Developers Thoughts: Improving Alliance Wars Discussion Thread

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  • R4GER4GE Member Posts: 1,530 ★★★★
    With both my r5 champs being AA and Blade, who I ranked specifically for AW attack ,I can't help but feel I am being screwed rather than getting a more enjoyable or funner gameplay. Doesn't seem Ill be able to use them much and have completely wasted my rare T5 basics. "Woe is me," right? But I think many others will suffer this set back.

    This seems more like an opportunity to nerf Blade w/o actually touching him. Which leads to the question, why don't you put more thought into their creation? Rather than create a champ everyone wants, blows resources on, and later take it all away from them? Money? Profit?

    Changes haven't happened yet, but with this "nerf" to bleed champs in AW, I think you'll hear many arguments for RDTs. Arguments will be, "but champs haven't been changed," "They are still useful in other modes." Who cares about other modes? This game is all about AW (which posts like this make clear of) and thats what we base our rank ups around, not some silly monthly EQ that can be beaten with Spider Gwen or Kamala Khan.

    If you're gonna keep forcing different forms of diversity to eliminate top ranked champs than you need to increase resources to make up for it. What you tend to think is a chance to increase roster use only pushes our chosen rank ups to the bench. Where is the diversity there? Just say you have added so many useless champs to the game and you want people to use them, whether we like it or not, and you will always make us waste resources on ranking the good champs.
  • Midknight007Midknight007 Member Posts: 770 ★★★
    I understand wanting to create a ever changing AW experience in order to keep it fresh. How about this... before working on and releasing new features, Kabam fixes the bugs and issues.

    I just had another crash when loading an AQ match. It wasn’t because of network connection. Players are tired of losing 1/2 health for things that are not their fault. Not to mention lag, and a whole list of issues with every update of either phones/devices and of the game itself.
  • NoOnexRONoOnexRO Member Posts: 343 ★★★
    Kabam, you have good intentions with these changes but maybe there is something simpler than rotating buffs in order to get that full roster use and not just the use of top heroes.

    5 days cool down for all heroes placed in AW.

    Each week there are 3 wars. So in these 3 wars force the players to use each time different heroes.
    Not with nodes but with a cool down system similar to the one that is present in the Arenas.
  • WerewrymWerewrym Member Posts: 2,830 ★★★★★
    Here's what I want to know. Will these changes really do what the developers want them to? Will their goal for summoners to bring in a different team really happen? I highly doubt it to be honest. Blade is still just as effective without his bleed and Corvus is still the king of AW, nothing has changed. You can introduce all of the global nodes you want, but until the top tier champions aren't leaps and bounds better than our other champs, we won't stop using them.

    I can tell you right now, I expect nothing to change for my team in AW, my top 3 attackers will still be my top 3 attackers. The key here is not to change AW, but to change the viability of 75% of champs. I would argue that the majority of champs never get used in AW because they simply cannot compete in the most competitive mode in the game. Until that 75% of champs get balanced to at least be usable in AW nothing is going to change. You can't tell us that you want us to use a wider variety of champs when that "variety of champs" are broken because you guys made them that way. I realize not all champs can be "god tier" but until the lower tiers of champs (which also happen to be the majority of champs) don't suck so much, not only will nothing change, nothing CAN change.
  • Disappointed_23Disappointed_23 Member Posts: 3
    Everyone always complains when there is a good champ but let’s be honest if there weren’t better champs then others we wouldn’t spend on crystals to acquire these champions. The problem I see with nerfing champs is you make us spend money or resources to acquire a good champion then after you milk all the money possible from us you need the champ. I have a blade at rank 5 200 and have spent a lot of time and resources to get him there only to now have him become pointless. I have now become pointless to my team as my attack team revolves around blade. This is not just about blade it’s the fact we are pushed to getting a top champ then that same champ is nerfed somehow down the line. It’s got to stop or people will get sick of the same routine. Making all defenders bleed immune does not make AW fun or more strategic it’s just a way to nerf all bleeders and make them pointless. You guys can do better then this so please rethink this change and come up with something better.
  • ACKILLACKILL Member Posts: 1
    Hello, I have a few suggestions:
    1) make a war of choice map.
    2) make buffs (1 per cell have 5 buffs and you can choose 3 bufs)
    3) the most important thing to do it change all the characters in the game for balance.
  • KpatrixKpatrix Member Posts: 1,055 ★★★
    Maybe put the global node on 29 so you can eliminate it on a difficult fight instead.
  • LoPrestiLoPresti Member Posts: 1,035 ★★★
    Just buff older champs and make the viable (like you did with Luke, Red Hulk, Venom, Carnage, etc). These are all great reworks and makes them viable rank-up choices and usable in war.

    I know you are doing it now, but at a really slow rate. Focus more on buffing older champs and it will fix a lot of issues.


    Also, bleed champs were already handicapped in war. Bleed immune nodes are already everywhere in AW, now with this global buff bleeders are completely useless. The idea's are nice, I'm all for diversity, but I don't agree with the implementation on how to fix this. It's a good idea, but it needs some work.
  • Helicopter_dugdugdugHelicopter_dugdugdug Member Posts: 555 ★★★
    Now can we get the non-spin version of dev thoughts?

    Bcoz I don’t think they are that naive that they don’t know the causes for such lack of attacker diversity?
  • nebneb Member Posts: 453 ★★★
    I understand the need to shift the meta constantly to try and keep war from becoming stale but it doesnt matter how slowly the meta shifts if its moving faster then our ability to acquire rank up materials. Am I supposed to bring r3 5 stars to attack over my 2 r5 5 star champs? Just reducing the effectiveness of the current top tier attackers but giving no way to shift our rosters to the new evolving meta is just going to upset most players in my opinion.
  • nebneb Member Posts: 453 ★★★
    Personally I think a cool idea for a global would be something like defenders get 300% increased hp, class advantage bonus increased by 500%.
  • Partha19Partha19 Member Posts: 1
    At last kabam want to take right decision
  • Sanctuary555Sanctuary555 Member Posts: 28
    This is terrible in my opinion. The 1st buff (Amped up) seems decent. I don't know anyone who will specifically change their attack team to do it, but would seems like it could help.

    The Bleed Immune is terrible. I don't think a buff should grant immunity from a lot of champs' main damage output. If someone has only 2 R5 and they are bleeders (GP, KM, Domino, Blade, Medusa, etc) then they look worthless on attack for this Season. You make them top targets to kick. Also, we have so few resources to rank champs high and to nerf them doesn't make people happy. Give us more rewards to rank more champs before this lame buff. The buffs should be something more general, like Class or the broader tags, i.e. Hero, Villain, Merc. Make Heros gain a buff on D and Villains a buff on Attack, that sounds fun without destroying ppl's top champs for a whole season

    If you saw a lot of Corvus in S4, wait for S5, lol.

    I personally think kabam should really take a good look at this post. If they are seriously thinking of how to encourage diversity, what is being suggested here basically is the most direct approach to encourage usage of all types of champs. Just give a buff to class or broader tags champs eg. Only mystic heroes or science villains gain power or like act 5 chapter 3, all champs but certain class or tags reduce attack by 50% etc. if kabam don’t respond to the above post then I seriously doubt their intentions is to encourage more usage of other champs. Why implement something that’s not directly solving the root of the issue and are still being subjected to the unhappiness of the community? Unless your intentions are not as stated in your thoughts?
  • Sanctuary555Sanctuary555 Member Posts: 28
    What about the issue with cheating alliances getting dropped to lower tiers and roflstomping alliances they have no business playing?

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

    Do something like restricting them to be able to use only 4* or 5* R3 champs for both offense and defense for the next season, instead of dropping them to lower tiers and punishing the opponents they will be meeting in lower tiers.
  • Y0shY0sh Member Posts: 27
    Although I can kind of understand where the developers are coming from with their seasonal tweaks of AW, I do not think they understand what a nightmare it is to organize AW placements and assignments. Officers are provided ridiculously limited ability to manage AW/AQ, and introducing anything that requires new assignments throughout the season is a stroke waiting to happen. I literally spend hours and even days planning things out via third party apps, excel, websites simply because Kabam offers so little useful resources or data themselves. And even after that is done, it is like herding cats to get everyone to follow instructions.

    Yeah, there are some defenders (IMIW, Modok, Korg, Medusa, etc.) and offenders (Blade, Void, CG, etc.) that everyone uses, but that's how you guys made it. And I feel that most officers have a set it and forget it approach, because after we spent all that time coming up with placements / assignments, the last thing we want to do is make more changes. Introducing things like rotating buffs / debuffs is just a band-aid IMO.

    Please give us more tools and data to manage AW if you really want to introduce dynamic changes. I'm still waiting for that Kabam employee to come back from vacation to give us prestige figures not that it really matters anymore.

    Do you have any suggestions on how we can do that? Like any tools in particular would be helpful in this kind of stuff?

    In all seriousness...bases....make the war D the base and allow officers access to simulate placement by adding alliance members rosters into different BGs. They could have access throughout the week and not only during placement phase. Lock it down once attack starts. This way officers have the ability to simulate defensive placements without having to wait until everyone actually joins a BG or creating spreadsheets, screenshots, 3rd party apps, etc.
  • Sanctuary555Sanctuary555 Member Posts: 28
    CosmicZen wrote: »
    Why not make an attacker diversity point system? Then you will have specialized diverse champs per path. This will also make content harder to beat. There are only so many bleed immune champs etc

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

    Yes, and by rewarding more points for diversity in both offense and defense. Make them the tie breaker!
  • Isman1998Isman1998 Member Posts: 520 ★★★
    Wait a global bleed immune node? Just screw my 5 star rank 4 X23 I guess. :(
  • Sanctuary555Sanctuary555 Member Posts: 28
    DJSergy 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

    Totally agree. People are not gonna give up their 5/65 or 4/55 to replace with a 3/45 or 2/35 to go into AW with.
  • Maximus_SpankersonMaximus_Spankerson Member Posts: 445 ★★
    edited October 2018

    Do you have any suggestions on how we can do that? Like any tools in particular would be helpful in this kind of stuff?


    http://www.alliancewar.com/aw/


    Post edited by Kabam Lyra on
  • Tiny_Tank_Tiny_Tank_ Member Posts: 1
    This change has nothing to do with more Dynamic play, Kabam just wants us to buy more revives and potions. If you really want more Dynamic play remove potions and revives altogether Kabam. Let true skill be the deciding factor in Alliance Wars.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Member Posts: 36,489 ★★★★★
    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.

    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.

    I'm not sure what you mean by "a majority relying on the same champ". Do you mean, for example, a majority of players relying on the same X champ? Or a majority relying on the champs they like to bring? Also, you can look at some of Brian Grant's, Lagacy's, or COWhale's War Vids and see if they check other alliance members War Teams if you think that a large number of players in the higher tiers are using Blade. Because based of what I've seen, if anyone is using him it's probably for maybe a couple of pesky mystics and synergies. As for the Bleed Immunity Global node, there's a lot of champions that Bleed and rely on Bleed to maximize DPS, such as: GP, Domino, KM, Hawkeye, and especially AA just to name a few. That might not seem like much but when RNG grants you these champs as viable options to r5 out of the garbage pulled then you have to make do. And with these new nodes this is definitely a problem to those with such champs. So if they are considering that a Bleed Immune global node is necessary to promote Attacker Diversity, then I think they need to consider how it can negatively affect the players too.

    I'm pretty sure it was clear what I meant. I don't really subscribe to YouTube to make my own observations. What the Bleed Immunity Node does is encourage people not to rely on the same tactic. That's what it's all about. To add a level of challenge and rotate it in order to keep it less reliant on the same tactics. There's scarce little they could do outside of Global Nodes that isn't flat-out making certain Champs mandatory. Bleed is only one Debuff. People rely on it because it gets fast kills. The negative side to that is it takes away a degree of challenge.

    I mean...I just wanted to clarify.

    Anyways, unless if you are in the Master bracket, I think you should allow Youtubers to influence your observation to some degree if you want to make a valid opinion on a subject such as this.

    Regarding the point you made about the Bleed Immunity node "encouraging" people to not rely on the same tactic because it gets fast kills and takes away a degree of challenge, to me, is absurd. For one, the only thing in this current meta that will get you a fast kill and take away a degree of challenge is boosting your heart out which I doubt Kabam is going to try to change any time soon. Secondly, it's not like all people in the affected brackets have a wide range of r4 and r5 5* champions to choose from like their 4*s. One of our officers, for example, has been getting bad pulls from his 5* crystals except for a couple, which are AA and CB with AA being his main attacker and SW and CB being backup. (Side Note: If you want to stay competitive in the current state of AW you're going to have to finish fights in under 3 minutes) He brings AA every war because he has to for our alliance and not because it's easier to steamroll through AW. You might be asking, what's the point of bringing him up? It's because I can guarantee that there are other people in the same situation as him, maybe with different champs, that would be impacted very negatively because of this Global Node. In summary, you can't just say people rely on Bleed champs just because they get fast kills. In some situations, Bleed champs are all they've got to stay competitive.

    If Kabam wants people to change up attack teams as often as Idelest does during seasons that's totally fine by me. I just don't think adding a Global Node like Bleed Immunity is the way to do it. And if they do, at least buff the rewards a bit so we can grow our rosters to adapt to this new level of progression.

    So what exactly do you suggest as opposed to Global Nodes? There aren't many options to inhibit.

    I'm not opposed to Global Nodes in general. I'm just opposed to Global Nodes such as Bleed Immunity that could cripple teams. If they introduced nodes similar to Amped Up like the Mutant/Cosmic/Tech Wrath to promote the use of other champs then I'm totally fine with that because it leaves me the option to use my regular attack team if I have to. But Global Nodes similar to Bleed Immunity such as Overclocked or even Poison Immunity that force players to use champs they might not even have to in order to stay competitive is a problem.

    Also, as suggested by Dorky Diggety Dave before, they could just introduce Attacker Diversity if that's there main goal instead of Global Nodes.

    They can't really introduce Attacker Diversity in the way we know it because it's not the same as Defense. You have 3 options for yourself, not 50 options on a Map. Who you select may affect the opposing Ally based on what you can and cannot take down, but it really doesn't affect the same way where you're coming up against the same few Champs 30 or 40 times.
    Now, the goal they indicated is to encourage people to use other options. I may have used the same language to describe the Nodes, but that was my way of trying to be gentle. The purpose of the Nodes is to do exactly what they do. Limit your options so you have to look for other strategies. There isn't a kind of/sort of gentle way to limit options.
  • BigPoppaCBONEBigPoppaCBONE Member Posts: 2,383 ★★★★★
    If you want more diverse attackers and defenders, making current popular choices worse is the wrong way. Make other options better. Then players will exercise those options. Something so basic shouldn’t need to be spelled out after every announcement.
    Double-time it on making old champs less terrible. Not just with synergies tied to new champs.
  • SuelSuel Member Posts: 279
    When does it start?
  • SunblastXSunblastX Member Posts: 8
    Obviously we're going to use a small group of champions, because
    1: you guys create champions that only a small group can defeat.
    2: it is so expensive and difficult to get items to evolve champions that we are forced to stay with this small group.
    Instead of creating more problems, as you are clearly planning, solve those problems and you will see a greater variety in attack and defense.
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