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

nuggz

We just started another war. This is how the begining now goes in most wars

DJSergy

nuggz wrote: »

Damn good idea, we going to try that... btw we don’t even chat anymore in warroom. Used to be a fun chat to talk with the opponent about how easy or tough their defense was, share placement strategies and sometimes some fun trash talk during close wars. Damn, we miss having fun in AW.

#boringAW #fixAW

Mystic_Class

Like you would have a soccer game, but it doesn’t matter how many goals each team scores, the winner is the team with most players with different age and how tall they are..

Greywarden

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

So, to reiterate, skill is the ability to finish all Fights without dying, and those that have skill should be rewarded. While those that KO and keep trying to help the team should have a forced penalty. Is that what we're saying? I honestly don't understand how I'm the only one who sees how unreasonable that is to say, so I'm just going to state my view rather than debate that.
Skill in War is about working together as a team, through strategy of Offense and Defense, to complete the Map and gain the most Points. There should be no penalty for making an effort. People may view the ability to win unharmed as skill, but that doesn't mean that view has to be enforced through penalty. There should be no penalty for making an effort to complete the Map because it creates a lose/lose situation where you need to complete to have a chance, but you have consequences for trying. There is nothing fair or skillful about that scenario. It's not about finishing without dying. It's about helping your team to make as many Points as possible. I don't agree that Defender Kills are the earmark for skill, so I will peace out of that aspect of the conversation. Anyone can KO, whether through their efforts, or lagging controls and other issues, and trying to fight shouldn't be a penalty.

There should be a penalty if both groups 100% but one does it by dying less times, not sure how that doesn't make sense.

Right now the 'penalty' with all else being equal is defender rating which is as far from skill as you can get.

Maybe there is a better metric for skill than kills but I haven't heard it in this 100+ page thread. Surely you can't argue that rating is a better metric of skill than defender kills.

PlasmaKing

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

PlasmaKing wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Which means the current solution would be Ranking or boosting in other ways. Without forming an opinion, that would be the answer to optimizing efficiency. We are going to lose Wars now and then in whatever system we play.

Sorry again you miss the point alliance war isn't fun and isn't war. It's a cheap diy AQ right now. You don't need to actually fight to win, you know before starting the result in the main.

War needs to allow the ability for weaker teams to win and tbh that's through skill and dying less. There are many cases of real battles were strategy and the captains ensuring they kept their troops alive longer while killing the enemy faster won the day.

If you're in an alliance and you don't like dying then don't play AW, but war has to be war otherwise call it short AQ because right now at best that's what it is.

What you're talking about is penalizing the opponent through trying, and having a penalty for attempting has very little to do with skill at all. It's not necessary to have Defender Kills in order to have a skill component. That can be achieved through adding some other form of difficulty. By having metrics for Defender Kills that become the main focus, you're actually creating a situation that removes the ability for Offense. Thereby making it Defense Wars. I'm sorry, but I do not agree that Defender Kills are absolutely necessary for a skill component. The only time that is used as an argument is in reference to the opposing team. What it really means is people are upset that they can't win by causing the other team to try itself into a Loss.

Now that just proves you really don't have a coherent thought, of course the amount you die is directly proportional to your skill. Burning your items is a direct indication of level of skill because you can't beat the champs in front of you without dying. Kills is ABSOLUTELY an offensive and defensive measure.

Right now the nodes aren't anywhere hard enough to make diversity credible right now, aw is a cake walk almost any alliance will always 100% it so skill is the measure not a set up measure just as what's deciding now.

If you don't have a credible team then you loose defensively or offensively because you can't die less or kill more! It's very simple and your circular discussions stop there as only noise is what you will be making from this point onwards.

World Eater

Remember when they said AW wouldn't have many linked nodes. Another Lie. Linked nodes all over the damn place.

nuggz

Alliance wars! Where less skilled allainces can prevail as long as they have higher pi

Slickpetey

I have zero interest in participating in Alliance War now. We went from a Tier 2 Alliance in AW to a Tier 6 Alliance in AW.

Our most recent loss was today. We only had 29participants because someone left the Alliance. We lost by 300 points which was defender rating and defenders placed. We had 78 defender kills to their 34 defender kills but with 1 less participant we auto lose.

I don’t even want to talk about how stupid diversity is.

We have multiple LoL killers, a lot of very skilled players, finished top 500 in Alliance Quest, yet we lose wars to extremely weak alliances. It’s dumb.

GroundedWisdom

Greywarden wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

So, to reiterate, skill is the ability to finish all Fights without dying, and those that have skill should be rewarded. While those that KO and keep trying to help the team should have a forced penalty. Is that what we're saying? I honestly don't understand how I'm the only one who sees how unreasonable that is to say, so I'm just going to state my view rather than debate that.
Skill in War is about working together as a team, through strategy of Offense and Defense, to complete the Map and gain the most Points. There should be no penalty for making an effort. People may view the ability to win unharmed as skill, but that doesn't mean that view has to be enforced through penalty. There should be no penalty for making an effort to complete the Map because it creates a lose/lose situation where you need to complete to have a chance, but you have consequences for trying. There is nothing fair or skillful about that scenario. It's not about finishing without dying. It's about helping your team to make as many Points as possible. I don't agree that Defender Kills are the earmark for skill, so I will peace out of that aspect of the conversation. Anyone can KO, whether through their efforts, or lagging controls and other issues, and trying to fight shouldn't be a penalty.

There should be a penalty if both groups 100% but one does it by dying less times, not sure how that doesn't make sense.

Right now the 'penalty' with all else being equal is defender rating which is as far from skill as you can get.

Maybe there is a better metric for skill than kills but I haven't heard it in this 100+ page thread. Surely you can't argue that rating is a better metric of skill than defender kills.

What I said is that Defender Kills are not necessary for skill. There are other ways to add more difficulty. It's the fact that it's a penalty for dying and trying that is the issue. People shouldn't be penalized at the cost of the War for KO'ing and making a continued effort to finish the Map. They could add more difficulty to the Map. They could add Bonus Points to those that finish without dying for that matter, if they wanted to reward that aspect. It's not necessary to make it a penalty.
I don't agree that skill requires penalizing the Offense for trying. That's exactly what it is. It's limiting the Offensive effort through penalty of death. That's not at all skill to me. That's a trap.

Anonymous

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I don't agree that skill requires penalizing the Offense for trying. That's exactly what it is. It's limiting the Offensive effort through penalty of death. That's not at all skill to me. That's a trap. [/quote]

That "trap" is called defense. It's a normal aspect of war, offense is your attack, defense is your "trap". And technically, no one was ever penalized for trying and dying, the other alliance was awarded points towards helping his team win the competitive war.

nuggz

If they wanna make the nodes ridiculously hard then we just end up going back to placing hard defenders with a little less diveristy and hope we aren't facing whales.
And @GroundedWisdom adding points for ppl that don't die is the same difference as defender kills. Still the more skilled players (the ppl who died the least) get more points. Half the stuff you say makes no sense at all

nuggz

Either way you look at it the ppl who die the least while completing a map are in fact the more skilled players. Period! They ppl who made multiple more attempt then the opponents at the same thing are less skilled.

nuggz

@GroundedWisdom

Ypu want to know why ppl should lose points for dieing? Because it's a WAR!!! you're fight other players in a battle. This isn't a quest or aq.
Again it's a War!!!!

@Kabam Miike

Speaking of a war! The fun is in the competition, the adrenaline rush, the difficulty, the teamwork, the strategy. Kabam can't force champs on us that don't fit that criteria and that's what they are doing. This is why war is no longer fun. There's no sense of urgency, no ability to set up a war with the champs we want with diversity points.
Of course in order to win wars we are force to place them to max out diveristy, we are forced to 100% the map because our opponents will do the same. So our only option is to how that our defender rating is higher and that we ranked up all our diverse champs. U know the ones that we have NO use for outside of this one catagory of the game.

How about this. Diversity should apply to kabam as well. If u place a champ in chapter quest than that champ cannot be place in the same chapter.

DJSergy

Not sure why Kabam just keeps ignoring this issue. Im close to quiting the game and most fellow alliance members feel the same way. AW was the most fun mode of the game.

The previous AW system had only one flaw and it was Mystic Dispersion and the way it interacts with dexterity. That was the only thing you will find in old forum posts players complaining about and asking for a change. Other than that, players loved AW.

It just blows my mind that instead of making a simple change Kabam decides to completely change AW scoring system and mess up the whole mode. Who’s idea was this??? Was this mode beta tested prior to the release??? Thought new changes like these were going to be beta tested to prevent another v12 debacle smh

unknown

This content has been removed.

GroundedWisdom

nuggz wrote: »

If they wanna make the nodes ridiculously hard then we just end up going back to placing hard defenders with a little less diveristy and hope we aren't facing whales.
And @GroundedWisdom adding points for ppl that don't die is the same difference as defender kills. Still the more skilled players (the ppl who died the least) get more points. Half the stuff you say makes no sense at all

The difference is one encourages people to play instead of penalizing their efforts.

Badrose

For the love of god... using revives is not an effort, it's just buying the win because you can't compete!

Thestoryteller6

DNA3000 wrote: »

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.

Just want to mention that reports from NYC seem to imply that there is a large change being worked on. Also they are to imply that everyone on the front lines of Kabam is aware of the fundamental issues with AW. I agree with you completely, why not just come out and say it and save a lot of grief? Well, I don't know but since it's Kabam I'm willing to believe they are working on an overhaul and just decided not to communicate that.

GroundedWisdom

Badrose wrote: »

For the love of god... using revives is not an effort, it's just buying the win because you can't compete!

Considering one of the main complaints is that the Map is too easy, I doubt that's the issue. Spending has always been an option. People were spending in the old system. Effort is exactly what it is. If people choose to, or need to use Resources, that shouldn't be a penalty either. They've been doing it all along. The difference is if you die, you have a penalty. Which means they were spending for less chance to Win.

Anonymous

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Badrose wrote: »

For the love of god... using revives is not an effort, it's just buying the win because you can't compete!

Considering one of the main complaints is that the Map is too easy, I doubt that's the issue. Spending has always been an option. People were spending in the old system. Effort is exactly what it is. If people choose to, or need to use Resources, that shouldn't be a penalty either. They've been doing it all along. The difference is if you die, you have a penalty. Which means they were spending for less chance to Win.

What you call "penalty" we all refer to as an intelligent decision to rank up certain champs for their effectiveness. They didn't take points away for dying in the old system anyway so not sure why you're referring to it as a penalty.

GroundedWisdom

Anonymous wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Badrose wrote: »

For the love of god... using revives is not an effort, it's just buying the win because you can't compete!

Considering one of the main complaints is that the Map is too easy, I doubt that's the issue. Spending has always been an option. People were spending in the old system. Effort is exactly what it is. If people choose to, or need to use Resources, that shouldn't be a penalty either. They've been doing it all along. The difference is if you die, you have a penalty. Which means they were spending for less chance to Win.

What you call "penalty" we all refer to as an intelligent decision to rank up certain champs for their effectiveness. They didn't take points away for dying in the old system anyway so not sure why you're referring to it as a penalty.

Penalty is exactly what it is. You fight, you die, you lose Points for dying.

SuperJacob

the biggeat issue i have is scoring diversity is the only important thing now. even not placing defenders doesnt hurt you if you can 100% opponent.we wouldve lost if they had beat a bosseven though our def rating was much better and we placed 10 more defenders

Menkent

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Penalty is exactly what it is. You fight, you die, you lose Points for dying.

Yes. It's a fighting game. Losing fights should be bad.

Etaki_Lirakoi

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Anonymous wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Badrose wrote: »

For the love of god... using revives is not an effort, it's just buying the win because you can't compete!

Considering one of the main complaints is that the Map is too easy, I doubt that's the issue. Spending has always been an option. People were spending in the old system. Effort is exactly what it is. If people choose to, or need to use Resources, that shouldn't be a penalty either. They've been doing it all along. The difference is if you die, you have a penalty. Which means they were spending for less chance to Win.

What you call "penalty" we all refer to as an intelligent decision to rank up certain champs for their effectiveness. They didn't take points away for dying in the old system anyway so not sure why you're referring to it as a penalty.

Penalty is exactly what it is. You fight, you die, you lose Points for dying.

Penalty usually means either “punishment for breaking a rule” or “given a disadvantage or handicap because of not complying with the rules”, what you are talking about is more along the lines of a “Failure”, “Defeat” or a “Loss”.

It’s not penalty, that’s not what the word means exactly, it’s a little misguiding.

GroundedWisdom

Etaki_Lirakoi wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Anonymous wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Badrose wrote: »

For the love of god... using revives is not an effort, it's just buying the win because you can't compete!

Considering one of the main complaints is that the Map is too easy, I doubt that's the issue. Spending has always been an option. People were spending in the old system. Effort is exactly what it is. If people choose to, or need to use Resources, that shouldn't be a penalty either. They've been doing it all along. The difference is if you die, you have a penalty. Which means they were spending for less chance to Win.

What you call "penalty" we all refer to as an intelligent decision to rank up certain champs for their effectiveness. They didn't take points away for dying in the old system anyway so not sure why you're referring to it as a penalty.

Penalty is exactly what it is. You fight, you die, you lose Points for dying.

Penalty means either punishment for breaking a rule or given a disadvantage or handicap because of not complying with the rules, what you are talking about is a “Failure”, “Defeat” or “Loss”.

It’s not penalty, that’s not what the word means exactly, it’s a little misguiding.

I'm not getting into semantics. Handicap is exactly what it creates. With the metrics as high as they were, it made a cumulative nail in the coffin. The Defender Kills amounted to a defining metric for Wars. When you have to limit your participation in Offense based on a metric that penalizes you for trying, that's not strategy or skill. That's a constraint. For the team who is accumulating the Defender Kills, I'm sure that's lucrative. However, to the team trying to gain Exploration and have a chance, that creates a perpetually degenerating situation. The more they try, the more they dig their own grave. The point of Wars is to make an effort to gain the most Points. Not to have to gauge whether to make an effort for it and sacrifice trying to finish the Map because dying costs Points. Trying and failing is one thing. Being docked for trying is another.

Jrboutdoorsman1

U r destroying the game kabamm, I've been playing since it started and new war set up where defender kills doesn't count is totally ridiculous, skill no longer matters! A team willing to give u the cash will almost always win, of course I spouse that's your intent. Thanks A lot. We jus lost a war because the other team was willing to give u money, we had 104 defensive kills compared to there 60, and that doesn't matter in a war. Seriously, so what's the point of war anymore than?

Menkent

Put this guy in charge of the department of defense. "It's not fair that dying more makes us lose wars."
Surely this is just trolling.

nuggz

@GroundedWisdom

***sigh***

nuggz

If kabam has intentions of fixing things and knows they are wrong it would be in their best interest to admit that as soon as possible. Not just to save grief but to save members as well.
We all know this is wrong. A simple reply would be nice. I don't mean "changes are coming".

I mean specifics and a real apology

Jaffacaked

Please just ignore grounded wisdom guys, it's clear he is just here to cause arguments (his words) and has no common sense and any clue how the game is working. He is just blindly defending kabam when in fact kabam know they have made a huge mistake with aw.

A few people who went to comic con an spoke to them have said they know they screwed the pooch an are working on a big fix, it's just extremely frustrating that they are not communicating any of this to us. We've lost some great members from our alliance an so many other alliance's have also lost great player an friends. Hopefully they issue an announcement once aw is down for maintenance on what they plan to do about it going forward