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

Run477

gohard123 wrote: »

Solution 2: Improved Methods to Identify Offenders, More Severe Punishments, Matchmaking Improvements

Easy peasy,
For cheaters - keep doing what you have been doing before but now remove the player from the alliance. The community has been saying this since forever

For matchmaking collusion - Do matchmaking pools where all alliances have a set period of time to enter the pool and the server matchmakes with its usual matchmaking algorithm. People wont be able to collude and find easier matches and match ups would be fair. Again the community has said this before

Buff 2 – Bleed Immunity:

Bleed immunity affects Defenders
Bringing in Debuff heavy Champions will still be a viable option, but Champions that rely heavily on Bleed will not be as effective this Season.

wow make AA BP and GP even more useless than they are now

However, we’ve also seen a higher Alliance kick rate which we have attributed to the increased competition brought on by the added significance of Alliance War points and its effect on Alliance Ranking.

This is only a major problem when people are kicked after the war season reward cutoff has been passed.

The way kabam could stop the war kicking issue is to make the war minimum 10 wars instead of 5

PaytoPlay

Also please please get rid of the war crystals... It's RNG is super unfair, especially the quantity. They can be different like 1k t2a vs 1k t5b... But they shouldn't be 1k t2a vs 10k t2a.

Red_barron

I have the perfect solution to keep every single player happy with any change you make kabam, after every season you set every 1 of our champions back to its original level when first obtained, any sig stones or awakening stones used returned to our stash and all rank up materials used ie cats, gold, iso
Then you tell us what your changes are and we can rank our rosters to suit that season

Run477

Evil_Devil wrote: »

I would say if u want to spice wars a little bit, why don't u activate Synergy, so alliances will be placing champions with synergy that work with each one individually.
Imo i don't like this global nodes but for recruitment tool and updating search tool, it's gonna be super helpful and less stressful for all summoners
I'm from +10 time zone and it's hard to find alliances from the same time zone and that matches the difficulty which someone is looking for

No on synergies

unknown

This content has been removed.

Heynow33

How about updating weaker champs more frequently instead of finding ways to kill good champs. The imbalance lies in the number of utterly useless champs.

Run477

BCdiscman wrote: »

I will probably be called a KABAM SHILL for saying this but honestly... this is the most encouraging post I have read from KABAM in a LONG LONG TIME. It is actually the start of the unrealized promise made by KABAM after the 12.0 debacle. Finally open and honest dialogue BEFORE changes have been made. I LOVE this! MORE of this please!!!

Even if you do not agree with the proposed changes or wish they would go farther, you must agree that having the open dialogue and being willing to discuss these future changes and plans is a giant step forward in their communication with the community of players. Again I want to thank KABAM and encourage you to continue with more of this going forward!

Telling us “this is what is going to happen” is not a dialogue.

Brainimpacter

Run477 wrote: »

gohard123 wrote: »

Solution 2: Improved Methods to Identify Offenders, More Severe Punishments, Matchmaking Improvements

Easy peasy,
For cheaters - keep doing what you have been doing before but now remove the player from the alliance. The community has been saying this since forever

For matchmaking collusion - Do matchmaking pools where all alliances have a set period of time to enter the pool and the server matchmakes with its usual matchmaking algorithm. People wont be able to collude and find easier matches and match ups would be fair. Again the community has said this before

Buff 2 – Bleed Immunity:

Bleed immunity affects Defenders
Bringing in Debuff heavy Champions will still be a viable option, but Champions that rely heavily on Bleed will not be as effective this Season.

wow make AA BP and GP even more useless than they are now

However, we’ve also seen a higher Alliance kick rate which we have attributed to the increased competition brought on by the added significance of Alliance War points and its effect on Alliance Ranking.

This is only a major problem when people are kicked after the war season reward cutoff has been passed.

The way kabam could stop the war kicking issue is to make the war minimum 10 wars instead of 5

wont work there is only 12 wars in a season, what about alliances that only run two groups, there would not be enough wars for everyone to qualify
btw how does needing to play 10 stop you getting kicked day before rewards?

Youngdaz

I think that the players had to keep choosing the champions they want to bring in AG. Having access of just some champions instead of the pool would create more problem as the players couldn’t rely of their champions. That means a top tier def champ would become useless if it’s not in the pool of champions available. Also for those who use some materials as T6B it would be for nothing. You might lose player because of that also because you change the all game and not just AG. MCOC is not a complete pay to win game as you can rely on champs which were introduced at the start of the game. If you change that most of the player would think that the game turned into a 100% pay to win.

Creating new nods or changing the nods each season is a better idea.

ShiiiiiiiiiD

I'm not against randomizing any buffs on the map however any time you do this, the officers who have to rearrange defenders are going to spend unimaginable more time reading all the nodes to find out which is which.

Instead of doing this to make it harder, why not make it more skill based by including boosts (items) in the 15 items allowed. This makes it strategy based also because now you'll have to decide on boosting or healing. Also the number 15 may be a little high as well. Just think boosts are items and should be considered items in all content to be consistent.

Kabam Miike

Username72647 wrote: »

What about the issue with cheating alliances getting dropped to lower tiers and roflstomping alliances they have no business playing?

So this is something we haven't really commented on yet, but I can say that we are aware of how this affects other Alliances, and is something we are looking at solutions to. We're not 100% sure on exactly what we're going to do at this time, but are looking to have something in place for Season 5.

MrMaat

Kabam have made these changes with global nodes and limiting them to top two maps due to roster depth of lower allies.

We are a 10mil ally but only low tier war.
We have the depth for these nodes but wont get to enjoy it.
There are countless other allies in my position.

War tier does not reflect roster depth. It reflects organisation and war skill.

J76

I think it would be interesting to see a war mode where you can only use 3* and lower champs. The rewards could include 5 and 6* shards.

DNA3000

Kabam Miike wrote: »

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?

I'm not sure if this is one of the things that @TurtleJames was thinking about, but one thing I think will become increasingly useful to players is, if Kabam continues to apply selective buffs and counter-buffs on offense and defense, a tool to filter champions by those criteria. Would be nice to see a list of all female champs (that the game classifies as such for the purpose of the global buff), all the champs that use bleed, or are immune to bleed, etc. Whenever Kabam implements a game mechanic that offers an advantage or disadvantage to a set of champs, players should be able to figure out which champs in their roster those advantages or disadvantages apply to.

Sometimes this is easy to figure out in general but a compiled list can be helpful, for example "who uses bleed?" And sometimes this is tricky and the game uses arbitrary game logic the players might not easily deduce. Is Vision "male?" Think about all the brouhaha over what the game defines as a "villain."

Run477

roastedbagel wrote: »

I feel like half the population of blade lovers forget the fact that he still deals some of the highest damage in the game even without bleed...

With that said I'm looking forward to no longer seeing the trinity on 9 out of 10 attack teams per bg.

They're specifically wanting us to use other Champs on attack - so yes - your favorite vampire hunter might not be the best choice anymore...adapt! Put him on defense, use him in AQ, use him in story mode....Break out that cyclops! 😂

Who are your r5 champs? You can laugh all you want. But when you spend t5bs and t2as on a champ, only to then have kabam continuously nerf the champ, it’s not funny. Sorry you are blade jealous bc you don’t have him.

Also, I rarely see trinity anymore. No clue what war tier you are in. But most people don’t bring trinity in wars I am in.

DarthVadid

If you really want to increase diversity and make a better defense map... make class paths similar to dungeons skill/mystic path you can only place that class and allow no duplicates. Also rotate class requirements for the bosses. One war will be science boss. One war will be cosmic etc. This will also diversify attackers

J76

It would be completely fair as most people have or can easily get decent 3*s and with better rewards like that it would be ultra competitive.

Heynow33

Heynow33 wrote: »

How about updating weaker champs more frequently instead of finding ways to kill good champs. The imbalance lies in the number of utterly useless champs.

Let me just add that rank down tickets would also give people a chance to rank different champs. Everyone ranks the same champs because there is no going back.

Micklownick

Oh the great nerf, not a nerf, totally a nerf, dont you dare mention RDT's nerf strategy.... it's just tiring when kabam creates God tier champs that everyone rushes to have and pour resources into just to be told they don't like how they create an unfair advantage for players who didn't get their god tier champ so they have found a creative way to work around RDT and refunds to do yet another nerf...oh but it isn't a nerf.... I'd say it is clever but we have seen this again and again and again...only the explanations from kabam get more convoluted as to why they are doing it...

nIHSEAN

Buff 2 - Bleed Immunity:
- Bleed immunity affects Defenders
- Bringing in Debuff heavy Champions will still be a viable option, but Champions that rely heavily on Bleed will not be as effective this Season.

I get that you are trying to shift blade meta, but the problem is that you just made him too OP,
When you try that bleed immunity thing, along with blade many bleeders like Gwenpool, X23, Hawkeye and many more lose their usefulness.

If you put crit resistance thing, it does affect high crit rate champions but it makes champs like Redhulk, Hyperion who
Already have low crit chance, into less useful champ.
And when champs like 5* 4/55 or 6* Killmonger, Sentinel, Emma frost are put on crit resistance node. It becomes impossible to defeat them in AW unless you have Stark Spidey, Corvus, or Blade (maybe now Omega Red too).

And for people who dont have the luck or money to get these champ on higher rarity, cant really compete with current top players with huge roster.

DNA3000

Username72647 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Username72647 wrote: »

Why not just go whole hog and introduce a global node that reduces all attacker ability accuracy to 0% and then introduce attacker diversity?

This way, it really doesn't matter who you bring as long as they are diverse.

Because that would be a bad idea.

I was being sardonic.

I was being sarcastic. I'm sure someone will be coming along shortly being ironic.

Vale84

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!

SO.

I did read the post once and at the end i was smiling like a kid: for the first time everything i wanted (slightly differently) Kabam to state about Seasons was there. I love the concept of rotation, diversification, ever-changing situation and roster re-evaluation.

95% of that post's theory i do like, and look forward. That should be the right direction.

BUT

I read it a second time focusing on the specifics added to every point, and soon enough my excitement died into disappointment the moment i read the "global nodes choiche" for season 5.
Honestly i still can't understand HOW can you contraddict yourself so badly in a statement coming from a company and how you didn't notice how what you speak of in theory and what you're coming of in practice are completely OPPOSITE.

1)GAME STATUS
Currently ingame there are NOT ENOUGH resources to allow diversification on WAR choiches. The unblobbery whaling players in top tiers have 5 defenders, 3 war attackers, 3 sidekicks for AQ and nothing much more. If you think we gonna bring r3 or weak r4 in war due to globals think again. You forced players upon BOTH war effectivity AND PRESTIGE and that drew a HUGE line over limiting account progression. What you speak of (again, the theory part) i can see doable in 6-12 months, not surely now.

2)Bleed immunity global buff:
- You talked for two paraghraps about diversification and then one of the new global takes out almost all skill champions and a overall 25% of the champions ingame. How can you diversify choiches when you TAKE AWAY choiches? I am puzzled.

- A quick example: i have R5 Gwenpool and R5 Blade, and this new feature won't make me pick GP over Blade. I wouldnt do so before, and now i'm even less inclined to do so (see my point on taking away). On top, you won't diversify anything. I WILL STILL CHOOSE BLADE over any non bleeding champ lower than RANK5, and it's not like we R5 one every 2 weeks.

- On this base, a node SUPPOSED TO DIVERSIFY just translates in a GLOBAL NERF to bleeders, and a big FU to Blade.

CONCLUSION: You just nerfed Blade usage, and people will STILL use it.

3) Female global buff
-Same spaghetti, a bonus to attack (and only with class advantage?) won't make me pick a R4 over non female R5 attackers. Not gonna happen. All you did was giving a slight buff to who has female attackers, and those would bring said female attackers anyways buff or not.

4) EVERY WAR DIFFERENT FROM THE PREVIOUS AND DIVERSIFICATION
That's the biggest contraddiction. You giving us no choiche on the matter. you're just FORCING two nodes for season 5 without even a pool we can choose from. How every war gonna be different if every war will feature bleed immunity?

SOLUTION?
Add a pool of 3 random global nodes (which can be selected by leadership and apply to all players) an ally can pick from every war. the pool of 3 effects has to change in the next war, so there won't REALLY be two wars alike. Make it once bleed immune, once another thing, once another more. THAT is diversification. Give us two pools of defensive and offensive buffs, defensive one being declared when war starts so attackers know and can plan what team to bring.

HOW EVERY WAR CAN BE DIFFERENT IF YOU FORCE THE SAME NEW GLOBAL NODE ON EVERY SINGLE ONE OF IT?

If you needed an excuse to kill blade, could have done so without ridiculing yourselves.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-..-.-.-.

As far as the rest goes:

- Piloting still happens, you have to invest more money into catching cheaters, and god's sake remove VPNS and PROXY usage, that's the root of you having such a hard time locating cheaters unless people feeds them to you on a silver plate.

-Matchmaking: this should be top1 priority and yet you speak like it'll be a thing in 2022.

PS: When we fixing medusa? think she capped the extra potion sales already.

Red_barron

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Username72647 wrote: »

What about the issue with cheating alliances getting dropped to lower tiers and roflstomping alliances they have no business playing?

So this is something we haven't really commented on yet, but I can say that we are aware of how this affects other Alliances, and is something we are looking at solutions to. We're not 100% sure on exactly what we're going to do at this time, but are looking to have something in place for Season 5.

I don’t know what you do there, this issue has been talked about over and over and over and over again on here and you miss the point in aw that is causing more problems than anything else, you need to take in what’s said, your so far out of touch with the community it’s unreal

RagamugginGunner

Nothing's going to change. People are still going to bring their r5 champs on attack, it's just going to cost them more. I love how you're making it harder, again, and refusing to increase rewards, again.

Never change Kabam.

TurtleJames

Kabam Miike wrote: »

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?

Off the top of my head:

1) At least allow us to view players’ entire rosters
2) Web based or in app AW map where officers can arrange and set defenders based on #1. And have diversity, rating, etc. bonuses tallied.
3) Allow is to preset multiple defender teams and auto place. Kinda like Future Fight. (Please for masteries also)
4) Look at 3rd party apps like ClanHQ and do it better. You guys are Kabam!
5) My brain is fried and it’s time to go home, but I’m sure others here will have even better ideas than me.

Panchulon21

So I see both sides of this.

Kabam side:

They want to increase sales of crystals for these champs who are uneffected, especially your OP female champs: ghost, Emma, wasp. Even good ones like rogue, próxima. I also understand they want us using different champs to beat other alliances. Too many times do I go into my defensive map and see 8 blades, 8 ghost riders and like 4-5 stark spiders.

Our side:
It’s kabams fault though, they put out these overpowering champs like blade with the synergies and the Corvus of the world. If you can use a champ that can clear everything, why use something else?

Continuing on our side, the changes are really annoying and I agree with the player base. As a leader I spend too much time dealing with placement, diversity, and changing all of that when a new player comes along. This is a pain and shouldn’t need to be done often. With the new changes you have to do it again.

The bleed immunity is pretty bad, a few reasons. I am a blade user, but don’t care about his bleed I primarily use him for danger sense. What hurts is a few of my alliance members use AA for specific champs (modok mostly) and now you just broke his main source of damage. Without Nuerotoxin he hits like a 4 year old girl.

Gwenpool can no longer extend her power lock, armor break or incinerate, which hurts her attack.

Carnage who you just buffed will no longer power gain as quickly as you amped him up to be. pretty sure people who JUST ranked him are PISSED

I understand the changes but don’t put out nerfs of some OP champs, as someone said up there. Maybe put out nodes like:

Season 5: female amped up champs for attack and on defense hero’s have tranquility every 35 seconds

Season 6: hero’s have a chance to proc a 5 second fury. Villain defenders are not effected by ability reduction

Season 7: villain attackers have amped up hero defenders have a chance to power gain 10% when a debuff is applied.

Something in those lines, don’t just hinder a HUGE base of attackers.

ShiiiiiiiiiD

CosmicZen wrote: »

Why not make an attacker diversity point system? Then you will have specialized diverse champs per path. This will also make content harder to beat. There are only so many bleed immune champs etc

This is a great idea. Have a diversity system for who people attack with. At the bare minimum this will prevent teams from tying!

DNA3000

Helicopter_dugdugdug wrote: »

Problem with countering blade is that it counters half of all skill champs ... bleed immunity destroys GP and KM more than Blade

One thing I think Kabam should have done was make female champions unaffected by the global bleed immunity. I think it is counterproductive to buff female champs on offense, then take their bleeds away on defense. That would specifically address champs like Gwenpool and Elektra. But also Medusa, Gamora, Guillotine, and X-23, who I think are all viable attackers on at least some tiers of AW.

Nerfed2Def

Here’s an idea; instead of making lame global buffs get to work buffing useless champions. It’s just lazy and generates no worth to players. Perhaps we could use these buffed champs in other game modes. AW isn’t the only mode where they are worthless!
Stop posting meaningless subject matter. “We know people cheat but we haven’t figured anything out specific to do.” So nothing’s changed? We know your aware it’s all over the forumns and sub Reddit’s.
You want to stop the disparity between crystal pulls and whales make more champs viable. If Kamala Khan was viable the game might be even. Who doesn’t have that worthless champ?

TheRealPinky

If you really want to actually make war, a war, it will need a complete overhaul. I have monster idea but would depend on how developers see it, and how complicated it is to add in game.

The idea would make each war a strategy in itself vs another alliance, therefore never having the same buffs on the same path, allowing each alliance to set up its own defensive strategy.

There also needs to be a leveling of sorts for all toons, instead of debuffing those top ones, increase the low lvl ones to be able to counter the top ones.

If you want real gameplay, you need to develop something that cant be exposed, my idea creates that. I will not share on here, developers or someone from Kabam would need to contact me, to see if it is even viable, but would be a game changer for sure.

Same could be applied to AQ, but in a different way , if you could change aq to seasons also. Way back certain toons were debuffed because you thought they were too strong, now no one uses those champs... essentially you debuffes to make useless... and that is what they have become.

You also need to fix the long defunct alliance war D synergy.

Off season should be designed to assign strategy for upcoming season. As of now there is no need, jist down time to gather shards and improve on your top teams.

Realistically we have a set 3 for war O, a set 5 for war D, and a set 3 for AQ. Almost no point in having hundreds of characters when only 16 (added 5 for monthly questing) are needed.

i have a possible solution, but would need Kabam to contact me.

Cheers,

TheRealPinky

P.S. I have been playing since the begining, and this is my first post (i think)