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

WOK

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

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.

Since it is named Alliance Wars, I'll say this. A "war" is exactly what you mention it shouldn't be. Consider the following example if you will.

Some country declares war on the US. The US deploys carriers, battle ships, and set perimeters on strategic regions around the globe to safeguard our people and way of life.....the US does not make the firsr offensive maneuver.
They merely show their hand as if to warn, "go ahead and try if you must but as you can clearly see, you will be dealt with swiftly and violently". The more troops and war vessels that perish adds more loss to the agresssor, not "if we lose a million men but sink their carrier we win".

If the agressor is a much smaller country not as heavily equipped, yet vastly superior in training of troops and military strategy, it could be possible that they could inflict more damage than they incur, which would give them a viable window for victory.

In case anyone missed it, the key phrase would be, "inflict more damage than incur".

andrade5184

lol this is what you guys get for telling them the content is not hard enough. what a load of **** just keep making war harder that will teach them to complain. its always been a simple fix just bring back defensive kills problem will be solved. how long must the circus show go on before you @kabam get it. smh

its hard enough the problem is defensive kills!!!!!!!!!

andrade5184

oh and diversity is also the problem if you want war to be harder just make it go away so we can use all our good dedenders we have to leave on the bench cause of diversity bs. we dont need a bunch of bs nodes to make war even harder than b4 u nerfed it. im so frustrated with you kabam

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

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.

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.

How are (3) and (4) variations of (1)? They aren't remotely similar.

andrade5184

the reason teams wouldnt 100% each map all the time in old wars was because of defender kills with defender kills gone every war can be bought with revives and items no matter how hard it becomes. but of course making wars more profitable for kabam is not the reason points for defender kills were removed. ya and pigs can fly

TheBSC20

After each update and supposed re-vamp to AW since the 15.0 change, I've become more and more disappointed and disillusioned about AW and have stopped caring about it. The changes have completely removed the joy and challenge of AW because of a glaring flaw, which everyone has discussed here at length, and no one at Kabam seems to want to grapple with. In particular, the new AW means that, all things being equal, AW is decided by defender rating -- plain and simple. How is that so? Well, based on the new scoring system, every alliance is a capable of producing the exact same score (with one exception discussed below) by:
(i) placing 150 champs;
(ii) having a perfect diversity score;
(iii) killing all 3 bosses;
(iv) killing all defenders (i.e., perfect attacker kill score); and
(v) exploring each bg 100%

If each alliance in AW does the above, the tie breaker is "defender rating," which basically translates into bigger alliance (by rating) wins, smaller alliance (by rating) loses. Admittedly, that's an over simplification, but it also holds a lot of truth.

Now, why is that more problematic than, let's say, using defender kills (or some other metric)? Because even if the scores are blind, alliances have a good sense of who has the better defender rating at the start of the war, meaning that alliances know that the war is fruitless before it even begins.

Here are a few examples:

Example 1: The Suicide Problem

Let's say two equally matched alliances face each other, but one (let's call them Loving Life) doesn't run suicides, and the other (let's call them Suicide Squad) does run suicides. Either by dueling the alliance or from an initial fight, Loving Life will know right away that there is now a big disparity in PI because Loving Life doesn't run suicides and Suicide Squad does. This also means that Loving Life knows it will lose, even if Loving Life's defense produces 3 times the amount of kills than Suicide Squad, so long as Suicide Squad 100% the maps. In other words, the defender rating system immediately let's Loving Life know that it shouldn't put much effort into winning the AW if it looks like Suicide Squad can complete the maps.

Example 2: David v. Goliath.

Let's say that one, highly skilled alliance (let's call it David) faces another skilled alliance with many more 4/55 champs (let's call it Goliath). In looking at the disparity in champs to start the AW, David will immediately know that Goliath should have a much higher defender rating than David. That, too, means that David knows that, as long as Goliath 100%'s the map, then David will lose, even if David's skills mean it completed the map with far fewer deaths than Goliath.

To solve the above issue, the latest update tries to enhance the difficulty of some nodes so that alliances can't 100% the maps. This "solution" merely doubles-down on the problem created by the new scoring system and runs directly contrary to the initial rationale given for the elimination of defender kills.

First, the new solution does not actually solve the problem of what happens when both alliances 100% the map, which means that both alliances will have a good sense of when an AW is pointless and when it is not.

Second, enhancing the difficulty of the nodes merely means that an alliance with a superior defender rating knows it may have to use some resources to win the AW. Enhanced nodes do not in any way prevent an alliance from completing a map if that is the alliance's desire.

Third, the enhanced node system does not reward an alliance for strategy so long as an alliance gets through the node and completes the map.

Finally, and most importantly, the enhanced node system runs directly contrary to what we were told about why defender kills were eliminated and actually magnifies the supposed problem created by defender kills. In the initial update to AW, we were told "The goal of this change was to encourage Summoners to continue their assault on the opposing Alliance, without having to worry about giving them more points, and to avoid that feeling of defeat after only trying one fight and being beaten." Under the new system, any smart alliance will know it is defeated even before the AW attack truly gets going, meaning that a smart alliance will NOT be encouraged to continue its assault on the opposing Alliance and will feel defeated well-before AW ends. Or, if for some reason the ratings seem so close it is hard to tell, each alliance will know it is a **** shoot as to whether it wins or loses and make a decision based upon that. No matter what the circumstance, however, the notion of skill and strategy to win AW feels like it has gone out the window.

AW was a brilliant addition to the game. It is now dying a very slow death (and is causing players to re-think playing this game). I strongly urge you to save it, revamp AW, and reward skill and strategy by fixing the scoring system. Some ways you might accomplish this are:

1) Reward defender kills (similar to the old system);
2) Award more points for beating a node without suffering a death than if you do. E.g., you beat node 44 without dying, you get 75 points, but, if you die, you only get 50. Or it could even be a sliding scale. Boss kills have a total of 20,000 points, but you lose 50 points off of the max total each time you die. So, a good boss gets 20 kills, the alliance who beat the boss only gets 19,000 points.
3) Award points based on items used. The fewer items used, the more points you get. You could of course do the reverse, i.e., more points for using items, but that seems contrary to the notion of rewarding any skill involved in the game.

The bottom line is that AW desperately needs you to fix the scoring system so that it rewards skill and strategy. Please do so.

Thanks,

Voluntaris

andrade5184 wrote: »

the reason teams wouldnt 100% each map all the time in old wars was because of defender kills with defender kills gone every war can be bought with revives and items no matter how hard it becomes. but of course making wars more profitable for kabam is not the reason points for defender kills were removed. ya and pigs can fly

yerp.... more profitable and LESS FUN.

if Kabam doesn't add skill back to Alliance War (via Defender Kill Points or some other way points for skill) by the end of the year, then I'm out ... along with my thousands of dollars.

Crine60

I can only find Act 5 Chapter 2 & 3 threads and don't see the nodes breakthrough, rolling thunder, brute force, flare or spite listed. Can someone explain these or provide a link to where they are described? So pathetic that Kabam can't even put together an announcement with all relevant information after all this time working on AW.

World Eater

2017 is the year that proves the devs have terrible vision for the future of this game. If your brand spanking new AW idea has to be revived 3 times in the first 7 weeks, you have no idea what you're doing.

Lemme guess the response this would get if they cared to respond:
blah blah blah, this is a live game ::insert lip service::: blahblahblah, revisions and balance...blahblahblah

Just like 12.0, I wouldn't believe a thing they say.

beeleeyoo

Kabam Miike wrote: »

R4GE wrote: »

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.

You guys must be high. You "updated" the nodes recently to the point that you need a flawless fight to make it through. One slip up and your offensive character is dead in under 5 hits. Couple this with the fact that your AW and AQ gameplay is still severely broken(parry, inputs for dodge/dash not registering, AI coming out of combos to attack with no break in action) and you have the makings of a completely garbage piece of content. Now adding to the difficulty of the nodes to "address player worries about diversity" is just another chance for you folks to ramp up the difficulty and necessity for items while hiding it behind some excuse. Go look at all the war histories. We have a loss in which we racked up 250+ defender kills, while keeping our deaths under 80, which did nothing for our alliance and we ended up losing anyways. That is called a broken scoring system. You are not fooling anyone with these excuses that you are listening to player feedback. Everything you have done since the alliance wars updates has made it worse.

nuggz

Thousands of comments.
Just do what we are trying to tell you would be in your best intrest

OnlyOneAboveAll

Where are our top alliances? You guy should be all over every chat group (Facebook, Line App, Twitter) whatever and organize a no war strike to all alliances. Or only use 3stars. Enough is enough. My comment will for sure be deleted.

KamalaWantsToPlayToo

As much as I hate to say it this is a 100% money grab now. Not gonna lie - I used to roll my eyes at comments that said as much, but now I can't see any other reason for these changes.

Why?

Defender Diversity - creates a need for resources that wasn't there before. People had no desire on ranking up the lower tier champs and now they are being forced to. Lots of sales will be thrown out to us for T4 and other ranking resources.

Defender Kills - removed because it "prevented people from fighting". If they're not fighting, they don't need potions. If they don't need potions, they're not spending units/cash. So removing defender kills was for no other reason than to encourage spending. Nothing more.

I really think we're spinning our wheels on this one. I just don't see defender kills coming back for this very reason.

Defender Rating - Encourage people to spend on increasing prestige/rating. Buying boosts? Keep buying them please. Need that high prestige champ that would also fit very nicely with Defender Diversity since nobody else has them yet? How about these fancy (and reasonably priced) featured Grandmaster Crystals! Buy them in bulk with an Odin!

Harder nodes without Defender Kills - Well they removed any hindrance to throwing in the towel, so why not? Buy as many potions as you'd like. Anyone else see an increase in the # of potions that can be used per war in our future?

They are creating their own economy of supply and demand.

I mean really this is pretty obvious what they're doing and why they're doing it. I for one have given up with this thread. They aren't listening and have no intention on listening.

@Kabam Miike will keep attempting damage control with cryptic responses that have very little meaning until everyone bends over and takes it. Because ya know....this is EXACTLY what everyone wanted.

DNA3000

KamalaWantsToPlayToo wrote: »

As much as I hate to say it this is a 100% money grab now. Not gonna lie - I used to roll my eyes at comments that said as much, but now I can't see any other reason for these changes.

Why?

Defender Diversity - creates a need for resources that wasn't there before. People had no desire on ranking up the lower tier champs and now they are being forced to. Lots of sales will be thrown out to us for T4 and other ranking resources.

Defender Kills - removed because it "prevented people from fighting". If they're not fighting, they don't need potions. If they don't need potions, they're not spending units/cash. So removing defender kills was for no other reason than to encourage spending. Nothing more.

I really think we're spinning our wheels on this one. I just don't see defender kills coming back for this very reason.

Defender Rating - Encourage people to spend on increasing prestige/rating. Buying boosts? Keep buying them please. Need that high prestige champ that would also fit very nicely with Defender Diversity since nobody else has them yet? How about these fancy (and reasonably priced) featured Grandmaster Crystals! Buy them in bulk with an Odin!

Harder nodes without Defender Kills - Well they removed any hindrance to throwing in the towel, so why not? Buy as many potions as you'd like. Anyone else see an increase in the # of potions that can be used per war in our future?

They are creating their own economy of supply and demand.

I mean really this is pretty obvious what they're doing and why they're doing it. I for one have given up with this thread. They aren't listening and have no intention on listening.

@Kabam Miike will keep attempting damage control with cryptic responses that have very little meaning until everyone bends over and takes it. Because ya know....this is EXACTLY what everyone wanted.

Interesting theory. Just out of curiosity, how much has your spending increased since the 15.0 AW changes?

RagamugginGunner

DNA3000 wrote: »

KamalaWantsToPlayToo wrote: »

As much as I hate to say it this is a 100% money grab now. Not gonna lie - I used to roll my eyes at comments that said as much, but now I can't see any other reason for these changes.

Why?

Defender Diversity - creates a need for resources that wasn't there before. People had no desire on ranking up the lower tier champs and now they are being forced to. Lots of sales will be thrown out to us for T4 and other ranking resources.

Defender Kills - removed because it "prevented people from fighting". If they're not fighting, they don't need potions. If they don't need potions, they're not spending units/cash. So removing defender kills was for no other reason than to encourage spending. Nothing more.

I really think we're spinning our wheels on this one. I just don't see defender kills coming back for this very reason.

Defender Rating - Encourage people to spend on increasing prestige/rating. Buying boosts? Keep buying them please. Need that high prestige champ that would also fit very nicely with Defender Diversity since nobody else has them yet? How about these fancy (and reasonably priced) featured Grandmaster Crystals! Buy them in bulk with an Odin!

Harder nodes without Defender Kills - Well they removed any hindrance to throwing in the towel, so why not? Buy as many potions as you'd like. Anyone else see an increase in the # of potions that can be used per war in our future?

They are creating their own economy of supply and demand.

I mean really this is pretty obvious what they're doing and why they're doing it. I for one have given up with this thread. They aren't listening and have no intention on listening.

@Kabam Miike will keep attempting damage control with cryptic responses that have very little meaning until everyone bends over and takes it. Because ya know....this is EXACTLY what everyone wanted.

Interesting theory. Just out of curiosity, how much has your spending increased since the 15.0 AW changes?

Probably not much. IMO, it's pretty clear that they're continued buff to the nodes is Kabam's plan to remedy that. Pretty much everythign they do is to earn a quick buck from everything the youtubers reported from NYCC. Who cares if the game dies in a few years when they can earn some money now?

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

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.

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.

How are (3) and (4) variations of (1)? They aren't remotely similar.

Well, I specified that I.was questioning number 3, but thought it was interesting. Mainly because I'm unclear how that would affect those that need to Revive or die. Since it's cumulative and based on time, it might have a carry-over effect that is similar to penalizing the need to use Items. Number 4 is the same as adding a penalty for using Items because it allows Defender Kill metrics after having to Revive.

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

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.

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.

How are (3) and (4) variations of (1)? They aren't remotely similar.

That's why I specified that the idea of Time peaked my interest, but I'd have to understand more about the cumulative aspect because if it's carrying over, and no doubt will be governed by Suicides, then that's the same as penalizing those that need to Revive. Not a fully formed disagreeance, just a questionable one for me. Number 4 is both instances of what I'm not for. It brings Defender Kills back in a way that counts after the use of Items.

LegionDestroier

Seems all these changes are just to keep MMXIV (the biggest whales) happy as under this system they cannot lose as they will always have the highest defender rating

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

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.

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.

How are (3) and (4) variations of (1)? They aren't remotely similar.

That's why I specified that the idea of Time peaked my interest, but I'd have to understand more about the cumulative aspect because if it's carrying over, and no doubt will be governed by Suicides, then that's the same as penalizing those that need to Revive. Not a fully formed disagreeance, just a questionable one for me. Number 4 is both instances of what I'm not for. It brings Defender Kills back in a way that counts after the use of Items.

How are (3) and (4) variations of (1)? They aren't remotely similar.

DNA3000

RagamugginGunner wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

KamalaWantsToPlayToo wrote: »

As much as I hate to say it this is a 100% money grab now. Not gonna lie - I used to roll my eyes at comments that said as much, but now I can't see any other reason for these changes.

Why?

Defender Diversity - creates a need for resources that wasn't there before. People had no desire on ranking up the lower tier champs and now they are being forced to. Lots of sales will be thrown out to us for T4 and other ranking resources.

Defender Kills - removed because it "prevented people from fighting". If they're not fighting, they don't need potions. If they don't need potions, they're not spending units/cash. So removing defender kills was for no other reason than to encourage spending. Nothing more.

I really think we're spinning our wheels on this one. I just don't see defender kills coming back for this very reason.

Defender Rating - Encourage people to spend on increasing prestige/rating. Buying boosts? Keep buying them please. Need that high prestige champ that would also fit very nicely with Defender Diversity since nobody else has them yet? How about these fancy (and reasonably priced) featured Grandmaster Crystals! Buy them in bulk with an Odin!

Harder nodes without Defender Kills - Well they removed any hindrance to throwing in the towel, so why not? Buy as many potions as you'd like. Anyone else see an increase in the # of potions that can be used per war in our future?

They are creating their own economy of supply and demand.

I mean really this is pretty obvious what they're doing and why they're doing it. I for one have given up with this thread. They aren't listening and have no intention on listening.

@Kabam Miike will keep attempting damage control with cryptic responses that have very little meaning until everyone bends over and takes it. Because ya know....this is EXACTLY what everyone wanted.

Interesting theory. Just out of curiosity, how much has your spending increased since the 15.0 AW changes?

Probably not much. IMO, it's pretty clear that they're continued buff to the nodes is Kabam's plan to remedy that. Pretty much everythign they do is to earn a quick buck from everything the youtubers reported from NYCC. Who cares if the game dies in a few years when they can earn some money now?

Everyone working on the game, I would imagine.

Rahul_Contest

You guys mentioned somewhere that there will be increase in amount of 4* shards you can get but I don't see any changes in arena or AW. Those are same as before and now you're just making content harder but ever think about whether or not rewards worth it?

KamalaWantsToPlayToo

@DNA3000

My spending has shut down completely pretty much.

Never said it was a good idea or that it was working.

I just can't think of any other reason why they would ignore what feedback they've gotten and keep trucking in their own direction without any communication on where they're going with a believable reason why.

Ockham's Razor I suppose.

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

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.

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.

How are (3) and (4) variations of (1)? They aren't remotely similar.

That's why I specified that the idea of Time peaked my interest, but I'd have to understand more about the cumulative aspect because if it's carrying over, and no doubt will be governed by Suicides, then that's the same as penalizing those that need to Revive. Not a fully formed disagreeance, just a questionable one for me. Number 4 is both instances of what I'm not for. It brings Defender Kills back in a way that counts after the use of Items.

How are (3) and (4) variations of (1)? They aren't remotely similar.

I just responded to this.

World Eater

Of course they waited to announce this after NY Comic-Con. They wouldn't want to actually face the negative backlash from the playerbase.

World Eater

DNA3000 wrote: »

KamalaWantsToPlayToo wrote: »

As much as I hate to say it this is a 100% money grab now. Not gonna lie - I used to roll my eyes at comments that said as much, but now I can't see any other reason for these changes.

Why?

Defender Diversity - creates a need for resources that wasn't there before. People had no desire on ranking up the lower tier champs and now they are being forced to. Lots of sales will be thrown out to us for T4 and other ranking resources.

Defender Kills - removed because it "prevented people from fighting". If they're not fighting, they don't need potions. If they don't need potions, they're not spending units/cash. So removing defender kills was for no other reason than to encourage spending. Nothing more.

I really think we're spinning our wheels on this one. I just don't see defender kills coming back for this very reason.

Defender Rating - Encourage people to spend on increasing prestige/rating. Buying boosts? Keep buying them please. Need that high prestige champ that would also fit very nicely with Defender Diversity since nobody else has them yet? How about these fancy (and reasonably priced) featured Grandmaster Crystals! Buy them in bulk with an Odin!

Harder nodes without Defender Kills - Well they removed any hindrance to throwing in the towel, so why not? Buy as many potions as you'd like. Anyone else see an increase in the # of potions that can be used per war in our future?

They are creating their own economy of supply and demand.

I mean really this is pretty obvious what they're doing and why they're doing it. I for one have given up with this thread. They aren't listening and have no intention on listening.

@Kabam Miike will keep attempting damage control with cryptic responses that have very little meaning until everyone bends over and takes it. Because ya know....this is EXACTLY what everyone wanted.

Interesting theory. Just out of curiosity, how much has your spending increased since the 15.0 AW changes?

Im guessing he also means Item Use alongside spending. The change of 0 points for defender kills will likely increase Item Use since alliances want to explore 100% and bring down all 3 bosses to try and win.

unknown

This content has been removed.

KamalaWantsToPlayToo

MikeHock wrote: »

Im guessing he also means Item Use alongside spending. The change of 0 points for defender kills will likely increase Item Use since alliances want to explore 100% and bring down all 3 bosses to try and win.

Correct. I see them as somewhat the same thing since as item use increases, so will the need to replace the items used.

How many potions are higher level alliances getting from AQ crystals/milestones these days? How many people are willing to use Glory for potions instead of something with ranking value?

Carames

Why not make it so that you get a point value for the percentage of health that you take away from a fight on the first try? Say a kill is worth 100 points. If you only manage to take off 50% of the opponent's health on your first attempt, you score 50 points. That's all of the points that the alliance can get for that fight. You could take three more tries to win the fight, but you never gain any more points for it. That way, alliances can still revive as much as they want without penalty, but any alliance could win a war, providing that they have the more skilled players.

It would actually make the wars competitive instead of all this diversity and defender rating nonsense

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

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.

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.

How are (3) and (4) variations of (1)? They aren't remotely similar.

That's why I specified that the idea of Time peaked my interest, but I'd have to understand more about the cumulative aspect because if it's carrying over, and no doubt will be governed by Suicides, then that's the same as penalizing those that need to Revive. Not a fully formed disagreeance, just a questionable one for me. Number 4 is both instances of what I'm not for. It brings Defender Kills back in a way that counts after the use of Items.

How are (3) and (4) variations of (1)? They aren't remotely similar.

I just responded to this.

Not really. Which is why I repeated my question. Exactly none of what you said responds to this question.

DNA3000

MikeHock wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

KamalaWantsToPlayToo wrote: »

As much as I hate to say it this is a 100% money grab now. Not gonna lie - I used to roll my eyes at comments that said as much, but now I can't see any other reason for these changes.

Why?

Defender Diversity - creates a need for resources that wasn't there before. People had no desire on ranking up the lower tier champs and now they are being forced to. Lots of sales will be thrown out to us for T4 and other ranking resources.

Defender Kills - removed because it "prevented people from fighting". If they're not fighting, they don't need potions. If they don't need potions, they're not spending units/cash. So removing defender kills was for no other reason than to encourage spending. Nothing more.

I really think we're spinning our wheels on this one. I just don't see defender kills coming back for this very reason.

Defender Rating - Encourage people to spend on increasing prestige/rating. Buying boosts? Keep buying them please. Need that high prestige champ that would also fit very nicely with Defender Diversity since nobody else has them yet? How about these fancy (and reasonably priced) featured Grandmaster Crystals! Buy them in bulk with an Odin!

Harder nodes without Defender Kills - Well they removed any hindrance to throwing in the towel, so why not? Buy as many potions as you'd like. Anyone else see an increase in the # of potions that can be used per war in our future?

They are creating their own economy of supply and demand.

I mean really this is pretty obvious what they're doing and why they're doing it. I for one have given up with this thread. They aren't listening and have no intention on listening.

@Kabam Miike will keep attempting damage control with cryptic responses that have very little meaning until everyone bends over and takes it. Because ya know....this is EXACTLY what everyone wanted.

Interesting theory. Just out of curiosity, how much has your spending increased since the 15.0 AW changes?

Im guessing he also means Item Use alongside spending. The change of 0 points for defender kills will likely increase Item Use since alliances want to explore 100% and bring down all 3 bosses to try and win.

I'm asking because at the moment I don't, and I'm unaware of anyone that has significantly increased spending in AW over the 14.0 version that was much harder than it is now.