Alliance Wars Discussion Thread

Hey Summoners!

We've just dropped some information on our next iteration of Alliance Wars, and this one includes some big changes to the Scoring method! Take a look at the announcement Thread and let us know if you have any questions or feedback!

http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/36645/alliance-wars-scoring-update-coming-december-13th

We've closed the last discussion thread, because it references older information that is no longer relevant. You can find that archived thread here: http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/31767/alliance-wars-discussion-2-0/

Comments

LeNoirFaineant

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

chunkyb wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

chunkyb wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Overall, I think I'm cool with it. I admit I have to have more coffee and consider it deeper. Lol. My main issues with metrics for Kills and penalizing Resources are respected, so I'm okay with this. Interesting angle. Actually, some ideas I remember shared here. On the surface, looks good.

DEFENDER KILLS ARE BACK! (under another name)

No. Not really. When the idea was presented before, I was iffy about it because it seemed to that effect, but there is a limited number with this system, and it doesn't actually penalize dying. There are Points given, then deducted for attempts. Now, the most you can lose are the Points allotted. I may have been a bit rigid originally, but I'm cool with this. It won't amount to the same high metrics Defender Kills did. There are limited Points and limited penalizations. After that, nothing is deducted, so it doesn't penalize Item Use.

The same high metrics? Most wars were won then by boss kills or exploration. Defender kills only factored into the equation when one group tried to overcome being beaten by reviving over and over again. This looks like it will function very much in the same way. Do you have some numbers that show how defender kills were a "high metric" as opposed to this system? Just curious.

When you had Wars won by 100-200+ Defender Kills metrics, yes.

These numbers only showed up with war 2.0 for the most part. But keep going. Second batch of popcorn is almost ready.

If the numbers weren't mounting to significant enough Points, they would have never been an issue, and we wouldn't have had months of debating to bring them back. Not only the numbers, but the way they altered the shape of War over time. When you have 30 potential Players, 3 Champs to start, 15 Item Uses, and Points deducted for every KO, those Points are significant and mount.

This begs the question of whether there was an issue. You can't use the fact that defender kills were removed as evidence that they were this huge metric. The new system seems to be functioning in very much the same way with the exception that after dying there is still incentive to keep trying to clear the node in a way that sometimes the old system wouldn't have. So I agree that they aren't exactly the same. But that has nothing to do with the huge metric that you are claiming defender kills were. Defender kills didn't factor into most wars. Hard as this is to believe you are wrong again.

I'm not arguing it endlessly. You can feel free to go back and examine my issues I've stated with Defender Kills in previous Threads because I'm not restating them here. At this point, you're arguing with me across multiple Threads and I'm not engaging with it anymore.

To be fair though, I’m not really arguing with you across multiple threads. I’m reading multiple threads and interacting with things with which I agree and disagree. I can’t help it if you happen to be wrong on multiple threads.

Speeds80

yeah I still Don't know what mike meant

Kabam Miike wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Marine3444 wrote: »

Concern: taking an empty node is as many points as a one shot kill. That’s seems a bit jaded as there are always more nodes than we had ability to place defenders.

In other words, where we place the "holes" can potentially be as important as where we place the defenders, at least in many tiers of AW where 100% doesn't happen all the time. Where AW usually ends in 100%/100%, it will be a wash and not harm the war either way.

I cannot emphasize this enough. This is going to add a really cool level of strategy to placing Defenders. You can spread them out, or you can stack the end of a path with mostly empty and hope it's a roadblock... So many options!

This is the part I'm not getting, there are 9 paths and a backup person, if the first half of a tough path is empty it's not going to stop someone walking across those tiles before they get to the roadblock
When times don't get walked across it's usually because someone has died and isn't reviving

DNA3000

Tobin14 wrote: »

So basically we are back where we started with defender kills but a cap of 3 per node and a fancy unnecessarily complicated new name.

Actually, I would say that is false. We took an unnecessarily windy road to get here, but we are nowhere near where we started. For one thing, attacker bonuses are fundamentally different from defender kill points in one critical respect: there are literally no circumstances in which it is better to stop attacking a node under the announced system. None, no matter how weird or contrived. There were circumstances under 14.0 where this was not true. We can argue how important they were, but they existed. Now, that complaint cannot be lodged.

We also have a map that is now, in my opinion, harder than it needs to be with this new scoring system. I don't know if the devs will reexamine map difficulty, but the difficulty was designed to prevent 100% map exploration even if one side chose to spend their way to the end, and now this isn't a necessary goal.

If we erase all of the prior iterations after 14.0 as a bad dream and compare the announced system to 14.0, in my opinion:

* Attacker bonus points are better than defender kill points overall, although that doesn't mean they couldn't be improved over time
* The Map path configurations are neutral: different, a change of pace, not necessarily better or worse
* More minibosses is an interesting improvement strategically
* The node difficulty is higher than 14.0, and in a way that is (now) unnecessarily so
* Defender diversity still needs to be changed to be a true tie breaker
* Node links are too concentrated in the middle in my opinion
* The paths restrict access to the far left and far right bosses too much to be consistent with the originally stated objective to make it easier for players to maneuver and help each other out. The middle paths might be better than 14.0, but the far side miniboss paths offer worse coordinated access than in 14.0.

Speeds80

Wait I do get it This really does mean the idiot who doesn't explore properly and doubles up Someone else's portal is going to kill a teams war, better drill that in to my alli

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

Tobin14 wrote: »

So basically we are back where we started with defender kills but a cap of 3 per node and a fancy unnecessarily complicated new name.

Actually, I would say that is false. We took an unnecessarily windy road to get here, but we are nowhere near where we started. For one thing, attacker bonuses are fundamentally different from defender kill points in one critical respect: there are literally no circumstances in which it is better to stop attacking a node under the announced system. None, no matter how weird or contrived. There were circumstances under 14.0 where this was not true. We can argue how important they were, but they existed. Now, that complaint cannot be lodged.

We also have a map that is now, in my opinion, harder than it needs to be with this new scoring system. I don't know if the devs will reexamine map difficulty, but the difficulty was designed to prevent 100% map exploration even if one side chose to spend their way to the end, and now this isn't a necessary goal.

If we erase all of the prior iterations after 14.0 as a bad dream and compare the announced system to 14.0, in my opinion:

* Attacker bonus points are better than defender kill points overall, although that doesn't mean they couldn't be improved over time
* The Map path configurations are neutral: different, a change of pace, not necessarily better or worse
* More minibosses is an interesting improvement strategically
* The node difficulty is higher than 14.0, and in a way that is (now) unnecessarily so
* Defender diversity still needs to be changed to be a true tie breaker
* Node links are too concentrated in the middle in my opinion
* The paths restrict access to the far left and far right bosses too much to be consistent with the originally stated objective to make it easier for players to maneuver and help each other out. The middle paths might be better than 14.0, but the far side miniboss paths offer worse coordinated access than in 14.0.

What would you suggest as an adjustment to Diversity?

DNA3000

Speeds80 wrote: »

yeah I still Don't know what mike meant

Kabam Miike wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Marine3444 wrote: »

Concern: taking an empty node is as many points as a one shot kill. That’s seems a bit jaded as there are always more nodes than we had ability to place defenders.

In other words, where we place the "holes" can potentially be as important as where we place the defenders, at least in many tiers of AW where 100% doesn't happen all the time. Where AW usually ends in 100%/100%, it will be a wash and not harm the war either way.

I cannot emphasize this enough. This is going to add a really cool level of strategy to placing Defenders. You can spread them out, or you can stack the end of a path with mostly empty and hope it's a roadblock... So many options!

This is the part I'm not getting, there are 9 paths and a backup person, if the first half of a tough path is empty it's not going to stop someone walking across those tiles before they get to the roadblock
When times don't get walked across it's usually because someone has died and isn't reviving

What about after the roadblock? You get to choose where to put the empty defensive nodes, do you place them after one of the "strong" nodes like 24, or do you put another strong defender there to synergize with node 24 and try to stop that path, which forces you to concentrate the empty spots in other place and create much easier paths to traverse? Do you want 9 equally difficult paths or three really hard ones, three average ones, and three trivially easy ones?

If you put all of the empty nodes into a single path, that path becomes a cake walk. But the other side still has to dedicate a player to walk over them to get the exploration. Is that better? Force one attacker to take an empty path and end up with all attackers at full strength, but eat up more of another attacker who now has to take on more nodes and could be even weaker when they reach the bosses?

I don't have answers to those questions, I'm suggesting the game poses those questions to the player placing defenders, which is something new to think about. Whether this is an "interesting" option to consider probably will require experience to determine fully.

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Tobin14 wrote: »

So basically we are back where we started with defender kills but a cap of 3 per node and a fancy unnecessarily complicated new name.

Actually, I would say that is false. We took an unnecessarily windy road to get here, but we are nowhere near where we started. For one thing, attacker bonuses are fundamentally different from defender kill points in one critical respect: there are literally no circumstances in which it is better to stop attacking a node under the announced system. None, no matter how weird or contrived. There were circumstances under 14.0 where this was not true. We can argue how important they were, but they existed. Now, that complaint cannot be lodged.

We also have a map that is now, in my opinion, harder than it needs to be with this new scoring system. I don't know if the devs will reexamine map difficulty, but the difficulty was designed to prevent 100% map exploration even if one side chose to spend their way to the end, and now this isn't a necessary goal.

If we erase all of the prior iterations after 14.0 as a bad dream and compare the announced system to 14.0, in my opinion:

* Attacker bonus points are better than defender kill points overall, although that doesn't mean they couldn't be improved over time
* The Map path configurations are neutral: different, a change of pace, not necessarily better or worse
* More minibosses is an interesting improvement strategically
* The node difficulty is higher than 14.0, and in a way that is (now) unnecessarily so
* Defender diversity still needs to be changed to be a true tie breaker
* Node links are too concentrated in the middle in my opinion
* The paths restrict access to the far left and far right bosses too much to be consistent with the originally stated objective to make it easier for players to maneuver and help each other out. The middle paths might be better than 14.0, but the far side miniboss paths offer worse coordinated access than in 14.0.

What would you suggest as an adjustment to Diversity?

Kabam keeps saying it is meant to be a tie breaker. If it is meant to be a tie breaker, it should be treated like a tie breaker. Diversity scores no points. If one side wins, they win. If both sides tie, then diversity is consulted and whichever side has the higher diversity breaks the tie and wins. That's how all tie breakers work.

Right now it is not a tie breaker. It is a small fraction of the total points available that can decide a closely fought war. In most competitions, this is the worst thing you can do. You do not want the least important thing to decide the hardest closest fought competitions and the ones with the closest score are often the hardest fought.

I mentioned an exemplar of the problem earlier in the thread. A good thing about AW is that in a war where everything is really close, the entire war can hinge on the actions of a single alliance player. That one player that fought for that one last node kill can sometimes decide the war. Diversity points can take that win away, or appear to. As a game designer, you live for that moment when someone cares that much about your handiwork, and cheers for a victory in a game composed of pixels and bits. It is not easy to do. Diversity points takes some of that away.

Anonymous

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Tobin14 wrote: »

So basically we are back where we started with defender kills but a cap of 3 per node and a fancy unnecessarily complicated new name.

Actually, I would say that is false. We took an unnecessarily windy road to get here, but we are nowhere near where we started. For one thing, attacker bonuses are fundamentally different from defender kill points in one critical respect: there are literally no circumstances in which it is better to stop attacking a node under the announced system. None, no matter how weird or contrived. There were circumstances under 14.0 where this was not true. We can argue how important they were, but they existed. Now, that complaint cannot be lodged.

We also have a map that is now, in my opinion, harder than it needs to be with this new scoring system. I don't know if the devs will reexamine map difficulty, but the difficulty was designed to prevent 100% map exploration even if one side chose to spend their way to the end, and now this isn't a necessary goal.

If we erase all of the prior iterations after 14.0 as a bad dream and compare the announced system to 14.0, in my opinion:

* Attacker bonus points are better than defender kill points overall, although that doesn't mean they couldn't be improved over time
* The Map path configurations are neutral: different, a change of pace, not necessarily better or worse
* More minibosses is an interesting improvement strategically
* The node difficulty is higher than 14.0, and in a way that is (now) unnecessarily so
* Defender diversity still needs to be changed to be a true tie breaker
* Node links are too concentrated in the middle in my opinion
* The paths restrict access to the far left and far right bosses too much to be consistent with the originally stated objective to make it easier for players to maneuver and help each other out. The middle paths might be better than 14.0, but the far side miniboss paths offer worse coordinated access than in 14.0.

What would you suggest as an adjustment to Diversity?

Kabam keeps saying it is meant to be a tie breaker. If it is meant to be a tie breaker, it should be treated like a tie breaker. Diversity scores no points. If one side wins, they win. If both sides tie, then diversity is consulted and whichever side has the higher diversity breaks the tie and wins. That's how all tie breakers work.

Right now it is not a tie breaker. It is a small fraction of the total points available that can decide a closely fought war. In most competitions, this is the worst thing you can do. You do not want the least important thing to decide the hardest closest fought competitions and the ones with the closest score are often the hardest fought.

I mentioned an exemplar of the problem earlier in the thread. A good thing about AW is that in a war where everything is really close, the entire war can hinge on the actions of a single alliance player. That one player that fought for that one last node kill can sometimes decide the war. Diversity points can take that win away, or appear to. As a game designer, you live for that moment when someone cares that much about your handiwork, and cheers for a victory in a game composed of pixels and bits. It is not easy to do. Diversity points takes some of that away.

I agree, they've done an amazing thing with this update, however, I think they can consider removing diversity from war. The only tiebreaker necessary is defender rating, which we already had in 14.0. Then also consider the low amount of rewards. Since the game is evolving, war should as well, being a major part of the game. December rewards are nice, but before we know it, January will be here and our main source of shards will be war.

GroundedWisdom

I mean, if it were to be a definitive tie breaker, it would only have to account for something in the event of a tie. I agree with that. In this case, I believe it's intended to tip the scale in the event of a close scoring scenario. They could lower it, but it would still serve that purpose.

LocoMotives

Anonymous wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Tobin14 wrote: »

So basically we are back where we started with defender kills but a cap of 3 per node and a fancy unnecessarily complicated new name.

Actually, I would say that is false. We took an unnecessarily windy road to get here, but we are nowhere near where we started. For one thing, attacker bonuses are fundamentally different from defender kill points in one critical respect: there are literally no circumstances in which it is better to stop attacking a node under the announced system. None, no matter how weird or contrived. There were circumstances under 14.0 where this was not true. We can argue how important they were, but they existed. Now, that complaint cannot be lodged.

We also have a map that is now, in my opinion, harder than it needs to be with this new scoring system. I don't know if the devs will reexamine map difficulty, but the difficulty was designed to prevent 100% map exploration even if one side chose to spend their way to the end, and now this isn't a necessary goal.

If we erase all of the prior iterations after 14.0 as a bad dream and compare the announced system to 14.0, in my opinion:

* Attacker bonus points are better than defender kill points overall, although that doesn't mean they couldn't be improved over time
* The Map path configurations are neutral: different, a change of pace, not necessarily better or worse
* More minibosses is an interesting improvement strategically
* The node difficulty is higher than 14.0, and in a way that is (now) unnecessarily so
* Defender diversity still needs to be changed to be a true tie breaker
* Node links are too concentrated in the middle in my opinion
* The paths restrict access to the far left and far right bosses too much to be consistent with the originally stated objective to make it easier for players to maneuver and help each other out. The middle paths might be better than 14.0, but the far side miniboss paths offer worse coordinated access than in 14.0.

What would you suggest as an adjustment to Diversity?

Kabam keeps saying it is meant to be a tie breaker. If it is meant to be a tie breaker, it should be treated like a tie breaker. Diversity scores no points. If one side wins, they win. If both sides tie, then diversity is consulted and whichever side has the higher diversity breaks the tie and wins. That's how all tie breakers work.

Right now it is not a tie breaker. It is a small fraction of the total points available that can decide a closely fought war. In most competitions, this is the worst thing you can do. You do not want the least important thing to decide the hardest closest fought competitions and the ones with the closest score are often the hardest fought.

I mentioned an exemplar of the problem earlier in the thread. A good thing about AW is that in a war where everything is really close, the entire war can hinge on the actions of a single alliance player. That one player that fought for that one last node kill can sometimes decide the war. Diversity points can take that win away, or appear to. As a game designer, you live for that moment when someone cares that much about your handiwork, and cheers for a victory in a game composed of pixels and bits. It is not easy to do. Diversity points takes some of that away.

I agree, they've done an amazing thing with this update, however, I think they can consider removing diversity from war. The only tiebreaker necessary is defender rating, which we already had in 14.0. Then also consider the low amount of rewards. Since the game is evolving, war should as well, being a major part of the game. December rewards are nice, but before we know it, January will be here and our main source of shards will be war.

I actually like diversity as a tie breaker more than defender rating. There’s no inherent advantage to either side with diversity. I think they will adjust rewards once AW is finally nailed down, they said so at the start of this. Given the comparatively huge rewards in EQ now, there’s no way it’s not addressed.

Anonymous

LocoMotives wrote: »

Anonymous wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Tobin14 wrote: »

So basically we are back where we started with defender kills but a cap of 3 per node and a fancy unnecessarily complicated new name.

Actually, I would say that is false. We took an unnecessarily windy road to get here, but we are nowhere near where we started. For one thing, attacker bonuses are fundamentally different from defender kill points in one critical respect: there are literally no circumstances in which it is better to stop attacking a node under the announced system. None, no matter how weird or contrived. There were circumstances under 14.0 where this was not true. We can argue how important they were, but they existed. Now, that complaint cannot be lodged.

We also have a map that is now, in my opinion, harder than it needs to be with this new scoring system. I don't know if the devs will reexamine map difficulty, but the difficulty was designed to prevent 100% map exploration even if one side chose to spend their way to the end, and now this isn't a necessary goal.

If we erase all of the prior iterations after 14.0 as a bad dream and compare the announced system to 14.0, in my opinion:

* Attacker bonus points are better than defender kill points overall, although that doesn't mean they couldn't be improved over time
* The Map path configurations are neutral: different, a change of pace, not necessarily better or worse
* More minibosses is an interesting improvement strategically
* The node difficulty is higher than 14.0, and in a way that is (now) unnecessarily so
* Defender diversity still needs to be changed to be a true tie breaker
* Node links are too concentrated in the middle in my opinion
* The paths restrict access to the far left and far right bosses too much to be consistent with the originally stated objective to make it easier for players to maneuver and help each other out. The middle paths might be better than 14.0, but the far side miniboss paths offer worse coordinated access than in 14.0.

What would you suggest as an adjustment to Diversity?

Kabam keeps saying it is meant to be a tie breaker. If it is meant to be a tie breaker, it should be treated like a tie breaker. Diversity scores no points. If one side wins, they win. If both sides tie, then diversity is consulted and whichever side has the higher diversity breaks the tie and wins. That's how all tie breakers work.

Right now it is not a tie breaker. It is a small fraction of the total points available that can decide a closely fought war. In most competitions, this is the worst thing you can do. You do not want the least important thing to decide the hardest closest fought competitions and the ones with the closest score are often the hardest fought.

I mentioned an exemplar of the problem earlier in the thread. A good thing about AW is that in a war where everything is really close, the entire war can hinge on the actions of a single alliance player. That one player that fought for that one last node kill can sometimes decide the war. Diversity points can take that win away, or appear to. As a game designer, you live for that moment when someone cares that much about your handiwork, and cheers for a victory in a game composed of pixels and bits. It is not easy to do. Diversity points takes some of that away.

I agree, they've done an amazing thing with this update, however, I think they can consider removing diversity from war. The only tiebreaker necessary is defender rating, which we already had in 14.0. Then also consider the low amount of rewards. Since the game is evolving, war should as well, being a major part of the game. December rewards are nice, but before we know it, January will be here and our main source of shards will be war.

I actually like diversity as a tie breaker more than defender rating. There’s no inherent advantage to either side with diversity. I think they will adjust rewards once AW is finally nailed down, they said so at the start of this. Given the comparatively huge rewards in EQ now, there’s no way it’s not addressed.

In this case we will have much fewer ties. Different alliances have different skillsets of players, and overall it will reflect this. I do see your point though, but I personally don't want to shy away from a challenge of difficult nodes with difficult defenders and let's see who's better.
Like I said though, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I mean, if it were to be a definitive tie breaker, it would only have to account for something in the event of a tie. I agree with that. In this case, I believe it's intended to tip the scale in the event of a close scoring scenario. They could lower it, but it would still serve that purpose.

The fact that they seem reluctant to call it a "close war scale tipper" suggests that's not what they want it to appear to be psychologically. If they came straight out and said they want diversity points to decide close wars, I think they'd be face-palmed.

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I mean, if it were to be a definitive tie breaker, it would only have to account for something in the event of a tie. I agree with that. In this case, I believe it's intended to tip the scale in the event of a close scoring scenario. They could lower it, but it would still serve that purpose.

The fact that they seem reluctant to call it a "close war scale tipper" suggests that's not what they want it to appear to be psychologically. If they came straight out and said they want diversity points to decide close wars, I think they'd be face-palmed.

Correct. However, I'm sure they're aware of what an actual tie-breaker is. I suppose we could argue that the metrics serve that purpose when there is a tie in scoring. Difference being they still account for something when there is no tie present. It's clear they want Diversity to account for something at least.

DNA3000

Anonymous wrote: »

LocoMotives wrote: »

Anonymous wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Tobin14 wrote: »

So basically we are back where we started with defender kills but a cap of 3 per node and a fancy unnecessarily complicated new name.

Actually, I would say that is false. We took an unnecessarily windy road to get here, but we are nowhere near where we started. For one thing, attacker bonuses are fundamentally different from defender kill points in one critical respect: there are literally no circumstances in which it is better to stop attacking a node under the announced system. None, no matter how weird or contrived. There were circumstances under 14.0 where this was not true. We can argue how important they were, but they existed. Now, that complaint cannot be lodged.

We also have a map that is now, in my opinion, harder than it needs to be with this new scoring system. I don't know if the devs will reexamine map difficulty, but the difficulty was designed to prevent 100% map exploration even if one side chose to spend their way to the end, and now this isn't a necessary goal.

If we erase all of the prior iterations after 14.0 as a bad dream and compare the announced system to 14.0, in my opinion:

* Attacker bonus points are better than defender kill points overall, although that doesn't mean they couldn't be improved over time
* The Map path configurations are neutral: different, a change of pace, not necessarily better or worse
* More minibosses is an interesting improvement strategically
* The node difficulty is higher than 14.0, and in a way that is (now) unnecessarily so
* Defender diversity still needs to be changed to be a true tie breaker
* Node links are too concentrated in the middle in my opinion
* The paths restrict access to the far left and far right bosses too much to be consistent with the originally stated objective to make it easier for players to maneuver and help each other out. The middle paths might be better than 14.0, but the far side miniboss paths offer worse coordinated access than in 14.0.

What would you suggest as an adjustment to Diversity?

Kabam keeps saying it is meant to be a tie breaker. If it is meant to be a tie breaker, it should be treated like a tie breaker. Diversity scores no points. If one side wins, they win. If both sides tie, then diversity is consulted and whichever side has the higher diversity breaks the tie and wins. That's how all tie breakers work.

Right now it is not a tie breaker. It is a small fraction of the total points available that can decide a closely fought war. In most competitions, this is the worst thing you can do. You do not want the least important thing to decide the hardest closest fought competitions and the ones with the closest score are often the hardest fought.

I mentioned an exemplar of the problem earlier in the thread. A good thing about AW is that in a war where everything is really close, the entire war can hinge on the actions of a single alliance player. That one player that fought for that one last node kill can sometimes decide the war. Diversity points can take that win away, or appear to. As a game designer, you live for that moment when someone cares that much about your handiwork, and cheers for a victory in a game composed of pixels and bits. It is not easy to do. Diversity points takes some of that away.

I agree, they've done an amazing thing with this update, however, I think they can consider removing diversity from war. The only tiebreaker necessary is defender rating, which we already had in 14.0. Then also consider the low amount of rewards. Since the game is evolving, war should as well, being a major part of the game. December rewards are nice, but before we know it, January will be here and our main source of shards will be war.

I actually like diversity as a tie breaker more than defender rating. There’s no inherent advantage to either side with diversity. I think they will adjust rewards once AW is finally nailed down, they said so at the start of this. Given the comparatively huge rewards in EQ now, there’s no way it’s not addressed.

In this case we will have much fewer ties. Different alliances have different skillsets of players, and overall it will reflect this. I do see your point though, but I personally don't want to shy away from a challenge of difficult nodes with difficult defenders and let's see who's better.
Like I said though, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

I have to be fair: this is more than a step in the right direction. This is more than several steps in the right direction. This is definitely a jetpack shooting up in the sky and landing within walking distance of the right house. I did not see any way to get to a good place from node tweak after node tweak. But from where this announcement is, I see a way to get to where I think most of us want to be with simple iteration.

To be frank, I think we will start to disagree amongst ourselves in which way to continue to go. And that's a good thing. When almost everyone agrees which way you should go, that tells you that you must be very far away in the wrong direction. But when everyone starts to point in slightly different directions, you know you're getting close. And when everyone starts pointing in every direction, you know you're standing in the middle of all of them.

Anonymous

DNA3000 wrote: »

Anonymous wrote: »

LocoMotives wrote: »

Anonymous wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Tobin14 wrote: »

So basically we are back where we started with defender kills but a cap of 3 per node and a fancy unnecessarily complicated new name.

Actually, I would say that is false. We took an unnecessarily windy road to get here, but we are nowhere near where we started. For one thing, attacker bonuses are fundamentally different from defender kill points in one critical respect: there are literally no circumstances in which it is better to stop attacking a node under the announced system. None, no matter how weird or contrived. There were circumstances under 14.0 where this was not true. We can argue how important they were, but they existed. Now, that complaint cannot be lodged.

We also have a map that is now, in my opinion, harder than it needs to be with this new scoring system. I don't know if the devs will reexamine map difficulty, but the difficulty was designed to prevent 100% map exploration even if one side chose to spend their way to the end, and now this isn't a necessary goal.

If we erase all of the prior iterations after 14.0 as a bad dream and compare the announced system to 14.0, in my opinion:

* Attacker bonus points are better than defender kill points overall, although that doesn't mean they couldn't be improved over time
* The Map path configurations are neutral: different, a change of pace, not necessarily better or worse
* More minibosses is an interesting improvement strategically
* The node difficulty is higher than 14.0, and in a way that is (now) unnecessarily so
* Defender diversity still needs to be changed to be a true tie breaker
* Node links are too concentrated in the middle in my opinion
* The paths restrict access to the far left and far right bosses too much to be consistent with the originally stated objective to make it easier for players to maneuver and help each other out. The middle paths might be better than 14.0, but the far side miniboss paths offer worse coordinated access than in 14.0.

What would you suggest as an adjustment to Diversity?

Kabam keeps saying it is meant to be a tie breaker. If it is meant to be a tie breaker, it should be treated like a tie breaker. Diversity scores no points. If one side wins, they win. If both sides tie, then diversity is consulted and whichever side has the higher diversity breaks the tie and wins. That's how all tie breakers work.

Right now it is not a tie breaker. It is a small fraction of the total points available that can decide a closely fought war. In most competitions, this is the worst thing you can do. You do not want the least important thing to decide the hardest closest fought competitions and the ones with the closest score are often the hardest fought.

I mentioned an exemplar of the problem earlier in the thread. A good thing about AW is that in a war where everything is really close, the entire war can hinge on the actions of a single alliance player. That one player that fought for that one last node kill can sometimes decide the war. Diversity points can take that win away, or appear to. As a game designer, you live for that moment when someone cares that much about your handiwork, and cheers for a victory in a game composed of pixels and bits. It is not easy to do. Diversity points takes some of that away.

I agree, they've done an amazing thing with this update, however, I think they can consider removing diversity from war. The only tiebreaker necessary is defender rating, which we already had in 14.0. Then also consider the low amount of rewards. Since the game is evolving, war should as well, being a major part of the game. December rewards are nice, but before we know it, January will be here and our main source of shards will be war.

I actually like diversity as a tie breaker more than defender rating. There’s no inherent advantage to either side with diversity. I think they will adjust rewards once AW is finally nailed down, they said so at the start of this. Given the comparatively huge rewards in EQ now, there’s no way it’s not addressed.

In this case we will have much fewer ties. Different alliances have different skillsets of players, and overall it will reflect this. I do see your point though, but I personally don't want to shy away from a challenge of difficult nodes with difficult defenders and let's see who's better.
Like I said though, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

I have to be fair: this is more than a step in the right direction. This is more than several steps in the right direction. This is definitely a jetpack shooting up in the sky and landing within walking distance of the right house. I did not see any way to get to a good place from node tweak after node tweak. But from where this announcement is, I see a way to get to where I think most of us want to be with simple iteration.

To be frank, I think we will start to disagree amongst ourselves in which way to continue to go. And that's a good thing. When almost everyone agrees which way you should go, that tells you that you must be very far away in the wrong direction. But when everyone starts to point in slightly different directions, you know you're getting close. And when everyone starts pointing in every direction, you know you're standing in the middle of all of them.

Ok, I understated it. Obviously it's a huge leap in the right direction. And I agree, we will all have different ideas about the little things. At least we can say it's about skill now and not all about diversity and rating. That I'm very happy to see.

GroundedWisdom

I still feel indifferent about Rating playing a part, but I will respect that's the direction they've chosen to take.

ESF

The first time my alliance faced another that didn't place more than one defender, I pulled my alliance out of AWs until this was fixed.

I like these changes and I am absolutely going to try to herd some cats and get them back to participating in this aspect of the game. You absolutely should get more points for killing people, getting killed less, killing more efficiently and effectively.

I didn't mind diversity, and still don't. But the priority in AW should always be kills

winterthur

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I mean, if it were to be a definitive tie breaker, it would only have to account for something in the event of a tie. I agree with that. In this case, I believe it's intended to tip the scale in the event of a close scoring scenario. They could lower it, but it would still serve that purpose.

I thought tie-breaker should be an occurrence which takes place after the event is over, for example a penalty shoot-out in a football/soccer game or even a coin-toss.

It is also used to determined which team is placed above the other if everything is the same, except that the determining factor does not takes place at the beginning.

Currently, no matter how little points is given to diversity, if those points are made known at the beginning, one team already know it is defeat.

It is like a little table tennis game, where the defending champion gets to play on if its a draw, while the challenger loses if its a draw.

GroundedWisdom

winterthur wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I mean, if it were to be a definitive tie breaker, it would only have to account for something in the event of a tie. I agree with that. In this case, I believe it's intended to tip the scale in the event of a close scoring scenario. They could lower it, but it would still serve that purpose.

I thought tie-breaker should be an occurrence which takes place after the event is over, for example a penalty shoot-out in a football/soccer game or even a coin-toss.

It is also used to determined which team is placed above the other if everything is the same, except that the determining factor does not takes place at the beginning.

Currently, no matter how little points is given to diversity, if those points are made known at the beginning, one team already know it is defeat.

It is like a little table tennis game, where the defending champion gets to play on if its a draw, while the challenger loses if its a draw.

Well, that's why I believe tie-breaker is used slightly more loosely in this instance. It's speculation, but it's based on the fact that it's been used before, but the Points are still present. With the new iterations, I don't believe it will be true that the Match will be predicted by knowing the Diversity metrics. Defender Points are more of a fixed state, and emphasis is placed on Attack for the bulk of Points. Something that I actually agree with, and had suggested before as an alternative, when I suggested Bonus Points for Attack rather than punitive Kill Points. Of course I wasn't the only one. The only issue that caught my attention was the removal of Defender Rating. I understand the reasoning behind it and I can respect that is the direction they decided to go. I am aware of the issue it posed with regards to determining Wins. I still think having it as some sort of metric is important. Then again, I'm not the soap box type. I will concede and see how this goes.

Badrose

Oh no, here we go again!

winterthur

With this first win on higher points condition, generally writing

it will change the Champion rank up strategy.

When I started in AW, I was thinking that AI (which was buffed) would be able to manage a 4/40 champ better than me using the same champ as attacker. So I zeroed in to awaken, rank and level champs I have that performs best to kill an attacker.

With the new conditions, there is now "pressure" to make the kill on the first try. I suppose the strategy will now be to awaken, rank and level champs with inflicts high damage.

GroundedWisdom

I think that was always a focus. Ideally you want the best Attack Team possible. I usually go with a couple good Damage Dealers and at least one with sustainable Regen.

ObiDon

Looks good, but at some point we need to discuss the elephant in the room, Mystic Dispersion. Mystic Wars, here. We. Go.

Mmx1991

Great improvement...but then again..we're back where we started. Mystics Wars all over again. Maybe it's time they change the interaction between dexterity and MD.

Sanvondes

You shoved diversity down our throats. But these new changes ensures it no longer plays a major role so all those champs we ranked just for diversity points are now useless. Rank down tickets should be awarded.

gadgetfanatic

I love these changes. We used to be a regular in tier 2-4 in wars and ever since defender kills were booted we were also downgraded to tier 6-8.

The latest changes does seem to show, in scoring, the results of smart strategized placing and skill based playing (with the exception of diversity). And to determine the victor is who was better in those metrics. The scoring now though is more complex and is really beneficial for the consistently skillfull alliances.

In my perspective, the chances of a tie with the complexity of the new scoring system is minimal only for low tier wars. This is because in the higher tiers, where skillfull playing is a norm, you can almost always assume that they will always get 100% exploration WITH NO KOs for non-mini and non-boss nodes. (A very tough feat to consistently play in this level now and will truly highlight players and their alliances in wars.)

I can see problems only rising in the higher tiers where diversity will always be the determining factor if the champs are always shown. I do suggest to avoid these instances in the higher tiers that defense placement be hidden so the other scoring metric, defense placement, is heightened to add a level of strategy and surprise. Smart placing then can trip up the gameplay of even some of the most skillfull players simply because they assumed wrong and brought in the wrong champ in a fight. This was an element that we loved playing with in the old wars and I would love to be back.

I do agree with DNA regarding diversity as a tiebreaker...it should only be considered after a tie in scoring.

gadgetfanatic

gadgetfanatic wrote: »

In my perspective, the chances of a tie with the complexity of the new scoring system is minimal only for low tier wars. This is because in the higher tiers, where skillfull playing is a norm, you can almost always assume that they will always get 100% exploration WITH NO KOs for non-mini and non-boss nodes. (A very tough feat to consistently play in this level now and will truly highlight players and their alliances in wars.)

Correction: i meant, we can assume 100% exploration wherein the only KOs coming from the minis, boss and possibly the chap 5 buffed nodes.

WOK

IMO, all the details of pros/cons of the changes can come afterwards.
First and foremost, I'd like to be included among those of us that would like to give a BIG THANK YOU and thumbs up to Kabam for implementing the new changes that address a large portion of the playerbase complaints and also for including some of the actual suggestions to scoring made by some of our own who have been vigilante in striving for a better game experience. I'm very excited to play the updated AW and giving positive feedback!

AlexVanDamme81

Change change but always at start point. No more easy annull MD on AW and not change the first old sistem? Instead, a lot of change, people until now waste units for unlock suicide masteries, waste units for buy and use boosts and now you make PI aren’t never more important. In the middle, you still give us the same old rewards. Really don’t know why.

LeNoirFaineant

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I still feel indifferent about Rating playing a part, but I will respect that's the direction they've chosen to take.

If you feel indifferent about it that means you don't care...