**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.

Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.

Dropping tiers in AW to get more points during AW Seasons

Mmx1991Mmx1991 Posts: 674 ★★★★
edited April 2018 in General Discussion
Many teams are doing this.

Pre-season they drop wars on purpose so when AW season starts they get matched up with easier teams and win more wars and get more points, since season rewards are all based on IN-SEASON performance.

Obviously they drop enough to maintain their current multiplier.

Is anything being done to address this? Can it be addressed?
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Comments

  • Mmx1991Mmx1991 Posts: 674 ★★★★
    Doesnt make sense

    Loosing with 7 multi is nearly the same as winning with 6

    No...

    Off-season they drop just enough wars to keep their in-season multiplier the same (how many is a guess) but then start racking up wins in-season since they go against easier teams since their war rating is lower.
  • DarkestDestroyerDarkestDestroyer Posts: 2,872 ★★★★★
    How do you know?

    Your saying it like this has been the 5th season... it’s been the first and only ended for so many hours (since our war ended anyway)

    Where are your facts or proof this is even happening already lol?
  • Mmx1991Mmx1991 Posts: 674 ★★★★
    How do you know?

    Your saying it like this has been the 5th season... it’s been the first and only ended for so many hours (since our war ended anyway)

    Where are your facts or proof this is even happening already lol?

    Educated guesses and it would be a typical strategy that teams would use to get ahead. I don't have rock solid evidence of going against AW mercs either but we all know it happens.
  • Maat1985Maat1985 Posts: 2,237 ★★★★
    Well this could not have happened before.....

    But also 6 and 7 multiplier up top yeah makes no sense....
    but down lower.... yu have 2.3, 2.4, 2.8...... etc

    Makes sense around this area....
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,558 Guardian
    Maat1985 wrote: »
    Well this could not have happened before.....

    But also 6 and 7 multiplier up top yeah makes no sense....
    but down lower.... yu have 2.3, 2.4, 2.8...... etc

    Makes sense around this area....

    The problem is that at lower tiers it doesn't take many wins in a row to jump tier. Since you're statistically likely to win about half the time if you are playing at or near your "intrinsic" tier relative to your strength, the best you can do is increase that winning percentage from 50% to 100% by dropping tiers, which means you can add 50k of winning bonus every other war, or about 25k per war on average. A multiplier gap of about 0.2 is enough to wipe out that bonus. So this really only is likely to work below tier 13, and only for a few rounds. I doubt there's a lot of serious jockeying going on in tier 17.

    It is a little bit more complicated than that when you factor in all possible ways to change points through higher completion percentage and such, but this is fundamentally a gamble you are just as likely to lose as win. It is not a reliable way to get a jump on the competition, and it only works when the competition itself is minimal to begin with.
  • Mmx1991Mmx1991 Posts: 674 ★★★★
    I didn't mean jumping tiers...like going down from tier 2 to 3.

    I meant losing wars until you've reached the bottom of your current tier (if you can accurately guess that) during pre-season.
  • DemonzfyreDemonzfyre Posts: 20,864 ★★★★★
    Mmx1991 wrote: »
    I didn't mean jumping tiers...like going down from tier 2 to 3.

    I meant losing wars until you've reached the bottom of your current tier (if you can accurately guess that) during pre-season.

    You have yet to validate your claim. How do you know this being done? If many are doing it then they end up fighting the same people anyway. There isn't a way for Kabam to know and there isn't anything to address. Just more wild conspiracy theories.
  • klobberintymeklobberintyme Posts: 1,403 ★★★
    edited April 2018
    Mmx1991 wrote: »
    I didn't mean jumping tiers...like going down from tier 2 to 3.

    I meant losing wars until you've reached the bottom of your current tier (if you can accurately guess that) during pre-season.

    That's a terrible strategy in a cumulative points season of war, where every opportunity to score the maximum amount of points benefit you much better than hypothetical tanking- you literally can't make up the lost opportunity points to justify the strategy. If u win the exact same number of wars as the alli above you did, but u tanked during the offseason to a lower tier, guess who has a higher score at the close of the season? But sure, knock yourself out peddling that conspiracy theory.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    This is not an effective strategy. As you lower, so does the Multiplier. The Season lasts 2 months. Someone can start fresh, but they will still have to build again and sustain Points to Rank high enough for what they want. A number of lower Tier Wars barely add up to one at a higher Multiplier. It's futile. Not a major concern. For that matter, if an Ally wants to start fresh and build every Season, I see no issue with that.
  • Renegade_DoggyRenegade_Doggy Posts: 358 ★★
    I'm glad you're getting scrutinized for this. Don't let the master plan out!
  • No0neNo0ne Posts: 1
    edited April 2018
    This is not an effective strategy. As you lower, so does the Multiplier. The Season lasts 2 months. Someone can start fresh, but they will still have to build again and sustain Points to Rank high enough for what they want. A number of lower Tier Wars barely add up to one at a higher Multiplier. It's futile. Not a major concern. For that matter, if an Ally wants to start fresh and build every Season, I see no issue with that.

    You're doing it wrong if you drop a multiplier.

    I know for a fact a few alliance are doing this.

    At 2300 War rating you get x7. At 2900 war rating you also get x7.

    So yes it's much more beneficial for alliance in the plat 1 to plat 3 range to drop to 2300 war rating right when the season starts.

    Think about it... would you rather be at 2300 playing against plat3/gold1 alliance at x7 or at 2900 playing against plat1/plat2 and borderline masters alliance at x7?

    The number of alliance in actual x8 is very small. Obviously the big boys like MMX don't need to do this but there are dozens of alliance fighting for any chance to jump from plat 3 to plat 2 or plat 2 to plat1.

    The difference in the amount t5b frags are huge. It's a difference of waiting 2-3 months for your 2nd 5* 5/65 champs.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    No0ne wrote: »
    This is not an effective strategy. As you lower, so does the Multiplier. The Season lasts 2 months. Someone can start fresh, but they will still have to build again and sustain Points to Rank high enough for what they want. A number of lower Tier Wars barely add up to one at a higher Multiplier. It's futile. Not a major concern. For that matter, if an Ally wants to start fresh and build every Season, I see no issue with that.

    You're doing it wrong if you drop a multiplier.

    I know for a fact a few alliance are doing this.

    At 2300 War rating you get x7. At 2900 war rating you also get x7.

    So yes it's much more beneficial for alliance in the plat 1 to plat 3 range to drop to 2300 war rating right when the season starts.

    Think about it... would you rather be at 2300 playing against plat3/gold1 alliance at x7 or at 2900 playing against plat1/plat2 and borderline masters alliance at x7?

    The number of alliance in actual x8 is very small. Obviously the big boys like MMX don't need to do this but there are dozens of alliance fighting for any chance to jump from plat 3 to plat 2 or plat 2 to plat1.

    The difference in the amount t5b frags are huge. It's a difference of waiting 2-3 months for your 2nd 5* 5/65 champs.

    The OP is talking about dropping all the way down as much as possible to gain Points. Meanwhile, while they're trying that tactic, other Allies are racking up Points with the Multiplier. It's futile. There's always going to be someone trying to manipulate an advantage. That doesn't mean it's a logical or effective one. Lol. The Season is based on cumulative Points. They can try to manipulate the Tiers, but that won't help the bottom line.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,558 Guardian
    Mmx1991 wrote: »
    I didn't mean jumping tiers...like going down from tier 2 to 3.

    I meant losing wars until you've reached the bottom of your current tier (if you can accurately guess that) during pre-season.

    But that seems to have an even less chance to be helpful. There's a lot of mathy ways to look at this, but lets consider another way of looking at it. Suppose that for every deliberate loss you take, you believe you will get an automatic win when the season starts. You won't, but this is about the best case scenario. So let's say you lose two wars in a row and drop to the bottom of your tier. When the season starts, you will now win two in a row and then you'll be back where you were (rating-wise) and then you'll start winning about 50/50 again, more or less. Had you not done this, you would have won about 50/50 and won once and lost once. So those two deliberate losses actually only translated into one extra win. And that's for the whole season.

    What is one extra win worth? Well, even when you lose you score points. You get a 50k bonus for winning, and you probably made somewhat more points in the victory. Let's say you score 20k more points than normal, for a grand total of 70k more points. That is less than half the points an alliance (3 BGs) will average per war. In a season, this then translates to about 2% more points for an alliance that fights the maximum number of wars (this is regardless of multiplier, because those are points before counting the multiplier). And this is the best case scenario. Assuming you can guess tier correctly and don't lose multiplier and assuming you can jockey to that spot correctly and assuming you then take full advantage of that rating drop then you might increase your total score by about 2% on average. Weighed against that are a lot of things that can go wrong when you try this, because winning and losing has a lot of statistical variance to it, because it depends greatly on who you get matched up against and how hard they decide to push to win that war. If you get unlucky and lose either of the first two wars of the season, your potential score increase would get wiped out. The 2% advantage happens only if you score two wins in a row at the start of the season and then perform normally after that. A loss in the second war erases your advantage. A loss in the first war sets you back worse than if you did nothing, because it would drop you a war tier (because you jockeyed the alliance to the bottom of that tier to start the season).
  • Mmx1991Mmx1991 Posts: 674 ★★★★
    edited April 2018
    No0ne wrote: »
    This is not an effective strategy. As you lower, so does the Multiplier. The Season lasts 2 months. Someone can start fresh, but they will still have to build again and sustain Points to Rank high enough for what they want. A number of lower Tier Wars barely add up to one at a higher Multiplier. It's futile. Not a major concern. For that matter, if an Ally wants to start fresh and build every Season, I see no issue with that.

    You're doing it wrong if you drop a multiplier.

    I know for a fact a few alliance are doing this.

    At 2300 War rating you get x7. At 2900 war rating you also get x7.

    So yes it's much more beneficial for alliance in the plat 1 to plat 3 range to drop to 2300 war rating right when the season starts.

    Think about it... would you rather be at 2300 playing against plat3/gold1 alliance at x7 or at 2900 playing against plat1/plat2 and borderline masters alliance at x7?

    The number of alliance in actual x8 is very small. Obviously the big boys like MMX don't need to do this but there are dozens of alliance fighting for any chance to jump from plat 3 to plat 2 or plat 2 to plat1.

    The difference in the amount t5b frags are huge. It's a difference of waiting 2-3 months for your 2nd 5* 5/65 champs.

    ^^^Thank you, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

    If 2900 and 2300 are both x7 multipliers, the 600 war rating difference is about 8-10 war wins. If you lose 10 in a row to get down to 2300 preseason, during the season you'll have 10 wars to get back to where you were (2900), and those 10 wars will be statistically easier (giving you more win points) if you start at 2300 war rating than if you did your original 2900.
  • Katy_CandyKaty_Candy Posts: 175
    It's been one season. How can you say this is been going on?
  • HulksmasshhHulksmasshh Posts: 742 ★★★
    The good part about 2-month seasons is that tactics like these will get ironed out by seasons end. It does have viability but only a handful of alliances could really pull it off. I have no idea the range that tier2+ alliances have jumping through tiers so I can’t comment on that, but I’d assume most would want to lose some wars up to the start of the next season.

    The ideal starting point for any master alliance would be right at the bottom of tier 1 when next season starts. It will give them a better chance to start off strong but eventually the leaderboards will even themselves out. Personally I’d rather my alliance take the free wins and shards if other alliances want to tank to us (not that we’d need many to tank anyway).
  • Mmx1991Mmx1991 Posts: 674 ★★★★
    The good part about 2-month seasons is that tactics like these will get ironed out by seasons end. It does have viability but only a handful of alliances could really pull it off. I have no idea the range that tier2+ alliances have jumping through tiers so I can’t comment on that, but I’d assume most would want to lose some wars up to the start of the next season.

    The ideal starting point for any master alliance would be right at the bottom of tier 1 when next season starts. It will give them a better chance to start off strong but eventually the leaderboards will even themselves out. Personally I’d rather my alliance take the free wins and shards if other alliances want to tank to us (not that we’d need many to tank anyway).

    If the difference between the high end of tier 2 (say 2900) and low end tier 2 (say 2300) is 8-10 wars, that's 8-10 easier wars than if you started at 2900. An easier 10 war advantage is huge.

    And what separates alliances at platinum 1 vs 3 is literally a handful of war wins.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    I feel conflicted. Part of me is happy that the Player Base is becoming vigilant about the honesty of others. The other part wishes I never suggested Seasons because of the hyper-focus on what everyone else is doing. Lol.
  • HulksmasshhHulksmasshh Posts: 742 ★★★
    Mmx1991 wrote: »
    The good part about 2-month seasons is that tactics like these will get ironed out by seasons end. It does have viability but only a handful of alliances could really pull it off. I have no idea the range that tier2+ alliances have jumping through tiers so I can’t comment on that, but I’d assume most would want to lose some wars up to the start of the next season.

    The ideal starting point for any master alliance would be right at the bottom of tier 1 when next season starts. It will give them a better chance to start off strong but eventually the leaderboards will even themselves out. Personally I’d rather my alliance take the free wins and shards if other alliances want to tank to us (not that we’d need many to tank anyway).

    If the difference between the high end of tier 2 (say 2900) and low end tier 2 (say 2300) is 8-10 wars, that's 8-10 easier wars than if you started at 2900. An easier 10 war advantage is huge.

    And what separates alliances at platinum 1 vs 3 is literally a handful of war wins.

    Well if that’s the case and your alliance falls under that range, why not do it for yourself lol. There’s nothing Kabam can do if you want to lose on purpose, especially to a random alliance. Kabam might make some ranking/tier changes based on their feedback from this season. But outside of completely re-hauling the tier/war rating system or resetting everyone’s war rating to 0, there’s nothing to stop an alliance from tanking the off-season if they think it’s the right move.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    Mmx1991 wrote: »
    The good part about 2-month seasons is that tactics like these will get ironed out by seasons end. It does have viability but only a handful of alliances could really pull it off. I have no idea the range that tier2+ alliances have jumping through tiers so I can’t comment on that, but I’d assume most would want to lose some wars up to the start of the next season.

    The ideal starting point for any master alliance would be right at the bottom of tier 1 when next season starts. It will give them a better chance to start off strong but eventually the leaderboards will even themselves out. Personally I’d rather my alliance take the free wins and shards if other alliances want to tank to us (not that we’d need many to tank anyway).

    If the difference between the high end of tier 2 (say 2900) and low end tier 2 (say 2300) is 8-10 wars, that's 8-10 easier wars than if you started at 2900. An easier 10 war advantage is huge.

    And what separates alliances at platinum 1 vs 3 is literally a handful of war wins.

    Well if that’s the case and your alliance falls under that range, why not do it for yourself lol. There’s nothing Kabam can do if you want to lose on purpose, especially to a random alliance. Kabam might make some ranking/tier changes based on their feedback from this season. But outside of completely re-hauling the tier/war rating system or resetting everyone’s war rating to 0, there’s nothing to stop an alliance from tanking the off-season if they think it’s the right move.

    Correct. Taking a dive is out of their control.
  • Mmx1991Mmx1991 Posts: 674 ★★★★
    _ASDF_ wrote: »
    Let them have at it. If the season was a month, great strategy. Being it’s longer, I doubt it’ll matter at all.

    How is it a bad strategy if it could give you 10 easier wars instead of 10 harder ones?
  • 420sam420sam Posts: 526 ★★★
    Mmx1991 wrote: »
    No0ne wrote: »
    This is not an effective strategy. As you lower, so does the Multiplier. The Season lasts 2 months. Someone can start fresh, but they will still have to build again and sustain Points to Rank high enough for what they want. A number of lower Tier Wars barely add up to one at a higher Multiplier. It's futile. Not a major concern. For that matter, if an Ally wants to start fresh and build every Season, I see no issue with that.

    You're doing it wrong if you drop a multiplier.

    I know for a fact a few alliance are doing this.

    At 2300 War rating you get x7. At 2900 war rating you also get x7.

    So yes it's much more beneficial for alliance in the plat 1 to plat 3 range to drop to 2300 war rating right when the season starts.

    Think about it... would you rather be at 2300 playing against plat3/gold1 alliance at x7 or at 2900 playing against plat1/plat2 and borderline masters alliance at x7?

    The number of alliance in actual x8 is very small. Obviously the big boys like MMX don't need to do this but there are dozens of alliance fighting for any chance to jump from plat 3 to plat 2 or plat 2 to plat1.

    The difference in the amount t5b frags are huge. It's a difference of waiting 2-3 months for your 2nd 5* 5/65 champs.

    ^^^Thank you, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

    If 2900 and 2300 are both x7 multipliers, the 600 war rating difference is about 8-10 war wins. If you lose 10 in a row to get down to 2300 preseason, during the season you'll have 10 wars to get back to where you were (2900), and those 10 wars will be statistically easier (giving you more win points) if you start at 2300 war rating than if you did your original 2900.

    But you conveniently forget one very important point: the alliance that is dropping in war rating is competing in a fluid system so as they drop from 2900 to 2300 there are many other alliances that are increasing their war rating and possible even pushing them out of the tier they need to be in at the start of seasons to maximize their points. Very few, if any, alliances are crazy enough to employ such an unsophisticated strategy.
  • IAmNotUrMomIAmNotUrMom Posts: 648 ★★★
    Many teams and the OP provides no proof that even one alliance is doing such.
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