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

R4GE

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.

Not really much to go off of there. Don't want to be pushy for info you don't have but this new hated system has been in place for way to long. At least seeing a comment from ya lets us know our feedback is being read, so I guess we can just sit back and hope its being considered.

Born

We are starting to see more and more allys in tier 1
Returning to the old ways of placing all their OP defenders. Some of these nodes are way too OP if you’re up against a team who didn’t place for diversity.

This is silly as now we will more than likely be doing the same as the cost will be too high to 100% the map. And I’m sure the trend will continue as more and more allys face these non diverse defences on this new map.

So if we go back and start placing all our magiks, dorms, mordos, Mephisto’s, spidey etc.... there is a good chance we can stop the other team if they are not big spenders. Also this way we can get some of our stronger attackers back that would have otherwise been used on our diverse defence. And this will also allow us to utilise all our defenders we worked so hard to Aquire and rank and we can now also remove suicides as we are not looking to win on rating anymore. We can also make better use of MD which most of us worked so hard to unlock. And now we can forget about ranking **** champs as well. So all good things I guess. But of coarse if the other team is willing to spend and still manage to 100% then we are certain for a loss. But what’s to say we wouldn’t of lost on rating anyway, It’s really a gamble either way.

But then the whole diversity thing kinda back fires doesn’t it? You said you are working towards making diversity the main thing. Well I can tell you it is trending in the opposite direction now. So we will basically be back where we were in the old war structure, but with no defender kills and a more OP map.

Maybe this was the plan from the begging? I wouldn’t be surprised to be honest. Use the new war structure to remove defender kills and then add diversity to make people place weak defence. Then bank on everyone crying about how easy it is, then increase difficulty to the point where it pays to place all the OP defenders again.

This war structure is beyond stupid now. Well done Kabam lol.

RagamugginGunner

Qu1ckshoT32_Gaming wrote: »

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.

I'm 100% convinced that they don't understand AW at the top tiers or can do simple math.

unknown

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SCARE

alright but how about diversity still dont see what you will do about that.

Justice_Evo_8

This diversity **** and all of these aw changes are garbage. I would rather go back to fighting dormammu and magik everywhere than to worry about ranking up and placing **** champs and relying on who has a higher rating when placing. It’s all rubbish. Bring back defender kills for points. I hate this new war system.

Justice_Evo_8

We turned to an AQ focused alliance and are looking for ways to beat the AW system bc aw the way it is is a headache. It’s not fun. It has nothing to do with skill. It used to be exciting and now everyone hates it. Have to use spreadsheets to make sure your defender rating and diversity is perfect. So dumb.

Zeke_the_Xbot

The issue with Defender Diversity that is becoming very apparent in My alliance now that we are moving up the ranks in AW. (New alliance with strong players working up the ladders again). Some will need to start ranking less desirable champions for the sole sake of defender diversity. Also the higher the tier the stronger the alliance you face most likely and if you are trying to place for diversity but don't have the champions ranked to accommodate it then you have to either place weak defenders or burn resources to again rank less desirable champs. This whole AW scheme takes away player agency in a game where picking and choosing what to use resources on is critical unless of course you throw $$$$ at the game which should be understood by now that not everyone can or will do that.

Run477

Another day another loss where both sides 100%, both sides 100% diversify, our side has more defender kills but other side wins bc of “rating.” Joy

DNA3000

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

Sorry for the delayed reply: I've been on vacation (from work, the internet, and the English language).

The problem with this analysis is that it makes the break even point seem much smaller than it actually is. It seems like all you have to do is stop 5% exploration and you win, and 5% can't be much. But that's an illusion: it depicts the war as being something where every 5% is contested. At the moment, every 5% is not contested. Realistically speaking, the first 50% is practically free. It is hard to avoid getting to at least 75% if you have a full battlegroup of players that have a heartbeat. The war is really fought over the last 10% - 25% of the map, depending on the tier and strength of the alliances. The 5% you need to win in your scenario is anywhere from 20% to 50% of the actual contested map.

But it is even worse than that. Almost everyone is at least placing strong defenders on the miniboss nodes. Those are generally the most difficult nodes to defeat. If you can't defeat those, you're likely going to lose anyway. So the scenario you are considering is the case where one alliance gets to 100% which is all bosses defeated and the entire map cleared, and another group somehow getting to 95% and defeating the boss, but somehow leaving just a few percent unexplored. That is more likely to be a navigation mistake than an actual node lost due to a strong defender.

You can't count on this happening, nor can you engineer it to likely happen by placing defenders. If you believe you are facing a battlegroup that can clear all the minibosses and the final boss, you have to believe they are likely to be able to clear the rest of the map, because that's the hardest hurdle. If you believe you are facing a battlegroup that might not be able to clear the minibosses, you're more likely to stop them there regardless of what else you place anywhere else. Stronger is better, but not at the cost of diversity points.

Not every point score is equally likely. 95% vs 100% can and does happen, but it happens more often due to one battle group failing to defeat the final bosses than it does because a couple nodes on a path are not completed but the entire rest of the map is completed. The odds favor presuming that this won't be a deciding factor in most wars, and all it takes is a 51/49 split in the odds to favor going with full diversity.

You say the players create the meta, but that's not true in two senses. First, that's not semantically correct: Kabam creates the meta, given the way the term "the meta" is used by Kabam and parroted by most of the players: the "meta" is the metagame, the game outside the game. In this context, it is the rules that govern what the players do to get better at actually playing the game, which is ultimately dictated by the rules of the game which Kabam alone creates.

But second, even in terms of the way you are using the term (calling "strategy" the "meta"), it is still Kabam that dictates the meta for AW. The players aren't choosing to place diverse defenses arbitrarily: that is being dictated by the scoring rules of AW which penalize the kind of strategy you are proposing as an alternative. Alliances which choose to employ your strategy will lose more often than they win until they drop to a tier where they are so much more powerful than their average opponents that any strategy will win, however suboptimal. It is not that your proposed high strength defense won't win ever: it will. But it will lose more often than it wins against equally skilled opponents, which is tantamount to saying it will penalize any alliance that consistently uses it (by causing them to lose and drop tiers until the strategy starts winning).

There's an objective test to determine if my reasoning is correct, although it will be hard to find volunteers to test it. If I'm right, any alliance that chooses to place strong but non-diverse defenses will *eventually* start winning, but they will win most of their wars when their opponents fail to reach the bosses at all, not because they marginally win by a few percent of exploration. That will imply they are winning against opponents far below their overall strength, which implies their defense placement strategy is hurting them, just in an invisible way that costs them rewards rather than apparent victories.

Keep in mind: every war has a winner and a loser. By definition, every alliance's long term winning percentage should gravitate to 50/50. What skill and strategy do isn't cause you to win all the time, it causes you to move up to higher tiers that offer more rewards and stronger opponents. Eventually, alliances should move to a tier where they are winning only about half the time. So all strategies eventually win. To know if a strategy is a good one you have to look past win/loss record and see what kinds of opponents your overall win/loss pattern is placing you against, and what kinds of rewards you are getting.

SummonerB2

DNA3000 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

Sorry for the delayed reply: I've been on vacation (from work, the internet, and the English language).

The problem with this analysis is that it makes the break even point seem much smaller than it actually is. It seems like all you have to do is stop 5% exploration and you win, and 5% can't be much. But that's an illusion: it depicts the war as being something where every 5% is contested. At the moment, every 5% is not contested. Realistically speaking, the first 50% is practically free. It is hard to avoid getting to at least 75% if you have a full battlegroup of players that have a heartbeat. The war is really fought over the last 10% - 25% of the map, depending on the tier and strength of the alliances. The 5% you need to win in your scenario is anywhere from 20% to 50% of the actual contested map.

But it is even worse than that. Almost everyone is at least placing strong defenders on the miniboss nodes. Those are generally the most difficult nodes to defeat. If you can't defeat those, you're likely going to lose anyway. So the scenario you are considering is the case where one alliance gets to 100% which is all bosses defeated and the entire map cleared, and another group somehow getting to 95% and defeating the boss, but somehow leaving just a few percent unexplored. That is more likely to be a navigation mistake than an actual node lost due to a strong defender.

You can't count on this happening, nor can you engineer it to likely happen by placing defenders. If you believe you are facing a battlegroup that can clear all the minibosses and the final boss, you have to believe they are likely to be able to clear the rest of the map, because that's the hardest hurdle. If you believe you are facing a battlegroup that might not be able to clear the minibosses, you're more likely to stop them there regardless of what else you place anywhere else. Stronger is better, but not at the cost of diversity points.

Not every point score is equally likely. 95% vs 100% can and does happen, but it happens more often due to one battle group failing to defeat the final bosses than it does because a couple nodes on a path are not completed but the entire rest of the map is completed. The odds favor presuming that this won't be a deciding factor in most wars, and all it takes is a 51/49 split in the odds to favor going with full diversity.

You say the players create the meta, but that's not true in two senses. First, that's not semantically correct: Kabam creates the meta, given the way the term "the meta" is used by Kabam and parroted by most of the players: the "meta" is the metagame, the game outside the game. In this context, it is the rules that govern what the players do to get better at actually playing the game, which is ultimately dictated by the rules of the game which Kabam alone creates.

But second, even in terms of the way you are using the term (calling "strategy" the "meta"), it is still Kabam that dictates the meta for AW. The players aren't choosing to place diverse defenses arbitrarily: that is being dictated by the scoring rules of AW which penalize the kind of strategy you are proposing as an alternative. Alliances which choose to employ your strategy will lose more often than they win until they drop to a tier where they are so much more powerful than their average opponents that any strategy will win, however suboptimal. It is not that your proposed high strength defense won't win ever: it will. But it will lose more often than it wins against equally skilled opponents, which is tantamount to saying it will penalize any alliance that consistently uses it (by causing them to lose and drop tiers until the strategy starts winning).

There's an objective test to determine if my reasoning is correct, although it will be hard to find volunteers to test it. If I'm right, any alliance that chooses to place strong but non-diverse defenses will *eventually* start winning, but they will win most of their wars when their opponents fail to reach the bosses at all, not because they marginally win by a few percent of exploration. That will imply they are winning against opponents far below their overall strength, which implies their defense placement strategy is hurting them, just in an invisible way that costs them rewards rather than apparent victories.

Keep in mind: every war has a winner and a loser. By definition, every alliance's long term winning percentage should gravitate to 50/50. What skill and strategy do isn't cause you to win all the time, it causes you to move up to higher tiers that offer more rewards and stronger opponents. Eventually, alliances should move to a tier where they are winning only about half the time. So all strategies eventually win. To know if a strategy is a good one you have to look past win/loss record and see what kinds of opponents your overall win/loss pattern is placing you against, and what kinds of rewards you are getting.

On a rare occurance draw.

DNA3000

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.

It would help the players greatly if you could explain what this means. With all due respect, this statement is meaningless on its face. When you say that a goal of 15.x AW is to make defender diversity points a tie breaker, that implies that defender diversity should do nothing unless there is a tie before factoring it in. But two things about that statement make it essentially meaningless. First, what do you even mean by "tie?" If you mean a literal tie, then isn't the goal of the current set of node tweaks in part to eliminate ties? It isn't easy for a war to end in a literal tie unless both sides "hit the rails" and 100% the map, which seems to be something Kabam is trying to eliminate or reduce.

But second, in the current version of AW diversity points are unlikely to be tie breakers at all because defender rating points are breaking all ties completely separate from diversity points, and in a way many players are unhappy about.

Saying a current goal is for defender diversity to act as a tie breaker seems nonsensical to me when a) one of the current goals seems to be to eliminate maximal ties from happening and b) defender rating makes literal point ties extremely unlikely anyway.

It is trivially easy to make defender diversity points a tie breaker. Only count them if a tie happens. The fact that Kabam hasn't implemented such a system suggests that "tie breaker" means something completely different to Kabam than it means to the players. It might be helpful to know what that something is. And that's separate from the fact that even if you somehow many defender diversity points a tie breaker, that doesn't address most of the complaints about the current system.

I will stress that the common denominator behind most complaints is not that any one particular part of the current system is bad, it is that the current system is missing something. It lacks an emphasis on player skill determining the outcome of the war. Nobody cares if you make defender diversity less impactful, if that just means defender rating takes over. Players advocating stronger competition built into the system won't be appeased by eliminating one bad way to win, if other bad ways to win take over. The good way to win is: we are better attackers than them. The second best way to win is: we placed better defenders that made the other attackers look bad. Every other way should only happen rarely and be corner cases.

Players used to post war ties almost fondly, like a winning lottery ticket that while it cost them rewards was something magical that happened only once in a blue moon. Now they post even war victories like they were bitter wins. A system designer needs to ask themselves why this shift happened, and realize what the system changes did to the way many players perceive war.

World Eater

How can they say that 100% Completion wasn't intended when they create a map with 8-9 lanes ,with linked nodes that everywhere, that make it necessary to fully explore the map to unlock the enemy boss? It's just lip service.

There are other threads about AW issues, including a strange update to matchmaking and tier system, and questions if node 24 (Hard map and above) is really working as intended.

DNA3000

MikeHock wrote: »

How can they say that 100% Completion wasn't intended when they create a map with 8-9 lanes ,with linked nodes that everywhere, that make it necessary to fully explore the map to unlock the enemy boss? It's just lip service.

Partially it is because they are trying to do contradictory, and thus impossible things, and partially because they aren't explaining their position eloquently.

They want to encourage players to attack, but they don't want players to always succeed. They think there is a nice balance between those two. They are wrong. Even if it existed, the tools they are using to try to reach it are too coarse to achieve that pencil-tip balance.

I *think* what they are trying to do is eliminate the situation where a player will give up while they still have live attackers but still encourage alliances to try to kill all of the opposing alliance's attackers. So they can honestly say their *objective* was not for alliances to always 100%, but rather for players to try, and then if the circumstances are such, ultimately fail in their objective to clear the map.

The problem is that while they are trying to not discourage players from attacking, vis-a-vis removing defender kills, what they actually did in total was make it far easier to attack, to encourage players to attack. It is important to note that not discouraging is not the same thing as encouraging. Removing defender kills removes the discouragement from attacking. Making the map easier encourages continued attacking. This ultimately leads to maps getting completed much more often.

The map doesn't actually have to be fully explored to unlock the bosses and finish the map. That's a literal true statement. But I think most experienced players here will note that the nodes you can theoretically skip are among the easiest nodes to kill - why *would* you skip them, except by mistake? If they were the absolute hardest nodes on the map, then it would be true that maybe (at least in some tiers) it is a reasonable thing to say that 100% is not driven by the map. But when the hardest nodes have to be killed and the easiest don't, as a practical matter while you don't have to 100%, the map all but mandates 100%. That's a design error.

What they should have done was make the middle paths the easiest paths, and from those paths you could get to *every* miniboss. That would be the minimum completion path. But the outer paths would be harder, and thus it would take more skill to bring them down. What's more, the outer paths should *debuff* the minibosses. This is not a new trick, its in Act 4. If an alliance chose to do more exploration, they would be removing debuff nodes and making the bosses *harder*. So now you have a choice: do 50% explore with easy bosses, do 75% with harder bosses, or 100% with maximal difficulty bosses.

But why not kill the bosses and *then* go for full completion after the debuff nodes don't matter? You design the top (boss side) of the map with ten minibosses, each with a different buff on the final boss. Some buffs easy, some harder. If you send all ten players into the boss "pit" you don't have any players left to clear outer paths. You could try to bring down the boss after clearing six inner minibosses and then have four players left to continue outer explore, or other complex tactics. But you don't get a free easy shot at the boss and then an easy shot at full explore. To get to 100%, you would have to do all paths up front and then kill the boss fully buffed (i.e. not debuffed).

I think that's what they *intended* to do, but for some reason it did not occur to them to do. Instead they did this weird jumble of outer/inner paths with cross buff nodes and crossing paths that ultimately still all-but-requires full explore. There's only one real reasonable option: to clear every path, defeat every miniboss, and then defeat the boss. That is simultaneously the easiest way to complete the map and the one that gives the most points.

In a competition, "easy" should give smaller points than "harder." The three point shot should be farther away. 50% explore should offer an easier completion, 100% explore should offer a harder completion. And again: this shouldn't be a novel idea: it exists in the game in Act 4.

GroundedWisdom

My assumption is that it's more than that. There is the discouragement factor. There is also the fact that 6*s are coming and have a slightly larger CR. Now, the effect is minimal in average Fights, but when you have a mechanic like Defender Kills that amounts to significantly large Points, that becomes amplified when you have 6*s placed. Especially in the beginning when Rosters are not as expanded. The issue is not just the penalty. It's the sheer numbers that the Kills amounted to. Some Wars have upwards of 100-200 Kills, and over time that's changed the shape and focus of Wars. It's become the defining factor, and that is not really the intended focus of War, in my opinion. This is something that has developed as the game has changed, and with it Rosters. Frankly, Defender Kills would make quite a loophole once 6* Defenders are in the mix. It's my view that is the real issue. Defender Kills are no longer guaranteeing Wins.

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

My assumption is that it's more than that. There is the discouragement factor. There is also the fact that 6*s are coming and have a slightly larger CR. Now, the effect is minimal in average Fights, but when you have a mechanic like Defender Kills that amounts to significantly large Points, that becomes amplified when you have 6*s placed. Especially in the beginning when Rosters are not as expanded. The issue is not just the penalty. It's the sheer numbers that the Kills amounted to. Some Wars have upwards of 100-200 Kills, and over time that's changed the shape and focus of Wars. It's become the defining factor, and that is not really the intended focus of War, in my opinion. This is something that has developed as the game has changed, and with it Rosters. Frankly, Defender Kills would make quite a loophole once 6* Defenders are in the mix. It's my view that is the real issue. Defender Kills are no longer guaranteeing Wins.

That theory does not fit the facts. In particular, it is contradicted by three objective facts:

1. Higher tier champions do not as a rule make defenses harder. Players generally rank up attackers first and defenders second. This means introducing 6* champions will first make attacking easier, and then when defenders catch up it will return the status quo. Moreover, rank up resource limitations combined with the overlap in ranks means the introduction of 6* champions will have an overall effect of making defenses relatively weaker still: we are a long way from alliances fielding even a full complement of 5* defenders. That means when 6* champions are introduced, they will be facing predominantly 4* defenders, mixed with some 5* defenders. 6* champions do not, and simply cannot, make attacking harder unless players completely lose their minds when it comes to rank up materials. That is for all intents and purposes mathematically impossible.

2. Kabam explicitly stated, via Kabam Miike, that the primary defensive strategy for war is intended to be to place defenders designed to stop alliances from making progress, and in effect winning the war on kills. This is supported by the node buff changes Kabam made which only make sense if this statement is true, and the original intent was not to make attacking alliances survive intact. This means it is not a matter of opinion that generating defensive kills is the primary focus of AW, it is the explicit stated intent of the developers supported by their actions. The fact that Kabam isn't doing a particularly good job of it doesn't change the intent.

3. Defensive placement strategy has not "developed" over time. That is factually false. For as long as alliance war has existed, the one and only strategy for placing defenders has been to choose the defenders that have the greatest chance of generating kills. Not only is there no other strategy, there is no other conceivable strategy that is not nonsensical. In fact, the optimal strategy even now is to place defenders that will generate the most kills if that is even possible without drawing diversity penalties. You still see Magik and Iceman on the boss nodes. You don't see Spider Gwen on a miniboss node unless someone is punking you. Boss and miniboss nodes are still being placed under the strategy of "inflict that maximum amount of pain on the opponent by killing them." We stopped doing that in 15.0 for non-boss nodes mostly because few champions were strong enough to generate enough kills to compensate for the diversity penalty. In the current 15.0.1 iteration of AW, in *some* tiers you are seeing players begin to place strong defenders on certain nodes, again to generate as many kills as possible. And what's more, the devs seem to actually *want* this to happen.

GroundedWisdom

I'm not entirely convinced that people won't be placing 6*s in Defense. Particularly the Boss Node. Of course there is still emphasis on placing as best a Defense as possible. The idea is to stop up the opponent as much as possible. However, it's still another layer from my perspective. Defender Kills with 6* Defense would in fact exacerbate the issues that arose from having Defender Kills. I will leave it at that because not everyone is convinced that there were issues with having them.

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I'm not entirely convinced that people won't be placing 6*s in Defense. Particularly the Boss Node. Of course there is still emphasis on placing as best a Defense as possible. The idea is to stop up the opponent as much as possible. However, it's still another layer from my perspective. Defender Kills with 6* Defense would in fact exacerbate the issues that arose from having Defender Kills. I will leave it at that because not everyone is convinced that there were issues with having them.

I'm not trying to convince you that people won't place 6* defenders, so I don't know why you state you aren't convinced of that idea. What I stated was the objective fact that players in general rank up attackers over defenders. That's a statement of history, not conjecture.

The stated issue with defender kill points by Kabam was that they discouraged attacking strong defense nodes. This is a binary issue. 6* champions by definition cannot exacerbate a binary issue by generating more kills, because the number of kills was irrelevant to the issue as stated by Kabam. 6* champions would only be relevant to this issue in terms of whether alliance war defenders will get stronger relative to alliance war attackers. I think that obviously won't happen in general.

I'm primarily concerned with the problems Kabam has stated were issues to them, because those issues directly impact the future development of AW. I'm aware of your own personal issues with defender kill scoring in general, but as they do not influence future AW development and as you aren't really narrow and specific with those objections I don't think there's any merit in my challenging them with logic.

GroundedWisdom

If you're trying to convince me that the addition of 6*s won't create further problems with Defender Kills present, then I'm afraid the logic won't stand.

World Eater

DNA3000 wrote: »

MikeHock wrote: »

How can they say that 100% Completion wasn't intended when they create a map with 8-9 lanes ,with linked nodes that everywhere, that make it necessary to fully explore the map to unlock the enemy boss? It's just lip service.

Partially it is because they are trying to do contradictory, and thus impossible things, and partially because they aren't explaining their position eloquently.

They want to encourage players to attack, but they don't want players to always succeed. They think there is a nice balance between those two. They are wrong. Even if it existed, the tools they are using to try to reach it are too coarse to achieve that pencil-tip balance.

I *think* what they are trying to do is eliminate the situation where a player will give up while they still have live attackers but still encourage alliances to try to kill all of the opposing alliance's attackers. So they can honestly say their *objective* was not for alliances to always 100%, but rather for players to try, and then if the circumstances are such, ultimately fail in their objective to clear the map...l.

The map doesn't actually have to be fully explored to unlock the bosses and finish the map. That's a literal true statement. But I think most experienced players here will note that the nodes you can theoretically skip are among the easiest nodes to kill - why *would* you skip them, except by mistake? If they were the absolute hardest nodes on the map, then it would be true that maybe (at least in some tiers) it is a reasonable thing to say that 100% is not driven by the map. But when the hardest nodes have to be killed and the easiest don't, as a practical matter while you don't have to 100%, the map all but mandates 100%. That's a design error..

Had to edit your post for space, but am aware that alliances can take a boss down without 100% completion. I'm guessing most alliances are exploring 90-100% with the current set up.

I do agree that they were trying to accomplish some things that contradict, but above all, diversity and more item use/spending is what is seemed they strived for. Most people's point here is that they really don't know what they're doing... and like I said in my earilier post, anything we get now is just lip service.

LocoMotives

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

If you're trying to convince me that the addition of 6*s won't create further problems with Defender Kills present, then I'm afraid the logic won't stand.

If I may be so bold, he's not trying to convince you of anything as he stated. He's saying that your perceived problem is not the same as the stated problems by Kabam. 6* champs have never once been referenced by Kabam when discussing war changes. So unless you have insider knowledge, the discussion of 6* champs and CR within this thread is off topic.

Personally, I would love to see @DNA3000's napkin drawing of war used in this game. There's no way it's worse than what we currently have. I really wish Kabam would cut the losses and just come up with a new plan and map.

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RagamugginGunner

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I'm not entirely convinced that people won't be placing 6*s in Defense. Particularly the Boss Node. Of course there is still emphasis on placing as best a Defense as possible. The idea is to stop up the opponent as much as possible. However, it's still another layer from my perspective. Defender Kills with 6* Defense would in fact exacerbate the issues that arose from having Defender Kills. I will leave it at that because not everyone is convinced that there were issues with having them.

I'm not trying to convince you that people won't place 6* defenders, so I don't know why you state you aren't convinced of that idea. What I stated was the objective fact that players in general rank up attackers over defenders. That's a statement of history, not conjecture.

The stated issue with defender kill points by Kabam was that they discouraged attacking strong defense nodes. This is a binary issue. 6* champions by definition cannot exacerbate a binary issue by generating more kills, because the number of kills was irrelevant to the issue as stated by Kabam. 6* champions would only be relevant to this issue in terms of whether alliance war defenders will get stronger relative to alliance war attackers. I think that obviously won't happen in general.

I'm primarily concerned with the problems Kabam has stated were issues to them, because those issues directly impact the future development of AW. I'm aware of your own personal issues with defender kill scoring in general, but as they do not influence future AW development and as you aren't really narrow and specific with those objections I don't think there's any merit in my challenging them with logic.

You need to YouTube Louis C.K.'s bit about arguing with a 3 year old.

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Danny1473

Is there no end to you ineptitude? I just finished my war path, the middle path, that has no stun immunity nodes, except every champ was stun immune! So is that how you are increasing profit? Jack up the AI in war and quest, and give characters “ghost” abilities to make sure that people have to revive in order to stay in a top alliance? Ive said it many times before and I’ll say it even more, though you have deleted each post and I am sure you will delete this one, fix your gameplay! Nobody cares about the new characters if the game mechanics are terrible.

DNA3000

RagamugginGunner wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I'm not entirely convinced that people won't be placing 6*s in Defense. Particularly the Boss Node. Of course there is still emphasis on placing as best a Defense as possible. The idea is to stop up the opponent as much as possible. However, it's still another layer from my perspective. Defender Kills with 6* Defense would in fact exacerbate the issues that arose from having Defender Kills. I will leave it at that because not everyone is convinced that there were issues with having them.

I'm not trying to convince you that people won't place 6* defenders, so I don't know why you state you aren't convinced of that idea. What I stated was the objective fact that players in general rank up attackers over defenders. That's a statement of history, not conjecture.

The stated issue with defender kill points by Kabam was that they discouraged attacking strong defense nodes. This is a binary issue. 6* champions by definition cannot exacerbate a binary issue by generating more kills, because the number of kills was irrelevant to the issue as stated by Kabam. 6* champions would only be relevant to this issue in terms of whether alliance war defenders will get stronger relative to alliance war attackers. I think that obviously won't happen in general.

I'm primarily concerned with the problems Kabam has stated were issues to them, because those issues directly impact the future development of AW. I'm aware of your own personal issues with defender kill scoring in general, but as they do not influence future AW development and as you aren't really narrow and specific with those objections I don't think there's any merit in my challenging them with logic.

You need to YouTube Louis C.K.'s bit about arguing with a 3 year old.

Arguing with someone on the internet is nothing like arguing with a three year old. I've argued with my three year old niece. It is a winnable situation.

An internet debate is a form of performance art. You aren't trying to defeat the other performer. You are trying to get the audience to think about the art. What matters isn't whether the person you're debating thinks you won. What matters is who the audience thinks won.

And that audience can include the developers in this case, which is why I think it is still worth my time to discuss the subject, even though it seems increasingly long odds that anything productive will come of it. If I wasn't the kind of person that would spend time and money on long odds, I probably wouldn't be a player of this game.

GroundedWisdom

LocoMotives wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

If you're trying to convince me that the addition of 6*s won't create further problems with Defender Kills present, then I'm afraid the logic won't stand.

If I may be so bold, he's not trying to convince you of anything as he stated. He's saying that your perceived problem is not the same as the stated problems by Kabam. 6* champs have never once been referenced by Kabam when discussing war changes. So unless you have insider knowledge, the discussion of 6* champs and CR within this thread is off topic.

Personally, I would love to see @DNA3000's napkin drawing of war used in this game. There's no way it's worse than what we currently have. I really wish Kabam would cut the losses and just come up with a new plan and map.

I actually didn't say it was stated by them. I see it as another layer. Their main reason was given. I see more than one problem with Defender Kills.

Ryanbeatyou

@DNA3000 "What matters is who the audience thinks won" reminds me of Aaron Eckhart in Thank you for Smoking

nuggz

No No No No

NMEONES

Hopefully we get some sort of news before war starts today...