I didn't strip skill from the equation. I said Defender Kills are not necessary for skill. Taking shots at me won't change the fact that they're gone. The argument is false because it's not about skill at all. It's about the Wins people gained from Kills. You could just as easily make the statement that people have to use skill now because they can't rely on Kills for the Wins. Depends on what perspective you look at, I suppose.
Well competitive alliances want skill back in the game. We aren't casual gamers that play map 3.
How do you make the argument that skill is needed now? KILLS DONT COUNT so you can die 15x with no penalty so just buy the wins as long as your alliance has a higher rating. Listen we get the white knight trolling thats going on, congrats! Going against the majority on every issue just to create a hostile environment. But kabam allows it so its really on them. Most players want defender kills to return, the majority of their paying customers want it returned but free casual players are the one that get the say even though they don't keep the game going by spending.
I'm sorry, at what point did spending become new? Allies have been using Resources at a penalty since Wars began. You know those Wars you won by large Kill counts? That was Allies spending them. To their own detriment. Spending is not new and has always been optional. Difference is people aren't paying to bring themselves closer to losing anymore. No, the whole skill argument is bunk because it's not necessary to have Kill metrics for skill. Not at all.
I didn't strip skill from the equation. I said Defender Kills are not necessary for skill. Taking shots at me won't change the fact that they're gone. The argument is false because it's not about skill at all. It's about the Wins people gained from Kills. You could just as easily make the statement that people have to use skill now because they can't rely on Kills for the Wins. Depends on what perspective you look at, I suppose.
Well competitive alliances want skill back in the game. We aren't casual gamers that play map 3.
How do you make the argument that skill is needed now? KILLS DONT COUNT so you can die 15x with no penalty so just buy the wins as long as your alliance has a higher rating. Listen we get the white knight trolling thats going on, congrats! Going against the majority on every issue just to create a hostile environment. But kabam allows it so its really on them. Most players want defender kills to return, the majority of their paying customers want it returned but free casual players are the one that get the say even though they don't keep the game going by spending.
I'm sorry, at what point did spending become new? Allies have been using Resources at a penalty since Wars began. You know those Wars you won by large Kill counts? That was Allies spending them. To their own detriment. Spending is not new and has always been optional. Difference is people aren't paying to bring themselves closer to losing anymore. No, the whole skill argument is bunk because it's not necessary to have Kill metrics for skill. Not at all.
You don't spend or compete at a high level in this game so not sure why you are talking about spending or AW. It takes skill to beat opponents and not die, thats just a fact. Have you beaten LOL yet? It takes skill to do so with just using an odins worth.
Defender kills was the great equalizer, a skilled alliance could beat a higher rated alliance based on skill. Thats a fact and disproves anything you've said about kills not being a good metric.
Now skilled alliances are penalized, even if they 100% with no deaths they still lose because outcome was predetermined by war rating. But again you just argue against the majority to create a hostile environment which isn't healthy for the forums.
Okay. I'm done debating this with you. If all you can come back with is what Tier I'm in, it gets old really fast. Defender Kills are gone. They're not necessary for Wars. That's my view. You can't continue to pursue a debate with me despite me trying to respectfully disagree more than once, then claim to be the victim of my "toxicity". You disagree. That's fine. We don't have to agree. They're not necessary for skill and they had significant negative effects. I'm not changing my outlook on them, so it's time to end our discussion.
So what penalties are in place for playing poorly now? You can try to flip it all you want, but that argument just isn't valid. You do a good job of it, I'll give you that.. But you can't make it valid.
Asking for a points-wise penalty for poor play isn't some outrageous thing. And in a player vs player style game mode, it's pretty necessary. Without it, you undermine the validity of the competition, which is what's happening now. (almost) No one wants a competition of points farming, as you describe war now. (almost) No one wants participation trophies. No one wants to lose a war before it's begun because of defender rating.
This entire construct is wrong headed. The points system, the idea of increasing node difficulty, all of it. And that's really easy to see unless someone just wants to be argumentative.
And the thing is, no one that can see how wrong headed it is will ever shut up about it. Many will just decide to keep farming shards and see war as another chore they do for rewards... And abandon the idea of taking any sort of gamer pride in war. That's been happening since war 2.0.
We used to have real matches with much more than rewards on the line.. And it was glorious lol. Now real gamers see it for what it is. And they don't abandon wars bc they might lose. They know they can still get shards and game the system to have more wins later. You say you don't like to lose, but there's really zero repercussions for losing. It's hurting the advancement of your alliance to not participate in wars. That's poor leadership for those 13 lower accounts you have in the alli. Why would you hold them back like that?
Okay. I'm done debating this with you. If all you can come back with is what Tier I'm in, it gets old really fast. Defender Kills are gone. They're not necessary for Wars. That's my view. You can't continue to pursue a debate with me despite me trying to respectfully disagree more than once, then claim to be the victim of my "toxicity". You disagree. That's fine. We don't have to agree. They're not necessary for skill and they had significant negative effects. I'm not changing my outlook on them, so it's time to end our discussion.
Okay. I'm done debating this with you. If all you can come back with is what Tier I'm in, it gets old really fast. Defender Kills are gone. They're not necessary for Wars. That's my view. You can't continue to pursue a debate with me despite me trying to respectfully disagree more than once, then claim to be the victim of my "toxicity". You disagree. That's fine. We don't have to agree. They're not necessary for skill and they had significant negative effects. I'm not changing my outlook on them, so it's time to end our discussion.
Why are you attacking me?
Nice try. You've responded to multiple comments I've made across Threads all night. You're not fooling anyone. You even necroed one of my old Posts. We're done here.
Stop calling me a necro thats disgusting. Stop making our discussions personal!
Guys let's stop and recap promptly and avoid further discussion.
@GroundedWisdom has stated he believes taking out defender kills was a necessary move and tie breakers put in place have done what is intended. That is his point of view and that is OK, he might not agree with all and that is also OK. If you don't agree just stop answering.
@Draco2199@chunkyb if you believe him to be attacking you, then ignore him. That is it, believe me I don't see why you want to take him on. Let him be.
To the rest and all and new comers. Most agree Defender Kills should return. What I think we should debate on this specific, is HOW they should return. We need to REMEMBER that the way they were in the previous iteration provided UNFAIR advantages to certain rosters, mastery investors and higher alliances. Changes intended wanted to balance some of these things out, but they didn't hit the mark just adding new score and removing Defender Kills. The vast MAJORITY AGREE THEY SHOULD RETURN but we must focus in HOW TO create the intended BALANCE
Also, there could be other things explored to improve the main objective of this discussion: ADD SKILL to the scoring system and enhance AW playability and balance for all user base. I have made some suggestions to this in a past post I'll try to requote. Think of what can define skill in the attacker end, not only if they die or not. Let's think of rewarding things like total attacking time, extra points on 0 hits taken, extra points on 0 item usage. Maybe even ideas add finishing blow points like what we are using in Valor missions. I don't know what else could be inplemented. But rewarding skill can help.
Guys let's stop and recap promptly and avoid further discussion.
@GroundedWisdom has stated he believes taking out defender kills was a necessary move and tie breakers put in place have done what is intended. That is his point of view and that is OK, he might not agree with all and that is also OK. If you don't agree just stop answering.
@Draco2199@chunkyb if you believe him to be attacking you, then ignore him. That is it, believe me I don't see why you want to take him on. Let him be.
To the rest and all and new comers. Most agree Defender Kills should return. What I think we should debate on this specific, is HOW they should return. We need to REMEMBER that the way they were in the previous iteration provided UNFAIR advantages to certain rosters, mastery investors and higher allainces. Changes intended wanted to balance some of these things out, but they didn't hit the mark just adding new score and removing Defender Kills. The vast majority include they should return but we mus focus in HOW to create the intended balance.
Also, there could be other things explored to improve the main objective of this discussion: ADD SKILL to the scoring system and enhance AW playability and balance for all user base. I have made some suggestions to this in a past post.
Hi @Kabam Miike thank you for creating a new discussion post.
I have gone through 30% of comments of other players, trying to get an idea of punctual proposals, as well as your explanations you gave on certain items of concern.
Based on my experience in Tier 5-3 and other comments above, I have thought of the following proposed fixes to improve the immediate state:
1)Bring back defender kills points, making them work similar to how Defender Points are awarded, giving you just some extra points, not significant as in AW 1.0.
Note: For opening the next item, my view on why Defender Kills didn't work awesome before is because it didn't have something to balance out and benefit the opponents. Simply put, true attack skill was left out of rewards. Exploration could be achieved with ally suport, but performance in is not being measured.
2)So to improve the skill balance factor, add "Clean Defeat" points for attackers, awarded to those that don't die in combat. This creates a balance scenario between how defeats and victories happen. Timeouts should not reward the points, as considering them could be abused if not taken into account. From a "revenue' standpoint this would incentivate use of items, enough to get pass a next node by seeking a survivability scenario. This could also add to gold rewards
3)I believe in the purpose of diversity to avoid massive mystic and auto passive damage enemy deployments. This is what is was made for and it is OK, it is working. The issue still not addressed in my opinion, is that it interacts with placed defenders & defeated adversaries scores. If points for defeated adversaries are removed from score, then you avoid the hole of having less points attacking due to incomplete placement of the other alliance, balancing out the equation to reward the better coordinated alliance that did full and diverse placement, which is fair. For me that is the easy fix. Note: Keep the count of killed opponents for the gold rewards!
4)To add further tie breaking, points could be awarded for mini boss defeats to add other tie breaking. Certain scenarios exist in Tier5 and below in which defeating a boss without the minibosses is feasable, and extra points could go to those that choose the challenge of full clear.
I think the above creates more skill based scoring mechanisms, addressing main issues and really rewarding the better alliance in all senses, not just how powerful defenders are. Node difficulty increases being designed can help to hinder 100% exploration efforts, but this was never the point. The point is about how to make skill more tangible in the end result.
Hopefully these proposals can be analyzed and taken to consideration, I believe it would help to put AW 2.0 in a good spot!
Putting up front my initial post to again focus on ideas.
Regardless of being a as boxed or fenced, I will look at consolidating and looking at options to push to the right people for discussion.
Guys let's stop and recap promptly and avoid further discussion.
@GroundedWisdom has stated he believes taking out defender kills was a necessary move and tie breakers put in place have done what is intended. That is his point of view and that is OK, he might not agree with all and that is also OK. If you don't agree just stop answering.
Candidly speaking, why are *you* responding to any of this?
I don't respond to every post full of gibberish in the thread, but so long as the facts matter to me, I'm going to reply occasionally to factually inaccurate posts. That would be my agenda, same as yours is to get your suggestions looked at and replied to.
To the rest and all and new comers. Most agree Defender Kills should return. What I think we should debate on this specific, is HOW they should return. We need to REMEMBER that the way they were in the previous iteration provided UNFAIR advantages to certain rosters, mastery investors and higher allainces. Changes intended wanted to balance some of these things out, but they didn't hit the mark just adding new score and removing Defender Kills. The vast majority include they should return but we mus focus in HOW to create the intended balance.
Also, there could be other things explored to improve the main objective of this discussion: ADD SKILL to the scoring system and enhance AW playability and balance for all user base. I have made some suggestions to this in a past post.
I discussed this quite a bit in this thread, along with a ton of different ways to do that. There's probably literally a hundred of my posts in the thread discussing what defender kills did, what their role in 14.0 AW was, why removing them created a problem, what alternatives exist to replace them with something that doesn't recreate the problem Kabam stated they had, why some alternatives to defender kill points might be superior to the original defender kill point system in 14.0, how defender kill points and the lack of them interact with defender diversity points, how the node difficulty qualitatively alters how those points function and how the devs are likely viewing the metrics they are using to tweak AW iteratively.
To respond directly to your suggestion post, which does not seem to acknowledge the existence of anyone else's suggestions, some of which have already been discussed in depth and directly parallel yours:
1. You can't just say "add defender kill points back just with less" because that is essentially the same mistake the devs made with diversity points: they just set them without thinking about their relationship with everything else and set them too high. They were higher than the points you could get for actually killing the node, and without defender kill points that meant there was no reason to place duplicate champs: the penalty was too high to overcome. A similar thing occurs if you just arbitrarily try to make defender kill points less problematic by making them "small." If they are too small, they don't have the effect people want. But if they are big enough to influece the war, they run afoul of the problem the devs stated: they can influence a player to stop attacking while they still have live attackers. It is mathematically impossible for defender kill points to avoid both problems, because they are actually the same problem worded differently.
2. The notion of "clean defeat" bonus points is comparable to several different suggestions to revalue nodes based on the number of defeats it takes to kill the node, it is just the extreme case where the only two options are "zero" and "everything else."
3. I'm not 100% certain what you mean by (3), but I can say that to the extent that diversity points was intended to address the problem of people focusing on the defenders capable of generating the most kills - which were often but not exclusively strong mystic defenders with mystic dispersion - the node buffs in 15.1 and 16.0 has significantly undone that. Moreover, Kabam's position on this seems to be particularly weird: they acknowledge that fighting the same powerful defenders over and over again is a bad thing, but they seem to be perfectly fine with players fighting a more diverse set of the same powerful defenders over and over again. They've specifically stated that they don't mind, and in fact it is intentional, that some nodes (i.e. 24, 42) are explicitly designed to make certain defenders extremely powerful on them, and the attacking side simply has to bring the "right attacker" (their words) to defeat it.
Separate from any other discussion about the merits of defender diversity systems, this means Kabam doesn't understand the root of the problem. The root of the problem was not that fighting Juggernaut five times was boring. The root of the problem was that fighting the same defense configurations every time was boring. But the current map seems to be reintroducing and encouraging doing exactly that.
4. As to "other tie breaking" I've stated repeatedly that we don't actually have tie-breaking in AW, and that's part of the problem. The things called tie breakers aren't being used as tie breakers making them problematic, and the developers consistently calling them something they are not pollutes the discussion further, making it extremely difficult to discuss what's actually wrong with them.
One of the arguments that has been used in favor of diversity was that champs aren't better than other champs. It has been said a few different ways... At times, it was "they aren't better because they get more kills".. At other times, it was "they aren't better just because the players decide they are" or "they're seen as better because the players say they are". Well, that argument has always been wrong. But now, kabam says it's wrong too.
Candidly speaking, why are *you* responding to any of this?
I don't respond to every post full of gibberish in the thread, but so long as the facts matter to me, I'm going to reply occasionally to factually inaccurate posts. That would be my agenda, same as yours is to get your suggestions looked at and replied to.
*NOTE* Post was going long and had to cut some characters short.*
To respond directly to your suggestion post, which does not seem to acknowledge the existence of anyone else's suggestions, some of which have already been discussed in depth and directly parallel yours:
1. You can't just say "add defender kill points back just with less" because that is essentially the same mistake the devs made with diversity points: they just set them without thinking about their relationship with everything else and set them too high. They were higher than the points you could get for actually killing the node, and without defender kill points that meant there was no reason to place duplicate champs: the penalty was too high to overcome. A similar thing occurs if you just arbitrarily try to make defender kill points less problematic by making them "small." If they are too small, they don't have the effect people want. But if they are big enough to influece the war, they run afoul of the problem the devs stated: they can influence a player to stop attacking while they still have live attackers. It is mathematically impossible for defender kill points to avoid both problems, because they are actually the same problem worded differently.
2. The notion of "clean defeat" bonus points is comparable to several different suggestions to revalue nodes based on the number of defeats it takes to kill the node, it is just the extreme case where the only two options are "zero" and "everything else."
3. I'm not 100% certain what you mean by (3), but I can say that to the extent that diversity points was intended to address the problem of people focusing on the defenders capable of generating the most kills - which were often but not exclusively strong mystic defenders with mystic dispersion - the node buffs in 15.1 and 16.0 has significantly undone that. Moreover, Kabam's position on this seems to be particularly weird: they acknowledge that fighting the same powerful defenders over and over again is a bad thing, but they seem to be perfectly fine with players fighting a more diverse set of the same powerful defenders over and over again. They've specifically stated that they don't mind, and in fact it is intentional, that some nodes (i.e. 24, 42) are explicitly designed to make certain defenders extremely powerful on them, and the attacking side simply has to bring the "right attacker" (their words) to defeat it.
Separate from any other discussion about the merits of defender diversity systems, this means Kabam doesn't understand the root of the problem. The root of the problem was not that fighting Juggernaut five times was boring. The root of the problem was that fighting the same defense configurations every time was boring. But the current map seems to be reintroducing and encouraging doing exactly that.
4. As to "other tie breaking" I've stated repeatedly that we don't actually have tie-breaking in AW, and that's part of the problem. The things called tie breakers aren't being used as tie breakers making them problematic, and the developers consistently calling them something they are not pollutes the discussion further, making it extremely difficult to discuss what's actually wrong with them.
Yes, hopefully all agendas can be addressed, specially if it's to build suggestions & share around more ideas for Kabam to do (hopefully)
As for debunking false or innacurate posts, I understand & stand with you and many others. My intention es merely to suggest we focus our valuable energy for the most productive part of the discussion that is all .
About other player feedback taken into account, I have not clearly stated that my intention was to blend most of what I read into specific suggestions, and I don't want to take credit as mine even with some of my input there. My bad to not make appropriate acknowledgement of post that gave me ideas to add on or that I might have not seen. Apologies if this has offended anyone & was not intented.
So about the paralleled input:
1)Agreed, that just bringing back Defender Kills won't fix. It's a gray area neither of our posts have completely addressed on the appropriate "how". The fact is that we want it back in a way that makes the difference without the opportunities of the previous iteration. More to build on here.
2)Yes, what you mentioned in other posts could be another way to tweak what I now want to call the *Defense Ledger*. So I could name *my* specific proposal as to add a more robust *Attack Ledger* with new metrics aimed to measure attack perfoemance (like "Clean Defeat"). If it's SKILL we want to "add and measure", then this is a way. E.g.1 nodes 24 and 42 will guarantee kills if you don't have the right attacker, true. But if you have flawless fights before/after, you have those points in favor. So mathematically speaking, both ledgers will work to score and you won't be able to anticipate the outcome before attack starts. E.g.2, Exploration is not a true attack metric, because if someone misses deployment then those are given points to the defense ledger, and in triple! (Nodes easily explored + Diversity + Defender Raiting points). I mean, then why not add attacker raiting? That would also reward your investment in attack roster, not only defense.
E.g.3. I just had this scenario happen today. One member did not deploy, so immediately "agreed" it was a defeat by both ends, because we can see the number before we move in attack. So we start asking our alliance to not use items and have fun, right? Well, 100% exploration and 0 items used. Them? Items used to bust through our defense. Where is our better skill rewarded? Note, their Defender Raiting was higher. So then even if we deployed 30, we might have been just slightly off. But if our performance would have been measured, it could have made a great difference. Attack metrics, can definitely add and give opportunities when skill is actually superior.
3)Yes! It is weird indeed. However, let's imagine this is the least of all the current problems. And I think we agree we like what Diversity added to the complexity of winning a war. It also helps the game overall by investing in other Champs we wouldn't actively invest. At least in my alliance now that they have had to increase 3/30 and 4/40 or 2/35 characters, they try to take advantage of the investment and use them or alternate them in defense/attack and/or missions. So, they did add in the node difficulty and are creating spaces for specific defenders, but you still penalize if you repeat so it kind of works out. Still not perfect, but again we can fix this with attack metrics and building attack ledger as expressed on the same examples of nodes 24 and 42. Maybe, my thought on it.
4)Agreed and yes, I will back out from this term. Point blank and we can see it in the final example I presented of 2). We don't have appropriate tie breaking as developers are stating because you already know up front how much points you will have.
So, I don't want to circle back, but then *my* specific and only proposal is to add to the Attack Ledger and associated metrics to mathematically implement opportunities to balance against the heavily measured Defense Legder. This would add a true tie breaking mechanic based on attack and skill performance for both sides that is not decided up front.
Ready to hear back, this was awesome and what I was expecting by being a little pushy on focusing on proposals and potential solutions thanks again for the reply.
It breaks my heart that so much effort is being put into this with no evidence whatsoever that anyone in their side is reading it aside from a forum mod occasionally skimming through to hand out a warning or two for name calling.
I didn't strip skill from the equation. I said Defender Kills are not necessary for skill. Taking shots at me won't change the fact that they're gone. The argument is false because it's not about skill at all. It's about the Wins people gained from Kills. You could just as easily make the statement that people have to use skill now because they can't rely on Kills for the Wins. Depends on what perspective you look at, I suppose.
Well competitive alliances want skill back in the game. We aren't casual gamers that play map 3.
How do you make the argument that skill is needed now? KILLS DONT COUNT so you can die 15x with no penalty so just buy the wins as long as your alliance has a higher rating. Listen we get the white knight trolling thats going on, congrats! Going against the majority on every issue just to create a hostile environment. But kabam allows it so its really on them. Most players want defender kills to return, the majority of their paying customers want it returned but free casual players are the one that get the say even though they don't keep the game going by spending.
I'm sorry, at what point did spending become new? Allies have been using Resources at a penalty since Wars began. You know those Wars you won by large Kill counts? That was Allies spending them. To their own detriment. Spending is not new and has always been optional. Difference is people aren't paying to bring themselves closer to losing anymore. No, the whole skill argument is bunk because it's not necessary to have Kill metrics for skill. Not at all.
Do you really not get it? We used to regularly beat much higher alliances who would spend like crazy and revive time after time only to lose to us due to defender kills because we were more skilled. Dying fewer times against similar or even harder defenders is a result of skill. It's not hard to grasp. Or sometimes they would beat us because despite the kills they got 3 bosses and we got only 2 and weren't willing to push, but it was way more satisfying and at least we had a good shot to win despite being 3-5 million lower and if we pushed for a kill skill made it possible to beat them whereas now it would literally be impossible. So how is the skill argument "bunk"? Under the old system with defender kills it was possible to win any war regardless of being up against a higher alliance if you were skilled. Now it isn't. Seems pretty cut and dry to me, but I guess it's bunk? I know you won't respond since you are done debating this though... again lol
So I Believe there is already plenty of feedback in this thread,and i really hope it gets used by Kabam and AW can become as great as it can be.That said i ad my perspective to the feedback hoping to help even more:
As i see it,AW consists of a few things:
-Champions(used in attack and defence). There is reason we had multiple same defenders before diversity and thats that some champions proved to be better defenders.I believe it would be better to be able to apply diversity in a natural way,which means tweaking some of the champs to make them greater defenders.I know its hard(and unlikely?) to happen but it would help a lot.And since i said it,let me add that tweaking most of the old champs would be great for the future of this game(more choices,more strategies,more unique.different rosters!)!
-Map. A well designed map is necessary.An ideal map in my opinion should have a lot of different nodes,with scaling difficulty,and leaving plenty room for different strategies.Adding act5 nodes maybe was a good idea,but i would happily accept some new nodes specifically created for AW and i am sure Kabam can think of some shiny ideas on that!Yes hard nodes are a must(impossible nodes or blockades are not a good idea though)!
-Points metrics. Thats obviously a combination exploration,rating,diversity and what is lacking right now...SKILL!We all want it back,and i do understand the concerns on Defender Kills but i still believe its the best and fairest idea,as somebody already claimed..even in real life exploration would be the strongest metric but then losses come in play(defender kills).Surely a simple addition of Def.Kils won't magically fix AW and thats why i said "points metrics",a careful readjustment is probably needed in the points awarded for each metric so we can get as close as possibly to a fair AW,counting skill and having its tie-breakers as well!Also i saw many different ideas form people in this community to include skills in AW and i hope they are also noticed by Kabam!
-Last but not least Masteries. Maybe not many realise that they play a big part in AW but i believe they do!So in my opinion a big part of "mystic" wars was how strong was mystic dispersion in mystic characters(it suited magic.juggy,Dorm even mordo perfectly).By any means i wouldn't like to see mystic dispersion devaluated,BUT a change in the other class masteries could help.If i am not mistaken very few use any of the other class specific masteries but mystic dispersion,so maybe if we could turn them to something more useful it could lead to more champs becoming greater in defense(or offence)!
The could make Dex not trigger mystic dispersion and it would only devalue it for awd. Much like willpower stacking, this is a change that players had actually been asking for for a long time.
Seems like a lot of folks are dissatisfied over the removal of defender kills, a key in ingredient in the old AW scoring system. So here is my question.
If your favorite restaurant removed or changed their secret ingredient which made their food taste wonderful and stand out from other restaurants, resulting in their food now tasting average or even leaving a bad taste in your mouth as a result would you keep eating there?
Why is this any different? Kabam previously had a winning recipe for AW in many people's eyes but for whatever reason their head chef made a choice to change the ingredients and it's just not quite the same anymore. Now you as a consumer have a choice: keep eating it up, order something else on the menu instead, or go eat somewhere else altogether that is healthier, better tasting, etc.
One thing is certain, they have made it pretty clear that defender kills are not coming back (or at least not anytime soon).
Forgot about this endless thread so reposting after having a good discussion closed. Thought tags were supposed to help make all this stuff easier to find but Kabam doesn't think so. We'll just bury this in with the rest of the good ideas and hope to have a real discussion rather than a bunch of posts within a post about AW. Anyway, hey.
ANYONE GOT SOME CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM FOR AW? HARD TO FIND ANYTHING POSITIVE ABOUT AW 2.0.
I even posted on Reddit to see what people are thinking as we go through the motions playing the thing.
Did Kabam make significant improvements?
Is making nodes more difficult something that changed the outcomes for your alliance?
Do we need to bring kills back once and for all? 25 to 50 points per D kill?
My opinion, good or bad, doesn't matter by itself. What do you guys currently think?
Riegel Posts: 209 10:40AM
Wallet Wars Return of the Triple Boost.
MikeHockMikeHock Posts: 476 10:41AM
Riegel wrote: »
Wallet Wars Return of the Triple Boost.
Truer words have never been spoken
LightvayneLightvayne Posts: 63 10:49AM
The harder nodes for the most part really haven’t changed anything. Groups are still easily completing maps 100% or pretty damn near close to it.
I can usually find a silver lining somewhere to some of the changes Kabam makes....I still can’t find it on this one.
The Map itself I dont have a problem with (though some of the teleportation destinations dont really make sense), its just the new point system killing the fun out of it.
My big issue is this. Skill was so important to us because we were a David in tiers with Goliaths. Our War Rating reached 2100 after a lot of planning and hard work, not spending. Then after the changes, our WR dropped significantly. We're getting less rewards and it's just less fun without skill and kills at play. We didn't do anything wrong and the factors in control of our wins or losses are essentially out of our control. The new system isn't fair. Period. Something has to be done before this year ends or we'll see to it that our voice is heard.
My big issue is this. Skill was so important to us because we were a David in tiers with Goliaths. Our War Rating reached 2100 after a lot of planning and hard work, not spending. Then after the changes, our WR dropped significantly. We're getting less rewards and it's just less fun without skill and kills at play. We didn't do anything wrong and the factors in control of our wins or losses are essentially out of our control. The new system isn't fair. Period. Something has to be done before this year ends or we'll see to it that our voice is heard.
Sorry. GW says skill has nothing to do with it. Apparently it's only about points lol.
It breaks my heart that so much effort is being put into this with no evidence whatsoever that anyone in their side is reading it aside from a forum mod occasionally skimming through to hand out a warning or two for name calling.
Yeah this is my concern also.
The majority of players want defender kills to be returned in some way to make AW more skill based again and not predetermined before the war has even started by diversity.
I like the idea of diversity but it just doesn't work without defender kills.
There has been no official comment as far as I've seen that they're even considering listening to us and bringing kills back so all this debating could be in vain.
You just conjectured what I said. I said larger Allies would most often win regardless. Meaning they have the Rosters to do so. Allies with a 6 Mil Rating going up against Allies of a 12 Mil Rating in Tier 1. Not an actual example, but it highlights the point that the Matches were horribly mismatched. You can call it skill because they died less to get there, but it threw the entire system off. For the longest time, people have maintained that Prestige is all that matters, and Rating doesn't make a difference. Kabam has mentioned that a great deal of factors can be determined by Rating, and I've said multiple times that Rating is a reflection of progression in the game because it signifies time and effort. I've said since the changes have taken place that the Tiers would be more in line with our Rating, and the Matches would reflect that by being closer to our Ally's Rating. For the most part, that's been the case. I'm not saying that the Ally must automatically win because their Rating is larger. I'm saying they are more apt to win, especially when the Match is far off. There is no logical reason why Allies should be Matched with others 2, 3 times their size. Call it skill, call it what you want. Time and effort in an Ally is reflected in its Rating.
I'd like to say I enjoyed reading the 80+ new comments since I last peeked, but I wont and I didn't. LOL
The point about the gaps in ratings is a great subject to bring up IMO. I believe the underlying desire of many of us still playing is born from those scenarios.
It's called a challenge.
An event that puts us at a crossroads of humdrum or exhilaration. A time where we test our playing skills against a bigger badder opponent.
And the ability to succeed in that "challenge" has been stripped from AW since the new update and continues to be overlooked, iteration after iteration. And I mean challenge as being a bigger alliance and not to be confused with ridiculously extreme node increases.
I'll be 1st to admit there were many instances where I asked my ally mates "how the F are these guys considered to be in the same tier as us"?! But, never once thought "this is BS, game sucks ass". Quite the contrary, we were thrilled that we might have a shot at beating "the unbeatable" and if we failed, no worries, we'll learn from any mistakes and do better next round. Kinda like the playoffs where we're the last seed and go on to take out #1.
I hope I speak for many when I say, this is much more rewarding then being #1 and always winning.
Maybe defender kills will be our Christmas gift this year. Even the Grinch gave back all the presents after taking them from the Who's in Whoville. If only their heart has the space to grow 3 times this holiday season.
ANYONE GOT SOME CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM FOR AW? HARD TO FIND ANYTHING POSITIVE ABOUT AW 2.0.
Technically speaking, you're playing AW 2.2. 2.2 is "less awful" than 2.0, but not as good as AW 1.0. I suppose that is positive.
I consider 15.0 AW to be AW 2.0. In 2.0 we got a war in which the "annoying" nodes like thorns were taken away, the map itself was made extremely easy through weakening node buffs, the penalty for poor performance on attack was removed by eliminating defender kill points, and a (relatively) huge amount of points were added for each defender placed on the map that was unique.
This created a war with virtually all competitive skill removed from AW. The easier map combined with the huge encouragement to place diverse defenses meant attackers were far more likely to complete far more of the map than before, pushing many tiers to reach 100% a high percentage of the time. With both sides killing all the bosses and completing the entire map, wars were generally decided based solely on the original defensive placement and not on any measure of skill during conventional gameplay. This was basically horrible.
15.1 and 16.0 reduced the impact of diversity points which slightly reduced the incentive to place fully diverse defenses and radically increased the strength of the node buffs on the map increasing the incentive to place strong defenders. The lack of any way to judge attacker performance still forces alliances to consider all or nothing defense placement: a defense that weakens but doesn't fully stop an attacker path is nearly worthless, but the nodes are now strong enough that certain defender/node combinations are now strong enough to override the incentive to place diverse defenses - aka blockades.
This is better, or at least this is less awful. However, the meta problem is that Kabam is making AW less awful not by improving the new elements of 15.0/16.0, but by taking the worst problems of 14.0 that they actually tried to solve and reinjecting them into 16.0 in even nastier ways.
What's more, Kabam is specifically saying (via the mods) that they are perfectly fine with certain defenders on certain nodes being almost unbeatable without "the right attacker." That's not a good look.
And while 15.0 was so easy it almost certainly at least had the side effect that people were spending less on AW, 16.0 seems to be forcing many players in many alliance tiers to spend more, for complex reasons having to do with the exact way the map is configured and the way the nodes currently work. They have to know that, and they are therefore responsible for that side effect whether it is intentional or not.
Comments
I'm sorry, at what point did spending become new? Allies have been using Resources at a penalty since Wars began. You know those Wars you won by large Kill counts? That was Allies spending them. To their own detriment. Spending is not new and has always been optional. Difference is people aren't paying to bring themselves closer to losing anymore. No, the whole skill argument is bunk because it's not necessary to have Kill metrics for skill. Not at all.
You don't spend or compete at a high level in this game so not sure why you are talking about spending or AW. It takes skill to beat opponents and not die, thats just a fact. Have you beaten LOL yet? It takes skill to do so with just using an odins worth.
Defender kills was the great equalizer, a skilled alliance could beat a higher rated alliance based on skill. Thats a fact and disproves anything you've said about kills not being a good metric.
Now skilled alliances are penalized, even if they 100% with no deaths they still lose because outcome was predetermined by war rating. But again you just argue against the majority to create a hostile environment which isn't healthy for the forums.
Asking for a points-wise penalty for poor play isn't some outrageous thing. And in a player vs player style game mode, it's pretty necessary. Without it, you undermine the validity of the competition, which is what's happening now. (almost) No one wants a competition of points farming, as you describe war now. (almost) No one wants participation trophies. No one wants to lose a war before it's begun because of defender rating.
This entire construct is wrong headed. The points system, the idea of increasing node difficulty, all of it. And that's really easy to see unless someone just wants to be argumentative.
And the thing is, no one that can see how wrong headed it is will ever shut up about it. Many will just decide to keep farming shards and see war as another chore they do for rewards... And abandon the idea of taking any sort of gamer pride in war. That's been happening since war 2.0.
We used to have real matches with much more than rewards on the line.. And it was glorious lol. Now real gamers see it for what it is. And they don't abandon wars bc they might lose. They know they can still get shards and game the system to have more wins later. You say you don't like to lose, but there's really zero repercussions for losing. It's hurting the advancement of your alliance to not participate in wars. That's poor leadership for those 13 lower accounts you have in the alli. Why would you hold them back like that?
Why are you attacking me?
Stop calling me a necro thats disgusting. Stop making our discussions personal!
@GroundedWisdom has stated he believes taking out defender kills was a necessary move and tie breakers put in place have done what is intended. That is his point of view and that is OK, he might not agree with all and that is also OK. If you don't agree just stop answering.
@Draco2199 @chunkyb if you believe him to be attacking you, then ignore him. That is it, believe me I don't see why you want to take him on. Let him be.
To the rest and all and new comers. Most agree Defender Kills should return. What I think we should debate on this specific, is HOW they should return. We need to REMEMBER that the way they were in the previous iteration provided UNFAIR advantages to certain rosters, mastery investors and higher alliances. Changes intended wanted to balance some of these things out, but they didn't hit the mark just adding new score and removing Defender Kills. The vast MAJORITY AGREE THEY SHOULD RETURN but we must focus in HOW TO create the intended BALANCE
Also, there could be other things explored to improve the main objective of this discussion: ADD SKILL to the scoring system and enhance AW playability and balance for all user base. I have made some suggestions to this in a past post I'll try to requote. Think of what can define skill in the attacker end, not only if they die or not. Let's think of rewarding things like total attacking time, extra points on 0 hits taken, extra points on 0 item usage. Maybe even ideas add finishing blow points like what we are using in Valor missions. I don't know what else could be inplemented. But rewarding skill can help.
What are you're guys take on these draft ideas?
@GroundedWisdom has stated he believes taking out defender kills was a necessary move and tie breakers put in place have done what is intended. That is his point of view and that is OK, he might not agree with all and that is also OK. If you don't agree just stop answering.
@Draco2199 @chunkyb if you believe him to be attacking you, then ignore him. That is it, believe me I don't see why you want to take him on. Let him be.
To the rest and all and new comers. Most agree Defender Kills should return. What I think we should debate on this specific, is HOW they should return. We need to REMEMBER that the way they were in the previous iteration provided UNFAIR advantages to certain rosters, mastery investors and higher allainces. Changes intended wanted to balance some of these things out, but they didn't hit the mark just adding new score and removing Defender Kills. The vast majority include they should return but we mus focus in HOW to create the intended balance.
Also, there could be other things explored to improve the main objective of this discussion: ADD SKILL to the scoring system and enhance AW playability and balance for all user base. I have made some suggestions to this in a past post.
Putting up front my initial post to again focus on ideas.
Regardless of being a as boxed or fenced, I will look at consolidating and looking at options to push to the right people for discussion.
Candidly speaking, why are *you* responding to any of this?
I don't respond to every post full of gibberish in the thread, but so long as the facts matter to me, I'm going to reply occasionally to factually inaccurate posts. That would be my agenda, same as yours is to get your suggestions looked at and replied to.
I discussed this quite a bit in this thread, along with a ton of different ways to do that. There's probably literally a hundred of my posts in the thread discussing what defender kills did, what their role in 14.0 AW was, why removing them created a problem, what alternatives exist to replace them with something that doesn't recreate the problem Kabam stated they had, why some alternatives to defender kill points might be superior to the original defender kill point system in 14.0, how defender kill points and the lack of them interact with defender diversity points, how the node difficulty qualitatively alters how those points function and how the devs are likely viewing the metrics they are using to tweak AW iteratively.
To respond directly to your suggestion post, which does not seem to acknowledge the existence of anyone else's suggestions, some of which have already been discussed in depth and directly parallel yours:
1. You can't just say "add defender kill points back just with less" because that is essentially the same mistake the devs made with diversity points: they just set them without thinking about their relationship with everything else and set them too high. They were higher than the points you could get for actually killing the node, and without defender kill points that meant there was no reason to place duplicate champs: the penalty was too high to overcome. A similar thing occurs if you just arbitrarily try to make defender kill points less problematic by making them "small." If they are too small, they don't have the effect people want. But if they are big enough to influece the war, they run afoul of the problem the devs stated: they can influence a player to stop attacking while they still have live attackers. It is mathematically impossible for defender kill points to avoid both problems, because they are actually the same problem worded differently.
2. The notion of "clean defeat" bonus points is comparable to several different suggestions to revalue nodes based on the number of defeats it takes to kill the node, it is just the extreme case where the only two options are "zero" and "everything else."
3. I'm not 100% certain what you mean by (3), but I can say that to the extent that diversity points was intended to address the problem of people focusing on the defenders capable of generating the most kills - which were often but not exclusively strong mystic defenders with mystic dispersion - the node buffs in 15.1 and 16.0 has significantly undone that. Moreover, Kabam's position on this seems to be particularly weird: they acknowledge that fighting the same powerful defenders over and over again is a bad thing, but they seem to be perfectly fine with players fighting a more diverse set of the same powerful defenders over and over again. They've specifically stated that they don't mind, and in fact it is intentional, that some nodes (i.e. 24, 42) are explicitly designed to make certain defenders extremely powerful on them, and the attacking side simply has to bring the "right attacker" (their words) to defeat it.
Separate from any other discussion about the merits of defender diversity systems, this means Kabam doesn't understand the root of the problem. The root of the problem was not that fighting Juggernaut five times was boring. The root of the problem was that fighting the same defense configurations every time was boring. But the current map seems to be reintroducing and encouraging doing exactly that.
4. As to "other tie breaking" I've stated repeatedly that we don't actually have tie-breaking in AW, and that's part of the problem. The things called tie breakers aren't being used as tie breakers making them problematic, and the developers consistently calling them something they are not pollutes the discussion further, making it extremely difficult to discuss what's actually wrong with them.
Thank you @DNA3000 for the reply
Yes, hopefully all agendas can be addressed, specially if it's to build suggestions & share around more ideas for Kabam to do (hopefully)
As for debunking false or innacurate posts, I understand & stand with you and many others. My intention es merely to suggest we focus our valuable energy for the most productive part of the discussion that is all
About other player feedback taken into account, I have not clearly stated that my intention was to blend most of what I read into specific suggestions, and I don't want to take credit as mine even with some of my input there. My bad to not make appropriate acknowledgement of post that gave me ideas to add on or that I might have not seen. Apologies if this has offended anyone & was not intented.
So about the paralleled input:
1)Agreed, that just bringing back Defender Kills won't fix. It's a gray area neither of our posts have completely addressed on the appropriate "how". The fact is that we want it back in a way that makes the difference without the opportunities of the previous iteration. More to build on here.
2)Yes, what you mentioned in other posts could be another way to tweak what I now want to call the *Defense Ledger*. So I could name *my* specific proposal as to add a more robust *Attack Ledger* with new metrics aimed to measure attack perfoemance (like "Clean Defeat"). If it's SKILL we want to "add and measure", then this is a way. E.g.1 nodes 24 and 42 will guarantee kills if you don't have the right attacker, true. But if you have flawless fights before/after, you have those points in favor. So mathematically speaking, both ledgers will work to score and you won't be able to anticipate the outcome before attack starts. E.g.2, Exploration is not a true attack metric, because if someone misses deployment then those are given points to the defense ledger, and in triple! (Nodes easily explored + Diversity + Defender Raiting points). I mean, then why not add attacker raiting? That would also reward your investment in attack roster, not only defense.
E.g.3. I just had this scenario happen today. One member did not deploy, so immediately "agreed" it was a defeat by both ends, because we can see the number before we move in attack. So we start asking our alliance to not use items and have fun, right? Well, 100% exploration and 0 items used. Them? Items used to bust through our defense. Where is our better skill rewarded? Note, their Defender Raiting was higher. So then even if we deployed 30, we might have been just slightly off. But if our performance would have been measured, it could have made a great difference. Attack metrics, can definitely add and give opportunities when skill is actually superior.
3)Yes! It is weird indeed. However, let's imagine this is the least of all the current problems. And I think we agree we like what Diversity added to the complexity of winning a war. It also helps the game overall by investing in other Champs we wouldn't actively invest. At least in my alliance now that they have had to increase 3/30 and 4/40 or 2/35 characters, they try to take advantage of the investment and use them or alternate them in defense/attack and/or missions. So, they did add in the node difficulty and are creating spaces for specific defenders, but you still penalize if you repeat so it kind of works out. Still not perfect, but again we can fix this with attack metrics and building attack ledger as expressed on the same examples of nodes 24 and 42. Maybe, my thought on it.
4)Agreed and yes, I will back out from this term. Point blank and we can see it in the final example I presented of 2). We don't have appropriate tie breaking as developers are stating because you already know up front how much points you will have.
So, I don't want to circle back, but then *my* specific and only proposal is to add to the Attack Ledger and associated metrics to mathematically implement opportunities to balance against the heavily measured Defense Legder. This would add a true tie breaking mechanic based on attack and skill performance for both sides that is not decided up front.
Ready to hear back, this was awesome and what I was expecting by being a little pushy on focusing on proposals and potential solutions
Do you really not get it? We used to regularly beat much higher alliances who would spend like crazy and revive time after time only to lose to us due to defender kills because we were more skilled. Dying fewer times against similar or even harder defenders is a result of skill. It's not hard to grasp. Or sometimes they would beat us because despite the kills they got 3 bosses and we got only 2 and weren't willing to push, but it was way more satisfying and at least we had a good shot to win despite being 3-5 million lower and if we pushed for a kill skill made it possible to beat them whereas now it would literally be impossible. So how is the skill argument "bunk"? Under the old system with defender kills it was possible to win any war regardless of being up against a higher alliance if you were skilled. Now it isn't. Seems pretty cut and dry to me, but I guess it's bunk? I know you won't respond since you are done debating this though... again lol
That’s crazy talk
As i see it,AW consists of a few things:
-Champions(used in attack and defence). There is reason we had multiple same defenders before diversity and thats that some champions proved to be better defenders.I believe it would be better to be able to apply diversity in a natural way,which means tweaking some of the champs to make them greater defenders.I know its hard(and unlikely?) to happen but it would help a lot.And since i said it,let me add that tweaking most of the old champs would be great for the future of this game(more choices,more strategies,more unique.different rosters!)!
-Map. A well designed map is necessary.An ideal map in my opinion should have a lot of different nodes,with scaling difficulty,and leaving plenty room for different strategies.Adding act5 nodes maybe was a good idea,but i would happily accept some new nodes specifically created for AW and i am sure Kabam can think of some shiny ideas on that!Yes hard nodes are a must(impossible nodes or blockades are not a good idea though)!
-Points metrics. Thats obviously a combination exploration,rating,diversity and what is lacking right now...SKILL!We all want it back,and i do understand the concerns on Defender Kills but i still believe its the best and fairest idea,as somebody already claimed..even in real life exploration would be the strongest metric but then losses come in play(defender kills).Surely a simple addition of Def.Kils won't magically fix AW and thats why i said "points metrics",a careful readjustment is probably needed in the points awarded for each metric so we can get as close as possibly to a fair AW,counting skill and having its tie-breakers as well!Also i saw many different ideas form people in this community to include skills in AW and i hope they are also noticed by Kabam!
-Last but not least Masteries. Maybe not many realise that they play a big part in AW but i believe they do!So in my opinion a big part of "mystic" wars was how strong was mystic dispersion in mystic characters(it suited magic.juggy,Dorm even mordo perfectly).By any means i wouldn't like to see mystic dispersion devaluated,BUT a change in the other class masteries could help.If i am not mistaken very few use any of the other class specific masteries but mystic dispersion,so maybe if we could turn them to something more useful it could lead to more champs becoming greater in defense(or offence)!
If your favorite restaurant removed or changed their secret ingredient which made their food taste wonderful and stand out from other restaurants, resulting in their food now tasting average or even leaving a bad taste in your mouth as a result would you keep eating there?
Why is this any different? Kabam previously had a winning recipe for AW in many people's eyes but for whatever reason their head chef made a choice to change the ingredients and it's just not quite the same anymore. Now you as a consumer have a choice: keep eating it up, order something else on the menu instead, or go eat somewhere else altogether that is healthier, better tasting, etc.
One thing is certain, they have made it pretty clear that defender kills are not coming back (or at least not anytime soon).
On a side note, writing this made me hungry, lol.
ANYONE GOT SOME CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM FOR AW? HARD TO FIND ANYTHING POSITIVE ABOUT AW 2.0.
I even posted on Reddit to see what people are thinking as we go through the motions playing the thing.
Did Kabam make significant improvements?
Is making nodes more difficult something that changed the outcomes for your alliance?
Do we need to bring kills back once and for all? 25 to 50 points per D kill?
My opinion, good or bad, doesn't matter by itself. What do you guys currently think?
Riegel Posts: 209 10:40AM
Wallet Wars Return of the Triple Boost.
MikeHockMikeHock Posts: 476 10:41AM
Riegel wrote: »
Wallet Wars Return of the Triple Boost.
Truer words have never been spoken
LightvayneLightvayne Posts: 63 10:49AM
The harder nodes for the most part really haven’t changed anything. Groups are still easily completing maps 100% or pretty damn near close to it.
I can usually find a silver lining somewhere to some of the changes Kabam makes....I still can’t find it on this one.
The Map itself I dont have a problem with (though some of the teleportation destinations dont really make sense), its just the new point system killing the fun out of it.
Sorry. GW says skill has nothing to do with it. Apparently it's only about points lol.
Yeah this is my concern also.
The majority of players want defender kills to be returned in some way to make AW more skill based again and not predetermined before the war has even started by diversity.
I like the idea of diversity but it just doesn't work without defender kills.
There has been no official comment as far as I've seen that they're even considering listening to us and bringing kills back so all this debating could be in vain.
So much for increased communication since 12.0...
I'd like to say I enjoyed reading the 80+ new comments since I last peeked, but I wont and I didn't. LOL
The point about the gaps in ratings is a great subject to bring up IMO. I believe the underlying desire of many of us still playing is born from those scenarios.
It's called a challenge.
An event that puts us at a crossroads of humdrum or exhilaration. A time where we test our playing skills against a bigger badder opponent.
And the ability to succeed in that "challenge" has been stripped from AW since the new update and continues to be overlooked, iteration after iteration. And I mean challenge as being a bigger alliance and not to be confused with ridiculously extreme node increases.
I'll be 1st to admit there were many instances where I asked my ally mates "how the F are these guys considered to be in the same tier as us"?! But, never once thought "this is BS, game sucks ass". Quite the contrary, we were thrilled that we might have a shot at beating "the unbeatable" and if we failed, no worries, we'll learn from any mistakes and do better next round. Kinda like the playoffs where we're the last seed and go on to take out #1.
I hope I speak for many when I say, this is much more rewarding then being #1 and always winning.
Technically speaking, you're playing AW 2.2. 2.2 is "less awful" than 2.0, but not as good as AW 1.0. I suppose that is positive.
I consider 15.0 AW to be AW 2.0. In 2.0 we got a war in which the "annoying" nodes like thorns were taken away, the map itself was made extremely easy through weakening node buffs, the penalty for poor performance on attack was removed by eliminating defender kill points, and a (relatively) huge amount of points were added for each defender placed on the map that was unique.
This created a war with virtually all competitive skill removed from AW. The easier map combined with the huge encouragement to place diverse defenses meant attackers were far more likely to complete far more of the map than before, pushing many tiers to reach 100% a high percentage of the time. With both sides killing all the bosses and completing the entire map, wars were generally decided based solely on the original defensive placement and not on any measure of skill during conventional gameplay. This was basically horrible.
15.1 and 16.0 reduced the impact of diversity points which slightly reduced the incentive to place fully diverse defenses and radically increased the strength of the node buffs on the map increasing the incentive to place strong defenders. The lack of any way to judge attacker performance still forces alliances to consider all or nothing defense placement: a defense that weakens but doesn't fully stop an attacker path is nearly worthless, but the nodes are now strong enough that certain defender/node combinations are now strong enough to override the incentive to place diverse defenses - aka blockades.
This is better, or at least this is less awful. However, the meta problem is that Kabam is making AW less awful not by improving the new elements of 15.0/16.0, but by taking the worst problems of 14.0 that they actually tried to solve and reinjecting them into 16.0 in even nastier ways.
What's more, Kabam is specifically saying (via the mods) that they are perfectly fine with certain defenders on certain nodes being almost unbeatable without "the right attacker." That's not a good look.
And while 15.0 was so easy it almost certainly at least had the side effect that people were spending less on AW, 16.0 seems to be forcing many players in many alliance tiers to spend more, for complex reasons having to do with the exact way the map is configured and the way the nodes currently work. They have to know that, and they are therefore responsible for that side effect whether it is intentional or not.
Ability Awakened: Independent Thought Process