Alliance Wars Seasons Discussion Thread

Summoners!

We've just announced an exciting new addition to The Contest! Alliance Wars Seasons are coming! Alliance Wars Seasons are going to be the most competitive new mode in the game, and will be the go to place for all of the rarest items in the game!

Find out everything you need to know here.

Comments

dkatryl

Yeah, the need for the multipliers doesn't make sense to me.

You already score more for winning, less for losing. Why should a win for a higher tier team count for more than a win for a lower tier team? Shouldn't a higher tier team already be scoring more wins, which is why they are a higher tier team in the first place, which would naturally make their total score over the season be higher?

Why artificially inflate the higher tier's score?

Thawnim

dkatryl wrote: »

Yeah, the need for the multipliers doesn't make sense to me.

You already score more for winning, less for losing. Why should a win for a higher tier team count for more than a win for a lower tier team? Shouldn't a higher tier team already be scoring more wins, which is why they are a higher tier team in the first place, which would naturally make their total score over the season be higher?

Why artificially inflate the higher tier's score?

The multiplier is just a nice way to balance out against alliances running less wars or less battlegroups. Yes, you may win more wars, but maybe even if you had lost a few you would still be adjusted up due to the multiplier.

dkatryl

How does that help in that scenario? If you run less wars, or a smaller battlegroup, you are already going to lose out to others in your tier that run more often and/or a 3 battlegroups.

Only thing the multipliers do is keep those at a higher tier there longer, and those at a lower tier take longer to move up.

dkatryl

I guess my point is, on the very 1st war or the season, there is going to be a winner in every bracket obviously. Let's assume that the winner gets full points, plus the 50k, as in the example used on:
http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/47443/announcing-alliance-wars-seasons
So, 100k + 50k, for 150k base points.
Tier 1 x8.0 = 1200000
Tier 2 x7.0 = 1050000
Tier 3 x6.0 = 900000
Tier 4 x4.5 = 675000
Tier 5 x4.0 = 600000
...
Tier 10 x2.4 = 360000
...
Tier 22 x1.0 = 150000

So, after the very first war, there is already a massive discrepancy between the points earned by the winner of Tier 1 vs Tier 22. Now, a natural reaction to that statement is that the Tier 1 war would have been much harder than the Tier 22 war, so why should they be treated the same?

Because it was only the first war of a season that will be comprised of several weeks, if not months. Those that are starting at Tier 1 are doing so because they win most of their wars, right? Those starting at Tier 22 are doing so because they lose most of their wars, right?

So why have the multipliers that seem keep those already at a higher tier from the start firmly entrenched in their tier unless they have a long string of losses and/or inactivity, and not simply go by the raw points accrued over the course of the season?

Primmer79

dkatryl wrote: »

I guess my point is, on the very 1st war or the season, there is going to be a winner in every bracket obviously. Let's assume that the winner gets full points, plus the 50k, as in the example used on:
http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/47443/announcing-alliance-wars-seasons
So, 100k + 50k, for 150k base points.
Tier 1 x8.0 = 1200000
Tier 2 x7.0 = 1050000
Tier 3 x6.0 = 900000
Tier 4 x4.5 = 675000
Tier 5 x4.0 = 600000
...
Tier 10 x2.4 = 360000
...
Tier 22 x1.0 = 150000

So, after the very first war, there is already a massive discrepancy between the points earned by the winner of Tier 1 vs Tier 22. Now, a natural reaction to that statement is that the Tier 1 war would have been much harder than the Tier 22 war, so why should they be treated the same?

Because it was only the first war of a season that will be comprised of several weeks, if not months. Those that are starting at Tier 1 are doing so because they win most of their wars, right? Those starting at Tier 22 are doing so because they lose most of their wars, right?

So why have the multipliers that seem keep those already at a higher tier from the start firmly entrenched in their tier unless they have a long string of losses and/or inactivity, and not simply go by the raw points accrued over the course of the season?

what stops an alliance from running a brand new alliance at the start of every season to start with easy wins as opposed to facing fair challenges

Riegel

@Kabam Miike

In the top levels of AW your rating will be much higher than those just entering T1 AW.

Due to this it can take a long time for top alliances to find new wars, also sometimes after finally finding a war alliances will be matched with alliances 1000's of rating lower.

Both of these things cause a loss of points. One by not being able to find wars fast enough the other by matching with alliance that a victory will award 0 points.

With the new AW seasons changes will there be any update to the existing match making process?

DNA3000

dkatryl wrote: »

Yeah, the need for the multipliers doesn't make sense to me.

You already score more for winning, less for losing. Why should a win for a higher tier team count for more than a win for a lower tier team? Shouldn't a higher tier team already be scoring more wins, which is why they are a higher tier team in the first place, which would naturally make their total score over the season be higher?

Why artificially inflate the higher tier's score?

There are lots of game design reasons for the multiplier, but I'll simply state the most important one. Seasons wouldn't work without it.

You say that an alliance in a higher tier must be winning more often. That's not exactly true. As far as anyone can gather, up to now the tier you are in is determined by win/loss record. The more wins you get, the higher you go up in tier. But once you achieve a higher rating and enter a higher tier, you start getting matched against stronger opponents. You cannot keep winning indefinitely. Eventually you have to reach a tier where you start to lose, because someone has to lose in every tier. You reach equilibrium when you start winning and losing about half the time. Any alliance that wins a lot more often than half the time keeps increasing rating until they either start getting matched against alliances they can only beat half the time, or they become the absolute top rated alliance capable of beating everyone they get matched against (I'm ignoring match making games for now).

So actually, on average most alliances win about half the time, eventually. An alliance in tier 3 wins about half the time against other tier 3 alliances, while an alliance in tier 12 also wins about half the time against other tier 12 alliances. If they didn't, they wouldn't remain in that tier.

So imagine a tier 3 alliance winning about half the time because they are up against tier 3 competition, and a tier 12 alliance also winning about half the time against tier 12 alliances, which is why they are stuck in tier 12. As long as they perform similarly relative to the competition and both run three battlegroups, they will actually score about the same number of points per war. The tier 3 alliance has no way to gain ground on the tier 12 alliance, because they have to face tier 3 competition and cannot improve their win/loss record compared to the tier 12 alliance that can just cruise and still win half the time.

The multiplier is actually the *primary* way in which stronger alliances will score more points overall than weaker ones. They cannot do so by winning more often, except perhaps initially. In fact a super strong alliance could deliberately lurk around in tier 12 for half the season and then go all out and win every single war to the finish, scoring more points than almost anyone else (by racking up victory bonuses in every war). The multiplier makes this strategy ultimately non-viable.

bigmull1

I appreciate the alliance war changes, I really do. However, removing the ability to see opponents % complete from the war progress screen does suck a little.

PoisonDatura

Okay i fully understand what are you saying but i dont think is fair for tier4,there are only in first 300 alliances,platinum and up,alpha t2.. so if we are half winning and half losing we will be in 300-1500(gold1) and we will not be able to r4 our rooster 5☆ there are only 4xr4 5☆ for now in our team and only if we continue going event quest or some calendar rewards we will get one more r4 5☆ in a few months ... so all alliances who have that privilege to be in 300 they will grow faster and we will never be able to reach them... this is like you are locking them on the top and all others have to work hard to achieve the same but will we not be able to do it... im not saying that they dont disrve it... but you should put some t2 alpha fragments in gold1,we need them to improve our r4 5☆ and to be able to put them in defence... it not fair we all have r5 4☆ and still ranking them on max just for fun,when we should spending t4b or t4cc for our 5☆
@DNA3000

DNA3000

PoisonDatura wrote: »

so all alliances who have that privilege to be in 300 they will grow faster and we will never be able to reach them...

Leaderboards are not static. What you say can't be done happens all the time.

I will never be the top player in the game. The definition of a fair game doesn't require that I have the same chance of becoming the top player in the game doing whatever I'm doing normally.

And before you consider the unfair advantages of the top 300, you should consider that unless you happen to literally be the alliance in 301st place, many alliances with no reward advantage over you are blocking your way into the top 300, and until you can beat them on a level playing field you have no way to challenge the top 300 either.

unknown

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PoisonDatura

DNA3000 wrote: »

PoisonDatura wrote: »

so all alliances who have that privilege to be in 300 they will grow faster and we will never be able to reach them...

Leaderboards are not static. What you say can't be done happens all the time.

I will never be the top player in the game. The definition of a fair game doesn't require that I have the same chance of becoming the top player in the game doing whatever I'm doing normally.

And before you consider the unfair advantages of the top 300, you should consider that unless you happen to literally be the alliance in 301st place, many alliances with no reward advantage over you are blocking your way into the top 300, and until you can beat them on a level playing field you have no way to challenge the top 300 either.

I dont want to be in first 300... i undarstand how and why they got there... im just saying they should put alpha t2 fragments in gold1 where are 300-1500 who work hard in aw/aq for their rewards and still somehow we are left behind to "pickup the pieces" from first 300...

Run477

We are in the top 300 and it’s not from spending money FYI. Some of our members are totally ftp and I’m basically ftp (I have bought a couple of awakening gems).

But there are definitely spenders. We won our last war by having to drop some potions bc the ally against us was totally spend to win. We had 2 out of 3 bgs dropped, they had 1 and they were ahead in explore by 1%. I was sitting at a front right 5* r4 spidey miniboss with sig 133. It was brutal. Nearly every attempted hit was an evade (I won’t even bring up how I is that 27% chance to evade seems like 100% and my hulk’s 85% chance to stun does t stun 2 or 3 in a row constantly...). Then they decided to “go for the win” by reviving and dropping so many potions.

We “won” the war when I had to then revive/heal to clear spidey (all other minibosses were down) and we soloed their boss.

We died 103 times that war. Their deaths were 199 and they didn’t even make it to the third bg boss. This is when the game gets stupid.

So yes, there are definitely allies that got there by spending. We see them constantly. It’s annoying.

MrTicTac19992008

Will the end of the seasons rewards be given to every alliance member in your alliance or will they only be given to those alliance members who participated in the wars for the previous season?

DNA3000

PoisonDatura wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

PoisonDatura wrote: »

so all alliances who have that privilege to be in 300 they will grow faster and we will never be able to reach them...

Leaderboards are not static. What you say can't be done happens all the time.

I will never be the top player in the game. The definition of a fair game doesn't require that I have the same chance of becoming the top player in the game doing whatever I'm doing normally.

And before you consider the unfair advantages of the top 300, you should consider that unless you happen to literally be the alliance in 301st place, many alliances with no reward advantage over you are blocking your way into the top 300, and until you can beat them on a level playing field you have no way to challenge the top 300 either.

I dont want to be in first 300... i undarstand how and why they got there... im just saying they should put alpha t2 fragments in gold1 where are 300-1500 who work hard in aw/aq for their rewards and still somehow we are left behind to "pickup the pieces" from first 300...

Gold 1 contains those black crystals which contain T5B and/or T2A fragments (it is unclear if it is chance for one or chance for both) with a (probably rare) chance to drop a full T2A.

Mafia868

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Loto @Kabam Zibiit
Why no one replied our questions , I'm really hate that way and ignoring.

Qwerty

can we get tiered victory/defeated crystals with better rewards? the only decent pulls out of those are alliance pots or loyalty.

Kpatrix

When are we going to see a discussion about the class detect masteries. A lot of us have these unlocked using class cores that were purchased with either units or loyalty. Since these are no longer needed, has the team had enough time to come up with an alternative for these ?

The_RawMaster007

What are those bottom 20 alliances mean...?
The least also get the master rank...? @Kabam Miike

Badrose

AQ, new AW, events, 1 hr timer, no more life.

unknown

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MissMissy

An idea I think that would be awesome would be taking away the option of us finding a war match. If an alliance is interested in participating in a war then they would select a button and place their defense within the customary 24 hour period. And then within that period AI would match up alliance with an appropriate non fixed challenger.

But this would mean that aw would have a fixed time frame.. but definitely worth it imo

And on another note, I believe the rewards are a little top heavy ): The strong will only become much stronger.

Ready61

@Kabam Miike you guys should add diversity points for Alliance Wars attack teams. That will really turn up the competition on so many levels.

DNA3000

linux wrote: »

dkatryl wrote: »

Yeah, the need for the multipliers doesn't make sense to me.

You already score more for winning, less for losing. Why should a win for a higher tier team count for more than a win for a lower tier team? Shouldn't a higher tier team already be scoring more wins, which is why they are a higher tier team in the first place, which would naturally make their total score over the season be higher?

Why artificially inflate the higher tier's score?

Without this multiplier, we'd have a strong incentive to sandbag our defenses -- to drop down to a lower tier so we could be sure of always clearing to 100%.

I don't believe that would work, because if you drop to a tier where you always win, the always winning part will automatically cause you to bounce up to a higher tier. The points you lose for deliberately losing probably would end up higher than the points you would gain for clearing a higher percentage of the map, since there is a 50k bonus for winning.

I think it is important to remind people that in AW season one there will be two "ranking" in AW: your AW tier which works exactly the way it works now (as far as we know) which determines (roughly) who you get matched against and what your points multiplier is, and your seasonal ranking which is determined by how many points you have and what AW season reward tier you are in. These are two different things. If you decide to deliberately lose to drop into a lower AW tier, you will also cost yourself points which will cause you to drop lower on the AW leaderboard and thus the AW seasonal reward tier.

Losing constantly to drop AW tier, and then winning every time once you are at a low tier, is basically the same thing as winning half the time at your original tier if you end up in the same place in the end, except your average multiplier will be worse in the first case than the second one. With the multiplier this definitely doesn't work. But even without the multiplier it is unclear if this would do anything, because it looks like you would roughly break even doing this. Your fate would depend on exactly how the ratings adjustments are calculated.

unknown

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DNA3000

linux wrote: »

Anyway -- my point is that the multipliers are needed, to deal with the fact that clearing in T1-T3 is much harder than in T4.

While that is a potential problem, I don't believe it is the most important one, because even if the rate of 100% explore was exactly the same in all tiers, the multiplier would still be necessary for AW seasons to function at all. The notion that it is not necessary rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of how war tiers themselves function: the notion that being in a higher tier means you win more often. That's subtly but critically wrong: being in a higher tier means you won more often, placing you in a higher tier. But once you reach the tier that matches you against comparable competition, your win rate must then eventually stabilize to something close to 50/50.

If every alliance started in tier 22, and then win/loss record pushed every alliance up or down based on win/loss record, then the multiplier would be less necessary. But in that situation everyone would be randomly matched against potential behemoths who would run them over on their way to marching to tier 1. That's not ideal.

unknown

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DNA3000

linux wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

linux wrote: »

Anyway -- my point is that the multipliers are needed, to deal with the fact that clearing in T1-T3 is much harder than in T4.

While that is a potential problem, I don't believe it is the most important one, because even if the rate of 100% explore was exactly the same in all tiers, the multiplier would still be necessary for AW seasons to function at all. The notion that it is not necessary rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of how war tiers themselves function: the notion that being in a higher tier means you win more often. That's subtly but critically wrong: being in a higher tier means you won more often, placing you in a higher tier. But once you reach the tier that matches you against comparable competition, your win rate must then eventually stabilize to something close to 50/50.

If every alliance started in tier 22, and then win/loss record pushed every alliance up or down based on win/loss record, then the multiplier would be less necessary. But in that situation everyone would be randomly matched against potential behemoths who would run them over on their way to marching to tier 1. That's not ideal.

As I said, based on a some simple back-of-the-envelope numbers, if we clear at least two bosses it doesn't make sense for us -- that is, I don't think this is a problem because of the specific multipliers.

But if we rise to hard matches in T1-T3 where we average 1 boss or so for losses (and especially if we average fewer than 3 bosses for wins) then we should sandbag defense to go down in ranking to get easier matches -- I know we can ~always clear 3 maps in T4 (easier nodes), so if we lost on attacker kills in T4 we'd get at least ~900k for wins and ~675k for losses (average of about 787.5k, ignoring the fact that you lose a little more rank on loses than you gain on wins).

I think that probably won't happen though -- the extra 1/3 (4.5 -> 6) makes up for missing a fair chunk of the map at T3 and better.

What I'm trying to say is that while that situation exists for you, that can't be the primary reason for the multiplier because even if that wasn't true the lack of a multiplier would still break the season system. The multiplier helps you out of that problem, but it would be there with or without that problem.

SillyCaitlin

When does this begin?

Jon8299

So in the announcement you said the leaderboard would go live one week after Season 1 begins. Season 1 began now and the counter says the leaderboard will be live in two weeks.

A small mistake but now I'm wondering what other errors could be in the announcement.