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

Mmx1991

Voluntaris wrote: »

Any update on when the non boss defenders will get hidden again? While you're at it, go ahead and hide the classes as well in Tier 1.

I have a theory that they will make it permanent.

LeNoirFaineant

I don't think they will. Personally I'm fine with not having to burn masteries on class detect lol. Especially with the (removed by moderator) nodes they have now. But they should hide the defenders.

World Eater

Precisely , we could see the class of the enemy on each node, but not the hero (excluding the mini bosses and boss)

unknown

This content has been removed.

Acanthus

Is Kabam fine with the current iteration of Mystic Blade Wars? I guess people who have a Blade are, but the others like me, well..

unknown

This content has been removed.

Acanthus

Never said anything about Magik, she's only a threat on Immunity

unknown

This content has been removed.

BuckRogers

Could it be possible to display the defenders when adjusting the defence *without* the boost from their nodes?
I mean just like it was, that made it easier for officers to replace some heroes. Now I have no idea what the heroes base values are without the node.

nIHSEAN

new AW update is great, only thing i dont like is it has brought mystic defenders back. its interacting with mystic dispersion is so bad. people die for evading.

I really hope that problem with mystic dispersion gets fixed.

and also the AW rewards feels very outdated. Nobody is excited for a war victory crystal.

Mmx1991

MD is a ridiculous mastery.

Evading/expiring buffs = power gain?

How original.

Voluntaris

2 ongoing issues ... we can still see non-mini boss/boss defenders (not hidden).... and the un-announced change to AW matchmaking (used to be just based on War Rating, now it's on War Rating+Prestige) is resulting in ridiculously long matchmaking times.

Jreed2560

Yes matchmaking took over 3 hrs and will cause us to miss out on the next war.

Angry_Asian17

The rewards need to get buffed. Tier 1 war rating of 3k has nearly the same rewards as tier 2 1700 rating. The amount of resources used in a war don't justify the means, in this case the rewards. Please buff the rewards, add t1 and t2 alpha fragments along with 6 star shards. And please, please, please hide the defenders. It's killing wars terribly that u can still see every defender on the map.

Jreed2560

As I predicted we missed an opportunity for tonight's war because matchmaking took 4 hrs to find a match the other day.

Voluntaris

Lost out on matching for a 3rd war last night, since the first 2 matches took 1.5-2.5 hours to find a match, then the final one did not find a match after a little over an hour.

#NeedLoyalty

Kabam, please return the AW matchmaking to just based off of War Rating ... this is getting ridiculous ... and you still have not announced or even acknowledged the awful change to the AW matchmaking algorithm.

DNA3000

Voluntaris wrote: »

Lost out on matching for a 3rd war last night, since the first 2 matches took 1.5-2.5 hours to find a match, then the final one did not find a match after a little over an hour.

#NeedLoyalty

Kabam, please return the AW matchmaking to just based off of War Rating ... this is getting ridiculous ... and you still have not announced or even acknowledged the awful change to the AW matchmaking algorithm.

If match making has indeed been changed to matching based on both war rating and prestige, then:

1. This should be disclosed in patch notes. This is a player-facing change explicitly of a kind that @Kabam Miike stated way back during 12.0 discussions that Kabam "always" discloses in patch notes.

2. There are two ways to do this: using a synthetic metric that combines war rating and prestige, and by two-dimensional match making where both war rating and prestige are simultaneously matched independently. The former has balance issues. The latter only works if you have enough alliances looking for matches in every single rating and prestige partition non-stop. Apparently, that isn't true. To implement this correctly would require a lot of alliance war participation analysis, which was clearly not done. This is not something to just try and see.

3. If this was done it sounds like something done to address player complaints about matching solely by war rating being "unfair." This is actually a variation of the problem that originally afflicted AW in 15.0: competition was not prioritized so it fell by the wayside. Matching by war rating always has a chance - even when done perfectly correctly, which I'm not saying the game does - to match alliances against much stronger alliances. That's because the point to war rating is to state, as a matter of principle, that any alliance that wins a lot demonstrates that their actual strength is higher than their alliance prestige or rating would imply, and that therefore the "fair" thing to do would be to match them against alliances that are stronger than their rating. That is the *definition* of fair in the rating-match system. By definition, you can't argue it is unfair when you run up against a numerically higher alliance. That's just what happens when you win often enough.

If Kabam is going to try to "fix" this problem, they first have to understand that this is only a subjective problem that some but not all players believe to be the case. To "fix" it, they have to redefine what a fair war is, and when they do they will create problems for all the players that don't agree. They need to communicate why they are siding with some players against others.

The long match making times are just a nasty side effect of doing this in a way that I think will eventually redefine what a fair fight is in ways I don't think will be acceptable to everyone even if they fix the match making timers.

Also, I'm very worried Kabam will take the easy way out: speed up match making by relaxing the match making match window. In other words, allow alliances to be matched against other alliances with both war rating and prestige that is farther away, which will make it easier to find a "match." That's going to be a worst of all worlds solution.

Greywarden

Any word on updating rewards since we seem to be updating a bunch of other things?

Greywarden

I hate double posting but just remembered something that I forgot to ask about!

It seems like synergies are no longer working for AWD. That can't be right can it?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ContestOfChampions/comments/7p2wdh/aw_synergies_video_evidence_second_attempt/

Parancutic1

Hello! Does it happen to you that the category of war not appear or the fragments or anything?

Omni

Parancutic1 wrote: »

Hello! Does it happen to you that the category of war not appear or the fragments or anything?

Came to post the same thing

shingbab

Something has definitely happened. Here is a new alliance of veterans - they start in the tier 20:

War 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbS7tSa-U3o&t=2s
Tier 20 - first opponents are stacked. Ok...it could happen.

War 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjN-fIO9lKc&t=0s
Again - 5* 4/55 Magik Boss. Again? Where are the noob alliance they should be stomping on?

War 3? (skip to 6.30)

https://youtu.be/qbrCeQ0Y0PY?t=390s
Seems finding 6.5-7k prestige alliances in tier 20 is quite difficult?

It seems War Matchmaking has reverted to the first iteration where essentially there are prestige layers within each tier?

Greywarden

Greywarden wrote: »

I hate double posting but just remembered something that I forgot to ask about!

It seems like synergies are no longer working for AWD. That can't be right can it?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ContestOfChampions/comments/7p2wdh/aw_synergies_video_evidence_second_attempt/

Bumping my own comment as well as asking about the left mini boss only having one portal. I have been asking about that specifically for months with no response @Kabam Miike ?

World Eater

What the hell is going on with AW?

We've pointed out since yesterday that no rewards or tier levels are showing on the main AW page and now each BG has 1 hidden defender, Node 49.

Etaki_Lirakoi

MikeHock wrote: »

What the hell is going on with AW?

We've pointed out since yesterday that no rewards or tier levels are showing on the main AW page and now each BG has 1 hidden defender, Node 49.

Node 49 has always been hidden. The missing rewards do worry me though, I hope it’s just a visual bug, but you never know...

World Eater

Etaki_Lirakoi wrote: »

MikeHock wrote: »

What the hell is going on with AW?

We've pointed out since yesterday that no rewards or tier levels are showing on the main AW page and now each BG has 1 hidden defender, Node 49.

Node 49 has always been hidden. The missing rewards do worry me though, I hope it’s just a visual bug, but you never know...

The last time our alliance had node 49 hidden was when all defenders were hidden.

Etaki_Lirakoi

MikeHock wrote: »

Etaki_Lirakoi wrote: »

MikeHock wrote: »

What the hell is going on with AW?

We've pointed out since yesterday that no rewards or tier levels are showing on the main AW page and now each BG has 1 hidden defender, Node 49.

Node 49 has always been hidden. The missing rewards do worry me though, I hope it’s just a visual bug, but you never know...

The last time our alliance had node 49 hidden was when all defenders were hidden.

My alliance has had it hidden since they revealed all the other nodes.

RagamugginGunner

shingbab wrote: »

Something has definitely happened. Here is a new alliance of veterans - they start in the tier 20:

War 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbS7tSa-U3o&t=2s
Tier 20 - first opponents are stacked. Ok...it could happen.

War 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjN-fIO9lKc&t=0s
Again - 5* 4/55 Magik Boss. Again? Where are the noob alliance they should be stomping on?

War 3? (skip to 6.30)
https://youtu.be/qbrCeQ0Y0PY?t=390s
Seems finding 6.5-7k prestige alliances in tier 20 is quite difficult?

It seems War Matchmaking has reverted to the first iteration where essentially there are prestige layers within each tier?

By the way things are going it'll be impossible for Omni to reach tier 1.

DNA3000

shingbab wrote: »

It seems War Matchmaking has reverted to the first iteration where essentially there are prestige layers within each tier?

That "feels" like two-dimensional match making as opposed to synthetic metric match making. And if it is weighted towards prestige, which is what that looks like, then that's the problem I've pointed out in the past when people have asked for prestige based match making instead of war rating match making. Rating match making always pulls you towards higher tiers when you win and lower tiers when you lose, and will eventually pit you against alliances with similar win/loss records at or near a given tier. In other words, roughly similar strength. But this system seems to be matching towards equal rating strength more than war rating, and that means no matter what your tier you will tend to win about half your matches all the time, because you are facing similar strength alliances, and that will trap you in whatever tier you are in.

You will eventually "drift" upward, but much more slowly than in the old system. This is why match making should only be driven by rating. It is "auto-tuning" in a way other systems are not. Its not always easy to see that auto-tuning in effect, but this kind of degenerate case magnifies it in ways that make it a lot more obvious by virtue of its absence.

shingbab

DNA3000 wrote: »

shingbab wrote: »

IYou will eventually "drift" upward, but much more slowly than in the old system. This is why match making should only be driven by rating. It is "auto-tuning" in a way other systems are not. Its not always easy to see that auto-tuning in effect, but this kind of degenerate case magnifies it in ways that make it a lot more obvious by virtue of its absence.

I suppose it has been done to stop the practice of 'resetting' war rating (i.e all members reforming a new alliance) for easy loyalty that some complained of.
I'm not sure how you mitigate against that, but this doesn't seem right. Alliances essentially stuck in whatever tier they're in.