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

Midknight007

Kabam: Global Buff to help female champs!
Gwenpool: Hi, guys!
Kabam: Another Global Buff to make every defender bleed immune!
Gwenpool: *facepalm*

Jack221

Awesome job, these changes sound epic. Keep doing what ya doing and making this game exciting.
I bet most of the haters here don’t even even play the game. Just sit in here and moan. Boring...

Demonzfyre

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

DNA3000 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?

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.

I’m glad you were and I’m glad you spoke your mind good or bad. I’m not upset with any of the players or panel members, it’s more the situation. I get sick of every off season waiting to hear what they’ve come up with to spice things up and promote diversity. Every time so far that has meant put the extra squeeze on the player base. I dropped out of platinum wars because it was already hard enough not timing out on node 29 and spending units. I would really like to know what their endgame is for this mode. They change it every off season because it doesn’t fit what they have in mind. Do they really expect people to rank up crappy champs for 1 month of war or was this a way to weaken most peoples war team? I think most people know the answer and I wish they’d come out and say it instead of these stupid statements about diversity.

It's not a way to weaken teams. You have to look past that part. It just happens that the bleed global node was one of the first ones offered. If it was offered season 6 you might not even have this train of though.
Their goal as they stated is to get to a point where alliances set their own global nodes for the wars and not Kabam. This means there will be a list global nodes to choose from and set per war. I am sure there will be other features to add to this as well but they are trying to roll it out slowly. Who knows, if it doesn't work like they envision, maybe the whole idea goes away but we have it and they are going to analyze the data and take it from there.

Midknight007

Jack221 wrote: »

Awesome job, these changes sound epic. Keep doing what ya doing and making this game exciting.
I bet most of the haters here don’t even even play the game. Just sit in here and moan. Boring...

Buhahaha... been playing for three years.

Nope, these changes are lukewarm at best.

RogerRabs

What’s next? Season 6 Global Safegaurd node for Corvus? Tranquility on all nodes to stop Void?

Zuko_ILC

Demonzfyre wrote: »

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?

It's called prestige chart, if you don't want to get kicked in high level alliances you can't r5 Venom. So yes you are forced to rank certain champs to stay competitive.

DNA3000

Jamiefyffe16 wrote: »

Do they really expect people to rank up crappy champs for 1 month of war or was this a way to weaken most peoples war team? I think most people know the answer and I wish they’d come out and say it instead of these stupid statements about diversity.

Actually, the subject of rank up did come up, and I and others pointed out that counterplay is significantly weakened by the fact that you can't respond to a "meta" change quickly through rank ups, and such counterplay moves are also extremely expensive. It is a problem that Kabam says they are investigating for future iterations of AW. I can't say in what way they might attempt to address this problem, but the subject of ways to temporarily and/or quickly rank defenders specifically for AW did come up as novel possibilities.

As to the general subject of "diversity" I think that term has a very bad taste from the previous iteration cycle of alliance war where I felt Kabam aimed for literal diversity in a misguided attempt to generate more counterplay. What Kabam actually wants (based on my discussions with them) is more diverse gameplay, not literally more diverse champion usage. They just don't articulate that very well. Diversity for its own sake is silly. But what they are trying to achieve is for players to think strategically about which champions they use, and for the number of valid options to be high enough that different players come up with a wide variety of options. That automatically means players will be using a more diverse set of champions, but not just for diversity's sake. It would be because you and I disagree over what the best choices are, and the game is sufficiently balanced that one of us isn't just automatically wrong.

They can't do that in one big jump so they are trying to crawl there slowly. They recognize that we don't have a lot of strategic options for placing defenders, so we're always placing the same ones. So everyone brings the same attackers to counter those defenders. And that "meta" gets locked in. The global nodes are intended to be a tiny step towards breaking that stalemate. Personally, I don't think the two they picked will do diddly squat. But the important thing isn't the specific node buffs they picked. The important thing is Kabam intends to evaluate and expand those buffs, and in particular they have signalled their intent to try to evolve that system into one that places more control into our hands rather than theirs. That's worth working towards.

Midknight007

If they wanted to increase diversity and keep the game fresh... why not add random buffs (like labs) to nodes.... and the number of buffs on each node goes up as an alliance increases tiers (Master = 6, platinum = 5, Gold = 4, Silver =3, etc.

They can give every player on offense 5 randomizes. It could add some extra strategy on placement and diversity. Defense should be able to see the buffs on all nodes prior to entering placement phase.

IsItthough

If your goal was to make a more dynamic and intriguing version of war instead of choosing a global buff you could have implemented a system where we as summoners would get a choice between 5 buffs for different nodes. Of those 5 buffs we could select 3 to activate. Now these buffs would be randomly selected like labs. This would make the map more challenging while also helping to make sure it wasn’t stale. Each path every war could have 1 or 2 nodes which you could do this. That way you would never have the same fights. It would create a wider use of defenders. You could add in one random class bonus on top so that would give incentive to use a class on that node. Once again this would randomize for each war. That would make for some fun and interactive play.

As for the people that keep saying kabam hasn’t forced anyone to rank people up I feel you are way off based. The over use of the same defenders in war has made it a must to have a unique set of champs. You know it, and are just being naive to suggest other wise.

ChrisB23

I was half expecting something like this, because just last week I ranked Blade to 5/65, woke him with a generic stone from act 5 and took him to sig 60 with saved stones.

You want me to bring another champ? Fine, i’ll need resources to rank up another, specifically T5B and T2a or I’ll need a rank down ticket. And I want my awakening gem and sig stones back.
The reality is I’ll probably have to still bring Blade because of his rank for the danger sense and for the Sparky synergy.

I have deep wounds at level 5. Which is obsolete for the next month. Where are the masteries to increase shock damage, or cold damage? And the equivalents of Coagulate and Suture? It’s time to expand that tree and give us more points to spend.

Want wars to be harder?
Activate the synergies in war defence.

Want more defender diversity?
Activate the synergies in war defence.

Want to level the playing field in Wars?
More T2a and T5B availability.

Please and thank you.

chunkyb

My normal war team: rider r5, km r5, blade r4.
My history w kabam: lmao go ask around or look it up.
My stance on rdt: almost always in favor of them, loudly... To the point of forum bans.
Deep wounds at 5
Involved in the war changes discussion.

The overall reaction is a bit silly and way over the top yall. It feels like people either aren't reading or aren't understanding.
Slow down and put some thought into it.

Demanding rdt bc one season of war will change? What about after that season? They're supposed to reverse that or it's permanent? What about other game modes? You don't want those champs ranked up for anything?

Deep wounds refunds? You don't want dw in other game modes? Or after one month? They're supposed to give us units just so we have to unlock deep wounds again later?

I'm ALL for fairness to the players. I fought for aa specific rdt and caught a ban. I still think the players got the shaft on that. I don't even have a 5* aa. Just got a 4* a little while back. But aa-rdt was the right thing to do.
I have one r3 mystic I use on defense. I wouldn't rank her down if given a chance but have still been extremely vocal that mystic rdt are deserved.
I've fought for players the entire time I've played this game...to my own detrimental usually lol.

The bottom line is we won't like all the globals that get thrown out. I didn't like plenty of eq bosses. But challenges are necessary. Jmo, but players should enjoy the challenges... Because it's a game and if it wasn't challenging it would suck. The same thing over and over isn't fun. War isn't really fun. It's the same thing over and over. I'd much rather have some globals to deal with than more ramped up nodes or monotonous/aq-like wars.

The potential of this method is the good part. Bleed immune is gonna mess me up pretty bad but there's potential for actual fun to be had, and that's what should be exciting people.

I do have issues with some of this and voiced that in the discussion we had. I think true counterplay should be more of a focus but I also realize it takes steps to get there. I also realize the overall reaction here proves those steps are necessary lol. I think players need a way to quickly adapt to the globals when it comes to their roster as well as having fair warning about future globals. I don't think rdt would be the answer because those are permanent and things will change in a month. I feel like if wars are going to be more dynamic, then war rosters need to also be more dynamic somehow. I don't really know how that should work tho. The ability to swap a rank between 2 champs for a season? Idk. I hadn't thought of that particular idea during our discussions so I'll throw it out there and see what happens haha.

Either way, I get the strong feelings... I just see a lot of overreaction. I think if you step back and think thru your normal war path and the foes you usually face, you'll find some answers to what you should do. It's what I did when I had some time for it and it helped.

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IsItthough

@chunkyb I can’t disagree about the rdt and your support on the AA neutering. I would say my only argument is that while thes are only going to be season long you have limited many people with lower options in war. While yes the other game modes are important, let’s be fair there is no act 6 and event quests are well event quests. The one place that an alliance has to gain t5b is war. Now for one month some will have to sit on the sidelines or spend to get those. If they start adding t5b and 6 star shards in more content then fine I can sit a month out of war.

As it is now war is a joke, look at the 15 alliances that were docked for cheating! Guess what most ended up in plat 2 or better. But hey cheating gets them ahead meanwhile my alliance that wasn’t docked faced 3 of them in our last 4 wars. And guess what they cruised right by us. An alliance should never and I repeat never be docked war rating when caught cheating. It’s a slap in the face that they drop 500 points and beat the hell out of the lower alliance laughing all the way. As they collect 5 and 6 star shards. War is broken! And this isn’t a good fix!

ACMegatron

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!

Before I disparage your 3 pillars and completely misguided solutions, can I politely ask for you to eliminate the "pain point" of resetting the entire mastery tree when you need to make one small change? Please spend your time implementing a way to add or subtract single points, or give us presets. Thanks,

ContestChamp

Red_barron wrote: »

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

This is by far the best idea that I’ve ever read on this forum.

ContestChamp

DNA3000 wrote: »

Panchulon21 wrote: »

It’s kabams fault

People keep saying this, and I have no idea why. Yes, it is Kabam's "fault" because they made the game in the first place. Therefore, it is their responsibility to fix it, by changing the game to address problems in the game.

You Missed the point:

None of these changes address the fundamental flaws. Prestige, limited rank resources, and bad drop rates affect who people use a a lot more than anything else in the game.

ContestChamp

Red_barron wrote: »

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

ATTENTION DEVELOPERS - THIS IS BY FAR A MUCH BETTER IDEA FOR DIVERSITY AND REDUCING BOREDOM WITH GAME THAN ANYTHING YOU’VE EVER SUGGESTED.

Red_barron

if You really want to make aw a fair playing field for all why not make it 4* only, most people have many 4*’s there cheaper to rank up for changes and it’s more about skill than rosters, also you could make it that you can not duplicate an attacker so we have to use 30 different attackers and when you place your defence you choose you attack, that would also make it more interesting.

DNA3000

ContestChamp wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Panchulon21 wrote: »

It’s kabams fault

People keep saying this, and I have no idea why. Yes, it is Kabam's "fault" because they made the game in the first place. Therefore, it is their responsibility to fix it, by changing the game to address problems in the game.

You Missed the point:

None of these changes address the fundamental flaws. Prestige, limited rank resources, and bad drop rates affect who people use a a lot more than anything else in the game.

Actually, it is you that missed the point entirely. Everything you said does not respond in any way to what I quoted, and then responded to. Whether the changes are *correct* or not, in your opinion, that doesn't change the fact that everyone agrees there are problems, including Kabam, and everyone agrees that it is Kabam's game and they are the only ones who can change it. Therefore, saying "its Kabam's fault" is a meaningless statement.

If you're going to reply to me, reply to what I said, and what I was responding to. I cannot address the point that exists in your head.

chunkyb

IsItthough wrote: »

@chunkyb I can’t disagree about the rdt and your support on the AA neutering. I would say my only argument is that while thes are only going to be season long you have limited many people with lower options in war. While yes the other game modes are important, let’s be fair there is no act 6 and event quests are well event quests. The one place that an alliance has to gain t5b is war. Now for one month some will have to sit on the sidelines or spend to get those. If they start adding t5b and 6 star shards in more content then fine I can sit a month out of war.

As it is now war is a joke, look at the 15 alliances that were docked for cheating! Guess what most ended up in plat 2 or better. But hey cheating gets them ahead meanwhile my alliance that wasn’t docked faced 3 of them in our last 4 wars. And guess what they cruised right by us. An alliance should never and I repeat never be docked war rating when caught cheating. It’s a slap in the face that they drop 500 points and beat the hell out of the lower alliance laughing all the way. As they collect 5 and 6 star shards. War is broken! And this isn’t a good fix!

Not a lot here I could argue with tbh. We see eye to eye on a lot of stuff. I don't see where people would need to sit out tho. My options aren't great as far as my subs go but it'll be fun to try to work it out... And as seen by all the replies here, everyone else is in the same boat for the most part.

DNA3000

ContestChamp wrote: »

Red_barron wrote: »

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

ATTENTION DEVELOPERS - THIS IS BY FAR A MUCH BETTER IDEA FOR DIVERSITY AND REDUCING BOREDOM WITH GAME THAN ANYTHING YOU’VE EVER SUGGESTED.

If you're trying to turn the game into Second Life, sure. But this completely destroys the notion of the game as a progressional game.

MrMaat

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.

dude u never even read properly did you. these nodes will be only in the challenger and expert maps.
not in the low tier.
you are complaining about a non-issue.

infact i think this is a great thing and should reach lower down in the tiers than it does.

GroundedWisdom

OKAYGang wrote: »

Grimmbear wrote: »

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

Also rip AA

This, where is the compensation for the Deep Wounds Mastery which is now useless?

How is it useless?

DTMelodicMetal

Can we get new content that rewards T2AC and T5BC in greater amounts than shards so we can rank up champions that aren't indirectly nerfed by AW Season 5's meta?

Dark_King888

I have a very unique proposition. As it is, 24 hours is a very long time to place defenders.

I have 2 suggestions

Part 1 -

Why not have a map, where only the ability nodes like 100% more health, or 300% attack or 200% champion boosts are present?

Based on the tier of the team, they get a set of buffs/debuffs which they can apply as nodes as they please. They can only put 2 local nodes per point

So they can choose to make it as difficult or easy as they want.

There can be various strategies, make 1 path so difficult that the boss needs to be taken with a node. Or make multiple paths medium so everyone is tested and 1 slip up costs.

Have bleed immune after bleed immune after bleed immune to fatigue the same champ and get the kill. Or just place nice complementing ones like 100% bleed and heal block. Or Masochism and powergain.

Also, people can choose to put an enhanced bleed on a node that has say 100% champ boost or on 300% champ boost based on how much he values his defenders bleed.

So basically, u just make the nodes easy or difficult with health, attack or champ boosts, those being universal to that tier and let people put their own attributes like powergain or immune or poison or bleed or masochism. U provide a set of node attributes as per tier, a fixed number of attributes can be added to each node (say 2 each) and from the set of attributes, u can only use those in that tier and only once each. So if u put 1 powergain, u cannot put the same again even if there are 2 in the set. Also if u have 2 powergains, u can only put them on 2 nodes, and no more.

Part 2 -

Let the summoners design the paths too. And yes, bring back defender kills. Admit it, it was a mistake and no amount of attacker bonus is gonna cover for it. Give points to defender kills in reverse order -

1st death on a node , defending team gets 50 points. 2nd death, 75. 3rd death 100.

More deaths on a node give increasingly more points.

DNA3000

IsItthough wrote: »

If your goal was to make a more dynamic and intriguing version of war instead of choosing a global buff you could have implemented a system where we as summoners would get a choice between 5 buffs for different nodes. Of those 5 buffs we could select 3 to activate. Now these buffs would be randomly selected like labs. This would make the map more challenging while also helping to make sure it wasn’t stale. Each path every war could have 1 or 2 nodes which you could do this. That way you would never have the same fights. It would create a wider use of defenders. You could add in one random class bonus on top so that would give incentive to use a class on that node. Once again this would randomize for each war. That would make for some fun and interactive play.

Variations of this sort of thing were suggested to Kabam in the early access. What was created and announced was considered a first small step towards potentially something more interesting down the road.

GroundedWisdom

All-in-all, I have no issues with the changes coming so far. The rotating Buffs aren't Attacker Diversity perse, at least in the sense we've come to know it. It just means more Champs will be utilized. Let's face it. It's been dominated by one Champ, and I don't feel that it's a good direction for the game to go in to have one Champ always dominate any game mode.
I'm also glad they're looking at Matchmaking manipulation. It's been one of my larger concerns. Between Collusion, Tanking, and Penalization, the Matchmaking system has been all over the place, and that's caused a detriment to many.
Glad to know these things are being considered.

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KKNJ07

@Kabam Miike If you need diversity, limit AW weekly to a specific set of champs alone as both offense & defense. Something like the set of champs in a featured crystal. Only depending on buffs would not help achieving diversity.