**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.

Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.

Developers Thoughts: Improving Alliance Wars Discussion Thread

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Comments

  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    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.

    Which one champ are you talking about? Corvus? Sparky? Blade? I don't know if I can agree that one champ has been dominating any game mode let alone AW. Based on the wars I've been in and countless AW vids I've watched from various Youtubers and their Alliance Mates from different tiers, I haven't seen more than 3 people use the same team in each BG. And they certainly haven't been using only one champ to clear their path.

    Apparently you must not have seen the Leaderboard. Should I say the Bladerboard.
  • 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.

    Which one champ are you talking about? Corvus? Sparky? Blade? I don't know if I can agree that one champ has been dominating any game mode let alone AW. Based on the wars I've been in and countless AW vids I've watched from various Youtubers and their Alliance Mates from different tiers, I haven't seen more than 3 people use the same team in each BG. And they certainly haven't been using only one champ to clear their path.

    Apparently you must not have seen the Leaderboard. Should I say the Bladerboard.

    Well I’m in masters and don’t use blade and take lane 4/5/6 depending on who’s is mini boss
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    edited October 2018
    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.

    Which one champ are you talking about? Corvus? Sparky? Blade? I don't know if I can agree that one champ has been dominating any game mode let alone AW. Based on the wars I've been in and countless AW vids I've watched from various Youtubers and their Alliance Mates from different tiers, I haven't seen more than 3 people use the same team in each BG. And they certainly haven't been using only one champ to clear their path.

    Apparently you must not have seen the Leaderboard. Should I say the Bladerboard.

    Well I’m in masters and don’t use blade and take lane 4/5/6 depending on who’s is mini boss

    I didn't mean literally every Player only relies on Blade. However, you can't deny that it's been a constant throughout most Attack Teams. The point I'm opening up is that it makes it very difficult to create an effective Defense when the same Champ or two are being used with virtually the same Debuff over and over. They made several efforts to refine Defense. Now they're looking at Attack. You can't viably approach it from the same angle as Defense because each Player can only bring 3 options for themsleves.
  • NojokejaymNojokejaym Posts: 3,892 ★★★★★
    arni2 wrote: »
    Sooo,
    let's try and break thing apart:
    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
    Good Female attackers - Magik, Emma Frost and Domino (33% new champs), luck biased again

    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.
    NO BLADE, Nice, But also new Symbiote Supreme will suffer from this node, interesting...
    Issue 2: Unfair Play in Alliance Wars

    This issue is integral to the mode. Alliance Wars is a highly competitive mode, and our goal is to make it the MOST competitive mode in the game, so fairness is paramount. No Alliance should feel that they can play their best, and fairest, but be let down when another Alliance does not play fair, and beats them, or 2 Alliances collude to manipulate the standings.

    All the solutions that proposed are generic and won't do much.

    In order to make alliance wars to be skill based, limit the amount of boost (attack, health) that player can use per war, otherwise the maxed boosted alliance usually win. (I know it probably won't happen because those boosts are one of the main income from war system, but you might surprise)


    angela
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    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.

    Which one champ are you talking about? Corvus? Sparky? Blade? I don't know if I can agree that one champ has been dominating any game mode let alone AW. Based on the wars I've been in and countless AW vids I've watched from various Youtubers and their Alliance Mates from different tiers, I haven't seen more than 3 people use the same team in each BG. And they certainly haven't been using only one champ to clear their path.

    Apparently you must not have seen the Leaderboard. Should I say the Bladerboard.

    I hope you're not basing your opinion based on the Leaderboard. Back when Blade was first released, Mystic Wars were still happening especially in the higher tiers. A little while after he was released so was Act 5.4 which rewarded, anyone who fully explored it, the option to to r5 1 5* champion. It just so happened that Blade was a great counter to Mystics and had high prestige so of course the higher ups were going to choose him as their first r5 and pump every signature stone they have into him.

    Fast forward to today and now we see Mystic Wars are dead and the new Auto-Block era has arrived. By now, the higher ups has at least already got their Blades to sig level 200 and their hands on a shiny new Corvus. Now since Corvus hasn't been around for as long as Blade has and introduced during the first time T5B has came out it should make sense why you'd still see more Blades than any other champ on the leaderboard, albeit a lot less.

    In this current meta, Blade just isn't that useful anymore in AW at least since Kabam killed off Mystic Wars (not complaining btw). I'll be so bold to say if Kabam issued RDT's right now you'd probably see more IMIWs, Corvus Glaives, KM, or Thor Ragnaroks in place of Blade.

    So yeah, I've seen the Leaderboards. But I also pay attention to when the meta shifts.

    Changing MD has literally just happened, and these changes have no doubt been in the works some time. They're also ongoing, so this is just the first introduction we will likely see. I think it's a good idea overall. It's a given that the norm is to find a popular Champ for Attack, the majority use the same Champ or two, and then it becomes just the same dance with little challenge. They're adding more moving parts.
  • ChampioncriticChampioncritic Posts: 3,347 ★★★★
    My main concern with AW is that war rating may not really be the best measure of a fair fight. For easily 18 wars in a row, my alliance has faced people whom have full teams of 5* 4/55s while on my side only 3 ish people have a similar team while the rest of us have 4* 5/50s and 4/40s. This is definitely, in my opinion, caused by kabam lowering the war rating of cheating alliances, which in turn lets them face easier opponents, which in turn drops war rating of the losers which in turn mean they once again face easier opponents. Meaning that the effect of lowering war rating is passed down to us in the lower tiers and we end up facing opponents that are way stronger than us but yet have the same war rating.

    This is something i hope to see fixed in the next season and beyond. Like others have suggested maybe make it such that war rating can only be modified during the season, so that alliances will not be able to "tank" their war rating during the off season in order to face easier opponents during the season.
  • NojokejaymNojokejaym Posts: 3,892 ★★★★★
    DNA3000 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 think that would be fun i already use different champs for attack
  • The is
    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.

    Which one champ are you talking about? Corvus? Sparky? Blade? I don't know if I can agree that one champ has been dominating any game mode let alone AW. Based on the wars I've been in and countless AW vids I've watched from various Youtubers and their Alliance Mates from different tiers, I haven't seen more than 3 people use the same team in each BG. And they certainly haven't been using only one champ to clear their path.

    Apparently you must not have seen the Leaderboard. Should I say the Bladerboard.

    Well I’m in masters and don’t use blade and take lane 4/5/6 depending on who’s is mini boss

    I didn't mean literally every Player only relies on Blade. However, you can't deny that it's been a constant throughout most Attack Teams. The point I'm opening up is that it makes it very difficult to create an effective Defense when the same Champ or two are being used with virtually the same Debuff over and over. They made several efforts to refine Defense. Now they're looking at Attack. You can't viably approach it from the same angle as Defense because each Player can only bring 3 options for themsleves.

    The issue is not that blade needs a nerf or not, the reason why Blade is so good is that he’s a great attacke, a decent Defender, and great PI. He’s the whole package. If KK was top 3 PI she would be r5 left and right.

    Kabam wants all these things but then f#cla themselves due to other factors.

    It’s stupid to think that yes AW is a big part but now PI is huge part due to AQ rewards. So they can’t thibk of one without the other.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    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.

    Which one champ are you talking about? Corvus? Sparky? Blade? I don't know if I can agree that one champ has been dominating any game mode let alone AW. Based on the wars I've been in and countless AW vids I've watched from various Youtubers and their Alliance Mates from different tiers, I haven't seen more than 3 people use the same team in each BG. And they certainly haven't been using only one champ to clear their path.

    Apparently you must not have seen the Leaderboard. Should I say the Bladerboard.

    I hope you're not basing your opinion based on the Leaderboard. Back when Blade was first released, Mystic Wars were still happening especially in the higher tiers. A little while after he was released so was Act 5.4 which rewarded, anyone who fully explored it, the option to to r5 1 5* champion. It just so happened that Blade was a great counter to Mystics and had high prestige so of course the higher ups were going to choose him as their first r5 and pump every signature stone they have into him.

    Fast forward to today and now we see Mystic Wars are dead and the new Auto-Block era has arrived. By now, the higher ups has at least already got their Blades to sig level 200 and their hands on a shiny new Corvus. Now since Corvus hasn't been around for as long as Blade has and introduced during the first time T5B has came out it should make sense why you'd still see more Blades than any other champ on the leaderboard, albeit a lot less.

    In this current meta, Blade just isn't that useful anymore in AW at least since Kabam killed off Mystic Wars (not complaining btw). I'll be so bold to say if Kabam issued RDT's right now you'd probably see more IMIWs, Corvus Glaives, KM, or Thor Ragnaroks in place of Blade.

    So yeah, I've seen the Leaderboards. But I also pay attention to when the meta shifts.

    Changing MD has literally just happened, and these changes have no doubt been in the works some time. They're also ongoing, so this is just the first introduction we will likely see. I think it's a good idea overall. It's a given that the norm is to find a popular Champ for Attack, the majority use the same Champ or two, and then it becomes just the same dance with little challenge. They're adding more moving parts.

    Mystic Wars were dead long before the changes to MD. The fact that it was recently nerfed just makes it a "little more dead". Also, I'm not against them trying to diversify Attack teams more. All I'm trying to say is that I disagree with what you said that currently one champ is dominating this one game mode when there's a good amount of evidence on the forums alone proving otherwise. Right now you might be thinking I'm replying just to argue but I just don't want Kabam to get the wrong idea that Blade is still the current meta.

    Edit: Also, what's wrong with using the same champ as long as everyone isn't using it? I'm more comfortable using Venom/Stark Spidey than MS/AA and I tend to bring them along more because of the path I take in war.
    I'm inclined to disagree that a large number weren't using Blade for War. Perhaps some were exploring other options, but the data must have shown a strong reliance on Bleed Champs, otherwise there wouldn't be the Global Node. Blade is just one example. As for the same Champ, I'm not talking bringing the same Champ ourselves. I'm talking about a majority relying on the same Champ. I'm sorry, but some people relying on alternatives doesn't change the majority reliance.
  • Flodd1234Flodd1234 Posts: 13
    edited October 2018
    You are starting to get what I suggested since alliance war started, ages ago. Have themes for alliance war. Only use 2 stars, 3 stars, 4 stars, avengers, mutants, heroes, villains, spiderverse, guardians, etc. focusing on females and bleed is just the beginning.

    What a dumb ass idea is rotating nodes. It just makes the hard champs harder. Restricting champs is the only way to go. It doesn’t matter what buffs you put on cyclops, modok is harder to fight. Even if the node is “only buff cyclops”, if you place an IWIM, he will get more kills.

    It will make AW memorable and historic. People will say, remember that mutant AW a while back that I did so and so... I don’t think anyone remembers or cares what season number of AW we are on. Just repeating what I said before but at least you guys made alliance help an alliance event. I suggested that one a while back as well. Happy to see that someone may have listened to me
  • DTMelodicMetalDTMelodicMetal Posts: 2,785 ★★★★★
    arni2 wrote: »
    Sooo,
    let's try and break thing apart:
    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
    Good Female attackers - Magik, Emma Frost and Domino (33% new champs), luck biased again

    Proxima Midnight:

    https://youtu.be/0S7ocupYvD0
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    Medusa.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    Quake as well.
  • Ggeorg10Ggeorg10 Posts: 46
    Attacker Deversity!
    80pts (like 1 attack bonus) every unique attacker...
    Simple and accurate!
  • TacoScottyTacoScotty Posts: 407 ★★
    1) Just introduce AWO diversity if you want to see more diverse attackers in the higher tiers... though most likely some will just drag along a champ they never use for points

    2) I can't wait for month when global is something like prove yourself haha! Yes a lot of fights this just drags things out but can make others a pain.

    3) For globals, if that is path you are going to go I would suggest:
    - t1 wars 4 globals, t2 wars 3 globals, t3 wars 2 globals, gold wars (t4-whatever) 1 global, else 0.
    - Something needs to be done to make map difficulty harder between t3 and t1 as you can tell from the data top alliances crush the current map. You need more to help them differentiate the top 3 from other 17 for master. This would provide more scaling difficulty to go along with scaling rewards seen between gold to p3 and then p3 through master. Master alliances are good, even with 4 globals (unless stupid globals) their death count will remain low but may help them better show top 3 in a given season. Would suggest the potential globals available for t1 versus t2/t3 have different sets with the higher tier wars have more difficult globals being possible. I would then have globals change weekly during the season

    You can also add more minis t1 / t2 maps. For both I would add mini on paths 2 and 8 and then for t1 has mini also on 1 and 9.

    4) Remove defenders remaining

    5) When two alliances who have different default maps match up, always default to higher map and have both alliance get the selected maps multiplier. Therefore if you go one step further and make for example t1 map have more globals, more minis, etc. if a p2 alliances faces a master they will have extra points to earn.
  • WhathappenedWhathappened Posts: 747 ★★★
    I said it earlier that this is a push to counter Blade but definitely hurts a large part of skill and mutant champs. You are punishing an entire group because of one champ. Doesn't really help with diverse game play. If you really wanted diverse usage other champs need buffs. Rarely do you see Abomination on defense or on a poision node, because unless he's hugely buffed he sort of sucks. If his was buffed and a decent defender we would see him used more... simple as that. I really don't mind making female champs stronger but really disagree with complete bleed immunity. Talking about RNG playing to big a role... now whomever has Corvus wins..lol. Your actually making things worse if I understand everything correctly. I don't have blade but did rank up Killmonger because I like him more than Corvus.. might have been a mistake. It takes way to long to get a champ completely ranked up to neuter him in the most competitive mode. I'm definitely not asking for more resources but monthly meta shifts shouldn't happen. If you want more diverse game play limit the rank of champ allowed in war to r3 that way people can jump around, not really what I want but does level the field a little. Just spitballing.
  • BornBorn Posts: 228 ★★
    This global bleed immune node is ridiculous. You effectively just rendered allot of champs useless. Allot of people spend countless hours grinding or countless dollars spinning crystals to get some of these champs, or even both. Not to mention all the resources spent and time taken to rank these champs. Now they will be nerfed through AW. The main reason and game mode these champs are so heavily sort after.

    Now we need to rank a different set of champs that will likely then be useless in the next season? Where are all these resources coming from? A season is only a month long and the off season only 2 week. How do you expect people to adapt their rosters so quickly?

    I for one have favoured ranking Bleed champs in my roster. I personally like using them, the bleed often triggers other abilities within the champs mechanics adding to their effectiveness. My roster for season 5 is begging to look allot less appealing to my alliance.

    You guys need to put more thought into these changes. You can’t just nerf peoples rosters like that. We have used rare and valuable resources that are very hard to come by ranking these champs. Think about that before you go making our rosters so much less effective.

  • NojokejaymNojokejaym Posts: 3,892 ★★★★★
    J76 wrote: »
    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.

    some people dont have 3 stars
  • Corby11Corby11 Posts: 163
    While ever the node buffs are fixed players will work out the best defenders / attackers for each node and will gravitate to building their team around them. The only way to increase diversity in placement and attack is to have twice as many defenders on the board (say 2 each node and the attacker chooses to fight A or B each time) and cycle the buffs on the nodes each war so that attackers need to devolope 3 or 4 attack teams to deal with their lines.

    Well it may not be the only way but its 1 possibility. Lol.

    You would need a ballance on the number of random buffs i guess because if you go too far randomising it then you risk the possibility of taking all strategy out of wars.
This discussion has been closed.