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

Fhfjghhggggjfhfjg

Just bloody great my wolverine and gwenpool will be useless in war now smfh

Shaun01

What everyone really needs to ask themselves is why. Why does Kabam really care who we use on defense or offense? Why would Kabam push so hard for diversity when the bulk of those diverse champs actually are horrible, By design, Their design.. They actually make a statement about Luck and RNG when the drop rates are atrocious and have been for years, by design, their design.

If they really wanted to fix AW they could easily just go back to the original format in the very first season. When there were times that teams couldn't finish a map. Everything they have done since hasn't improved wars, it's made them worse.

There's an underlined agenda with each and every decision they make with changes in AW. There's always a spin, there's always talk of fair and diverse but it's all about one real goal.

They will change nodes to make the most powerful champs obsolete without directly nerfing them to keep from issuing RDT. And by removing the most powerful champs abilities to use what's that do, well, it ultimately makes you end up spending.

On closing, there's something else everyone needs to ask themselves. Who is making you play AW? Why do you chose to go "all in" for wars, spend like crazy for rewards that haven't really changed in years and in no way equal the amount spent or stress to earn them?

weavile

to make thing fun and challenging, node should have pro and con and not a blanket of buff or nerf. If you want to make people use more diversity with global node here are some of my suggestion.
+ First off alliance can choose which global they want to apply to. Maybe the alliance has many Medusa so a node that compliment her would work, or they would choose a global that deter the current meta.
+ Node 1: bleed immune but if champs fail to trigger bleed, they gain true strike for 5 seconds. Popular attacker like GP, Blade, AA won't be as effective but you can't place Medusa, IWIM or so liberally.
+ Node 2: exodus armor: gain a passive armor huge crit resistance but it get armor break with a heavy attack (you still get to keep the crit resistance). Prevent huge crit champ but champ like Sentinel, IWIM or Killmonger is a risky move now
+ Node 3: pint size powerhouse: reverse the diminishing return, lower rank champ now have crit and block advantage instead, so you risk bringing r5 4* instead of r4 5* for higher crit and lower chip damage
All node beside node 3 should be apply to non mini boss and boss node, the boss node receive no effect otherwise war become sit on 1 miniboss and rekt kill.

Also please for the love of god make revive percentage base

Mike_1978

I will probably be chastised for this this but maybe KABAM should eliminate Alliance Wars all together! I am a moderately decent player who is very active and on daily, I was in an alliance in season 2 and got kicked and lost out on rewards, the same happened on season 3, so I started my own alliance and find it a struggle to gain any members because everyone is only interested in the rank and rewards not the game play it seems. I think we keep the alliances and only have the quests, maybe even more of them and do away with the wars. This will eliminate the cheating issue as well.

DTMelodicMetal

Lot of players are saying a global bleed immunity node will make AA useless. Those players must not be aware that AA's sp3 has a 100% chance to inflict poison. A global bleed immunity node will decrease AA's damage output significantly, I wouldn't go as far to say it will make him useless for AW attack.

Red_barron

We all saw multiple alliances caught and punished last season and yay we thought then we watched the majority climb back to the level they were and they were the ones laughing as they had easy wars in the lower tiers, before revamping sort out the problems

Rodstein

RagamugginGunner wrote: »

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.

Yeah what is up with this, there having been more changes per season to increase difficulty, but no real many boosts to rewards

PaytoPlay

Well I am also kinda confuse, is kabam promoting war diversity or are they promoting war strategy... Seems like the latter since the community convinced kabam not to get rid of diversity scoring in season 3.. but kabam didn't kill the idea off, just delaying it for now. I think kabam wants to promote war strategy more (eg. As long as there's some strategy involve and different champ with different ability and team work is needed, they don't really care if there's 10 dominos and 10 Medusa on the map).

HeraldOfTheEnd

Why give these characters certain abilities if you are going to make those abilities ineffective?! Its extremely counterproductive and a waste of our favorite characters. ..or am i missing something?

Marasmc2311

If you truly want to make AW better for ALL PLAYERS then make rewards based by ranking within tiers. Example if in gold 1 the top ten% get higher rewards and so on down. This allows for each tier to be competitive within their tier and rank really means something. This will also allow for teams to earn rewards that can move them to higher tiers faster and not always be stuck in same group. As of now the rich get richer and the rest cannot grow. How can 900 teams in gold one all get same rewards and expect to grow. It’s Ridiculous. That’s why Teams can’t keep a consistent alliance and you have people leaving and joining so often now.

Mitchell35

I can’t wait. My Medusa/magik/wild card team gonna slay.

project314

WYdealGuy wrote: »

Instead of adding annoying buffs/debuffs to encourage us to diversify our defense and offensive teams, why not do a top-to-bottom revamp of all champs from the first 2-3 years of the game? Most are totally irrelevant. I get it that you make money from new champs, but if you want to lower community rage and encourage diversity put some meaningful effort into fixing useless ones. 3-5 a month seems doable. Few things are more soul crushing than pulling a useless 5 or 6 star champ after saving shards for weeks or even months. You can do it kabam!

This dude is on to something, and I'm not saying that because we're in the same alliance or anything. =P

I do like the idea of switching it up monthly to force players to rethink their strategies. What I think would be important in this context is to make rank-up materials easier to come by. The champion(s) I rank up for season 5 could be useless in the following season. If the idea is to make us use more of our roster, at least help us make more of our roster usable.

As for the champion updates, I appreciate what was done this year with Luke Cage, Red Hulk, Venom and Carnage, and I feel a lot of champs would become relevant again after a similar revamp. Let's see more than 4 of those in 2019. I won't be quite as ambitious as my alliance mate, but maybe 2 champs per two month cycle could work?

Month 1: 2 champs get reworked
Month 2: Beta/adjustments
Month 3: Implementation/work begins on 2 more champs
Month 4: Beta/adjustments
...

Kingpin7354

I think changes are needed and if we take a moment to try these changes out they could surprise us or we can revisit the idea of it once the season is over.

Fugnasty

Literally last night I 5/50d Corvus over Blade for soul reason that hes OP in war. aaaaaaand KABAM!

becauseicant

Thank you for communicating your intentions and motivations with us regarding alliance war. This gives us the opportunity to have a discussion and give feedback which is something the community has been requesting for a long time.

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Having the right Champion, and being lucky in Crystal pulls, is much more important than we would like it to be.

This is a core design decision which you control through crystal odds, shard collection rates, and crystal pools. Trying to fix it through alliance war seems backwards. Also the reason there is such a huge gap between lucky and unlucky players is that a large majority of champions are outdated and offer nothing of use to players. If you want to decrease this gap you need to either start improving the majority of champions to some baseline of usability (tons of work) or create separate and new crystal pools and/or increase drop rates so that obtaining newer and higher power level champions is easier.

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Buff 1 - Amped Up:
- Female Champions you bring to this fight receive increased Class Bonus effects. Half of the Attack bonus is always applied. Specific tuning values will be revealed soon
- Amped up affects the Attacker, so bringing in Female Champions will give your Attack team an offensive boost!
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.

The first global buff is good. It's not too limiting (affects all females), it affects champions without negating their core ability set, and offers an interesting choice for defenders and attackers. It can also be scaled

The second global buff is not very good. Severely limits an already small pool of viable attackers, punishes players for decisions regarding rank ups and masteries, and makes war harder by lowering DPS and thus extending fights.

Please reconsider which kind of global buffs you are going to implement, especially as these are going to be active for an entire season. Focus more on buffs like the first one which are more broad and offer some choice to the defender and attacker - possibly focusing on things like champion classes, champion tags, and adding playstyles rather than limiting viable options. Getting a champion and all the required resources to rank them up takes months and months of playing so unless we have some way to rearrange and change our roster this fact needs to be kept at the forefront of the discussion.

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Issue 2: Unfair Play in Alliance Wars

Liked what I read so far about your plans to fix this issue. Matchmaking window needs to be addressed so that alliances can't choose to queue at the exact same time to manipulate who they face. Punishing individuals also seems like a better alternative if the infractions are limited specifically to one or two individuals. I know alliance leaders and officers have been requesting some method of dealing with cheaters who remain anonymous but affect the whole alliance so this could be the time to implement some tools or changes to help them deal with that.

When it comes to punishing alliances you can't keep just dropping their war rating because as we all know this ends up hurting other alliances even more while also giving cheaters easier wars. Repeat offenders should be taken out of the general matchmaking pool, given large reductions in possible season rewards, and eventually banned from competing altogether. As long as alliances can cheat without greatly effecting their season rewards they will continue to do so.

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Solution 3: Improved Alliance Search Tools and New Recruitment Tools

Love it, the more tools we have in game the better. Things like prestige have been hidden and obscured for too long considering the impact they have on the game.

Not Mentioned
War Rewards - Too large of a gap between Gold 1 and Plat 3. Randomness of war season crystals creating huge disparity between different player's rewards in the same alliance. All players in an alliance should receive the same season rewards.

Alliance War Tools for Leaders/Officers - With global buffs changing defender choices each season alliance leadership needs tools in game to help them set defense.

Alliance War Cost - What are the plans, if any, to address the increasing cost of alliance wars? Will there be any change to the random availability of war boosts? What about suggestions like having a fixed allotment of items for each war to even the playing field?

chunkyb

Ok. Now that everyone has had their freak out, actually look at what they're doing. I'm honestly not a huge fan of these particular globals. And I told kabam that in the war changes discussion they allowed me to be part of. What I am a fan of is them making changes to keep the game fresh, challenging, and creating a new way to strategize. This could be very good as we move forward.

Look at war now. Tho it's extremely competitive, it's becoming like aq... Where you do the same thing day in and day out and try your best not to die. How is that fixable?
The only 3 ways I know are:
1- keep making new champs that everyone chases to get an advantage. Yay, I guess?
2- create crazier nodes than we already have.
3- get creative and shake things up in the manner they've now done.

Personally, I thought these nodes wouldn't do enough to shake up war and make me rethink things... But I think I'm wrong. I normally solo an r5 Medusa with my km and I think that's going to be impossible now. So I either take a timeout or bring another champ capable of doing the job. That's scary and frustrating and exciting and kinda fun tbh.

Besides that, you most likely run the same path every way and see almost the same defenders as well. There are usually around 3 options for any node that's not a diversity node. Now, that will change. That's a good thing.

But what I'm really excited about is the potential down the road. Implementing these nodes means #1 and #2 above aren't going to be the main way of keeping wars lively. If done right, these globals can do a lot to inject new strategies to win and new fun ways to play imo. Sure there will be problems for players with each of them, but it's a game. If it's not challenging me, then why am I playing?

As for blade... People should look at that a little more. He doesn't depend on bleed. If you need bleeds to get a kill with blade, you're doing it wrong.

There are negatives to this, sure. Hopefully, they will be addressed much SOONER than things normally are. But for me, it's the potential that has me excited and I'm willing to deal with some bs to get there... Esp when everyone is in the same boat.

OnlyOneAboveAll

Just read thtough most of the comments. I actually love what Kabams intentions are here. Seem like some great changes. With that said! If one of your goals is to diversify attacker use and defender placement then for the love of god please help us rank up champios faster. I've been playing since day 1 and only having 1 rank 5 and 3 rank 4 champs is ridiculous. I have like 50 5 stars and my choices of ranking up has been very limited because of who is more useful and where. Not too mention 80% of the champs all need to be buffed to make them more challenging. Most people only have trouble with a very small handful of fights which makes the rest of the champs very easy no matter what buffs you add to them.

CoachLed

Kabam, “Lets buff carnage and venom”

A little later.....

Also Kabam, “Uh oh, we made them too good. Let’s just throw a bleed immune global in AW. That’ll fix it.”

QuikPik

A tool that will help officers out a lot for war...

- When a person places defenders, give them the option to auto place them on the exact same node as last war
- If defender is already on that node, randomly place the defender somewhere else

Ramen

A couple of suggestions:

Let alliances set parameters for war before finding an opponent. Parameters like 4* only, no buffed nodes, shorter timed match (12 hrs instead of 24) or whatever else creative thing you can come up with. May help improve some of the things you mention above.

Not war-specific, but would be cool to see something like a weekly / monthly Alliance challenge checklist. Each item on the checklist worth a small reward, then a larger cumulative reward for how many checks you get. I understand this is essentially what we have now, but these tasks would be more specific. Things like: complete 200 perfect (3-0) arena matches, complete 20 quests in chapter 5, 100% complete Epic difficulty in monthly quest. Tasks can scale to fit Alliance skill level. This would encourage Alliances to focus on the entire game, not just a couple of areas. And since anyone can contribute towards checking something off, would let players who don’t do arena, for example, contribute in other ways.

Again, I know that’s similar to what we have now, but just providing some food for thought.

Also, if there’s a concern about new champs not getting into the game quick enough, maybe increase drop rates, or make character-specific crystals. Really like Luke Cage? Great. Here’s a Grand Master Luke Cage crystal. Guarantees a 3* Cage, with possibility of 4, 5 or 6*. I’d prefer that over the daily class crystals.

DJSergy

OnlyOneAboveAll wrote: »

Just read thtough most of the comments. I actually love what Kabams intentions are here. Seem like some great changes. With that said! If one of your goals is to diversify attacker use and defender placement then for the love of god please help us rank up champios faster. I've been playing since day 1 and only having 1 rank 5 and 3 rank 4 champs is ridiculous. I have like 50 5 stars and my choices of ranking up has been very limited because of who is more useful and where. Not too mention 80% of the champs all need to be buffed to make them more challenging. Most people only have trouble with a very small handful of fights which makes the rest of the champs very easy no matter what buffs you add to them.

Exactly my point nothing wrong with what they trying to do could be great for the game but they either need to allow us to rank up champs faster or issue rank down tickets every season. Pretty simple imo

arsjum

For those asking for RTD, even if they are issued (though I highly doubt they will be), it is NOT a solution. Are you gonna rank down and rank up your top champs every season? Global nodes are going to last for one season only. Bleeders will be back to where they are in Season 6.

Jubaknight

It seems bleed ability is going to be useless as the game progress. Almost most of the new good defenders are bleed immune, now bleed abilities in AW is useless as well!
I think it is time not to rank up any champ with bleed abilities anymore. I am glad I r5 my 5* hyperion over AA.

SparkAlot

This is perhaps the worst decision ever made, and, will make more people just give up on this game.

I am not talking about the whales that have maxed out everything, I am talking about all the people in the lower tiers that have worked really hard trying to get their main killing machines ranked up as high as possible, pouring every bit of gold & resources they had.

Now, Kabam pulls the rug out from them, and says, "Sorry, we don't want you to use your bleed champs that you worked so hard on to rank them up, time to rank someone else up!"

There is a serious shortage in the lower levels trying to rank up because of all the lack of resources. If Kabam implements some way so they can rank up other champs QUICKLY, before the next season starts, then, this wouldn't be that much of a issue, but, the odds of that happening are 0%.

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Lyra @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious please only allow these global nodes in Gold 1 and higher tiers.

rnr87

The changes sound interesting for sure change is always welcome where it doesn't hurt our wallets lol. Is there gonna be a reward increase this season as well too help us strengthen our roster? I mean let's face it unless your in the top .25% it takes alot longer too acquire these precious rank up items too widen your roster.

Ghostspider231

@Kabam Miike the statement about global buffs imply that the alliance gets to chose between two nodes, but I'm not sure. Will both global buffs be active for each tile or will the alliance get to chose? And if they get to chose will it be active for every tile or will the alliance get to chose the buff per tile?

Jubaknight

It would be easy to solve issue 1 by being fair to all playing by relaxing the random and the luck factors in obtaining and ranking champions. So simple! Solutions r always simpler than we think.

PaytoPlay

Ghostspider231 wrote: »

@Kabam Miike the statement about global buffs imply that the alliance gets to chose between two nodes, but I'm not sure. Will both global buffs be active for each tile or will the alliance get to chose? And if they get to chose will it be active for every tile or will the alliance get to chose the buff per tile?

Global implies map wide so every tile. Rotating implies it will change from war to war so probably won't be active at the same time. Good question regarding who pick the active global buff though... Probably not the alliance

BeginthEnd

Many good examples given above.
•Create larger maps with more nodes to increase diversity, while increasing item use to promote completion.
•Increase specific team synergies that work within seasonal maps. (I.E. romance, mastermind, or unique synergies for female/male/hero/villains.)
•Priority #1 should be fixing know issues such as cheating, collusion, or anything not working as intended. Seems fairly obvious to me when I see a new player, level 50 or below, with an “uncollected title” plus a featured 5* awakened Champ and two or more 5* 4/5s or 6*s. Rank them down if it’s a known issue and remove them from alliance for a season.
•Work to fix this before creating new content.
•Create “flexible” nodes specific to a particular champ. “Enhance Signature: “Champs Sig Tag Here” or any category- “female boost” villain boost” to enhance attackers and defenders, promoting strategy based, coordinated attacks/defensevine setup.
•Be specific to AW, as to not completely change the game.
•Show some love to your old school players

make a harder AW map for Hardcore Only BG1 with specific criteria to enter.

DNA3000

SparkAlot wrote: »

This is perhaps the worst decision ever made, and, will make more people just give up on this game.

I am not talking about the whales that have maxed out everything, I am talking about all the people in the lower tiers that have worked really hard trying to get their main killing machines ranked up as high as possible, pouring every bit of gold & resources they had.

Now, Kabam pulls the rug out from them, and says, "Sorry, we don't want you to use your bleed champs that you worked so hard on to rank them up, time to rank someone else up!"

There is a serious shortage in the lower levels trying to rank up because of all the lack of resources. If Kabam implements some way so they can rank up other champs QUICKLY, before the next season starts, then, this wouldn't be that much of a issue, but, the odds of that happening are 0%.

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Lyra @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious please only allow these global nodes in Gold 1 and higher tiers.

Gold 1 is a bracket, not a tier. But Kabam did say in the announcement that the global buffs in the current iteration would only be affecting higher tiers:

Rotating Global Buffs will only affect Alliances in the Challenger and Expert Tiers, because they have the widest rosters, and we feel they’re best equipped to play with/around these Buffs. Once we’ve rolled these Buffs out to our top Summoners and analyzed their effects, we will evaluate broadening the range of Summoners that will experience these Buffs.