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

Wheels09_d1ablo

If you think this is bad just wait till you see the **** they come up with next to nerf blade.

Demonzfyre

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

All this is just another nerf under the guise of diversity. They know we won’t change our attack teams so they just weakened them even more so we time out and die more. Every season they find a way to make war harder and for people to spend more without upping the rewards. I wonder how much longer people are willing to take their BS.

For the love of everything, THIS IS NOT A NERF!!!!! Stop calling it that. A nerf would a fundamental change to a champ. That is not what is happening here. This only effects AW and not other game mode. Plus these 2 nodes are ONLY FOR SEASON 5 and not beyond. Not a nerf by any means what-so-ever.

Demonzfyre

Wheels09_d1ablo wrote: »

They said this is just the start. More global buffs will be added in season 6.

They are rotating buffs in and out. Read more carefully and back off the ledge.

Demonzfyre

PaytoPlay wrote: »

Demonzfyre wrote: »

PaytoPlay wrote: »

Demonzfyre wrote: »

PaytoPlay wrote: »

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

For Season 5 the 2 mentioned nodes will be active for this season only. Season 6 will introduce new global buffs.
@PaytoPlay @Ghostspider231

Sounds like it's in addition to the two though... So there'll be more nodes to choose from in season 6 than the initial 2

@PaytoPlay its not. I was a part of the feedback group. They will be rotating the 2 for season 5 out for 2 others in season 6.

Ok good to know.

I should add that it could be 2 or maybe 1 or maybe 3. They didn't really say but I am assuming 2 for season 6 as well.

Fhfjghhggggjfhfjg

Demonzfyre wrote: »

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

All this is just another nerf under the guise of diversity. They know we won’t change our attack teams so they just weakened them even more so we time out and die more. Every season they find a way to make war harder and for people to spend more without upping the rewards. I wonder how much longer people are willing to take their BS.

For the love of everything, THIS IS NOT A NERF!!!!! Stop calling it that. A nerf would a fundamental change to a champ. That is not what is happening here. This only effects AW and not other game mode. Plus these 2 nodes are ONLY FOR SEASON 5 and not beyond. Not a nerf by any means what-so-ever.

Yes it is a nerf smh all bleed champs will be useless now in aw. While yes they are still useful in other content why would anyone bring these champs i war anymore?

Demonzfyre

Wheels09_d1ablo wrote: »

If you think this is bad just wait till you see the **** they come up with next to nerf blade.

Just stop. It's not a nerf. Does Blade still cause bleed in- Quests/AQ? Yes. Not a nerf.

Demonzfyre

Fhfjghhggggjfhfjg wrote: »

Demonzfyre wrote: »

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

All this is just another nerf under the guise of diversity. They know we won’t change our attack teams so they just weakened them even more so we time out and die more. Every season they find a way to make war harder and for people to spend more without upping the rewards. I wonder how much longer people are willing to take their BS.

For the love of everything, THIS IS NOT A NERF!!!!! Stop calling it that. A nerf would a fundamental change to a champ. That is not what is happening here. This only effects AW and not other game mode. Plus these 2 nodes are ONLY FOR SEASON 5 and not beyond. Not a nerf by any means what-so-ever.

Yes it is a nerf smh all bleed champs will be useless now in aw

Were there bleed immune nodes before the global buffs? Oh yeah there were and blade did just fine. Plus this is only for challenger and expert maps as well. Anything lower wont have the globals.

thegrimmling

Address off-season yanking to influence matchmaking in the regular season.

MaRvEl_MoNsTeR

@Kabam Miike so rank down tickets for bleed champs and full refunds for SS crystal buys are in order?

What about refunds for DW?

Demonzfyre

MaRvEl_MoNsTeR wrote: »

@Kabam Miike so rank down tickets for bleed champs and full refunds for SS crystal buys are in order?

What about refunds for DW?

So if you get RDT's and refunds for DW and you rank down Blade or whoever and rank someone else up and then Act 6 comes out. What are you going to do?

Bodhizen

Kabam Miike wrote:

Issue 1: Meta Champions vs Diversity

I think that it's great that you're going to look into making Alliance Wars a mode of play where more champions become viable for both offense and defense. However, that means that you may have to reconfigure some of the champions (and many of the nodes) to ensure that certain nodes play really well with the abilities of certain champions.

As one example, Kamala Khan has been panned by the community (and rightfully so) as a terrible champion pretty much since she joined the contest. Her "deformation" ability does nothing, and her Fury powers are removed as she gets hit (or as time goes on), so in order to play her decently well, you have to play perfectly and you constantly have to be restoring her Fury. Her Fury determines whether she gets increased Attack rating, whether she gets increased Block proficiency, whether she removes Armor Up effects from opponents [which would be a great counter to Champs like Iron Man (Infinity War) if she wasn't so finicky and unreliable to play].

If you're going to modify nodes to make Fury-based champions like Kamala Khan more effective, you either have to set up a node that ensures that Fury effects don't expire when the opponent is struck (which only affects some of the Fury-dependent Champions), that Fury effects never expire once gained, or you need to rework how Kamala Khan works so that your existing Fury-enhancing nodes make her a viable choice. The first two options would make Kamala Khan a better defender (on certain nodes), while the third option makes Kamala Khan a better defender and attacker, and depending upon how you rework Kamala Khan, she might actually become a viable champion to use against characters like the aforementioned Iron Man (Infinity War) with her ability to strip off 2 stacks of his Armor Up buffs with all of her Special Attacks.

Effectively, this means that you either have to tailor buffs on nodes to make specific champions viable defenders (which won't make more champions viable defenders, just different champions viable defenders for that specific war), or you have to make nodes that target the abilities of a wider array of champions that still give preference to some champions over others (such as enhanced Fury effects making champions like Sabretooth or Drax far more effective than Kamala Khan due to the fact that her Fury buffs being so easy to knock off).

Kabam Miike wrote:

This includes a way to let Alliances “customize” their Alliance Wars Defenses by selecting a Global Buff that suits their roster the best.

You mention that champion rosters are largely luck-based. Specifically, you said, "Currently, Summoners who are lucky enough to collect certain Champions will have a large advantage over Summoners that haven’t." You cannot "customize" Alliance War Defenses by selecting Global Buffs that don't make poorly designed (or power creeped out of viability) champions as effective of defenders (or attackers) as better designed and/or objectively more powerful champions. Failing to update more than two Champions a year does a great disservice to the community of players who were either unlucky enough to draw "bad" champions, or who have champions on their rosters that do nothing other than collect digital dust as they sit unused on the shelf.

Kabam Miike wrote:

Solution 1: Season 5 Update: Rotating Global Buffs

This all sounds great, but if you're going to achieve your stated goal of not increasing the overall difficulty of Alliance Wars, you're going to have to strip out some of the existing buffs from nodes. Using your own examples of Amped Up (Attacker) and Bleed Immune (Defender) buffs, when you're going after a Power Gain champion on a Power Gain or All or Nothing node, you still need to bring a Power Drain/Power Burn/Power Lock Champion. If Magik is on your champion roster, your Amped Up buff would help her out, but if you're relying on Vision (for example) to Power Drain/Power Burn your opponent's power meter or Spider Man (Stark Enhanced) to Taunt your opponent into using a Special Attack because that's who you happen to have, the Alliance War difficulty was increased (maybe you were relying on a Bleed champion to take down your opponent's health before their power meter built up). Every node gains an additional defensive buff that nullifies the utility of a (fairly) wide array of champions (in the case of Bleed Immune, that encompasses a large number).

Kabam Miike wrote:

Issue 2: Unfair Play in Alliance Wars

You really need to look into solutions where punishing an offending player doesn't necessarily punish every member of the Alliance, and punishing offending Alliances doesn't punish the Alliance they play against when their Alliance rating is dropped. One way to potentially mitigate this punishment of non-offending Alliances is to base match-ups upon a combination of factors instead of only war rating, such as basing it off of a new metric of damage dealt versus damage received during a war plus war rating, plus total prestige of all Alliance members... Alliances would get matched up against other Alliances of similar ability and similar war rating instead of just Alliances of similar war rating (regardless of ability). If my Alliance gets punished and our war rating drops, we can kick the snot out of Alliances of lesser ability and work our way back up to our normal reward bracket pretty fast; that's how things function now. The current system punishes Alliances pitted against Alliances that have been playing unfairly.

I sincerely hope that these comments are not falling on deaf ears. So many contributions to this community come across that way as there is a lack of any sort of "back-and-forth" or targeted response from Kabam employees or moderators.

Best wishes!

@Kabam Porkchop
@Kabam Miike
@Kabam Lyra
@Kabam Zibiit
@Kabam Vydious

DNA3000

Wheels09_d1ablo wrote: »

If you think this is bad just wait till you see the **** they come up with next to nerf blade.

I suggested sunglasses applying sixty seconds of degen in season six, but someone else pointed out this would hurt Falcon too much.

BigPoppaCBONE

Demonzfyre wrote: »

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

Demonzfyre wrote: »

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

All this is just another nerf under the guise of diversity. They know we won’t change our attack teams so they just weakened them even more so we time out and die more. Every season they find a way to make war harder and for people to spend more without upping the rewards. I wonder how much longer people are willing to take their BS.

For the love of everything, THIS IS NOT A NERF!!!!! Stop calling it that. A nerf would a fundamental change to a champ. That is not what is happening here. This only effects AW and not other game mode. Plus these 2 nodes are ONLY FOR SEASON 5 and not beyond. Not a nerf by any means what-so-ever.

This is flat out a nerf. I’m not arguing semantics with you about it. You’ve proven time and time again that you’ll lap up whatever Kabam gives you and carry their water. They put in a node that takes out multiple champs main abilitie and you don’t think it’s a nerf....

IT'S FOR 1 SEASON! What don't you understand about that? It's also for only 1 game mode. It's not a nerf period at all. There isn't any semantics to argue.

Can the nerf/not a nerf crowd silently agree to disagree and quit going around in circles?

SgtSlaughter78

Vale84 wrote: »

Ppl ranking up Carnage and Venom this week gonna love this. 2 years to make them worth something and killed right after. Blade is in good company.

Really agree with this. Some people in my alliance have been really happy that they can contribute more in wars now by using their venom and they’ve just had the legs cut from under them.

Davidson75

Are they going to change where alliances can tank or lose a ton of wars in off season but then when season starts it will be easier for them to advance and play against easier alliances to get higher tier rewards like gold 1 or platinum

unknown

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BeginthEnd

This entire concept seems to be an attempt to fix the symptom; not the system that created it. Backwards approach?

I wouldn’t even consider using Colossus, Groot, etc. etc. Even if they were given new abilities like “immune to everything” Or they became the only viable champ to use because, all of a sudden, somebody whispered the magic words and “KABAM!” they’re suddenly better than Blade, AA, Sparky and other top champs.

I use champs I have fun playing with, that I read about in comics, or ranked up before better champs were released. Even if at a disadvantage. (80% of the time)

I don’t always use the champs that make my roster what it is, but when I do, I like to enjoy it. Put down the hater-aid. It does not quench your thirst my friend.

Point is, fix what’s worth fixing. Do it right and follow through with any bugs or cheats that put others ahead of those that worked for it. Then work to create content designed to replace hugely popular messaging apps.

Blade kills vamipires. They rely on blood to survive. Would be like giving vampires hearts of gold that pumped out huge vats of blood per beat- streaking out their eyes on command like laser beams, blinding Blade and making him puke at the same time.
He would probably spend some of his immortal years studying to become an astronaut, so he could jump out a shuttle and fly into the sun while screaming WHY GOD WHYYY

Demonzfyre

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

Demonzfyre wrote: »

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

Demonzfyre wrote: »

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

Demonzfyre wrote: »

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

All this is just another nerf under the guise of diversity. They know we won’t change our attack teams so they just weakened them even more so we time out and die more. Every season they find a way to make war harder and for people to spend more without upping the rewards. I wonder how much longer people are willing to take their BS.

For the love of everything, THIS IS NOT A NERF!!!!! Stop calling it that. A nerf would a fundamental change to a champ. That is not what is happening here. This only effects AW and not other game mode. Plus these 2 nodes are ONLY FOR SEASON 5 and not beyond. Not a nerf by any means what-so-ever.

This is flat out a nerf. I’m not arguing semantics with you about it. You’ve proven time and time again that you’ll lap up whatever Kabam gives you and carry their water. They put in a node that takes out multiple champs main abilitie and you don’t think it’s a nerf....

IT'S FOR 1 SEASON! What don't you understand about that? It's also for only 1 game mode. It's not a nerf period at all. There isn't any semantics to argue.

It’s for this season. Then next season they have a whole different set of nerfs. I don’t think it shocks anyone that they recruit a bunch of yes men for their little panel. Do you even ask for **** anymore or do you like for them to give it to you dry?

Say whatever you want about me I don't really care. And just for your information, wasn't for the bleed global. My feedback was to not do the bleed because of this reaction from the community. You all can't handle it and jump off the deep end without taking a step back and seeing the big picture. All this is, is an effort to keep AW fresh and competitive. Stop focusing on the 1 champ you can't use and look for others that might be able to be used instead. It's just temporary and we'll have something different in season 6. You also have the option to not play in AW as well. Play just the other game modes instead.

I also have the option of calling them out on their BS. I have plenty of champs I can use but that doesn’t change the fact that they continue to make war harder and expect more and offer nothing in return. Every season they come up with another excuse that just so happens to make us need to spend more to get through yet rewards have not been touched. There should be give and take but all they do is take every off season.

I don't disagree with the rewards part. Part of my feedback I gave was about rewards. I knew it would be the first thing out of everyone's mouth. They should increase the rewards but they didn't.

The whole point of this is to keep AW from becoming what AQ became. That's it, plain and simple. It's not to nerf champs or make you spend more money.

Anonhmous

Why bleed?why not shock or degen

sbb75

How can we add more strategy to a fixed / capped scoring system...hmm
With the same exact 1 option strategy for all during attack..
Maybe restrict all pots and boosts from AW.?? No then some alliances won’t get 100%.
How about adding the same exact node to All defenders/ eliminate on the most common abilities and an entire mastery. Almost a entire class
Yes yes that is it .gane changer

Zuko_ILC

Basically all champs released this month can't be used for aw offense. Carnage, Venom, symbiote supreme....makes no sense at all for diversity reasons. Now no one can bring bleeders on attack....I'm seriously just scratching my head here because you now have eliminated deep wounds and half my ranked up roster and I don't get a refund on my purchases? LOL that's all I can say.

IsItthough

I’m confused is the global buff going to be able to be taking down? Is it attached to the boss? Are you really telling me that for a full month and a half of war seasons that my AA that took an generic gem and a bunch of resources is pointless. Is every defender bleed immune. This is a joke right?

DNA3000

MaRvEl_MoNsTeR wrote: »

@Kabam Miike so rank down tickets for bleed champs and full refunds for SS crystal buys are in order?

What about refunds for DW?

The global buffs are intended to be changed regularly, probably every season. Kabam is not going to issue rank down tickets and mastery refunds every month.

These global buffs are the first step as a means to an end, not the end itself. The long term goal, I believe, is to empower the players to make meaningful strategic decisions on defense which then prompts attackers to make meaningful decisions to counter those decisions on offense: what Kabam refers to as "counterplay." Everyone is complaining about Blade being nerfed because of the global bleed immune node, but if an alliance chose to place an entire defense made up of bleed immune champions, that should be perfectly acceptable to do, and then attackers would have to deal with that. That's an oversimplification, but alliances should have the ability to do something that actually forces attacking alliances to change their attack team choices. Right now, attackers don't really have to react to anything: the best team is the best team is the best team. The only time this changes is when the rare champion is introduced that is game-changing on offense or defense, and that doesn't happen often.

There's no way to make such a sweeping change to the game in any reasonable amount of time, so the global buffs are a bridge to that goal. They basically "decide" for everyone what special advantage the defense will have this season, and importantly that decision is *announced* so everyone knows what it is. That allows players to react to it, and change what they do if they feel a change would be helpful. Attackers now have to react to something.

This isn't ideal, and Kabam knows it. Many of the problems players have articulated in this thread are definite problems and Kabam is aware of them. Rank up is slow, so "counterplay" is highly constrained. We can't just rank up defenders or attackers to respond to things like a global node. Defense placements themselves are invisible to make them more challenging, but that invisibility also means attackers can't "counterplay" against them because they don't know what they are. There's no obvious balance point between changing global nodes too quickly and too slowly. The long term goal is to introduce global buffs as a starting step, and try to evolve solutions to these problems as they go along.

I don't know if they will solve those problems in a timely manner or in an effective manner. I don't know if the global node system will evolve into anything eventually worthwhile to achieve their stated goals. But I do know that the Kabam developers are aware of all of these challenges, and have been thinking about solutions to them.

In any case, players asking for rank down tickets or mastery refunds are, I think, not entirely unjustified, but that won't happen because the long term goal is not the simply change alliance war and let everyone redo all their rank ups to adjust to the change. The long term goal is to make every rank up and mastery decision *sometimes* generate a great result and *sometimes* generate a not so great result, so there is no "best" rank up decision. You simply have to roll with the fact that the environment of the game will not present the same challenges every time.

DNA3000

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

Demonzfyre wrote: »

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

Demonzfyre wrote: »

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

All this is just another nerf under the guise of diversity. They know we won’t change our attack teams so they just weakened them even more so we time out and die more. Every season they find a way to make war harder and for people to spend more without upping the rewards. I wonder how much longer people are willing to take their BS.

For the love of everything, THIS IS NOT A NERF!!!!! Stop calling it that. A nerf would a fundamental change to a champ. That is not what is happening here. This only effects AW and not other game mode. Plus these 2 nodes are ONLY FOR SEASON 5 and not beyond. Not a nerf by any means what-so-ever.

This is flat out a nerf. I’m not arguing semantics with you about it. You’ve proven time and time again that you’ll lap up whatever Kabam gives you and carry their water. They put in a node that takes out multiple champs main abilitie and you don’t think it’s a nerf....

IT'S FOR 1 SEASON! What don't you understand about that? It's also for only 1 game mode. It's not a nerf period at all. There isn't any semantics to argue.

It’s for this season. Then next season they have a whole different set of nerfs. I don’t think it shocks anyone that they recruit a bunch of yes men for their little panel. Do you even ask for **** anymore or do you like for them to give it to you dry?

I was one of the players on their little panel, and I believe it is highly unlikely you can find someone that has expressed more criticism of more specific implementation details of Alliance War than I.

Jiff_Cleaner1

Pillar: Keep alliance wars dynamic.

I have become a bit disenfranchised due to the ever decreasing value of my favourite champs. I would like to see a commitment to a more cyclical nerf-buff changes to all champs so that I can enjoy them again once their value improves.

For example: if a new Dr. Strange film comes out, I would like to se a significant buff to DS so that, for a time his health steal becomes OP. This would give me a warm fuzzy feeling that the effort I spent in ranking him was not wasted.

I would also like to see that the synergies in war defence have some effect. I originally built a team around those but it clearly has no value.

Narcuul

I’m glade I never brought up my AA. You guys hate him.

PaytoPlay

Narcuul wrote: »

I’m glade I never brought up my AA. You guys hate him.

I am just glad I never awakened him with my generic.

Zuko_ILC

We aren't diverse because you as a company have pretty much forced us to rank up certain champs. Secondly you refuse to release rank up materials quicker so we aren't even able to rank up other champs we own. But then are being told the meta has changed, it hasn't we'd have more options if you improved drop rates and gave out more rank up materials. This is a you problem not a customer problem.

Demonzfyre

Zuko_ILC wrote: »

We aren't diverse because you as a company have pretty much forced us to rank up certain champs. Secondly you refuse to release rank up materials quicker so we aren't even able to rank up other champs we own. But then are being told the meta has changed, it hasn't we'd have more options if you improved drop rates and gave out more rank up materials. This is a you problem not a customer problem.

How have they forced you? They dont make your ranking decisions.
Which rank up materials are you referring to?

unknown

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