be made. Reduce the cost of reviving and potting up so people aren’t afraid to play and bring back the skill element of the game. Skill is the heart of AW, without it. It’s not war.

Do a 2 week sale to get your data. I’d be willing to bet that you make more money.

Moneyhead

@Kabam Miike Do you guys really have no clue on what’s going on in game? You change the points from 125 to 50, what the hell difference does that make when most of us will still 100 percent the map? Even noobs are clearing 100 percent. Diversity only makes us place lame trash champs on the map since we know the other alliances we face will go 100 percent. Without defender kills the only tie breaker is defender rating which is trash. You guys have made all of the defensive rank up’s not worth anything and took all skill out of AW. For those that can’t move forward in a map because their alliance mate can’t clear a node need to leave that alliance and go somewhere else, that shouldn’t be your problem and definitely shouldn’t be ours. Anyone in my alliance that can’t clear a lane won’t be here for the next war.

LegionDestroier

Keep the votes coming in on this poll: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/23956/will-the-new-war-updates-change-anything#latest

Anonymous

Kabam Miike wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Anonymous wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

NevvB wrote: »

Dunno if it’s funny or sad that kabam doesnt understand how defender kills can impact war.

We understand how they can impact wars, but what I've gotten a lot of Private Messages about and have now seen posts of is that players are concerned that they will continue to 100% the map, and that Defender kills would fix this. This is what we're trying to avoid, a case where an Alliance is able to 100% Explore the map very easily, and even less so should it be possible for both Alliances to fully explore their opponent's maps.

We're working towards this, and will continue to make more iterations if we think that they are necessary.

We have usually been able to 100% our opponents maps in the old war system. Even with all the magiks, dorms, juggs, nightclub, etc. Most top 100 alliances have. How is this new design supposed to stop that?

That's a fair Question! The goal is to make the map more engaging and difficult so that where you place which Defenders is a conscious decision that you have to think about. If we find that you guys are all still 100%ing this Map, then it means that we need to make further revisions.

We're not through with this, and we plan on keeping a close eye on this next round. If there are more changes that need to be made, just like the last couple weeks, we'll make more.

At the risk of being repetitive, please explain how map changes are going to accomplish this. You say you want players to think about which defender to place on which node. But what the node does or where it is doesn't matter directly. What matters to the players is "if I place this defender here, what will the result be: good for me, or not good for me."

How do you expect a player to make that decision? Under 14.0, that question had an easy answer: place the defender that will get the most kills. Kills give points, and the more kills the defender gets the greater the chance the defender will also blockade the path. That's logical. That's how we made our decisions.

You say Kabam is adjusting the nodes to make them harder. No matter how easy they are or how hard they are, what should the players be thinking about which defender is better or worse? The only thing we can possibly think in 15.0 is "try to place a defender that can stop a player dead. If that can't happen, then it doesn't really matter what we place." But trying to stop an attacker from continuing to try to attack is your stated reason for removing defender kills. If we aren't allowed to compel an attacker to stop attacking, if we don't get points for defender kills, what's left to judge?

Kabam's position seems to be that if the nodes are harder, then it will matter which defenders get placed. But it only matters if being harder matters. And in 15.0, "harder" only matters if you stop the attacker cold. If you just kill him a couple times, that doesn't affect the war.

A defender isn't better because it hits harder or because he has a difficult to evade special attack or because he regenerates health. That's incidental. A defender is better if it helps us win a war. A defender has one and only one way to ultimately do that. Change the score. We don't get points when it kills an attacker. We only get points if the entire attacking alliance gives up on that path. Short of that, the only points we get is on placement. Nothing about the defender capabilities affects placement points.

Your question: How do you expect a player to make that decision?

The answer is that this still hasn't changed. Those defenders you're placing are still getting kills. Even if your defender doesn't stop a Summoner dead in their tracks, if you manage just one kill, you are still improving your defense in war.

That kill means that you are making them either use another champion to continue to compete, or use a revive/potion (of which there is a limited amount they can use every war). If they lose again, they have to make that choice again. So while that kill no longer grants you points, to say that there is no easy answer to your questions is not true. You still want to place your best defender for the situation/node that gets Kills, because Kills reduce your opponent's ability to move forward.

Just because there are no longer points awarded for a Defender Kill doesn't mean there is no value in defense. Reducing the Champions and offense that your Opponent has at their disposal is a victory. Every time you reduce your opponent's ability to output in the War, it's a victory.

Basically, just like before, you're trying to halt or negatively impact your Opponent's ability to progress, rather than have them award you points. The goal of defense hasn't changed: Exhaust your opponent's Champions and ability to proceed.

The only thing halting the other alliance from progressing on my defense is the fact that they will give me points for losing. Otherwise they will 100% our map and it will come down to diversity/rating. No skill involved whatsoever. I think you don't really understand this point.

DNA3000

Kabam Miike wrote: »

JRock808 wrote: »

andrade5184 wrote: »

great job everyone now you got kabam to make wars even harder which will not only result in diversity still being the deciding factor as well as it costing more to win. i mean without defender kills it really sucks that the maps going to be harder now.

Think about it. It's not an accident. The whole goal was to increase revenue via AW.

Our goals were to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging and fun

... on offense. It seems clear that the goal was to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging, and fun on offense. Every single change is disengaging on defense. Eliminating defender kills eliminates the most critical way players were judging defenders. Diversity points dictated a very strong push to place fully diverse champions regardless of what the champions did (and continues to do so). Reducing the node difficulty reduces the ways in which a champion could synergize with and strengthen a node on defense. All of these changes are unambiguously disengaging for players placing defenders.

It does help attackers during the attack phase. It is easier to attack. There are less penalties for attacking poorly and dying. There is more chance for help to arrive on attack with portals and cross over paths. Attacking is a lot easier in every possible way.

The thing is, the only real difference between AW and AQ is defense. If you ignore defense placement then the attack phase has virtually identical game play to AQ. AW is different from AQ in a similar way that Map 6 is different from Map 5. Defensive placement is the gameplay option that exists in AW and doesn't exist in AQ. Players controlling the defensive map is what can make the attack phase fundamentally different from AQ: we aren't attacking the same computer every time, we are attacking different human beings every time.

I think diversity is an albatross, and Kabam shouldn't even want "more diverse" AW. What they should strive for is unpredictable AW. Some players want tough competition and some don't, but all of them could benefit from being surprised by what they find on the AW map. That's why you give the players the ability to place defenders. You want AW maps to be different every time, unlike the static AQ maps that are the same every time. That's the "diversity" you want: not to force people to place every single champion once. You want players to be encouraged to be unpredictable. Confusing diversity with unpredictability is at the core of some of the biggest complaints about 15.0 AW.

Moneyhead

@Kabam Miike How about you get good beta testers who know what’s going on instead of these noobs you guys seem to always use. Every time you guys change something new it’s always a mess. Right now defender rating will win the war and that’s not fun at all

Moneyhead

@Kabam Wolf Make sure Kabam Mike reads my posts, didn’t want you to feel left out without anything to do

chunkyb

Kabam Miike wrote: »

NevvB wrote: »

Dunno if it’s funny or sad that kabam doesnt understand how defender kills can impact war.

We understand how they can impact wars, but what I've gotten a lot of Private Messages about and have now seen posts of is that players are concerned that they will continue to 100% the map, and that Defender kills would fix this. This is what we're trying to avoid, a case where an Alliance is able to 100% Explore the map very easily, and even less so should it be possible for both Alliances to fully explore their opponent's maps.

We're working towards this, and will continue to make more iterations if we think that they are necessary.

Wait. I thought the original issue was 1 out of 3 attackers died and that was bad because it discouraged them from continuing? Now you don't want everyone to make it to the end?

Can we just have old wars back?

Moneyhead

@Kabamalicious Make sure you have Kabam Wolf have Kabam Mike read my posts. Just in case you’re bored doing nothing and felt left out. Can’t make it all about Kabam Mike

KamalaWantsToPlayToo

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Just because there are no longer points awarded for a Defender Kill doesn't mean there is no value in defense. Reducing the Champions and offense that your Opponent has at their disposal is a victory. Every time you reduce your opponent's ability to output in the War, it's a victory.

Basically, just like before, you're trying to halt or negatively impact your Opponent's ability to progress, rather than have them award you points. The goal of defense hasn't changed: Exhaust your opponent's Champions and ability to proceed.

Then why come out with a metric like Diversity that is mutually exclusive with a strong defense?

You're saying that the goal of defense hasn't changed, but it has. The goal of a defense is to be diversely difficult. There's no such thing.

I don't care how many points Diversity gives it goes against everything you just said. You removed defender kills and added Diversity. You're sending the wrong message and that's why people keep bringing up defender kills.

Remove diversity and let's start talking.

Kpatrix

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I'm not new to War. I've been organizing them since they started. I'm not getting into personals. Which this is. When you have a Player Base that encompasses all levels and everyone plays the same system, you can't devalue the issues that exist by simply saying, "Git gud".

I'm sorry, but you have not played at a high tier, at least not recently. We all know your in game name, we know your rating compared to the other 12 in your alliance, we know exactly why you want these changes a 300k leader with sub 80k members should have no voice in this discussion. That is pure manipulation. You are not fighting opponents your strength, you ate taking the easy way out.

StavelotXote

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Our goals were to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging and fun. We've said this before. I know you're going to believe whatever you want to believe, but I promise you, that was not at all our goal here.

When we removed Defender kills, it's because we didn't want players to simply give up after a fight. Not playing should never be the optimal strategy. We wanted everybody to fight for the very last node. Stuck because your Alliance mate couldn't take down the link to the node in front of you? Well fight it anyways! See if you can take it down!

We've said before that getting this mode to where we want it to be will be an iterative process. So if there are more iterations that need to be made, we will. But first, we've got to get through a few days of War until we can see how this is working out.

If this is an iterative process, remove the requirements for loss rewards. Might as well get something decent for already wasting your champs for 24 hours in a loss that is decided and having to wait yet another 24 hours with even more champs tied up in attack.

Furthermore, increasing the difficulty of the map isn't an issue, it is the scoring system, period. While I am still not a fan of this new map, the concept of being able to switch paths to help a teammate is good. Get rid of some of the dead spaces between nodes, so that when you move at the start, you can actually do something. Shortening the timers is pointless when there is more dead space on the map.

chunkyb

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

JRock808 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I'm not new to War. I've been organizing them since they started. I'm not getting into personals. Which this is. When you have a Player Base that encompasses all levels and everyone plays the same system, you can't devalue the issues that exist by simply saying, "Git gud".

In a head to head competition yes you absolutely can. There is nothing else to say. You lose, you learn, you try again. You don't claim the win because you spent more for your cleats. Jeez.

Spending is really irrelevant because the larger metric is the Defender Rating. If Players want to finish the Map and choose to spend, that has always been an option. There's never been a penalty for that. The penalty was from trying and getting KO'd. When the opponent has a strong enough Roster, those numbers add up greatly. To the point of making a Win impossible no matter what was chosen for strategy.

So, war. Yeah.
That's how it works
You can't kill me, I can kill you, I win. War.

By your so-called theory, the losing alliance would rank up over time and something something metric, something something, and that would all come out in the wash.

danielmath

DNA3000 wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

JRock808 wrote: »

andrade5184 wrote: »

great job everyone now you got kabam to make wars even harder which will not only result in diversity still being the deciding factor as well as it costing more to win. i mean without defender kills it really sucks that the maps going to be harder now.

Think about it. It's not an accident. The whole goal was to increase revenue via AW.

Our goals were to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging and fun

... on offense. It seems clear that the goal was to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging, and fun on offense. Every single change is disengaging on defense. Eliminating defender kills eliminates the most critical way players were judging defenders. Diversity points dictated a very strong push to place fully diverse champions regardless of what the champions did (and continues to do so). Reducing the node difficulty reduces the ways in which a champion could synergize with and strengthen a node on defense. All of these changes are unambiguously disengaging for players placing defenders.

It does help attackers during the attack phase. It is easier to attack. There are less penalties for attacking poorly and dying. There is more chance for help to arrive on attack with portals and cross over paths. Attacking is a lot easier in every possible way.

The thing is, the only real difference between AW and AQ is defense. If you ignore defense placement then the attack phase has virtually identical game play to AQ. AW is different from AQ in a similar way that Map 6 is different from Map 5. Defensive placement is the gameplay option that exists in AW and doesn't exist in AQ. Players controlling the defensive map is what can make the attack phase fundamentally different from AQ: we aren't attacking the same computer every time, we are attacking different human beings every time.

I think diversity is an albatross, and Kabam shouldn't even want "more diverse" AW. What they should strive for is unpredictable AW. Some players want tough competition and some don't, but all of them could benefit from being surprised by what they find on the AW map. That's why you give the players the ability to place defenders. You want AW maps to be different every time, unlike the static AQ maps that are the same every time. That's the "diversity" you want: not to force people to place every single champion once. You want players to be encouraged to be unpredictable. Confusing diversity with unpredictability is at the core of some of the biggest complaints about 15.0 AW.

To address this - before the diversity changes, there were basically 5-7 defenders that every single player put, it was as predictable as AQ. You always knew who you were fighting, there was never a surprise basically. Though I still preferred the old system but to say it was less predictable is just plain untrue.

Badrose

Kabam Miike wrote: »
Hey Guys,

As we have mentioned many times now, we are still working on the Alliance Wars mode. So those Champions that you think right now might be less useful than they were before, might just become your favourites again.

May someone please explain to me what is chanced now?

RagamugginGunner

You've stated you goals, your dreams, your hopes, your theories and your wildest desires. And we've told you the facts. Diversity is not fun. No defender kills is not fun. Waiting 3 hours between fights moving around the map i not fun. Please fix it.

DNA3000

Kabam Miike wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

At the risk of being repetitive, please explain how map changes are going to accomplish this. You say you want players to think about which defender to place on which node. But what the node does or where it is doesn't matter directly. What matters to the players is "if I place this defender here, what will the result be: good for me, or not good for me."

How do you expect a player to make that decision? Under 14.0, that question had an easy answer: place the defender that will get the most kills. Kills give points, and the more kills the defender gets the greater the chance the defender will also blockade the path. That's logical. That's how we made our decisions.

You say Kabam is adjusting the nodes to make them harder. No matter how easy they are or how hard they are, what should the players be thinking about which defender is better or worse? The only thing we can possibly think in 15.0 is "try to place a defender that can stop a player dead. If that can't happen, then it doesn't really matter what we place." But trying to stop an attacker from continuing to try to attack is your stated reason for removing defender kills. If we aren't allowed to compel an attacker to stop attacking, if we don't get points for defender kills, what's left to judge?

Kabam's position seems to be that if the nodes are harder, then it will matter which defenders get placed. But it only matters if being harder matters. And in 15.0, "harder" only matters if you stop the attacker cold. If you just kill him a couple times, that doesn't affect the war.

A defender isn't better because it hits harder or because he has a difficult to evade special attack or because he regenerates health. That's incidental. A defender is better if it helps us win a war. A defender has one and only one way to ultimately do that. Change the score. We don't get points when it kills an attacker. We only get points if the entire attacking alliance gives up on that path. Short of that, the only points we get is on placement. Nothing about the defender capabilities affects placement points.

Your question: How do you expect a player to make that decision?

The answer is that this still hasn't changed. Those defenders you're placing are still getting kills. Even if your defender doesn't stop a Summoner dead in their tracks, if you manage just one kill, you are still improving your defense in war.

That kill means that you are making them either use another champion to continue to compete, or use a revive/potion (of which there is a limited amount they can use every war). If they lose again, they have to make that choice again. So while that kill no longer grants you points, to say that there is no easy answer to your questions is not true. You still want to place your best defender for the situation/node that gets Kills, because Kills reduce your opponent's ability to move forward.

Just because there are no longer points awarded for a Defender Kill doesn't mean there is no value in defense. Reducing the Champions and offense that your Opponent has at their disposal is a victory. Every time you reduce your opponent's ability to output in the War, it's a victory.

Basically, just like before, you're trying to halt or negatively impact your Opponent's ability to progress, rather than have them award you points. The goal of defense hasn't changed: Exhaust your opponent's Champions and ability to proceed.

With all due respect, it has changed. I speak specifically for myself, although I reasonably assume I'm not alone.

You are incorrect when you say that even if the defender gets one kill that helps. It helps in theory. In practice it doesn't because getting one kill is not enough. Yes, if you can accumulate three kills then the player can be stopped. But that presupposes they won't revive. In 15.0 I am required to make a calculation I did not make in 14.0. If I place a second copy of a defender, is that worth the risk to my alliance because I am costing the a lot of points. Even if that defender gets kills if the other side revives and passes that node, I have just cost my alliance points.

This threshold effect in 15.0 doesn't allow me to focus on the performance of the champ. I have to compare the performance of the champ to the risk associated with losing points. That's something I did not have to do before. My decision process has undeniably changed. And it has changed in a way where since kills don't matter only stopping a player dead matters, you can't value a kill as an incremental step to stopping that player like you could in 14.0.

And it is not even about just that one defender. The problem is strategic in nature. It takes a lot of kills, on average, to stop an attacker. At least three, but since many players use revives, the statistical average is much higher. Lets say six kills is necessary before you can reasonably have a chance to halt a path. There's only about seven fights per AW path minus the final boss. Every single defender on that path must average one kill to stop the attacker. There's a threshold. One kill is worthless. Two kills is worthless. Even three kills might be worthless. Since kills award zero points, they *only* matter if I stop the player. Anything under that threshold gains me nothing. So when I place defenders, it is worthless to place one single strong defender in a sea of weak ones. The kills I get won't be enough to stop the attacker, and anything short of a stop costs my alliance points if I place a duplicate defender.

So to have any chance at converting kills to points I must go all in. I must place the strongest possible defenders on every spot on a path. And if I fail, my alliance is going to lose a ton of points and probably lose. If I hedge even a little, I might as well go all the way and place for diversity points. In effect, going for kills is like trying to draw a straight from scratch. Five out of five cards making a straight is awesome and I probably win. But four out of five cards to the straight is very likely worthless.

This is what is going on in my head, and a variation of this is likely going on in every other player's head that thinks strategically about defense. It is different than 14.0 in a fundamental way that places a huge risk burden on me if I do not place for diversity. The risk is ultimately not generally worth it.

Ragnar5559

U stil don’t seem to get the main issue @kabam miike without defender kills, it will still come to diversity and rating no matter what the points are decreased by because everyone will use and spend to do whatever it takes to 100% and that’s clearly what u want with diversity is more spending, and less skill, and with war that’s a joke!

Born

RagamugginGunner wrote: »

Born wrote: »

So basically you have created a system where allys won’t be able to calculate if they will win or lose until the time runs out?

Defender kills was the way it was calculated in the old system. A team was able to see if they were being out skilled, and make the decision to stop when they ran out of attackers and spend no items cause if they pushed through, they would lose on kills.

Now we have a situation where the result is an uknown until the end as there is no way to accurately calculate the other teams defender rating. So this gives the allys a reason to keep pushing, reviving, healing to clear the map in a hope that their defender rating is higher.

Actually this system is much easier to determine the winner. The higher rated alliance always has the advantage. The dev team clearly doesn't understand that they haven't done anything to prevent alliances to 100% the map so it'll all come down to defender rating. The latest "explanation" just shows how far from the mark they truly are.

Well not necessarily. Just cause someone doesn’t have a high rating, doesn’t mean they aren’t stacked with high level 5*’s and 4*’s. I have a lower rating than most of my ally but have more 4/55’s, 3/45*s and 5/50’s than most of them. They have more overall champs but at lower ratings. So going in, that isn’t the most reliable indication of a win or loss.

Ragnar5559

It’s a joke without defender kills no matter how much the diversity points are

DNA3000

danielmath wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

JRock808 wrote: »

andrade5184 wrote: »

great job everyone now you got kabam to make wars even harder which will not only result in diversity still being the deciding factor as well as it costing more to win. i mean without defender kills it really sucks that the maps going to be harder now.

Think about it. It's not an accident. The whole goal was to increase revenue via AW.

Our goals were to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging and fun

... on offense. It seems clear that the goal was to make Alliance Wars more diverse, engaging, and fun on offense. Every single change is disengaging on defense. Eliminating defender kills eliminates the most critical way players were judging defenders. Diversity points dictated a very strong push to place fully diverse champions regardless of what the champions did (and continues to do so). Reducing the node difficulty reduces the ways in which a champion could synergize with and strengthen a node on defense. All of these changes are unambiguously disengaging for players placing defenders.

It does help attackers during the attack phase. It is easier to attack. There are less penalties for attacking poorly and dying. There is more chance for help to arrive on attack with portals and cross over paths. Attacking is a lot easier in every possible way.

The thing is, the only real difference between AW and AQ is defense. If you ignore defense placement then the attack phase has virtually identical game play to AQ. AW is different from AQ in a similar way that Map 6 is different from Map 5. Defensive placement is the gameplay option that exists in AW and doesn't exist in AQ. Players controlling the defensive map is what can make the attack phase fundamentally different from AQ: we aren't attacking the same computer every time, we are attacking different human beings every time.

I think diversity is an albatross, and Kabam shouldn't even want "more diverse" AW. What they should strive for is unpredictable AW. Some players want tough competition and some don't, but all of them could benefit from being surprised by what they find on the AW map. That's why you give the players the ability to place defenders. You want AW maps to be different every time, unlike the static AQ maps that are the same every time. That's the "diversity" you want: not to force people to place every single champion once. You want players to be encouraged to be unpredictable. Confusing diversity with unpredictability is at the core of some of the biggest complaints about 15.0 AW.

To address this - before the diversity changes, there were basically 5-7 defenders that every single player put, it was as predictable as AQ. You always knew who you were fighting, there was never a surprise basically. Though I still preferred the old system but to say it was less predictable is just plain untrue.

In one sense the new AW is less predictable than 14.0, but in a more important way it is actually a lot more predictable. In 15.0 I cannot predict which champion is likely to be on any particular node, outside of the boss/miniboss nodes, this is true. However, in 15.0 I also do not care which champions are on any particular node, so much so that I don't bother to even scout the placing player or even glance at all at the precombat screen, because I'm killing everything without significant difficulty. I cared who was placed on thorns. I don't care who is placed on 35% attack and 20% armor.

If Kabam released a whole bunch of champs that were stat-identical to currently existing champions and they only changed the appearance of those champions players would complain that Kabam didn't really increase the number of champions, they just reskinned them. That added no additional diversity to the game. 15.0 causes players to place more different champions, but it also reduces the preceived difference between champions. I contend that the net result is that 15.0 AW is not more diverse. It is artificially diverse, but is giving attacking players a more homogeneous experience.

Also, while some defenders were more popular than others, I used to see more than seven different defenders even discounting cases where it was clear the player had an undersized roster. Spider-man, Nightcrawler, Hood, Hyperion, Dormammu, Magik, Juggernaut, Iceman, Electro, Dr. Strange, Mordo, Black Panther Civil Warrior, Agent Venom, Rhino, Yellowjacket, Cyclops and Unstoppable Colossus (5* with MD) are all good defenders that show up a lot even in higher tiers for at least some nodes. Even Ultron showed up as a defender sometimes and isn't a bad choice on certain nodes. Stun immune or increased ability chance for example.

Anonymous

Born wrote: »

RagamugginGunner wrote: »

Born wrote: »

So basically you have created a system where allys won’t be able to calculate if they will win or lose until the time runs out?

Defender kills was the way it was calculated in the old system. A team was able to see if they were being out skilled, and make the decision to stop when they ran out of attackers and spend no items cause if they pushed through, they would lose on kills.

Now we have a situation where the result is an uknown until the end as there is no way to accurately calculate the other teams defender rating. So this gives the allys a reason to keep pushing, reviving, healing to clear the map in a hope that their defender rating is higher.

Actually this system is much easier to determine the winner. The higher rated alliance always has the advantage. The dev team clearly doesn't understand that they haven't done anything to prevent alliances to 100% the map so it'll all come down to defender rating. The latest "explanation" just shows how far from the mark they truly are.

Well not necessarily. Just cause someone doesn’t have a high rating, doesn’t mean they aren’t stacked with high level 5*’s and 4*’s. I have a lower rating than most of my ally but have more 4/55’s, 3/45*s and 5/50’s than most of them. They have more overall champs but at lower ratings. So going in, that isn’t the most reliable indication of a win or loss.

You are correct, but it's a general statement that is usually a correct assumption. Surely, there are some who don't rank lower tier champs as much (I'm only 320k and I have 3 r4 5*s, a few r3 5*s and about 20 r5 4*s or so).