**Mastery Loadouts**
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Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
AQ vs AW. Which is the better
GrassKnuckles
Posts: 1,923 ★★★★★
Which is better AQ or AW?
AQ vs AW. Which is the better 78 votes
AQ because it’s less stressful
26%
21 votes
AQ because it’s great rewards lower effort
15%
12 votes
AQ because it’s simply more fun
0%
AW because it’s less stressful
0%
AW because it’s great rewards lower effort
2%
2 votes
AW because it’s simply more fun
25%
20 votes
Both great equally
1%
1 vote
Both need changed desperately
21%
17 votes
I could care less about both of them
6%
5 votes
0
Comments
If you're up there competing for platinum or higher ranks, with the looming threat of being booted from an alliance if you make a mistake, then war is infinitely more stressful.
That said, our alliance is very laid back with war, so I don't mind it at all. Hanging out in Silver 1, with no requirement for item use just makes it another piece of content with easy rewards.
More stressful? War.
AQ is boring, and is usually done because it needs to be.
War is better for alliances that are organized to do war. AQ is better for basically everyone else.
This may seem obvious, but it is not so obvious. "Organized for war" does not mean the alliance is full of people who like war. It very specifically means an alliance of people who like war and are all of comparable strength. If you have a heterogeneous alliance of players with a wide range of strength, Alliance War has a very high probability of being extremely stressful on the alliance. Alliances tend to gravitate towards matching against alliances of comparable overall strength, and that means your competition tends to be about as strong as the average player in your alliance. If you have a narrow group of players, that's fine. If you have a wide range of players, then for the strongest players in the alliance wars can end up being boring, because they will be relatively easy. Conversely they could be extremely difficult and costly for the weakest players, because they will be constantly fighting against far stronger defense placements than what they could ordinarily handle.
To put it another way, alliances keep winning against the competition (and move up to stronger competition) until their weakest links break. Then they start losing and level off. If you're among the weakest links, this is probably not a good experience. If you're among the stronger players, you might feel like those players aren't pulling their weight and should be replaced so you can get more interesting and more rewarding wars. This can put a lot of stress on an alliance.
With AQ it is not as bad, because the alliance chooses the difficulty of AQ, and can customize to a limited extent with battlegroup specific maps and modifiers. In other words, there is such a thing as choosing to fight a 765 AQ week. There's no such thing as choosing to fight a 765 war. With AQ the alliance can adjust the content to match the members. With AW, if the alliance wants to do well they have to adjust the members to match the content.
To put it in still another way, Alliance modes are rewarding when you win and costly when you lose. With AQ, we can all theoretically win. No one *has* to lose. With AW, half of us have to lose. If you can't mitigate that cost somehow, War is probably not going to be a fun time.