Alliance Wars Season 3 Discussion Thread

Summoners! We've just posted a list of Adjustments coming to Alliance Wars Season 3. Check out the post here. You've probably got questions, so ask away!

Remember, Season 3 starts on July 11th!

UPDATE: Summoners,

As many of you have reported, we are currently experiencing some unexpected hardware and software issues. This is causing many of you to experience limited access to the game, as well as sub par performance in game.

While we continue to investigate the issues and identify solutions, we will be delaying the start of Alliance Wars Season 3.

At this time, we do not have a timeline for when we will be launching Season 3, but want to ensure that we have time to work to resolve any interactions that are causing problems on iOS devices before starting the next competitive season.

We apologize for the delay, and appreciate your patience. We will update you all as soon as we have more information on these issues.

Comments

Zuko_ILC

Mini bosses before Mini bosses, why don't they just make each node a mini boss then? Boosting champ health 500% is just silly, is this LOL now? Gonna need a Proxima or Domino to do big damage just to win in 3 minutes.

unknown

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Greywarden

@Kabam Miike can you address the decision behind making AW harder for the same rewards? To me and many people in the community saying that we shouldn't 100% the map seems like we have to play this game the way you want instead of the way we want.

Stewman

WE DON'T WANT WAR DIFFICULTY INCREASED.
GET RID OF THE NEW "MINI BOSSES"

Amonthir

Stewman wrote: »

WE DON'T WANT WAR DIFFICULTY INCREASED.
GET RID OF THE NEW "MINI BOSSES"

Difficulty can be increased, IF it comes with the correct increase in rewards.

Vincew80

Increasing rewards is a moot point since clearly their objective is deepest pocket wins.

KoperBoy

"Our plan is 100% should not be achievable".

Where have I heard this?

Oh right... "Map 6 costs so much because it's not intended to be played on all five days".

unknown

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SantaGulk

"Our plan is 100% should not be achievable".
This is dangerous and not healthy and not sustainable. If Kabam keeps heading this way, I'll definitely quit.

Goll3m_1

We didn't like Diversity in the first place, but then we adapted to it, spent significant time, money and effort getting it to work, and it's still a significant point of frustration to any team or group leader in charge of insuring Diversity is in place. I'm personally exhausted having to constantly manage/maintain the Diversity effort without a built in tool or 3rd party development that integrates with the game. My offline Google Doc calculator works great as long as I'm constantly managing it. And so my first emotional reaction to "No More Diversity" was "Thank God, I don't have to do this anymore"... but then reality set in around the bigger consequences for removing Diversity.

So no it's back...but for how long? Kabam is actually very soft on this reversal. It's back...for now...as they continue to evaluate the game options. And so, the can has been kicked down the road and the only tangible outcome from this experiment is that Trust in this process has been eroded and the community is still very angry.

For as much as I hate managing this game around Diversity (the mechanics of coordinating with 9 other players (x3) to convince people who to bring to war, who to rank, and managing updates along the way) it's become a significant aspect of the War Engine. Kabam, if they want to make improvements, need to focus on how to make Diversity easier to manage at this point, not removing it for the sake of removing it.

pseudosane

I'm an officer in a gold 1 alliance. At the end of season 2 we had several people retire due to the stress of AW. Season 3 is slated to be more stressful. Alliances are crumbling, alliances are scrambling to keep their ranks filled and alliances are merging to continue playing this game. If you increase the difficulty of the maps you better expect more people retiring or moving their accounts into more relaxed or "retirement" alliances. This only adds more stress to the officers who need to keep the alliance at 30 members to stay competitive.

Kabam has put me personally in a bit of a conundrum with these changes. I'm not a big spender at all. I only have about $300-$350 tied up in this game in about 2.5 years of play. Not even close to a whale by any measure but not a f2p player either. They announce these major changes right before the July 4 sale. I was planning on buying any and all decent offers this time around just so I could beef up my unit supply for buying L4 potions for AW since I use most of my glory for these and therefore face a serious t1a shortage.

Now I don't want to buy any offers because my alliance is going to change to a "no item war" stance if the additional mini bosses are added as planned. We WILL NOT demand our alliance mates revive/heal in AW anymore causing them to use even more glory and units than in season 2. We simply won't do it. This means I no longer need the July 4 offers and neither do several of my alliance mates. This means Kabam makes less money from myself and my alliance. Of course this won't hurt their bottom line much. I strongly suspect others had a similar idea as well though, and if many, many others pass on the July 4 sale for this reason then it will hurt their bottom line.

I believe Kabam should make money. They are a business and the game doesn't exist if they do not. I don't feel bad spending when the offers are worth it. I do not want to spend on a game that is in constant flux though. I have no idea what hair-brained scheme is coming next. I have no idea when long standing bugs will be fixed. I have no idea which of my champs are going to be nerfed and when. I have no idea why they thought Domino was a good idea in her current state. I have no idea because Kabam doesn't communicate with us and makes these decisions without any input from the community.

I'm tired of Kabam throwing major horrible changes at us and then back-pedaling partially to try and calm the community. You need to listen to the community first and foremost. Deliver a game we still want to play. Deliver a game we are still willing to spend money on. Fail to deliver and your player base is going to slowly erode until this game doesn't exist.

Juice

Between the time that you guys released the news of diversity being removed and the time you decided to retract that decision, I ranked up a 5* modok, which I would have never ranked up in the world of diversity. I sent in a ticket about this which I received a generic response basically saying my issue will not be addressed with me personally. I refuse to log back into the game until those resources are rewarded back to me. I know this is a big game and my revenue is just a drop in the bucket, but good job losing a loyal paying customer that has logged into this game everyday for the past 3 years.

pseudosane

My 2 cents.

I'm an officer in a gold 1 alliance. At the end of season 2 we had several people retire due to the stress of AW. Season 3 is slated to be more stressful. Alliances are crumbling, alliances are scrambling to keep their ranks filled and alliances are merging to continue playing this game. If you increase the difficulty of the maps you better expect more people retiring or moving their accounts into more relaxed or "retirement" alliances. This only adds more stress to the officers who need to keep the alliance at 30 members to stay competitive.

Kabam has put me personally in a bit of a conundrum with these changes. I'm not a big spender at all. I only have about $300-$350 tied up in this game in about 2.5 years of play. Not even close to a whale by any measure but not a f2p player either. They announce these major changes right before the July 4 sale. I was planning on buying any and all decent offers this time around just so I could beef up my unit supply for buying L4 potions for AW since I use most of my glory for these and therefore face a serious t1a shortage.

Now I don't want to buy any offers because my alliance is going to change to a "no item war" stance if the additional mini bosses are added as planned. We WILL NOT demand our alliance mates revive/heal in AW anymore causing them to use even more glory and units than in season 2. We simply won't do it. This means I no longer need the July 4 offers and neither do several of my alliance mates. This means Kabam makes less money from myself and my alliance. Of course this won't hurt their bottom line much. I strongly suspect others had a similar idea as well though, and if many, many others pass on the July 4 sale for this reason then it will hurt their bottom line.

I believe Kabam should make money. They are a business and the game doesn't exist if they do not. I don't feel bad spending when the offers are worth it. I do not want to spend on a game that is in constant flux though. I have no idea what hair-brained scheme is coming next. I have no idea when long standing bugs will be fixed. I have no idea which of my champs are going to be nerfed and when. I have no idea why they thought Domino was a good idea in her current state. I have no idea because Kabam doesn't communicate with us and makes these decisions without any input from the community.

I'm tired of Kabam throwing major horrible changes at us and then back-pedaling partially to try and calm the community. You need to listen to the community first and foremost. Deliver a game we still want to play. Deliver a game we are still willing to spend money on. Fail to deliver and your player base is going to slowly erode until this game doesn't exist.

WOK

I've read some of the latest responses from Kabam....... And IMO they have taken "insulting player intelligence" to a new level. Smh

WOK

Basically nothing has changed, and nothing will change. Im continuing with my blackout. The rewards and completion mean nothing to me for a game that has pushed things too far.

Erickrgl

Kabam Miike wrote: »

NevvB wrote: »

So you made the nodes harder, any changes in rewards?

The rewards have not changed (aside from Season rewards being halved to match the change in length). This is because Alliances were still finding these Maps far too easy. The goal of these changes is to put an end to the near 100% of wars ending in 100% Exploration.

Solo han tocado el tema de diversidad, pero no es lo único que deben mencionar. No estamos de acuerdo con aumentar 5 mini bosses más, es una broma de mal gusto cuando solo 1 persona tiene que hacerse cargo de un camino. Mejor dígannos que utilizemos la tarjeta de crédito más seguido. Espero que nos escuchen porque ya todos los usuarios nos estamos uniendo para hacernos escuchar. Están tomando muy malas decisiones sin ningún respeto a la comunidad.

WOK

Just wanted to bring into the discussion something that hasn't been mentioned before, but I feel is significant and needs to be taken into consideration.

With the statements pertaining to Mcoc and the evolving meta, I would like to point out that for many players that have been playing since day one and those playing shortly after like myself, other than release of new characters and unique theme event quests, there was never any suggestion that the game was going to change to the degree it has now(unless I missed the memo somewhere).

As far as I and others in my little circle were led to believe, Act4 and ROL was basically the games "coup de gras" so to speak and AQ and AW were the "team" based content that allowed players the chance to have competition and gain resources to aid in progressing to finish the ACTs and ROL.
There was never any references of an Act5, Rttl, or LOL or even 6* champs in the horizon, which other than 6*champs happens to be awesome IMO, but besides the point.

If the changes that were in development were in fact going to be implemented, the playerbase should have been given the knowledge of it and made aware of the possibilities that what they are working/paying for can or will depreciate in value under the forseeable circumstances. But that was not and continues to not be addressed by Kabam.
Its my personal opinion that some if not a lot of the backlash is because of this lack of information and consideration for the playerbase.

For example, if I was made aware that 6*'s or 12* were in the horizon, I would have taken a much different approach to my decisions for which champs to rank up and use resources on.
If I was informed, and chose to rank up the way I had, obviously I had my own reasons, which means I was and would be ok with my decisions.

There is a big difference when decisions are able to be made with adequate information towards future changes, and not having that information at all.

I would say that this would be less impactive if the resources, time and money invested was trivial like something I can aqcuire again in a matter of days, but in our case its not. Resources are costly and scarce, some can take months to years to gather. I myself had played "religiously" for nearly 3 yrs and still looking forward to my 1st T5b and have yet to use a T2A which my inventory is 1 shy of being full.

I truly hope Kabam decides to take a different approach to their idea of transparency and connecting with the players.

Absimiliard

My issue here is that people are saying this is like bait and switch for diversity. I think this feels more like Jim Sterling spoke of when it came to the loot boxes in the non-F2P (ironically, considering this game is entirely based on loot boxes). It comes off more as conditioning rather than bait and switch. Kabam has continued to push any changes that benefit them entirely (Drax, AA, AW changes, etc.), while ignoring the community. They see how far they can take it and when there is outrage they backpedal to either the last change or just the thing the community was irritated with.

By doing this Kabam can keep pushing the envelope and get away with devaluing either our efforts or the game as a whole. Just the notion of the revive "exploit" which was, in reality, just farming like any game that has RPG elements incorporated into them, annoyed me greatly. Each excuse lately really hurts my enjoyment of the game and I don't want to fall into the Sunk Cost fallacy here.

I just wish Kabam would stick by their transparency statement they made after 12.0. The new season of AQ I'm not sure or but if they just reduced their prices on specials like the 4* awakening gem offer that was $50. That offer was a joke considering the current meta of the game leaning harder into 5*/6* champions. If that had been $20 I would have been sold. It's just weird considering the signature stone offer from earlier this year was great. If they make things more affordable, people will buy. There's no point in forcing the players into a corner in AW, especially since the top alliances have to play with pinpoint precision or they cost themselves a lot of rewards.

Drummer16

Yea, make more enticing offers that appeal to the actual semi-competitive to hardcore whale players, and you will see your revenue go up and up. It's not really fair to make the people that supported you guys until now have to deal with increased difficulty so that they can "foot the bill" to make up for any revenue losses via potion and revive purchases.

There are so many things that need to be changed about this game, and I don't feel like a prioritized list would be that hard to come up with.

I was really excited to see diversity was being removed, and since there was a level up event at the time of the announcement, myself along with many others in my alliance started upgrading new heroes. It really grinds my gears that 1) we never wanted diversity in the first place so people ranked up bad champs, despite the 1000s of threads protesting diversity being added 2) they say that diversity is being removed and a day later are like "oh, just kidding!" so people who couldn't rank up duplicate champs in their BGs now just did and can't use them now 3) the old AW system was WAY better than this and we should have just stuck to the original AW map and scoring rules, and kabam could have simply adjusted and increased the node difficulty and increased the rewards as needed without taking players though this disastrous journey.

It was just so ironic to see kabam's first post about why diversity was bad that outlined all the exact original complaints that they ignored when diversity was added like "war victors are decided when the matchup happens" and "it's not a tie breaker, you have to use it" and "all strategy is basically gone from AW because we have to place easy, trash defenders".

Sirnoob2

so a suggestion I have is make two leagues for aw
one league is the competitive aw this is same as current state of war except get rid of defender diversity this allows alliances to go all out and not gimp them

the second league is the more casual league this league has defender diversity for those who want a more downed down aw a cap of champs in to 4 stars no buying items and and item limit that u give everybody at the begining of attack phase also side this league is ment to be more casual and easy the rewards get towned down to match

this set up will help u guys satisfy ur players that want aw to be a challenge and those that want it to be more casual

Vulkan7

Loving the changes Kabam! Your continued incompetence has finally given me the resolve to quit after almost 3 years. I should have quit after 12.0 or after you broke AW with diversity. But you clearly have no clue how to treat the community. And as you drop further and further from gross ranks maybe then someone will finally realize that games with staying power, truly listen to their base, instead of the quick buck. I wish you no luck and hope your mmgt doesnt find it to another game to ruin.

SnakeDoc

So you increase the difficulty significantly but rewards stay the same?
You just made another og player quit the game. Congrats

WOK

Sirnoob2 wrote: »

so a suggestion I have is make two leagues for aw
one league is the competitive aw this is same as current state of war except get rid of defender diversity this allows alliances to go all out and not gimp them

the second league is the more casual league this league has defender diversity for those who want a more downed down aw a cap of champs in to 4 stars no buying items and and item limit that u give everybody at the begining of attack phase also side this league is ment to be more casual and easy the rewards get towned down to match

this set up will help u guys satisfy ur players that want aw to be a challenge and those that want it to be more casual

Although an interesting idea, seperate leagues and different rules to abide by seems to need quite a bit of work in order to implement and run simultaneously/separately.

Not positive if something similar had been suggested before or if it's even doable for that matter, but I just thought about this possibility.

Change the difficulty and map layout as described and dont remove anything that has been in play till now, with just a few minor tweaks to points per/metric maybe.

THEN add in a metric that tabulates points gained/lost for item usage instead of just being a number that has no value other than quantity available.
Each lvl pot, revive, champ boost, class boost what have you all having its own specific point value, because although each is considered a single item, IMO their level of help potency vary greatly.
The ally that uses any and all types of items gets those points deducted from their total and maybe even bonus points awarded to the ally having less points deducted(less significant items used).

I thought this might be a possible middleground for those asking for items being removed completely to better showcase skill and competition and those not so much in favor of removal, but against the coined "wallet wars".

Seemed like a decent enough idea that doesnt seem to need extensive work to put into play....... But I have no idea what actually needs to be done or if it can work like I said. @DNA3000 care to lend some thought?

Grub

@Kabam Miike

Are there any plans to make the opponent names invisible on the map? There’s a growing trend to just change your name to bar codes to gain an advantage in wars.

This isn’t in the spirit of the game clause.

Chris9

Vulkan7 wrote: »

Loving the changes Kabam! Your continued incompetence has finally given me the resolve to quit after almost 3 years. I should have quit after 12.0 or after you broke AW with diversity. But you clearly have no clue how to treat the community. And as you drop further and further from gross ranks maybe then someone will finally realize that games with staying power, truly listen to their base, instead of the quick buck. I wish you no luck and hope your mmgt doesnt find it to another game to ruin.

Mobile games’ business model as a whole is unsustainable; just like actividion’s patent on live services where their profits depend on players committing to just one game...the companies that make “enough changes” to temporarily satisfy the player base can buy some time. But it’s a tug of war...basically they make as much $ as they can

Markosan22

Are we getting rank down tickets

oak

Lol maybe on x-mass! If we're not naughty

Zachchuck88

It ok my maxes out Groot still looks pretty even though he is pretty much useles

DNA3000

WOK wrote: »

Sirnoob2 wrote: »

so a suggestion I have is make two leagues for aw
one league is the competitive aw this is same as current state of war except get rid of defender diversity this allows alliances to go all out and not gimp them

the second league is the more casual league this league has defender diversity for those who want a more downed down aw a cap of champs in to 4 stars no buying items and and item limit that u give everybody at the begining of attack phase also side this league is ment to be more casual and easy the rewards get towned down to match

this set up will help u guys satisfy ur players that want aw to be a challenge and those that want it to be more casual

Although an interesting idea, seperate leagues and different rules to abide by seems to need quite a bit of work in order to implement and run simultaneously/separately.

Not positive if something similar had been suggested before or if it's even doable for that matter, but I just thought about this possibility.

Change the difficulty and map layout as described and dont remove anything that has been in play till now, with just a few minor tweaks to points per/metric maybe.

THEN add in a metric that tabulates points gained/lost for item usage instead of just being a number that has no value other than quantity available.
Each lvl pot, revive, champ boost, class boost what have you all having its own specific point value, because although each is considered a single item, IMO their level of help potency vary greatly.
The ally that uses any and all types of items gets those points deducted from their total and maybe even bonus points awarded to the ally having less points deducted(less significant items used).

I thought this might be a possible middleground for those asking for items being removed completely to better showcase skill and competition and those not so much in favor of removal, but against the coined "wallet wars".

Seemed like a decent enough idea that doesnt seem to need extensive work to put into play....... But I have no idea what actually needs to be done or if it can work like I said. @DNA3000 care to lend some thought?

I don't think it would be hard to implement, but we'd probably be fighting over the item values because that's not something that you can mathematically determine: it is a value judgment as to how many points to deduct for item usage relative to the points to earn on attack bonus.

It is also unclear to me how this solves the problem Kabam is trying to solve. Apparently they don't want alliances to win on diversity points, and they also don't want alliances to win on attack bonus points. If you add another source of points (or point deductions) alliances will probably start winning or losing due to item usage points, which I'm guessing Kabam will also not like and try to "fix." The only way point deductions for item use does what Kabam is saying they want to do (which I still find irrational, but setting that aside) is if the item usage deductions are so large and so punitive that no competitive alliance would ever risk using any items during seasonal wars. Which is almost functionally identical to an item ban.

gohard123

oak wrote: »

Lol maybe on x-mass! If we're not naughty

Even if you are naughty, you'd still get a visit from Sump'n Claus

(Hopefully someone recognises that joke)