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

k666k

Everyone wants defender kills back, how hard is that to understand, but I guess its not designed to be what we want.

Donyb

I’m in agreement if alliance war continues to go the way it’s going rank down tickets have to be issued

Tension3

Why don’t you just tell us that you want money,more and more money? So If you like to play with that then go for it otherwise stop mentioning that again and again “spender will win”cause we know that already ??

Voluntaris

Donyb wrote: »

I’m in agreement if alliance war continues to go the way it’s going rank down tickets have to be issued

if Diversity Parade "wars" continues as is through end of the year, i'll be quitting. Hate when developers destroy the games I love.

Daddylonglegs93

I'm all for more interesting fights, but these changes do not convince many of us you're really thinking things through. Node 35 was already one of the hardest nodes on the map. In tier 1, you basically have 3 options - SESM, OG Vision, and OG Daredevil. Most of us only have one of those, and as is, he easily times out on that node. Now it's worse? And then another enhanced L2 node with poison? So what, if you didn't buy OGV, you can just stop advancing there? And then SPITE? In war? That node was annoying enough in challenges and other content, but now we have to deal with it in an environment where enemies will likely have mystic dispersion? How exactly is that supposed to work out? Dexterity is still essential and still interacts with MD. That was the most decisive factor in war before these changes, and now you're giving us a node that makes it twice as bad? Come on guys.

Then there's the real problem - last time your map changed, my alliance took you at your word and went with an actual difficult defense. We then had two wars in a row with over 200 defender kills, and lost because of diversity, your little tiebreaker. We would've won if kills counted for basically anything. That exact same dynamic can happen again here. Can you please explain to us why defender kills are so bad, because I don't think anyone's been satisfied with previous answers, and it really feels like they'd fix war pretty quick.

DNA3000

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Raganator wrote: »

You still make zero sense. Don't want people to feel discourage so take away defender kills, so just make nodes harder to discourage people. Stupid.

The "discouraged" comment is surrounding the idea of not taking on a fight for the sake of not giving the other Alliance Points. This causes people to make the choice to just not fight. Not fighting in a war should never be the optimal strategy.

I feel this needs to be said. This was *never* the optimal strategy. If you are surrendering an entire path and giving up while you still have live attackers, the odds are pretty good you are going to lose. I don't argue with the notion that some players did this, but when you say this shouldn't be the optimal strategy you are supporting the notion that an intelligent player might choose to do this for good reasons. A player might do this, but it would never be the right choice.

These changes are being made to move some of the emphasis away from Defender Diversity, and back on to making educated choices with your Defender placement. Before jumping to "This won't work", give the map a couple runs through. This will also help us gather more data on any further adjustments that might need to be made.

This won't work. The map might be different, and it is possible that there might be a reason to place a specific defender on a specific node now. But that calculus is going to be made in the same way by basically everyone. You are basically presenting me with the kind of decision I don't want, where either I place a random defender on the node because it doesn't matter, or I place a specific defender on the node because it is built for that defender. To overcome the diversity point disadvantage, being able to generate a single kill is not enough. And I can't rely on cumulative kills on a path, because the rest of the path isn't going to generate kills unless the entire path has the strongest possible defenders. Which means forfeiting a huge amount of diversity points. That's an all or nothing situation.

If you want players to actually make strategic decisions about placing a defender, they have to weigh two different things and choose between them. Right now the two things being weighed are diversity points on one side, and the ability for the defender to generate more points than diversity would have granted on the other side. But the only way for a defender to currently generate points is to show-stop a path. Being strong enough to generate a kill is worthless, unless you place other defenders on the same path that can also generate even more kills.

Until Kabam recognizes that node tweaks only work in conjunction with a way to measure the effectiveness of a node-defender combination, no node tweaks are going to work. At best, you will create a new optimal defender configuration that will be just as forced on the players as defender diversity currently forces players to place now.

The sound bite version of this is this: in 14.0, a defender's value was based on whether it could generate any sort of kill. In 15.0, no defender is worth anything by itself. The only thing with actual value is the sum total of all the defenders on a particular path. If all of them combined can stop the opposing alliance, that path generates points (in unexplored territory). If not, nothing they do ultimately means anything. So nothing Kabam does can encourage a player to place a single defender on a particular node if it costs diversity points, unless that one single defender all by itself is a one-champ wrecking machine that can kill a path dead.

Is that what Kabam is trying to do? Make nodes that allow an alliance to place one defender there and stop the other alliance dead? Because if Kabam is doing that, good luck, 90% of all alliances. If Kabam isn't doing that, the node tweaks won't change the strategic situation.

Twunt

Not a single player told you to add Act 5 nodes. Your imaginary Contest Council that you say you pull your ideas from and get feedback from, is probably in the same room with your beta testers.

You could make this a fair, balanced, competitive, and lucrative game mode. But you simply do not want to.

NinjaWarrior99

Daddylonglegs93 wrote: »

I'm all for more interesting fights, but these changes do not convince many of us you're really thinking things through. Node 35 was already one of the hardest nodes on the map. In tier 1, you basically have 3 options - SESM, OG Vision, and OG Daredevil. Most of us only have one of those, and as is, he easily times out on that node. Now it's worse? And then another enhanced L2 node with poison? So what, if you didn't buy OGV, you can just stop advancing there? And then SPITE? In war? That node was annoying enough in challenges and other content, but now we have to deal with it in an environment where enemies will likely have mystic dispersion? How exactly is that supposed to work out? Dexterity is still essential and still interacts with MD. That was the most decisive factor in war before these changes, and now you're giving us a node that makes it twice as bad? Come on guys.

Still no penalty for defender kills and added nodes that will force more potions to be used. Hmmm....sounds like Kabam is really listening to the community.

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming

@Kabam Miike I do like the addition of act 5 nodes in AW however that will not fix the issues we are having in tier 1. I can provide screenshots or make a video on how defender kills alone would have won or lost the war for us.

Mathematically you have to run 50 unique defenders in each battle group, then you have to have the highest defender rating possible. You'll find that the top rated alliances are all running max pi builds (a variant of suicides) and they place with boosts to increase their defender rating.

Again, alliance war is a war of defender rating and at it's current condition the new nodes will not slow us down from 100% the map.

Alliances are swapping their defender rating scores to determine if it's even worth 100% the other alliance if they need to use items, I've only used 2 items since AW season 2 started and that's because they we're expiring.

As of right now there are a few changes I would suggest

1: Add back defender kill points. We've lost wars that we would have won with defender kills counting. There is nothing we can do to win a war if the other alliance has a higher defender rating. If you continue to say that defender kills was causing people to just quit playing, add it back to at least expert tier, nobody in expert tier AW will quit if they lose one champ and get frustrated, if they do then they will be kicked from their alliance as they are not capable of contributing towards their alliance.

2: Change how defender rating is calculated. Boosts should not count towards defender rating as they are only a temporary thing, yet as of right now one boost will extend your rating for a maximum of 48 hours while your champion is on defense. Make the rating based on the base pi of the champion with synergies included. Fighting people who have suicides is boring, the champions are draining their health because willpower only heals off base health and the modified amounts of health is what the suicides masteries are using to deal damage. Using the base pi of the champion will reward alliances and players that have spent time to earn the rewards to be able to take their champions to 5/50, 3/45, 4/55, etc. and still provide a level playing field for alliances that are able to die less if you add defender kills back.

3: change the crit buffs interaction with dexterity. The crit buff from dexterity is what makes it difficult to fight a number of champions. The buffs interaction with Dormmamu is why he is a popular AW boss, he constantly puts degeneration on you that you are getting wether or not you have brought a champion that gains buffs or not without the mastery. The crit buffs interaction with mystic dispersion is another problem for Dormmamu. I can fully evade the special attack 2 of Dormmamu but in doing so I have refreshed dexterity upon my self a minimum of 3 times. When you are fighting a Magik with mystic dispersion every evade will give her a maximum of 12% power, three evades and she's at a bar of power, allowing her to have a chance to activate limbo which deals unavoidable damage to you, it's also extremely easy to push champions like Magik and Dormmamu to their special 3 solely because you evaded their attacks and not because of anything else.

4: champions that deal unavoidable damage need to have that changed to their base attack + masteries and synergies and not the modified attack from the node. This includes champions such as Magik, Dormmamu, and Iceman. Previously you had recognized the issue that champions were giving alliances that had a heal that was based off of the modified health from that champion. A Wolverine, Ultron, Cable, Iron Man, etc. could present themselves as unsurmountable roadblock for certain alliances. Unavoidable damage does the exact same thing but in a different way. Before I stepped up to 4L0ki, I was in tier 2 AW. Tier 2 AW is a different animal from tier 1 (well, it used to be). My 4/55 Magik with 5/5 Mystic Dispersion would routinely get 20+ kills. I've seen over 40 kills before and this was when defender kills counted.

I'm going to include screenshots of different war win results and include a breakdown of how the war could have been different if defender kills counted. Keep in mind every one of these wars had both alliances 100% the other with max diversity.

This war was lost on defender rating alone. We would have won with defender kills.

This alliance died 204 times to us, a crazy amount of kills. We won on defender rating alone.

This is just showing that even against the number one alliance you can still get more kills then them. This also showcases the inflated defender rating you can get with a max pi build and placing with boosts.

Same alliance as featured above, same deal we lost on defender rating alone.

More of the same, losing by defender rating alone but we would have won if defender kills counted.

Raganator

@DNA3000 I appreciate all the thought and time you put into pointing out the obvious flaws in Kabam's thinking. I really just wish it wasn't all for nothing.

nuggz

@Kabam Miike

You haven't listened to a single thing we've been saying. This is radical.

DaMunk

I can't wait for the next war. Watching the community backlash has become more entertaining than war.

Hype_perion01

I can't wait until I come across a Magik and juggernaut in AW with spite and mystic dispersion, I think that's what everyone's feedback has been so far right?! Seems like you guys still don't get the point. We don't need harder nodes we just want our defender kills back, having to speak to each member about who they should bring for diversity and then who has the higher PI of that champ is ridiculous.
Plus that dexterity buff, you guys can't make it a passive buff?!

Donyb

It isn’t wise to mention the “b” word

Draco2199

Bianco wrote: »

You told us when you make new aw it will be easier and delete all hard nodes like thorns, all or nothing, slashed tires etc and now you bring new great nodes like masochism, bane, sprite and all fu****g **** to aw... You know what? Bring back old aw with old nodes and old system, with defender kill points and GET THE **** AWAY FROM THIS

And brought back all or nothing.....lol

We got trolled hahahaha

gohard123

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Raganator wrote: »

You still make zero sense. Don't want people to feel discourage so take away defender kills, so just make nodes harder to discourage people. Stupid.

The "discouraged" comment is surrounding the idea of not taking on a fight for the sake of not giving the other Alliance Points. This causes people to make the choice to just not fight. Not fighting in a war should never be the optimal strategy.

These changes are being made to move some of the emphasis away from Defender Diversity, and back on to making educated choices with your Defender placement. Before jumping to "This won't work", give the map a couple runs through. This will also help us gather more data on any further adjustments that might need to be made.

lol we jumped to the ''this wont work'' conclusion the first time and we were right

DNA3000

k666k wrote: »

Everyone wants defender kills back, how hard is that to understand, but I guess its not designed to be what we want.

I don't want or need defender kills back. What I want is a way for a good defender to help me win the war in a way other than pray that the other alliance gives up and stops fighting because they are afraid of it.

Defender kills did that. A defender was worth placing on the map if it could get even a single kill, because that single kill helped me win. In 15.0, that single kill is worthless. Kabam would say it is not worthless because a kill helps stop the other side. That is a meaningful statement if your defenders got an assist like in basketball. Kabam is wrong: they do not.

Defender kills were just a tool. There's nothing special about defender kills. But if we are going to eliminate them, we need something else to judge the performance of a defender by. RIght now, 15.0 has no way to judge a defender, except by some nebulous idea of oh, maybe, if we are really lucky, this defender might help stop the path by some miracle.

Give me another way to judge a defender. Give me some way for a good defender to earn me points, or cost the attacker points. This thread has at least six separate suggestions on how to do that, that does not involve bringing back defender kills. Give me any one of them, and lets test it out to see if it works.

Greenstroke

Funny thing is that you changed aw cause of these and removed thorns/slashed tires/200% power gain cause these were too hard and not fun to deal with.

So in the new aw you bring us
Flare: unavoidable degeneration
Bane: somewhat unavoidable degeneration
Spite: if you gain buffs you cant control = l3 to the face multiple times
So these aint BS? And these are fun?
Very well sir, very well......

And mashocism, buffet and arc overload are based from modified health? I hope not!!!!!!

unknown

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Kocheese

Unbelievable. Smh, how bout addressing inflating defender rating via boosts and suicides

StavelotXote

Is diversity intended to make us dump resources into **** champs until we run out of the resources?

Will there then be some announcement that rewards will be increased as requested, then I will pull better dupes of someone actually worth of some t2a I had before then? But then, the plot twist is t2a will still be rare?

Are you twisting my arm to r4 5* kamala khan for wars? Diversity is awesome and should include everyone, so do all champs matter? Even the ones I feel deflated just looking at in the reel, while praying not to land on them, and I more than likely will?

Once I do this, will you then reinstate defender kills- of which she will get none- then she will have been exponentially more useless than before ranking up?

If you cannot figure out how to make wars interesting for some reason, is this our fault?

Why is the play experience of war going to continue to be underwhelming and so time consuming? It's 48 hours and decided in 24 hours. What for?

Why is the map so goddamn big for no reason? Why did the map need to be changed? Why did slashed tires and starburst go away to make it "too easy", then we could just get bane and other Act 5 buffs? This makes sense, right?

Why can't diversity just be based on class? I mean all champs are useful and all classes are balanced, right? All class masteries are useful too, right?

While we keep getting resources to do this, we should rank champs for a constantly changing war format because of this? It's fair to continually change the scoring system and then make our ranking choices based on it invalid repeatedly because you continually refuse to get it, right?

I mean it contributes to summoner advancement and level up, and class advancement, so it's not like we don't get anything once we end up regretting these choices, right?

We should not 100% the map anymore because the map is hard? That is why we should not win? Not because my champion on that node is actually good, but because the opponent just sucks at the game? So while kills don't count, if and only if they decide to try again, and again, and again until they get it right, I should feel a moral victory when they finally pass my lockdown node? Then I can collect some shards for wasting 5 of my champions for a day or two and 3 more for a day?

I'm sorry, I just see all of this as laughable. And that's the bottom line.

Try again

Darth_Hulk

Kabam Miike wrote: »

This is why we're bringing more difficulty back to Alliance Wars maps. The double 100% should not be a common thing. It's meant to be a rarity, and in that case is where Defender Diversity come in.

@Kabam Miike I have a slightly different perspective than many here, but still feel it needs to be considered. I am in a mid-lower tier alliance (and very content there), our rating is typically 1250-1300's (occasionally into 1400's), which puts us in roughly tier 6-7 war. At this level, diversity does not really affect us and has not yet decided a war either way. So, it does seem to be the scenario you intend in that it can be a tie-breaker for us. And in fact, my alliance is enjoying war right now.

However, increasing the difficulty of our nodes while you are tuning the maps for higher alliances will greatly impact us. As of yet, we have not 100% completed an entire war map, or had an enemy do so to us in this new war system. In fact, many of our wars end up with 0 boss kills on one or both sides. Of our last 5 wars, none have ended with more than 2 boss kills combined for both teams (these were all 3bg wars). That is out of a possible 6 boss kills.

My point is, the difficulty is already tuned well for our level, adding in bane, flare, arc overload, spite, and other stuff will only make the difficulty to where there is rarely any boss kills on either side. If we know we will never have a chance to kill the boss, the fun of war is already gone. So, please take a close look and consider us lower tier guys while you ramp up the difficulty for the big guys.

unknown

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Brnbby

If I wasn't jailed I'd give you a piece of my mind.

Nadrojl1

I'm starting to think there should be a Mcoc community wide aw boycott until they bring back defender kills. I bet that's the data that will change their minds..

Voluntaris

Brnbby wrote: »

If I wasn't jailed I'd give you a piece of my mind.

you and me both bro

nuggz

The harder kabam makes the nodes, the less diverse our defenses will be in tier 1-3

MrMojo

Seems pretty simple to me. They want people to spend or use more items to complete the map and try to win. Points for defender kills would stop that. They want more of your $$$ and items.

TheObiJuan

And with this new failed AW change, there goes our used-to-be-fun AW to complete ****. Very challenging local nodes will be added that weren’t meant to be used on Champions with masteries like MD. Spite, Power Shield, Bane, etc.

Now we’ll be forced to spend more and more to still 100% and tie but lose to whomever has the higher defender rating.

But it’s okay, Kabam Miike says it’s a “rarity”.

Jaffacaked

@Kabam Miike awesome 2 more guys just gave notice cos they can't put up with this be excuse for alliance war.