Developers Thoughts: Improving Alliance Wars Discussion Thread

Hey Summoners!

We've just posted a brand new behind the scenes look at the future of Alliance Wars, including some new changes coming to Alliance Wars Season 5! Make sure you take a read of the post over on our Blog: https://playcontestofchampions.com/developer-thoughts-improving-alliance-wars/

The Rotating Global Buffs kick off on October 17th! Prepare yourselves!

Comments

CosmicZen

Sounds like 12.0 SW, Thor and Ds. We made blade, corvus and starkspidey too op . We are now going to build content around stopping them at the expense of other champs. ;^)

Brainimpacter

you dont need to keep making it harder to try beat away the staleness, look for another solution.
you think people wont work out in a week which is best team to use with the new global nodes so making it stale in no time with little strategy and settling back to same old

DNA3000

Zuko_ILC wrote: »

The biggest problem with diversity for offense and defense is the lack of rank up materials.

There was an early access preview for the AW change announcement similar to the previous one regarding AQ changes. This specific point was brought up by several of the participants, and is something the developers are thinking about.

It was clear to everyone that this first set of global buffs wasn't directly intended to shift the strategy for attackers and defenders by a huge amount: it was intended to introduce players to the idea and to see how the idea works with limited effects before expanding it if it works. This is something that is less a problem for this iteration of the global buff idea, and more of a problem for what happens if they actually fulfill their goal of significantly changing the balance between attackers and defenders down the road.

Horror_punk

Please reduce the gap between Platinum 3 and Gold1
Gold1 got huge number of alliances and some of these alliances are no less than platinum 3
In my opinion add Platinum 4 for 200 other alliances with increased rewards than gold1 and few lower rewards than Platinum 3

Further add T5B in glory store because the gap in big alliance players and average alliance players is increasing day by day

Top alliance players got 4-5 5/65 champs whereas average alliance members got 1-2 that too after completing act5 100%.

Thanks

TurtleJames

Although I can kind of understand where the developers are coming from with their seasonal tweaks of AW, I do not think they understand what a nightmare it is to organize AW placements and assignments. Officers are provided ridiculously limited ability to manage AW/AQ, and introducing anything that requires new assignments throughout the season is a stroke waiting to happen. I literally spend hours and even days planning things out via third party apps, excel, websites simply because Kabam offers so little useful resources or data themselves. And even after that is done, it is like herding cats to get everyone to follow instructions.

Yeah, there are some defenders (IMIW, Modok, Korg, Medusa, etc.) and offenders (Blade, Void, CG, etc.) that everyone uses, but that's how you guys made it. And I feel that most officers have a set it and forget it approach, because after we spent all that time coming up with placements / assignments, the last thing we want to do is make more changes. Introducing things like rotating buffs / debuffs is just a band-aid IMO.

Please give us more tools and data to manage AW if you really want to introduce dynamic changes. I'm still waiting for that Kabam employee to come back from vacation to give us prestige figures not that it really matters anymore.

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QuikPik

Bleed immunity makes AA totally unviable for attack team anymore.

Cliffordcan

This is terrible in my opinion. The 1st buff (Amped up) seems decent. I don't know anyone who will specifically change their attack team to do it, but would seems like it could help.

The Bleed Immune is terrible. I don't think a buff should grant immunity from a lot of champs' main damage output. If someone has only 2 R5 and they are bleeders (GP, KM, Domino, Blade, Medusa, etc) then they look worthless on attack for this Season. You make them top targets to kick. Also, we have so few resources to rank champs high and to nerf them doesn't make people happy. Give us more rewards to rank more champs before this lame buff. The buffs should be something more general, like Class or the broader tags, i.e. Hero, Villain, Merc. Make Heros gain a buff on D and Villains a buff on Attack, that sounds fun without destroying ppl's top champs for a whole season

If you saw a lot of Corvus in S4, wait for S5, lol.

RWW12

One suggestion for fixing the piloting situation and the issue of bumping a platinum2/3 alliance down into fights with gold1 opponents could be a 24 hour ban for the individual offender for the first offense. That will hurt the summoner as well as the alliance that now must fight with one less attacker and 10 less defenders. Then only lower the war rating of the offending team as if they would’ve lost the last war. No lower, so they will continue to fight the same level of opponent that they should be fighting. Lastly, doc the alliance points from their season total thus dropping them in the overall rankings. It’s great that kabam has cracked down on piloting, but last season our own alliance fought at least a couple alliances that obviously fell from a higher tier and were now working their way back up. This resulted in some losses that kept us from advancing to the next level.

Keonex

Global Node is a BAD idea. This game is going in the wrong direction for sure.

RogerRabs

TurtleJames wrote: »

Although I can kind of understand where the developers are coming from with their seasonal tweaks of AW, I do not think they understand what a nightmare it is to organize AW placements and assignments. Officers are provided ridiculously limited ability to manage AW/AQ, and introducing anything that requires new assignments throughout the season is a stroke waiting to happen. I literally spend hours and even days planning things out via third party apps, excel, websites simply because Kabam offers so little useful resources or data themselves. And even after that is done, it is like herding cats to get everyone to follow instructions.

Yeah, there are some defenders (IMIW, Modok, Korg, Medusa, etc.) and offenders (Blade, Void, CG, etc.) that everyone uses, but that's how you guys made it. And I feel that most officers have a set it and forget it approach, because after we spent all that time coming up with placements / assignments, the last thing we want to do is make more changes. Introducing things like rotating buffs / debuffs is just a band-aid IMO.

Please give us more tools and data to manage AW if you really want to introduce dynamic changes. I'm still waiting for that Kabam employee to come back from vacation to give us prestige figures not that it really matters anymore.

Strong agree. It shouldn't take an excel spreadsheet and roster screenshots to put together a defense. We should have an in-game tool that allows you to coordinate.

Justagame

Sometimes I have a feeling that you have no idea what is going on in your own game. Bleed immune global node ... awesome. Now it will be Corvus everywhere.

Brainimpacter

if we cant utilise bleed champs ill need rank down tickets otherwise i cant play with my team after putting all my T2A into them for war only for you to move the goalposts again.

Mastiffman

Instead of ranking down cheaters how about booting them out of the season and following seasons and not just the alliance but everyone from that said alliance. If someone is banned in game for let’s say buying bogus units maybe ban them from the game forever I watched the nycc tournament and I saw at least 2 people who were either banned for piloting or banned for buying bogus units one was able to get a 6 star new sym Howard and the other got a lot of prizes maybe instead of rewarding cheaters you actually stand up and do what’s right for all the others who don’t cheat or break the tos agreement.

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Justagame

I guess last 6 months were spent on ideas about how to nerf Blade.

Grimmbear

AHAHAH

These dont buff defenders, they just nerf champs like blade km and gp

But keep lying about wanting more "diversity" while we still dont have enough rank up materials

Theres a reason so many people are spending less on your game, and its not AW attackers.

Its you.

NightCracker

RIP AA next season of AW

MrShady

I have a suggestion & I know many would agree, can we have longer breaks in between these wars? A lot of guys are getting burnt out. There’s a lot of content & little time to run everything. I honestly think Alliance Wars should have a months break. That’s 4 weeks of no war. This would allow players to save their resources more & actually be able to rank up who they want with the saved Glory.

Helicopter_dugdugdug

Just nerf blade and Corvus directly rather than destroying a whole lot of fairly balanced champs like u did in 12.0

DNA3000

Googleplexian wrote: »

Stop explaining the same bs to us every aw update and just roll it out. No1 believes or ever will believe that line about expanding our roster viability in war or any other facet of the game. We will be here again with the same scenario next time you want to nerf the god tier champs guaranteed.

Communication requires two willing parties. Many players have asked for more communication and more dialog with the developers (which are not the same thing). I think that Kabam is taking small steps forward in this regard and making progress, but that will only be of any benefit to the players that are open to the process. Many players aren't even really open to the process of communicating with other players, and for them the signal to noise ratio will always be zero.

I believe Kabam is making a good faith effort to improve alliance war in the ways they've described, and I believe most of the early access discussion participants also believe this, even if there may be disagreement on how effective their efforts might end up being. I think the problem many people have is that they cannot separate disagreement of methodology with mischaracterization of motivation. A lot of people seem to believe that everyone thinks the same actions will have the same consequences as they do, and thus anyone doing something that they think leads to a bad place must have bad motivations. Even if this notion is so obviously false just judged by how much disagreement there exists between players on the optimal ways to effect a particular change in the game.

Justagame

I mean I can understand why they do this. Corvus is very expensive to use, so it's better if everyone will use Corvus instead of Blade.

Grimmbear

Oh yeah, not to mention that deep wounds is now worthless to me

Also rip AA

Kabam Miike

TurtleJames wrote: »

Although I can kind of understand where the developers are coming from with their seasonal tweaks of AW, I do not think they understand what a nightmare it is to organize AW placements and assignments. Officers are provided ridiculously limited ability to manage AW/AQ, and introducing anything that requires new assignments throughout the season is a stroke waiting to happen. I literally spend hours and even days planning things out via third party apps, excel, websites simply because Kabam offers so little useful resources or data themselves. And even after that is done, it is like herding cats to get everyone to follow instructions.

Yeah, there are some defenders (IMIW, Modok, Korg, Medusa, etc.) and offenders (Blade, Void, CG, etc.) that everyone uses, but that's how you guys made it. And I feel that most officers have a set it and forget it approach, because after we spent all that time coming up with placements / assignments, the last thing we want to do is make more changes. Introducing things like rotating buffs / debuffs is just a band-aid IMO.

Please give us more tools and data to manage AW if you really want to introduce dynamic changes. I'm still waiting for that Kabam employee to come back from vacation to give us prestige figures not that it really matters anymore.

Do you have any suggestions on how we can do that? Like any tools in particular would be helpful in this kind of stuff?

The_One

Are there any plans to change the current system of having to be in the alliance you've participated in 5 wars at the end of the season?

I missed season rewards last time because I went on holiday and only managed 4 wars with my new alliance when I got back but I did more than 5 wars with the alliance I was in before my holiday.

Also we see a lot of forum posts where someone is kicked on the last day of the season by a disgruntled officer meaning they get nothing.

Elusive

Honestly it's hard to grasp where KABAM wants to get with those "changes". There is no META at this game as there is META in other games. We have champions that do well against majority of nodes/matchups and other that fail. At the current "META" stated by @Kabam Miike , there is no use for a SHE HULK, no matter which buff you give to her (that was only an example). Also the lack of resources to bring champions to max rank (rank 5 as 5* ATM) do not allow people to have "diversity" rosters for defense and attack.

Right now AW is taking lots of time/preparation from the alliance. People have to scout their path, discuss possible encounters and which player take which path, yeah that is a HUGE time consuming at the top tier AW. And just place more "RNG" stuff won't help the process to make the life of players easier (by easier I mean less time consuming in this iterations of encounters and other time consuming strategies that goes under war planning).

Also placing a node "ALL BLEED IMMUNE" (for example) will make some fights IMPOSSIBLE in a 3 minute window for people that for instance has only a Blade for their attack (Gwenpool also).

Right now with the addition of a new champ every other week we are getting lots of dynamics to the AW specially since all the new champs are either being good defenders or attackers and some occasions both.

What has to be changed in AW in my POV.

- Scoring system
1. An alliance should not benefit if their enemy left defenders up, that gives an opportunity for collusion, and also you should not get score on the incapability of the other alliance. Your score should be linked only to your skill. With that said we should remove the remaining defenders points. That would cap a maximum score per war since if you die 0 times and have 150 diversity you would reach the maximum (considering you cleared all 3 BG's.).

2. Top TIERS (eg TIER 1) should place in front of ANY TIER 2 alliance, even when they lose. What does it means? The forum is full of complaints of alliances "tanking" their war rating during off season to place at the "end" of TIER 2 bracket and with that never face alliances from TIER 1, since that occur they win EVERY war in the season, and end up in the master bracket for season rewards. While a TIER 1 alliance that had some bad encounters may falling down to Platinum 1, even tho they have more war rating than a TIER 2 alliance.
That would solve the issue of "tanking", since if you are deep on TIER 2 you might not be able to get master rewards. That will push alliances to play better and stop with the "tanking". A solution for that is change the multiplier, and create a gap between TIERS.

This are some problems/solutions of pertinent topics in our forum during on/off season.

Another possible way to bring more diversity to the game is to rework 70% of the champions that in fact are useless.

Robbietheox

I think an adjustment of bracket size most players want to end game players want gold1 plus the problem is this group has been expanding which has been making AW more stressful and overly competitive so an expansion would help relieve some of that stress also maybe adding some 6* shards to tier 5 and improving the tier 5 basic amounts in season rewards we don't mind an increase in difficulty if the rewards are fair to match it

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Väggar

I can agree with the stagnant previous season and only using specific champs because of our RNG luck, but if you want to implement the system to where we can use other champs as viable options than please. BUFF EVERYONE. Even She Hulk and Ant-Man. HulkBuster. Don't create a B.S. "Unique Synergy" on them because than that means we need another champion in order to use that synergy. Just make every champion viable and not weak and an actual tool that can be used on any standard either defensively or offensively. Just look on YouTube at any video on Offensive Tier list with the Youtubers opinion on their spreadsheet about every character. It's pretty easy to see which ones need a buff. So get to it! 😂

Colinwhitworth69

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Hey Summoners!

We've just posted a brand new behind the scenes look at the future of Alliance Wars, including some new changes coming to Alliance Wars Season 5! Make sure you take a read of the post over on our Blog: https://playcontestofchampions.com/developer-thoughts-improving-alliance-wars/

The Rotating Global Buffs kick off on October 17th! Prepare yourselves!

The changes to the alliance search sounds like a great idea. I struggled for months to join an appropriate alliance, but I finally found one through the forums here. Any improvements you can make to the search system is needed.