Just wanted to share my thoughts on the newest post on Alliance Wars (as of 10/17/2017). For the sake of context, the post is basically saying The Kabam Team will be implementing Act 5 nodes into Alliance Wars.
So I am not against having Act 5 nodes in Alliance Wars at all. It is something I actually recommended happen when Thorns was removed. So, this is now the second time The Kabam Team has redone the nodes, the first time being on September 26. I don't think The Kabam Team understands, you can't just address a symptom if there is a bigger problem going on. The big issue for AW aren't nodes, the problem are the defenders kills and Kabam's strong desire to push Defender Diversity.
Regardless of having difficult or easy nodes, if Defender Diversity is still in place people are still going to have an easy time fighting champs since everyone's goal is to bring unique champions. I've seen Venompools, Star-Lords and so many other non defense champs in AW that nodes don't even matter. Even if someone manages to rack up a good amount of kills on a node, what difference does it make? Defender kills mean nothing.
The focus on adjusting nodes is time wasted in my honest opinion. Focus on the main problem, bring back Defender Kill Points and forget about Defender Diversity. I really have a hard time understanding why the Dev. Team has such a strong grip on Defender Diversity for. I know it was something the Team wanted to try but it has obviously failed miserably. It adds nothing to the game. It took real skill and knowledge of nodes for someone to set up a strong and sturdy defense for AW before. What skill is put into bringing 5 non-defense champs to AW?
I do understand why Defender Diversity was introduced to AW. I understand that people where using a lot of Magiks, Nightcrawlers, Spideys, etc. but that was fine. Those champions were used a lot in AW Defense because they have very strong defensive capabilities. With the push to diversify defense, the game team ended up killing defense completely and has, arguably, removed the need to rank up defenders. I sound like a broken record at this point but I'll keep on voicing my opinion as long as I play the game.
I could go on and on but I'll close with this, the easy fix is to go back to the old AW season. Just forget this season of AW and go back to the old AW. Forget the new point system, map, nodes and just go back to the good AW. Why fix something that isn't broken?
Hey Summoners, we have another update for you all.
Tomorrow, we’ll be debuting our next refinement on the Hard, Challenger, and Expert Maps in Alliance Wars.
As we work towards our previously stated goals of making Alliance Wars more engaging, challenging, and varied, we’ve gathered your feedback and collected lots of data. We’ve made a few adjustments as we’ve gone along, and have been getting closer and closer to where we want Alliance Wars to be.
After introducing some changes to some of the nodes of these 3 maps recently, we’ve gotten closer to where we were in terms of difficulty in the previous iteration of Alliance Wars, and moving the emphasis back towards making informed decisions on the combinations of Defender and Nodes. We still feel there are additional changes and improvements we can make, and we are paying close attention to the performance and opinion of the mode.
This iteration of node adjustments will focus on some of the more high value locations on the map, and will introduce some newer buffs that you may have seen in Act 5.
We’ll be monitoring these changes and the effect they have on Alliance Wars moving forward, and will continue to make adjustments as necessary. Once you’ve had some experience with the Map, and have ran through it a couple times, come back here to share your thoughts!
100% garbage. You should be ashamed of this terrible set-up. Have an idea.
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
I was concerned this would happen, when @Kabam Miike took special notice of the players complaining about both sides 100% completing the map. I predicted they would crank up the difficulty to prevent that, and then claim that AW was "competitive" again because as long as both sides cannot complete 100%, you can always claim both sides could have done more to win, so it was all in the hands of the players.
The "100% complaint" was a ticking time bomb, and it just went off. Ironically, the changes are unlikely to affect the very alliances most likely to 100% complete.
Wow you really listen to the community real well kabam. Just another thing you've done to prove you aren' t listening to us. We don't like these wars. From the map to diversity to defender kills. Your losing in the long run kabam. Your just setting yourselves up for failure still. You've turned war into a on going joke. This is why ppl won't spend like they did once before. Youve blown it again. Well done.
2 changes made to war system, both involved buffs to nodes.
After the 1st time you buffed nodes pages among pages were argued that we needed changes to the scoring system. Please point out the changes you made that were from the majority feedback to show us you are listening.
The node changes were directly linked to players being worried that their rosters were no longer useful in Alliance Wars because of Diversity. This pointed to a problem where the Map was not providing enough of a challenge, so that Defender Diversity was making the decisions on who won, and not acting as the tie breaker.
As we said, we're still looking into more revisions that may need to be made after, but this was based on your guys feedback.
They still aren't. If both teams 100% a map, which they usually will because defender kills don't matter, then the higher alliance with the wider roster will always win. It's not a tie breaker. It's a "Our alliance is matched with someone 3m higher than us. We're getting the same rewards this map whether or not we 100% this so why bother?" If you were listening to your feedback you'd bring back defender kills like we've been saying since this horrible map was introduced.
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.
How the hell can you be so clueless? Read the damn thread, we've told you what we want. This is NOT it.
The frustrating thing for me in all of this is the idea that the devs don't want to discourage someone deciding not to fight a node in War....but it doesn't seem like it's getting through to devs that as soon as an alliance begins a war and sees the opposing alliance bringing in varied champs to take advantage of defender diversity, then all that's left is to look at the alliance rating and immediately one knows that his/her alliance can or cannot win simply based off of the defender rating of each alliance.
So before you're even done with the first section of nodes in war, there's a feeling of "hey, don't go nuts here everyone, they brought diverse champs, they have us on defender rating, we cannot win." The current system of diversity/rating/no defender kills is a discouragement to the entire alliance.
Hey Summoners, we have another update for you all.
Tomorrow, we’ll be debuting our next refinement on the Hard, Challenger, and Expert Maps in Alliance Wars.
As we work towards our previously stated goals of making Alliance Wars more engaging, challenging, and varied, we’ve gathered your feedback and collected lots of data. We’ve made a few adjustments as we’ve gone along, and have been getting closer and closer to where we want Alliance Wars to be.
After introducing some changes to some of the nodes of these 3 maps recently, we’ve gotten closer to where we were in terms of difficulty in the previous iteration of Alliance Wars, and moving the emphasis back towards making informed decisions on the combinations of Defender and Nodes. We still feel there are additional changes and improvements we can make, and we are paying close attention to the performance and opinion of the mode.
This iteration of node adjustments will focus on some of the more high value locations on the map, and will introduce some newer buffs that you may have seen in Act 5.
We’ll be monitoring these changes and the effect they have on Alliance Wars moving forward, and will continue to make adjustments as necessary. Once you’ve had some experience with the Map, and have ran through it a couple times, come back here to share your thoughts!
Holy $$%%@!$$.
Adding $pite, Bane, Ma$ochi$m & Buffet onto the "Hard" map? This just confirm$ my previou$ po$t.
What a load of BS.. "we listen to your comments".. who's comments? You only listen to the money thats being spend..or not.
When new season started you said you removed thorns..slashed tires etc..but now you bring back act 5 nodes to replace them?
Maybe you got some special glasses cause i havent seen anyone ask for harder nodes.. and the thing most player keep asking for you keep ignoring *couch* defender kills *couch*.
Dont pretent to suposedly "listen" to your player comunity. The only thing you are trying to accomplish is to crank up difficulty and make AW your cashcow.
To say you listen to us is just insulting to your player base..because clearly havent.
@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.
Well, if I'm lucky in 16.0 Alliance Wars will be decided by forum rating, and all my posts will technically be rank up materials.
I feel like wars are being decided by coin toss, and Kabam is trying to add more competition to the game by tossing the coin higher, and telling the players that if it isn't being tossed high enough they will work on tossing it even higher next time.
I guess if some people are looking to move to a higher alliance there will probably be some openings soon. People are just getting tired of goofy stuff.
What was going on in pre-15.0 alliance war that was an issue? Can anyone point me to threads stating the scoring system was unfair, broken, or didn't work?
I don't recall any complaints about that. Thorns, AoN, Starburst, yeah.. lame mechanics that needed to be removed, but short of that what problems where the majority of players having that this total turnaround was required?
So outside of some ridiculous nodes, and the the fact that MD and Dexterity is NOT working fine as is, despite Kabam's statement otherwise, what was wrong with the basic strategy of AW? You placed strong defenders on appropriate nodes, attacked the opponents defenders with appropriate champs and the players decided the outcome.
Guys, you cannot make a sandbox-style, player content-centric mode work by a formula. You can try to keep the sand in the box, and define the boundaries of the box but once you have put the kids in the dirt you have to let them play. You are trying to structure AW like a Borg drone structures recess at a daycare. It WILL NOT WORK. Let the kids play.
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.
I’m starting to think it’s not that they don’t want to, but they just not competent enough to make it work.
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.
I completely agree it's not about defender kills it's about having some sort of metric that rewards your defense. As it stands right now the only way to win is with a higher defender rating, which is not a fighting war but a war of spreadsheets.
You could instead take away points for every item used in war, but a game mechanic like that would discourage spending units on those items, and as a business you want to promote item use without having content that demands that items be used ie a skilled player should be able to solo fights in the game where a less skilled player might have to use items to defeat that particular obstacle. That's literally my only complaint about the Collector fight.
Since the map has gotten a lot larger it's kind of hard to find nodes. If the node numbers could be clustered together rather than randomly scattered that would make it easier.
Just read the AW update by @Kabam miike, and curious to know if the changes in nodes are actually the only changes that have been made? Didn't read anywhere about scoring changes. TBH, I'd be extremely dissapointed if this is in fact the case. Would basically make the statement of gathering all the community suggestions and opinions to improve the next iteration a complete farce.
Also read some of the previous comments and would like to express a couple thoughts.
#1 Since participating in my first AW back sometime near august 2015, I have never observed nor heard of another alliances opponent that had all 30 members go through the max 15 items usage due to the need to revive. IMO of what "war" is about, that type of hardheaded stubbornness is self inflicting more damage than is necessary.
One would have to be pretty ignorant to not realize they are outmatched after 1 or 2 revives max without success. And to have a belief that they will or can win a war using all those items compared to the opponent not having used that many is just plain irrational. I do however recognize there are players that could possibly do this knowing they will lose but disregard it for the self satisfaction of taking out the opponent, which is all fine and dandy(still irrational), but I'd like to think that type of scenario is very few and far apart.
#2 there's an old saying that "the best defense is a good offense". Its my opinion that if an alliances offense needs every member to use more than 5 items to revive in order to take out an opponent, that is not symbolic of a good defense at all.
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.
I completely agree it's not about defender kills it's about having some sort of metric that rewards your defense. As it stands right now the only way to win is with a higher defender rating, which is not a fighting war but a war of spreadsheets.
You could instead take away points for every item used in war, but a game mechanic like that would discourage spending units on those items, and as a business you want to promote item use without having content that demands that items be used ie a skilled player should be able to solo fights in the game where a less skilled player might have to use items to defeat that particular obstacle. That's literally my only complaint about the Collector fight.
That's what occurred to me as well with Item Restrictions. Spending has always been optional, and really won't logically be discouraged by any paradigm put forth by them. Nor should it be in my opinion. That leaves me sort of blank for suggestions. Trying to add a metric element that doesn't involve Defender Kills, or Item Use Points. Which is why I suggested Bonus Points of some sort for completing without dying. I'm still considering ideas. I'm just not debating the addition of Defender Kills, and I can't justify them penalizing people for using Resources either.
The first rule of any competitive game or game mode is that there should never be an auto-win scenario for one side or the other. The caveat being that both sides are fairly even in terms of skill, ability and resources.
You have completely failed at that.
If you have a high enough defender rating it is impossible for you to lose assuming you complete your objectives. Auto-win. What helps that? Spending money on champs/resources to rank up 50 per BG.
The idea that they won't complete them is asinine. What insures this? People will use consumables that cost cash.
So you have essentially created a situation that boils down to one thing: who can spend the most to achieve auto-win status.
That is not war. That is not competition. This is why people distrust you and assume everything is a money grab, because when you get past the spin of 'fun and interesting without making people feel bad' nonsense, that's what it boils down to. You want people to pay to get new champs every 2 weeks thanks to the prestige creep. You want people to buy your cats every fricking day for a week to rank them up. You want people to buy boosts to place defense, cores (which you just had a an offer on, cheeky monkeys) to unluck suicides, boosts and potions for offense.
This is what people see. Whether you intend it or not, this is what we see you for and you have done NOTHING to alleviate that, short of hollow words than ring as true as a crooked tuning fork.
2 changes made to war system, both involved buffs to nodes.
After the 1st time you buffed nodes pages among pages were argued that we needed changes to the scoring system. Please point out the changes you made that were from the majority feedback to show us you are listening.
The node changes were directly linked to players being worried that their rosters were no longer useful in Alliance Wars because of Diversity. This pointed to a problem where the Map was not providing enough of a challenge, so that Defender Diversity was making the decisions on who won, and not acting as the tie breaker.
As we said, we're still looking into more revisions that may need to be made after, but this was based on your guys feedback.
They still aren't. If both teams 100% a map, which they usually will because defender kills don't matter, then the higher alliance with the wider roster will always win. It's not a tie breaker. It's a "Our alliance is matched with someone 3m higher than us. We're getting the same rewards this map whether or not we 100% this so why bother?" If you were listening to your feedback you'd bring back defender kills like we've been saying since this horrible map was introduced.
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.
In the old map, it used to be that we could reach an AW boss without having to spread people across 8-9 paths.
This thread is a waste of time and energy. They already knew what they wanted to do. The only "iterative" process was slowly easing us into their final vision of war... Which we have zero input on. This thread is only here to make you feel like someone cares what you say and to allow it to get big enough that most ppl won't spend time reading it.
If there was actually any testing or monitoring... This so-called iterative process would actually be more than forcing us to rely on diversity/defender rating and just tossing in some act 5 nodes. Trying to act like any testing/monitoring has been done is asinine.
Just don't spend any resource at all on war and let the chips fall where they may. It's literally the only voice you have as a player at this point. You have as much chance of getting your concerns dealt with on this forum as you do when dealing with support.
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.
I completely agree it's not about defender kills it's about having some sort of metric that rewards your defense. As it stands right now the only way to win is with a higher defender rating, which is not a fighting war but a war of spreadsheets.
You could instead take away points for every item used in war, but a game mechanic like that would discourage spending units on those items, and as a business you want to promote item use without having content that demands that items be used ie a skilled player should be able to solo fights in the game where a less skilled player might have to use items to defeat that particular obstacle. That's literally my only complaint about the Collector fight.
That's what occurred to me as well with Item Restrictions. Spending has always been optional, and really won't logically be discouraged by any paradigm put forth by them. Nor should it be in my opinion. That leaves me sort of blank for suggestions. Trying to add a metric element that doesn't involve Defender Kills, or Item Use Points. Which is why I suggested Bonus Points of some sort for completing without dying. I'm still considering ideas. I'm just not debating the addition of Defender Kills, and I can't justify them penalizing people for using Resources either.
Every option to replace 14.0 defender kills with a metric that rewards good defender placement (cleaned up and simplified a bit) either suggested or that I can think up:
1. Deduct points from the attacker for every attacker revived by the attacking alliance.
2. Make the points awarded to attacker for defeating a defender a function of the number of defenders defeated by it (i.e. points = 100/kills)
3. Make the points awarded to attacker for defeating a defender a function of the cumulative amount of time it takes to defeat the defender (i.e. points = 100 / (minutes to defeat), minimum one minute)
4. Award defender kill points as before, but no points for the first three defeats from any one player (i.e. no penalty for using all initial attackers)
5. Award bonus points to the attacker based on health remaining when defender is defeated, normalized across multiple attackers (if any).
6. Award points to the defending alliance based on the amount of cumulative damage dealt by placed defenders on non-boss nodes.
That's what I recall off the top of my head. I'm sure if given a set of constraint parameters I could come up with more.
Maybe all just get back to 2* war so nobody has to spend and kabam doesnt see 1 penny revenue from this monstrosity of a game mode they try to force upon us
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.
I completely agree it's not about defender kills it's about having some sort of metric that rewards your defense. As it stands right now the only way to win is with a higher defender rating, which is not a fighting war but a war of spreadsheets.
You could instead take away points for every item used in war, but a game mechanic like that would discourage spending units on those items, and as a business you want to promote item use without having content that demands that items be used ie a skilled player should be able to solo fights in the game where a less skilled player might have to use items to defeat that particular obstacle. That's literally my only complaint about the Collector fight.
That's what occurred to me as well with Item Restrictions. Spending has always been optional, and really won't logically be discouraged by any paradigm put forth by them. Nor should it be in my opinion. That leaves me sort of blank for suggestions. Trying to add a metric element that doesn't involve Defender Kills, or Item Use Points. Which is why I suggested Bonus Points of some sort for completing without dying. I'm still considering ideas. I'm just not debating the addition of Defender Kills, and I can't justify them penalizing people for using Resources either.
Every option to replace 14.0 defender kills with a metric that rewards good defender placement (cleaned up and simplified a bit) either suggested or that I can think up:
1. Deduct points from the attacker for every attacker revived by the attacking alliance.
2. Make the points awarded to attacker for defeating a defender a function of the number of defenders defeated by it (i.e. points = 100/kills)
3. Make the points awarded to attacker for defeating a defender a function of the cumulative amount of time it takes to defeat the defender (i.e. points = 100 / (minutes to defeat), minimum one minute)
4. Award defender kill points as before, but no points for the first three defeats from any one player (i.e. no penalty for using all initial attackers)
5. Award bonus points to the attacker based on health remaining when defender is defeated, normalized across multiple attackers (if any).
6. Award points to the defending alliance based on the amount of cumulative damage dealt by placed defenders on non-boss nodes.
That's what I recall off the top of my head. I'm sure if given a set of constraint parameters I could come up with more.
There have been suggestions, I mean in terms of offering my own.
1. I can't really get behind because that's essentially penalizing Item Use.
2. Could be interesting. Limited by the number of Champs you can defeat, but still an element.
3. Pretty much an extension of 1, so I'm not too keen.
4. Same as 1.
5. That could be something I'd consider.
6. Also something that could work. Cumulative Damage could be a mechanism.
I just meant in terms of my own thoughts. There have been suggestions for sure.
To be specific, the suggestion on Time is interesting to me. I'm just skeptical of multiple tries. Which is why I suggested it's an extension of 1. If there are limits to it, it could be plausible as a Bonus.
Lol maybe the devs got bored with fixing all the bugs each time they started their own game. "Let set up a betting pool and every few weeks another dev gets a shot at AW update to see who's update can piss off the most players".
Comments
So I am not against having Act 5 nodes in Alliance Wars at all. It is something I actually recommended happen when Thorns was removed. So, this is now the second time The Kabam Team has redone the nodes, the first time being on September 26. I don't think The Kabam Team understands, you can't just address a symptom if there is a bigger problem going on. The big issue for AW aren't nodes, the problem are the defenders kills and Kabam's strong desire to push Defender Diversity.
Regardless of having difficult or easy nodes, if Defender Diversity is still in place people are still going to have an easy time fighting champs since everyone's goal is to bring unique champions. I've seen Venompools, Star-Lords and so many other non defense champs in AW that nodes don't even matter. Even if someone manages to rack up a good amount of kills on a node, what difference does it make? Defender kills mean nothing.
The focus on adjusting nodes is time wasted in my honest opinion. Focus on the main problem, bring back Defender Kill Points and forget about Defender Diversity. I really have a hard time understanding why the Dev. Team has such a strong grip on Defender Diversity for. I know it was something the Team wanted to try but it has obviously failed miserably. It adds nothing to the game. It took real skill and knowledge of nodes for someone to set up a strong and sturdy defense for AW before. What skill is put into bringing 5 non-defense champs to AW?
I do understand why Defender Diversity was introduced to AW. I understand that people where using a lot of Magiks, Nightcrawlers, Spideys, etc. but that was fine. Those champions were used a lot in AW Defense because they have very strong defensive capabilities. With the push to diversify defense, the game team ended up killing defense completely and has, arguably, removed the need to rank up defenders. I sound like a broken record at this point but I'll keep on voicing my opinion as long as I play the game.
I could go on and on but I'll close with this, the easy fix is to go back to the old AW season. Just forget this season of AW and go back to the old AW. Forget the new point system, map, nodes and just go back to the good AW. Why fix something that isn't broken?
100% garbage. You should be ashamed of this terrible set-up. Have an idea.
I was concerned this would happen, when @Kabam Miike took special notice of the players complaining about both sides 100% completing the map. I predicted they would crank up the difficulty to prevent that, and then claim that AW was "competitive" again because as long as both sides cannot complete 100%, you can always claim both sides could have done more to win, so it was all in the hands of the players.
The "100% complaint" was a ticking time bomb, and it just went off. Ironically, the changes are unlikely to affect the very alliances most likely to 100% complete.
How the hell can you be so clueless? Read the damn thread, we've told you what we want. This is NOT it.
So before you're even done with the first section of nodes in war, there's a feeling of "hey, don't go nuts here everyone, they brought diverse champs, they have us on defender rating, we cannot win." The current system of diversity/rating/no defender kills is a discouragement to the entire alliance.
Holy $$%%@!$$.
Adding $pite, Bane, Ma$ochi$m & Buffet onto the "Hard" map? This just confirm$ my previou$ po$t.
You (Kabam) $hould be a$hamed of your$elve$
When new season started you said you removed thorns..slashed tires etc..but now you bring back act 5 nodes to replace them?
Maybe you got some special glasses cause i havent seen anyone ask for harder nodes.. and the thing most player keep asking for you keep ignoring *couch* defender kills *couch*.
Dont pretent to suposedly "listen" to your player comunity. The only thing you are trying to accomplish is to crank up difficulty and make AW your cashcow.
To say you listen to us is just insulting to your player base..because clearly havent.
Well, if I'm lucky in 16.0 Alliance Wars will be decided by forum rating, and all my posts will technically be rank up materials.
I feel like wars are being decided by coin toss, and Kabam is trying to add more competition to the game by tossing the coin higher, and telling the players that if it isn't being tossed high enough they will work on tossing it even higher next time.
What was going on in pre-15.0 alliance war that was an issue? Can anyone point me to threads stating the scoring system was unfair, broken, or didn't work?
I don't recall any complaints about that. Thorns, AoN, Starburst, yeah.. lame mechanics that needed to be removed, but short of that what problems where the majority of players having that this total turnaround was required?
So outside of some ridiculous nodes, and the the fact that MD and Dexterity is NOT working fine as is, despite Kabam's statement otherwise, what was wrong with the basic strategy of AW? You placed strong defenders on appropriate nodes, attacked the opponents defenders with appropriate champs and the players decided the outcome.
Guys, you cannot make a sandbox-style, player content-centric mode work by a formula. You can try to keep the sand in the box, and define the boundaries of the box but once you have put the kids in the dirt you have to let them play. You are trying to structure AW like a Borg drone structures recess at a daycare. It WILL NOT WORK. Let the kids play.
Let. Them. Play.
I’m starting to think it’s not that they don’t want to, but they just not competent enough to make it work.
I completely agree it's not about defender kills it's about having some sort of metric that rewards your defense. As it stands right now the only way to win is with a higher defender rating, which is not a fighting war but a war of spreadsheets.
You could instead take away points for every item used in war, but a game mechanic like that would discourage spending units on those items, and as a business you want to promote item use without having content that demands that items be used ie a skilled player should be able to solo fights in the game where a less skilled player might have to use items to defeat that particular obstacle. That's literally my only complaint about the Collector fight.
Also read some of the previous comments and would like to express a couple thoughts.
#1 Since participating in my first AW back sometime near august 2015, I have never observed nor heard of another alliances opponent that had all 30 members go through the max 15 items usage due to the need to revive. IMO of what "war" is about, that type of hardheaded stubbornness is self inflicting more damage than is necessary.
One would have to be pretty ignorant to not realize they are outmatched after 1 or 2 revives max without success. And to have a belief that they will or can win a war using all those items compared to the opponent not having used that many is just plain irrational. I do however recognize there are players that could possibly do this knowing they will lose but disregard it for the self satisfaction of taking out the opponent, which is all fine and dandy(still irrational), but I'd like to think that type of scenario is very few and far apart.
#2 there's an old saying that "the best defense is a good offense". Its my opinion that if an alliances offense needs every member to use more than 5 items to revive in order to take out an opponent, that is not symbolic of a good defense at all.
That's what occurred to me as well with Item Restrictions. Spending has always been optional, and really won't logically be discouraged by any paradigm put forth by them. Nor should it be in my opinion. That leaves me sort of blank for suggestions. Trying to add a metric element that doesn't involve Defender Kills, or Item Use Points. Which is why I suggested Bonus Points of some sort for completing without dying. I'm still considering ideas. I'm just not debating the addition of Defender Kills, and I can't justify them penalizing people for using Resources either.
You have completely failed at that.
If you have a high enough defender rating it is impossible for you to lose assuming you complete your objectives. Auto-win. What helps that? Spending money on champs/resources to rank up 50 per BG.
The idea that they won't complete them is asinine. What insures this? People will use consumables that cost cash.
So you have essentially created a situation that boils down to one thing: who can spend the most to achieve auto-win status.
That is not war. That is not competition. This is why people distrust you and assume everything is a money grab, because when you get past the spin of 'fun and interesting without making people feel bad' nonsense, that's what it boils down to. You want people to pay to get new champs every 2 weeks thanks to the prestige creep. You want people to buy your cats every fricking day for a week to rank them up. You want people to buy boosts to place defense, cores (which you just had a an offer on, cheeky monkeys) to unluck suicides, boosts and potions for offense.
This is what people see. Whether you intend it or not, this is what we see you for and you have done NOTHING to alleviate that, short of hollow words than ring as true as a crooked tuning fork.
In the old map, it used to be that we could reach an AW boss without having to spread people across 8-9 paths.
Worth repeating.
Every option to replace 14.0 defender kills with a metric that rewards good defender placement (cleaned up and simplified a bit) either suggested or that I can think up:
1. Deduct points from the attacker for every attacker revived by the attacking alliance.
2. Make the points awarded to attacker for defeating a defender a function of the number of defenders defeated by it (i.e. points = 100/kills)
3. Make the points awarded to attacker for defeating a defender a function of the cumulative amount of time it takes to defeat the defender (i.e. points = 100 / (minutes to defeat), minimum one minute)
4. Award defender kill points as before, but no points for the first three defeats from any one player (i.e. no penalty for using all initial attackers)
5. Award bonus points to the attacker based on health remaining when defender is defeated, normalized across multiple attackers (if any).
6. Award points to the defending alliance based on the amount of cumulative damage dealt by placed defenders on non-boss nodes.
That's what I recall off the top of my head. I'm sure if given a set of constraint parameters I could come up with more.
The words I have are fowl and degrading.
Kabam, bye
There have been suggestions, I mean in terms of offering my own.
1. I can't really get behind because that's essentially penalizing Item Use.
2. Could be interesting. Limited by the number of Champs you can defeat, but still an element.
3. Pretty much an extension of 1, so I'm not too keen.
4. Same as 1.
5. That could be something I'd consider.
6. Also something that could work. Cumulative Damage could be a mechanism.
I just meant in terms of my own thoughts. There have been suggestions for sure.
Bring back kills count