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

fabbass

There are 2 fair solutions:
1. Bring back defender kill points.
2. Give Rank Down tickets.

Donyb

Bringing back rank downs will not help anything ..... they either need to get rid of def rating cuz people can manipulate their rating by boosts and suicides or add another category because diversity isn’t the tiebreaker as it was intended to be

LocoMotives

@Donyb and defender rating never mattered when D kills existed. I've come to appreciate diversity in some regard, but our defenders have to matter. Maybe as diversity = 100 pts and defender kills = 50 pts. This way diversity still matters and rating goes back to being an extremely rarely used tie-breaker.

KML15

Rank down tickets ruin the game. You will see a massive spike in cutoffs for AQ. And you will see tougher opponents in AW.

OnlyOneAboveAll

Still both sides 100%ing the maps. But at least us spenders and actually get what we are paying for and win some wars. :-) thanks Kabam.

RagamugginGunner

Can a mod confirm whether or not node 24 is working correctly and if it is why the hell they thought it was a good idea?

NMEONES

Unreal.. few wars in and we are still 100%. We just lost a war where we had almost 200 defender kills and lost to defender rating. How can u not see this issue @Kabam Miike ? This is ridiculous.. how much more of this are we going to have to put up with?!

Born

All that happens now is at the start of attack phase alliances swap screen shots of their defender ratings, whoever has the highest rating wins. The other team now knows not to use any items as they will lose anyway. This helps out the lower defender rating ally so they can save items for when they have a winning matchup. Rinse and repeat every war.

Kinda works out as you end up only using items on a definite win (if you have to use items that is).

This is the system they have created. Can’t see how it’s any better than the old one.

Plantesan

1. Can someone explain what the point to adding the 5.2 nodes are, considering diversity makes them useless in attempting to not make the other team clear 100 %? (Which still happens)
2. Is there the possibility of rating tier point values to be considered in aw (ex. 8 mil alliance vs 8.2...both fall under 8 mil point value) Losing wars because of such a factor is bogus, since we are having to bend over backwards to make your joke of a diversity implementation a thing.

And to those that are thanking kabam for allowing you to spend to get a win...how about improving your fighting ability for once?

nuggz

We had diversity in the game prior to this new aw system. It's called prestige and champs abilities. That alone set the course of who to rank. That system is conflicting with this "diverse war" system.

You want to claim that we have the freedom to choose but it's somewhat forced with prestige and certian champs abilities.

Now that aw has incorporated this forceful ranking our freedom to rank is less in our Control.

Also I'd like to point out that diversity isn't acutely giving us points for using other champs we wouldn't normally use its PUNISHING us for using multiple champs that are great for defense and abilities that are specifically awd.

Conclusion what does diversity do?

- Takes our freedom of champ ranking away.
- punishes us for past ranking
- doesn't correspond with prestige

@Kabam Miike

Marine31_

The only thing that's being accomplished here is you guys are getting paid more the other thing that is happening is that if we don't spend to 100% every Map then we are in danger of losing other players under the old war system it was based on skill and if you spent to revive and fight that can lose you the game the way it's set up now is complete BS you guys should be ashamed of yourselves. I'm not even sure why people keep playing including myself. You can make the notes as hard as you want but if there's no repercussion for spending then that's all it's going to be is every Alliance is going to spend until they 100% everything now the only way to win is by the Defender rating the way war is now it's so stupid

hurricant

Marine31_ wrote: »

The only thing that's being accomplished here is you guys are getting paid more the other thing that is happening is that if we don't spend to 100% every Map then we are in danger of losing other players under the old war system it was based on skill and if you spent to revive and fight that can lose you the game the way it's set up now is complete BS you guys should be ashamed of yourselves. I'm not even sure why people keep playing including myself. You can make the notes as hard as you want but if there's no repercussion for spending then that's all it's going to be is every Alliance is going to spend until they 100% everything now the only way to win is by the Defender rating the way war is now it's so stupid

Only thing being accomplished is pissing off players and making them leave. We've put up with this for 2 months and there's no sign that Kabam is even considering fixing the real issues. People will start leaving because they used to love war for its competitive aspect and now it's a war of spreadsheets that doesn't reward skill.

Ryanbeatyou

I feel like the community is missing one piece of information with regard to the current state of war. Everyone I've read so far is commenting on the fact that if you spend items and get full diversity, it's always decided by defender rating. While that's true, this is not a problem for the development team. They tried to make the map more difficult to give more options for defensive strategy, but as near as I can tell no one has tried anything different. Let's look at a hypothetical war.

Team A goes full diverse and places 50 unique defenders in each BG, with the bosses and harder nodes getting the premium defenders and everything else is a mismash. Their pre-attack score is 8mil rating for roughly 1600 points, and 150 diversity for 7500 points.

Team B goes pre 15.0 with no diversity and places all MD, evade, hype, etc. They have a pre attack score of 8mil for 1600, but only 50 diversity for 2500. They are down 5000 points from the outset.

For the result of this war, both sides clear the bosses in each bg, and Team B gets 100% expo due to easy map, but Team A can't, even after spending items, clear 100%. The break even point in this hypothetical war is 95%. If Team A can get more than that on expo, they win. If they can't, they lose.

I don't like this arranged spreadsheet battle either, but the players create the meta, and right now the meta is unimaginative. That's all I'm trying to say. Sorry if TL:DR

hurricant

Ryanbeatyou wrote: »

I feel like the community is missing one piece of information with regard to the current state of war. Everyone I've read so far is commenting on the fact that if you spend items and get full diversity, it's always decided by defender rating. While that's true, this is not a problem for the development team. They tried to make the map more difficult to give more options for defensive strategy, but as near as I can tell no one has tried anything different. Let's look at a hypothetical war.

Team A goes full diverse and places 50 unique defenders in each BG, with the bosses and harder nodes getting the premium defenders and everything else is a mismash. Their pre-attack score is 8mil rating for roughly 1600 points, and 150 diversity for 7500 points.

Team B goes pre 15.0 with no diversity and places all MD, evade, hype, etc. They have a pre attack score of 8mil for 1600, but only 50 diversity for 2500. They are down 5000 points from the outset.

For the result of this war, both sides clear the bosses in each bg, and Team B gets 100% expo due to easy map, but Team A can't, even after spending items, clear 100%. The break even point in this hypothetical war is 95%. If Team A can get more than that on expo, they win. If they can't, they lose.

I don't like this arranged spreadsheet battle either, but the players create the meta, and right now the meta is unimaginative. That's all I'm trying to say. Sorry if TL:DR

No team in their right mind would place 50 diverse defenders. Those are easy points that account for most of the scoring that would be potentially being ignored. That's how you lose the war. The only way this would work is if every alliance decided to ignore diversity but that would never happen because the system Kabam has set up rewards diversity. Plus, a tier 1-2 alliance would get through your hypotherical MD stacked defense and explore 100% anyway because it's worth it to revive a few times (with no downside) for a bunch of nearly guaranteed shards.

It's equivalent to in the old system putting a spider gwen on every node when defender kills were rewarded. Whatever Kabam rewards most is what teams will focus on, and in this case, it's diversity and rating.

Viper1987

hurricant wrote: »

Ryanbeatyou wrote: »

I feel like the community is missing one piece of information with regard to the current state of war. Everyone I've read so far is commenting on the fact that if you spend items and get full diversity, it's always decided by defender rating. While that's true, this is not a problem for the development team. They tried to make the map more difficult to give more options for defensive strategy, but as near as I can tell no one has tried anything different. Let's look at a hypothetical war.

Team A goes full diverse and places 50 unique defenders in each BG, with the bosses and harder nodes getting the premium defenders and everything else is a mismash. Their pre-attack score is 8mil rating for roughly 1600 points, and 150 diversity for 7500 points.

Team B goes pre 15.0 with no diversity and places all MD, evade, hype, etc. They have a pre attack score of 8mil for 1600, but only 50 diversity for 2500. They are down 5000 points from the outset.

For the result of this war, both sides clear the bosses in each bg, and Team B gets 100% expo due to easy map, but Team A can't, even after spending items, clear 100%. The break even point in this hypothetical war is 95%. If Team A can get more than that on expo, they win. If they can't, they lose.

I don't like this arranged spreadsheet battle either, but the players create the meta, and right now the meta is unimaginative. That's all I'm trying to say. Sorry if TL:DR

No team in their right mind would place 50 diverse defenders. Those are easy points that account for most of the scoring that would be potentially being ignored. That's how you lose the war. The only way this would work is if every alliance decided to ignore diversity but that would never happen because the system Kabam has set up rewards diversity. Plus, a tier 1-2 alliance would get through your hypotherical MD stacked defense and explore 100% anyway because it's worth it to revive a few times (with no downside) for a bunch of nearly guaranteed shards.

It's equivalent to in the old system putting a spider gwen on every node when defender kills were rewarded. Whatever Kabam rewards most is what teams will focus on, and in this case, it's diversity and rating.

Yes we have gotten rid of diversity because why should we focus on it? If you are constantly getting matched up with stronger alliances that are higher rated you have to do something different to even have a shot to win. The only way lower rated alliances can even hope to win is to go back to pre 15.0 and hope to stop the other alliance with a strong defense. Since we are in tier 1, that’s very rarely the case but it’s better than getting trampled by defender rating. The system is bogus.

Ryanbeatyou

@hurricant I agree with you that no right minded T1-2 alliance would do this. The map is too easy. But at T3 and down, I think it's viable. I believe this is what the design team is trying to do with their latest changes. The system is rigged to get as close to 50% win loss ratio anyway at the lesser tiers.

hurricant

Ryanbeatyou wrote: »

@hurricant I agree with you that no right minded T1-2 alliance would do this. The map is too easy. But at T3 and down, I think it's viable. I believe this is what the design team is trying to do with their latest changes. The system is rigged to get as close to 50% win loss ratio anyway at the lesser tiers.

Then they should bring defender kills to the top tiers, and turn them off for lower tiers like someone suggested above. They do different buffs for different tiers so why not this?

Ryanbeatyou

@hurricant That's not a bad idea, but I can't see them implementing it. The problem would be where to draw the line, I would rathere see defender kills be calculated as a small tie breaker across the board. say 20 points per kill. But I can't see that being implemented either

World Eater

I definitely liked the old map where you only had to clear 6 paths to unlock the boss, but then you'd sacrifice Completion. There was a LOT more strategy and thinking involved in the old map. Now you have to pretty much finish every path and unlock every node to bring down the boss. They said they don't want 100% completion, but designed a map that makes you have to do that to unlock the boss.

unknown

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Juggerneyks

i noticed that we get less score added to our war rating now, you used to get like 60-70 points added on to you war rating for winning. we won a war yesterday and received 20 something points for it. i remember them saying something about introducing difficulty ratings for war so maybe that has something to do with it??

unknown

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R4GE

Back on topic now, will we be receiving any new info on any more changes, or none at all?

DJSergy

R4GE wrote: »

Back on topic now, will we be receiving any new info on any more changes, or none at all?

Seeems we will have to wait and see if they will make enough money from AW with these new nodes. If not, expet harder, tougher nodes introduced into the map until they make the expected profits from this screwed uo AW system. It’s ridiculous...

They losing the bigger picture tho: make AW fun and competitive again. You will have players hooked with game and spending more in the long run.

DJSergy

Right now AW feels like another AQ. Not fun, we just do it for the rewards. Please bring back the shorter-skilled version of AW back. Please...

R4GE

Kabam, we are in desperate need of info for us to be able to capitalize on war. You are treading on many players having valid arguments for rank down tickets. So far you have consistently changed nodes, people rank based on those nodes. If we were to continue to rank up for them theres no telling if you are going to change them again. Maybe you buff them more, or maybe you nerf them based on complaints. Either way, we suffer.

For the player ready to quote me and say rank up's are optional.....feel free to let your resources expire. I'm not taking that route.

At the very least, we need the expiration removed from our inventory until final changes are made and we are told it is final.

Kabam Miike

R4GE wrote: »

Back on topic now, will we be receiving any new info on any more changes, or none at all?

We do have plans to make more adjustments, but don't have anything that we can announce just yet. At this moment, I can't make any promises either way on if there will be further changes to the Nodes, but the goals include making Defender Diversity the Tie Breaker it was always meant to be.

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming

Kabam Miike wrote: »

R4GE wrote: »

Back on topic now, will we be receiving any new info on any more changes, or none at all?

We do have plans to make more adjustments, but don't have anything that we can announce just yet. At this moment, I can't make any promises either way on if there will be further changes to the Nodes, but the goals include making Defender Diversity the Tie Breaker it was always meant to be.

I'm curious as to how this is going to play out, as the new wars are now won by math and spreadsheets, diversity should be a factor but not the only thing that determines who wins or loses. We need something that measures the effectiveness of the defense. Without that, the larger alliance will always win, or the alliance that runs the larger boosts.

Kocheese

💯 agree @Raganator I stated last year kabam would be it's own detriment. Greedy rabbits. We know what happens after that. With greed it's never enough.

Menkent

The biggest failing of this is that it's not fun. If diversity is the tie breaker than we'll need 150 diversity every war, and that means some sort of spreadsheet. It's tedious and everyone hates it.

Old war could get frustrating getting the same few defenders fight after fight, but at least i didn't have to harass my bg about keeping a Google sheet up to date. And the community had already come up with the solution - fix the MD/dexterity issue. The end. This is willpower all over again. From day one people were saying that multiple instances of the same debuff shouldn't multiply healing, but instead they spent a year building content (like most of the nodes in act 4) around an unintended interaction before finally fixing it after people were heavily invested. And here we are with every competitive player sitting on a stable of 5/50 mystics that we aren't allowed to use anymore, pissed that all our effort (and money?) just got trashed.

But let's be honest. We're on page 116 and they still think tweaking nodes is the answer.