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

Titant17

It’s dishonour again.

Erikfive_0

So glad diversity is the tie breaker.

nuggz

All the wins/loses and now a tie? Wow!
A war decided by diversity and rating is not a war. How long is kabam going to ride this train????

DNA3000

WOK wrote: »

From the numerous posts Ive been able to read in ths past few weeks, I don't recall if anyone had made a suggestion to have defender rating points removed.
From my limited knowledge as it is, what I've been able to deduce from the current AW and the issues/inconsistencies in regards to the scoring is that it doesn't suggest that removing that criteria would negatively affect the main objective of making AW more engaging, fair, and competitive without discouraging to press forward. @DNA3000 if you wouldn't mind sharing your thoughts on this idea and its possible benefits/ramifications, I for one would much appreciate it.

Just came up with a general thought that maybe defender rating could be calculated solely for the process of "fair" matchmaking along with war rating and taken out of the scoring equation.
with diversity remaining intact and points for defender kills making a return along with some other adjustments in the overall score evaluation, could it possibly be a feasible solution to the current argument that "the winner is determined when it begins"? Much more in depth details are clearly needed I know, but it was just a lump of clay I thought could be molded onto something good.

Well, first of all correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we used to get defender rating points in the old war? I thought it was something similar to what we have now. I don't remember very many complaints about defender rating points in the old system even though theoretically speaking it could have swung the results of a close war.

I think the difference is that in 14.0 the amount of points you could get for all combat-related activities - mainly killing nodes, exploring paths, and defender kills - swamped the amount of points you could get from defender placement and defender rating most of the time, so defender rating points were seen as a small adjustment to the overall score. I think if we change the points system in any way that returns the emphasis to combat results and combat performance - whether that is with defender kills or some other way - people will not care about defender rating points and we won't need to do much about them. If we reverted AW back to 14.0 we'd still have rating points but they wouldn't be a problem.

I think the focus on rating points now isn't that people intrinsically are opposed to rating points. I think the problem is that the difference in rating points is huge compared to the difference in combat points in many cases now in 15.0.

It might be helpful to compare 14.0 and 15.0 directly, because I think many of us might have forgotten precisely what the 14.0 details were. I looked up a couple internet sources and I believe this is correct:

14.0 scoring
Boss kill: 20,000 per group
Exploration: 877 per 1%
Defender kill: 100 per
Attacker kill: 50 per
Defender placed: 50 per
Defender rating: 0.002 per rating point

If we analyze this scoring system, we can make some observations. First, each defender placed is worth 50 points, but each attacker kill is worth 50 points. So in fact, ignoring rating for the moment, each killed defender is worth zero: the placer gets 50, the attacker gets 50, and the net overall score remains even. The largest influence on scoring is (besides boss kill) defender kills. And defender kill points are not really a measure of defender strength but rather attacker performance. The attacking side that dies the fewest times will have a huge scoring advantage.

To a first order approximation, whoever kills the most bosses wins. The point difference is just too high to overcome most of the time. When that is tied, exploration and defender kills then come into play. Whichever side explores the most with the least kills wins. And the ratio is pretty high: 8.8 to one. An exploration percent is worth 8.8 attacker deaths. I believe there were 65 traversable nodes (55 defender nodes, 10 empty nodes) which means each node was worth about 1349 points, or each defender node was worth 1595 points. It was always worth attacking a node almost no matter how many deaths it took because it was worth more points than the defender kills would likely generate.

Defender rating is going to be somewhere in the vicinity of 1000-2000 points for most wars, and the difference in defender rating is likely to be a small fraction of that value, probably 200-400 points maximum. For most wars, the defender rating difference was going to be less than one node of exploration or just a handful of defender kills. It would tend to matter only when both exploration and defender kills were very close (or balanced out).

And to be honest, the side placing the higher defender rating defense is very likely to be placing the stronger defense in 14.0 anyway, and likely to be generating more kills. It would take a higher skill level on the other side to overcome that point advantage, but any significant higher skill could do so: it would only take a a few less attacker deaths to overcome those defense side points.

In 14.0, defender rating was a small number compared to defender kills and exploration. And in closely rated matches it was likely worth just one or two kills. I think that is a palatable advantage.

In 15.0, those hundreds of points are no longer counterbalanced with defender kills, and since defense placement for diversity makes an easier map traversal it is no longer counterbalanced with exploration points. If exploration is closely matched then the dominant sources of points are diversity points and rating points. And for most reasonably likely wars diversity points are going to be on the order of a few hundred points apart and rating points are going to be a few hundred points apart. The two are going to decide a lot of wars far more often than rating did in 14.0.

So basically, I think if we somehow change war scoring so that attacker performance is emphasized again, defender rating points won't matter. Maybe even diversity points won't matter. But changing them alone can't help. So I think either way they aren't a problem worth thinking about too much except as part of a holistic change to overall scoring where they need to change to make some other idea work right.

NMEONES

I was hoping for an update about AW today...

DJSergy

NMEONES wrote: »

I was hoping for an update about AW today...

We should be hearing updates very often, similar to v12 updates. The fact that the current AW system is broken and Kabam doesn’t show any sense of urgency to fix it just blows my mind. Saying they need data collection, iteration and feed back is the lamest excuse I’ve heard. It is quickly making players lose their interest in the game and if they don’t fix this nonesense they will lose a lot of their player base.

Kabam says they love their player base but their actions show no respect towards their players. We deserve better than this

Kpatrix

DNA3000 wrote: »

WOK wrote: »

From the numerous posts Ive been able to read in ths past few weeks, I don't recall if anyone had made a suggestion to have defender rating points removed.
From my limited knowledge as it is, what I've been able to deduce from the current AW and the issues/inconsistencies in regards to the scoring is that it doesn't suggest that removing that criteria would negatively affect the main objective of making AW more engaging, fair, and competitive without discouraging to press forward. @DNA3000 if you wouldn't mind sharing your thoughts on this idea and its possible benefits/ramifications, I for one would much appreciate it.

Just came up with a general thought that maybe defender rating could be calculated solely for the process of "fair" matchmaking along with war rating and taken out of the scoring equation.
with diversity remaining intact and points for defender kills making a return along with some other adjustments in the overall score evaluation, could it possibly be a feasible solution to the current argument that "the winner is determined when it begins"? Much more in depth details are clearly needed I know, but it was just a lump of clay I thought could be molded onto something good.

Well, first of all correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we used to get defender rating points in the old war? I thought it was something similar to what we have now. I don't remember very many complaints about defender rating points in the old system even though theoretically speaking it could have swung the results of a close war.

I think the difference is that in 14.0 the amount of points you could get for all combat-related activities - mainly killing nodes, exploring paths, and defender kills - swamped the amount of points you could get from defender placement and defender rating most of the time, so defender rating points were seen as a small adjustment to the overall score. I think if we change the points system in any way that returns the emphasis to combat results and combat performance - whether that is with defender kills or some other way - people will not care about defender rating points and we won't need to do much about them. If we reverted AW back to 14.0 we'd still have rating points but they wouldn't be a problem.

I think the focus on rating points now isn't that people intrinsically are opposed to rating points. I think the problem is that the difference in rating points is huge compared to the difference in combat points in many cases now in 15.0.

It might be helpful to compare 14.0 and 15.0 directly, because I think many of us might have forgotten precisely what the 14.0 details were. I looked up a couple internet sources and I believe this is correct:

14.0 scoring
Boss kill: 20,000 per group
Exploration: 877 per 1%
Defender kill: 100 per
Attacker kill: 50 per
Defender placed: 50 per
Defender rating: 0.002 per rating point

If we analyze this scoring system, we can make some observations. First, each defender placed is worth 50 points, but each attacker kill is worth 50 points. So in fact, ignoring rating for the moment, each killed defender is worth zero: the placer gets 50, the attacker gets 50, and the net overall score remains even. The largest influence on scoring is (besides boss kill) defender kills. And defender kill points are not really a measure of defender strength but rather attacker performance. The attacking side that dies the fewest times will have a huge scoring advantage.

To a first order approximation, whoever kills the most bosses wins. The point difference is just too high to overcome most of the time. When that is tied, exploration and defender kills then come into play. Whichever side explores the most with the least kills wins. And the ratio is pretty high: 8.8 to one. An exploration percent is worth 8.8 attacker deaths. I believe there were 65 traversable nodes (55 defender nodes, 10 empty nodes) which means each node was worth about 1349 points, or each defender node was worth 1595 points. It was always worth attacking a node almost no matter how many deaths it took because it was worth more points than the defender kills would likely generate.

Defender rating is going to be somewhere in the vicinity of 1000-2000 points for most wars, and the difference in defender rating is likely to be a small fraction of that value, probably 200-400 points maximum. For most wars, the defender rating difference was going to be less than one node of exploration or just a handful of defender kills. It would tend to matter only when both exploration and defender kills were very close (or balanced out).

And to be honest, the side placing the higher defender rating defense is very likely to be placing the stronger defense in 14.0 anyway, and likely to be generating more kills. It would take a higher skill level on the other side to overcome that point advantage, but any significant higher skill could do so: it would only take a a few less attacker deaths to overcome those defense side points.

In 14.0, defender rating was a small number compared to defender kills and exploration. And in closely rated matches it was likely worth just one or two kills. I think that is a palatable advantage.

In 15.0, those hundreds of points are no longer counterbalanced with defender kills, and since defense placement for diversity makes an easier map traversal it is no longer counterbalanced with exploration points. If exploration is closely matched then the dominant sources of points are diversity points and rating points. And for most reasonably likely wars diversity points are going to be on the order of a few hundred points apart and rating points are going to be a few hundred points apart. The two are going to decide a lot of wars far more often than rating did in 14.0.

So basically, I think if we somehow change war scoring so that attacker performance is emphasized again, defender rating points won't matter. Maybe even diversity points won't matter. But changing them alone can't help. So I think either way they aren't a problem worth thinking about too much except as part of a holistic change to overall scoring where they need to change to make some other idea work right.

I think your math is off a little, each tile was worth 450 points, plus 50 for the defender, meaning you could die 5 times and break even. 23% exploration equaled one boss kill, if you had 97% and two boss kills you could beat your opponent with 73% and 3 boss kills, assuming defender kills were the same. If they had given up more then you could make up a percentage point per 6 kills or so. I'm not 100% sure, but that's how we used to calculate on whether we needed 3 boss kills or not

Kpatrix

The point I'm trying to get across is in 14.0, there were several strategies you could use. You could go boss express with very few defender kills and kill all 3 bosses, you could go for max exploration, you had a lot more options. You could win with 9 per bg, even 8.
That's impossible now, unless you stack your defense so strong that you stop the other team dead and hope they don't revive while you have to hit 100% against their diverse defenders. If they are matching you on exploration, you just give up; that's the same thing they said they wanted to get away from with defender kills.
The former system worked much better than this one does. There is only one possible setup you can use to give you your best shot at winning, and the outcome is decided before the war starts. It's nowhere near as much fun or strategic, and skill is not rewarded. It isn't really a completion, which is what the heart of pre 15 war was.

WOK

@DNA3000 Thanks for your insight! I've never been one to notice the details of things that I enjoyed doing, especially for entertainment, and MCOC was no different. Just recently started being more interested in them because the game slowly lost its appeal with all the consistent problems and faulty changes post 12.0. Thanks again for your efforts in breaking down the points and affording me a more clear view at what has happened with the AW points snafu. Keep doing what you do my friend!

mostlyharmlessn

Kabam Miike wrote: »

This is exactly what I talked about with Sctty2hotty33_, we don't need "pressure" to make changes. We already agree that there is work that needs to be done with Alliance Wars, especially from where it started with this iteration. We're getting closer to where we want to be with Alliance Wars, and we'll know more after this series of wars finish.

We are committed to making sure we make this mode the best that it can be! We're not giving up, and we want to work with you guys to make it happen. We understand that it's frustrating that it's taking a while, but this might take a few more iterations. Hopefully not many, but we're going to have to wait and see where we're at soon!

Mike that might be because it seems pressure is the only way things happen.

There have been excellent suggestions that have come out of this discussion by the player base, and requests that have been around for so long players are just frustrated to the point of quitting or not wanting to take part in AW anymore.

The Dexterity / MD interaction change has been requested for as long as I can remember players realizing that every evade counted as new and fed MD.

The player base has for the most part rejected Defender Diversity. If you really want it to be a tie breaking metric then how about 1 point for the team that has most diverse defenders overall?

Defender kills needs to be added back. Yes maps have a tendency to get 100% explored, but the idea with defender kills would be to help discourage 100% exploration. because unless there's a real benefit to reviving such as at a Boss or mini, the opposition will be less likely to revive.

Some alliances are just placing defenders now and letting the time expire to collect loss rewards because the rewards for a win just do not outweigh the time to do the map now.

Max_

We have adjusted our game playing as a group we focus on feature 4 and 5 start champs. It’s nice to see different champs in AW defense. The MD is no longer and issue. Thank you. I hardly come across it now.

The new system is not the best but it’s playable.

unknown

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hurricant

linux wrote: »

Max_ wrote: »

We have adjusted our game playing as a group we focus on feature 4 and 5 start champs. It’s nice to see different champs in AW defense. The MD is no longer and issue. Thank you. I hardly come across it now.

The new system is not the best but it’s playable.

But the problem with taking slow action is that Kabam will wind up losing all the players who liked competitive AW in favor of those who just want another easy chore like AQ.

Like someone said earlier, they could ruin war in one big change, but suddenly fixing it takes months

RagamugginGunner

It literally takes two seconds to add defender kill points. They're still taking it so don't give me any **** about it being a hard change.

It seems like they'd rather piss off their players and let AW die than admit they were 100% wrong about diversity and defender kills.

Huluhula

Max_ wrote: »

We have adjusted our game playing as a group we focus on feature 4 and 5 start champs. It’s nice to see different champs in AW defense. The MD is no longer and issue. Thank you. I hardly come across it now.

The new system is not the best but it’s playable.

It’s people like this, that haven’t figured out how to play around MD that are the problem

ChiSox_2005

Let's face the truth. This is all about MONEY! Until they bring back Defender Kills, any Alliance can bring max diversity and BUY THE WIN.

mostlyharmlessn

Max_ wrote: »

We have adjusted our game playing as a group we focus on feature 4 and 5 start champs. It’s nice to see different champs in AW defense. The MD is no longer and issue. Thank you. I hardly come across it now.

The new system is not the best but it’s playable.

I think most would agree MD itself isn't the problem... the interaction between Dexterity and MD is the problem since Dexterity would count as new buff every single time you evaded.

If you evade and trigger dexterity a few times without ever hitting an opponent. It come across magik you would push them past a bar of power and start dying for evading, or end up with a Juggs/UC that spends nearly an entire fight unstoppable.

Cosmic_Ray13

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

Max_ wrote: »

We have adjusted our game playing as a group we focus on feature 4 and 5 start champs. It’s nice to see different champs in AW defense. The MD is no longer and issue. Thank you. I hardly come across it now.

The new system is not the best but it’s playable.

I think most would agree MD itself isn't the problem... the interaction between Dexterity and MD is the problem since Dexterity would count as new buff every single time you evaded.

If you evade and trigger dexterity a few times without ever hitting an opponent. It come across magik you would push them past a bar of power and start dying for evading, or end up with a Juggs/UC that spends nearly an entire fight unstoppable.

Sorry for being the noob here but what does MD mean?

DaMunk

Mystic dispersion

GroundedWisdom

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

Max_ wrote: »

We have adjusted our game playing as a group we focus on feature 4 and 5 start champs. It’s nice to see different champs in AW defense. The MD is no longer and issue. Thank you. I hardly come across it now.

The new system is not the best but it’s playable.

I think most would agree MD itself isn't the problem... the interaction between Dexterity and MD is the problem since Dexterity would count as new buff every single time you evaded.

If you evade and trigger dexterity a few times without ever hitting an opponent. It come across magik you would push them past a bar of power and start dying for evading, or end up with a Juggs/UC that spends nearly an entire fight unstoppable.

It wasn't the MD/Dexterity interaction that caused issues alone. There were many issues.

Cosmic_Ray13

DaMunk wrote: »

Mystic dispersion

OK thank you...... and what is that may I ask?

DaMunk

Well I actually come on here to add another complaint. Looks like there's plenty to go around. Kabam needs to communicate better and implement a fix soon. We just lost another war due to the new system, diversity was fine, defender rating was the determining factor. Heck who knows we might have lost anyway but it was pretty much a tie except for a small difference in DR. So war was lost before it began, there was basically nothing we could do to win. I can't imagine another month of this ****. Fix your darn game.

DNA3000

hurricant wrote: »

linux wrote: »

Max_ wrote: »

We have adjusted our game playing as a group we focus on feature 4 and 5 start champs. It’s nice to see different champs in AW defense. The MD is no longer and issue. Thank you. I hardly come across it now.

The new system is not the best but it’s playable.

But the problem with taking slow action is that Kabam will wind up losing all the players who liked competitive AW in favor of those who just want another easy chore like AQ.

Like someone said earlier, they could ruin war in one big change, but suddenly fixing it takes months

Unfortunately, this is typical for how MMO development works. When it works it works, when it doesn't work it just doesn't work.

A project like this generally starts with a problem statement. Alliance War needs work because blank. Greatly simplifying things, blank turns into a list of problems, the list of problems turns into a set of metrics that can quantify the problem, a redesign is created that is intended to address those problems, the design is implemented and pushed out. Then the game is run with the new design and data collected on those very same metrics to see if they are improving. If they get to where the devs want them to go, they are done (as done as anything is ever done in an MMO). If not, the tweak parts of the design and go again: test, measure, repeat.

Typically, the major design and implementation work happens in one long phase under development conditions completely different from what's going on when the devs are just tweaking things, so they don't just redesign things. It is always design, implement, datamine, review, tweak, datamine, review, tweak. This loop doesn't go back to design often, and datamine generally takes a significant amount of time: at least a week, sometimes a month or more.

The fact that Kabam has gone relatively quiet tells me there's a good chance they are in a tweak, datamine, review, tweak loop. There's nothing to talk about while data is being collected. And since the tweak loop doesn't generally make major design changes (there are complex operational reasons this is generally true) and since I know only design changes are going to address the problems I perceive in the current version of war, I'm unwilling to simply wait and see.

Keep in mind: I defended the devs when it came to the equally controversial balance changes to Dr. Strange. I thought they cut too deep, but I said then and I continue to say that sometimes the devs design/tweak/datamine/tweak methods are the only way they can really get to where they want to go, and Strange was an example. I think it was obvious his healing was cut too drastically, but that's something you can iterate to a better solution. I wish it could be done better and faster, and many people still think he's cut too deep, but no process can guarantee the devs will agree with the players on what needs to be changed. The point is when you're tweaking numbers anyway, iteratively tweaking numbers is a legitimate way to try to find the right ones.

But here, tweaking numbers is not the right way to solve the problems AW has. So datamine-driven iterative tweaking isn't going to get there no matter how many iterations and no matter what metrics are being monitored.

Maybe they've gone back to the drawing board and that's why they are quiet. I suppose it is possible. But if they were doing that, there's no reason to keep that a secret. The most logical reason for being quiet is they still believe that they can datamine their way to a solution and they are just waiting for the good news to come from the game data.

You think it is frustrating not knowing what's going on. It ain't less frustrating when you have a pretty good guess.

DNA3000

ChiSox_2005 wrote: »

Let's face the truth. This is all about MONEY! Until they bring back Defender Kills, any Alliance can bring max diversity and BUY THE WIN.

I don't think this is necessarily generating revenue. The higher diversity defense placements are also easier to kill. Combined with the easier nodes, I'm mostly just walking through my paths. I'm one of the stronger attackers in my alliance so that's not a universal thing, but my experience is that in making the attack phase easier, it is likely that less players are spending less units on less potions in Alliance War. Yes, you can buy victories. But I don't think as many alliances have to buy completions now.

Win or lose, I'm spending measurably less on war now. I don't think I'm a wide outlier.

Luca

Defkills need too come back. So skill can counter rating and diversity to some extent. The nodes are still easy, diversity just makes it worse. Every organized alliance has full diversity and can 100% the maps easily. So it always comes down to rating. There is no way you can beat an alliance with a higher defrating. Thats very frustrating, and not the way alliance wars should be.

Donyb

Here’s another example of why defender kills are needed the way the scoring is discourages skill and strategy and where the winner is the ones that spend cold hard cash to get suicide masteries and boosted

Darkwolf1981

Ok, for several wars we a 10m alliance have played since the update it keeps coming down to spending to win. My alliance which was founded March 2015 will not spend a 100 dollars every War which has created us to go from tier 2 war when it was based on skill to tier 6 and up which is based on spending. I have been dedicated to this game more than any other and have not missed a log in since march 2015 when I formed this Alliance. Being wars is a huge part of growth for its the only way to fulfill loyalty donations when giving 12.5k per week or should not be a money grab. Leave that to the extra content not the main content if u actually care about the community as a whole rich/poor your discriminating the poor section to lower rewards while granting the spenders a window to the #1 spot. Im reaching my limit after 3 years. If I and my alliance can't play the basics in a game without paying to do so I believe I can do that in another game for free. I've spent thousands to learn this lesson in the past 3 years but am not unable to spend so it's looking very clear what War has become. I have built my roster on my own with my own skill and now if I want to remain playing wars for rewards worthy of my size I now have to spend to do so. I. Know a company is built on profits but i am very disappointed in how wars was altered on everybody to make the new owners richer. Very disappointing that Google has this listed as Editors Choice when every said attempt to make the game more enjoyable has segregated the players from rich and poor.

ChiSox_2005

DNA3000 wrote: »

ChiSox_2005 wrote: »

Let's face the truth. This is all about MONEY! Until they bring back Defender Kills, any Alliance can bring max diversity and BUY THE WIN.

I don't think this is necessarily generating revenue. The higher diversity defense placements are also easier to kill. Combined with the easier nodes, I'm mostly just walking through my paths. I'm one of the stronger attackers in my alliance so that's not a universal thing, but my experience is that in making the attack phase easier, it is likely that less players are spending less units on less potions in Alliance War. Yes, you can buy victories. But I don't think as many alliances have to buy completions now.

Win or lose, I'm spending measurably less on war now. I don't think I'm a wide outlier.

I think you make a great point, but what you are missing is that this has opened the door for weaker alliance to beat stronger alliances (7M vs 10M). That is why we continue to see alliances losing when they dominate the defender kills colum (120 vs 100). These alliance are not walking through like you. They are buying their way through and winning on diversity rather than skill.

unknown

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DarkQuill

Im with much anger, when I see Kabam's disregard for our problem, AQ is coming to an end and they have not fixed the problem and my alliance will be hampered due to a problem that is not our fault.