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

DNA3000

Werewrym wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Brainimpacter wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Brainimpacter wrote: »

I dont think Kabam realise how many people are going to be left without a strong enough attack team for their tier after most put resources into champs that will be useless next season, Ive seen endless people in Line talk about quitting or not playing the season because they are not going to be able to clear their paths.

I would bet real money there aren't enough players in tiers 1 through 3 that would be unable to complete their war path due to bleed immunity to fill a medium-sized Burger King.

I would also bet real money there are literally thousands of people complaining on Line about something they are not actually going to face, because they are not in at least a challenger tier alliance (tiers 2 and 3).

last i knew tiers 1-3 were Expert and 4-5 challenger so a lot more alliances than you think, almost everyone from gold brackets up basically

I'm probably misremembering this then. However, I think this is basically everyone from Platinum upward, and some of Gold 1, if they were fighting competitively. My alliance was right on the border of Gold 1/Gold 2 and was hovering in tier 7-8 for the most part.. I doubt there are many players even in tier 5 that would throw up their hands and give up due to bleed immunity.

It’s about top 1000 in gold 1

Gold 1 is 301 - 1500, and Gold 2 is 1501 - 3000. My rough back of the envelope calculation using my own alliance's current placement to confine the numbers says that tiers 1 through 5, which are supposed to be the top 5% of all ranked alliances, should be somewhere between 1700 and 1800 alliances, approximately. Given the margin for error for that calculation and due to the fact that it is unlikely every tier 1 through 5 ranked alliance fought competitively throughout the entire season, that's rough agreement that the top five tiers of alliances correspond roughly to the master, platinum, and the gold 1 seasonal brackets approximately.

Brainimpacter

seems small when talking about only 1500-2000 alliances will get the changes, but thats actually upto 60,000 rosters affected.

Werewrym

DTMelodicMetal wrote: »

Werewrym wrote: »

It’s about top 1000 in gold 1

Top 3
Top 20 for master
Top 21-50 for plat 1
Top 51-100 for plat 2
Top 101-300 for plat 3
Top 301-1,500 for gold 1

Thanks, didn’t have time to find all the bracket cutoffs. I know for a fact that there are some tier 6 alliances in gold 1 though.

DTMelodicMetal

Werewrym wrote: »

Thanks, didn’t have time to find all the bracket cutoffs. I know for a fact that there are some tier 6 alliances in gold 1 though.

There are many tier 4-5 alliances in gold 1 as well. Most platinum 3 alliances maintain the tier 3 war points multiplier all season, some spent time in tier 4 last season.

DNA3000

Brainimpacter wrote: »

seems small when talking about only 1500-2000 alliances will get the changes, but thats actually upto 60,000 rosters affected.

The question is not how many players are affected in this context, but rather are those players in a position to react to the global buffs. For many lower tier players those buffs would be both significant and not easy to work around. But whether it is 60,00 or 600,000 players, if they are all strong players with large rosters the net impact on them will likely be far lower than the worst case scenarios being discussed in the thread.

Midknight007

DNA3000 wrote: »

Brainimpacter wrote: »

I dont think Kabam realise how many people are going to be left without a strong enough attack team for their tier after most put resources into champs that will be useless next season, Ive seen endless people in Line talk about quitting or not playing the season because they are not going to be able to clear their paths.

I would bet real money there aren't enough players in tiers 1 through 3 that would be unable to complete their war path due to bleed immunity to fill a medium-sized Burger King.

I would also bet real money there are literally thousands of people complaining on Line about something they are not actually going to face, because they are not in at least a challenger tier alliance (tiers 2 and 3).

My alliance is in Gold 1 and we are pretty solid tier 5. It would impact us. Only a handful in my alliance have 2 r5 5*. The rest have 1. We lack depth... so my complaints are valid.

RagamugginGunner

This is going to crush those in tiers 4 and 5.

HamedSO

Developers have remain so far from players that’s why a lot of people are stepping aside! Not sure if I suggest something this time my voice will be heard!

DTMelodicMetal

Midknight007 wrote: »

My alliance is in Gold 1 and we are pretty solid tier 5. It would impact us. Only a handful in my alliance have 2 r5 5*. The rest have 1. We lack depth... so my complaints are valid.

AW tiers are a lot more stacked than they were when AW Seasons started. Season 1 all top alliance members had 1 5/65 champion. Season 2 top alliance members had 2, maybe some had 3. Season 3 top alliance members had 3 5/65 champs, a few had 4, and last season 4 5/65 champs was becoming common for master tier players.

My season 2 alliance finished top 100 in platinum 3, we were tier 2-3 all season. My season 4 alliance finished top 300-400 in gold 1 , we were tier 4-5 all season. Tier 4-5 defenses last AW season were more stacked than tier 2-3 defenses during AW season 2. Far more players would be negatively impacted by a global bleed immunity buff than players who have enough 4/55-5/65 AW attackers to make adjustments without a decrease in AW performance.

Team_Sly

All of what you are saying will just fall on deaf ears, for me my X-23 will now be useless in AW due to bleed immune, also stating that “ if players are lucky enough to get the champs then they will have an advantage over those that dont” how is that even fair. I think you have shot your self in the foot this time Kabam, what once use to be a great game is now becoming a not so great game.

DNA3000

Team_Sly wrote: »

All of what you are saying will just fall on deaf ears, for me my X-23 will now be useless in AW due to bleed immune, also stating that “ if players are lucky enough to get the champs then they will have an advantage over those that dont” how is that even fair. I think you have shot your self in the foot this time Kabam, what once use to be a great game is now becoming a not so great game.

X-23 is probably one of the few winners in the global buff shuffle. Although she loses bleed she gains (I presume) her bleed immunity cruelty stacks which is probably a close to neutral swap, and in the meantime she gets the female champion heightened class advantage bonus on attack.

This reflexive who's good who's bad snap judgments are part of what I suspect the dynamic intent is intended to stamp out.

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

Brainimpacter wrote: »

seems small when talking about only 1500-2000 alliances will get the changes, but thats actually upto 60,000 rosters affected.

The question is not how many players are affected in this context, but rather are those players in a position to react to the global buffs. For many lower tier players those buffs would be both significant and not easy to work around. But whether it is 60,00 or 600,000 players, if they are all strong players with large rosters the net impact on them will likely be far lower than the worst case scenarios being discussed in the thread.

I'm inclined to agree. If the Top 5% has maintained their position without developing significant enough Rosters to deal with a Bleed Immune Node, that would outline a much larger flaw with the design. I'm with you. People will no doubt be able to adjust, overall. If they're of limited Rosters and Resources, I'm curious what they are doing in the Top 5%.

sbb75

If Kabam wanted to keep AW fresh and Dynamic and kill us more there are much better solutions...
How about the alliance can assign a set amount of nodes (6 per BG) specific to the Defender. Same ones used in Act.
Give people a reason to place:
Moon knight - Lunatic, Daredevil - Radar, Like Cage - Reborn.
Let the alliance pick where the node goes.

Without changing the entrie framework of AW you increase strategy. Keep it fresh changing it monthly and add Diversity to Defense without placing a sack of potatoes.

A Global Node and bleed immune just make most of the repeat defenders better
If you’ve at go the Bleed Immune route Then you should refund my Deep Wounds same as MD..
Based on today’s offer you took away over $100 worth of resources when on a Sale!! Or over $200 every other day if the year

OKAYGang

R4GE wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

gasmaskdude wrote: »

Can i get rank down tickets for this BS?

Besides the fact that it's not what they're for, what happens next rotation? More Tickets? That's a slippery slope.

Who are you to say what they are for? There used to be one reason for them, but Kabam changed the RDT game when they gave them away as a gift in December with no changes being made to a champ.

There is no longer an exact reasoning behind RDT's

I was temporarily retired and missed that give away

BigPoppaCBONE

DNA3000 wrote: »

Team_Sly wrote: »

All of what you are saying will just fall on deaf ears, for me my X-23 will now be useless in AW due to bleed immune, also stating that “ if players are lucky enough to get the champs then they will have an advantage over those that dont” how is that even fair. I think you have shot your self in the foot this time Kabam, what once use to be a great game is now becoming a not so great game.

X-23 is probably one of the few winners in the global buff shuffle. Although she loses bleed she gains (I presume) her bleed immunity cruelty stacks which is probably a close to neutral swap, and in the meantime she gets the female champion heightened class advantage bonus on attack.

This reflexive who's good who's bad snap judgments are part of what I suspect the dynamic intent is intended to stamp out.

Someone earlier was complaining that alternative debuffers like X-23 and Elektra only work on naturally immune champs. So no cruelty or armor breaks.

I agree with the idea that information would help change who people bring. I am in what used to be a Plat 1 alliance until the end of the season (now a home for the semi-retired due to burnout) and the information gathering to decide paths after the intro of seasons and the accompanying roster boom promoted a transition from Blade, GR and Iceman to 3 from Hyperion, Blade, Medusa, Corvus, Iceman, Rulk, etc. depending on the scouting, classes visible, and common strategic placements. Luckily we had a ton of 4-55s and at least 2 5-65s each to make that happen.

DNA3000

sbb75 wrote: »

If Kabam wanted to keep AW fresh and Dynamic and kill us more there are much better solutions...

What they are doing now isn't a solution. Kabam themselves state that their goal is to allow the players to have more control over how they use global buff-like mechanics in conjunction with their defense placement, but this was just a first early step to validating the idea and to slowly introduce the concept to the players.

Ref: "We’ll start off a little slow with Season 5. Although our intention is to allow Summoners to choose a buff that synergises well with their Defense rosters."

OKAYGang

What Kabam has done with Red Hulk, Luke Cage, Venom and Carnage is nothing short of awesome. People are ranking and using those champs now, when previously they were just the butt of many MCOC jokes. Great job Kabam you've figured out to encourage diversity! That formula works. This "Developer's Thoughts" one just discourages most players including myself.

When you buff old champs I want to grind and pay for more rank up materials so I can rank up more champs. When you nerf, I think why bother, they'll just nerf the good ones anyway making my efforts and money spent a waste.

Why the sudden 180 here? You were going in the right direction, then out of nowhere this.

GroundedWisdom

People keep calling it a nerf, but that's not at all what it is. It's a rotating Node. Nothing is changing about the Champs themselves. As for buffs, they've done a few and no doubt there's room for more. However, I think the list that people consider useless/less effective is much higher than can reasonably be reworked. There's a tendency to discard anything not God Tier. Buffs have to be calculated and done carefully, and within balance of other progress. It's not a matter of just sweeping all the old Champs.

BigPoppaCBONE

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

People keep calling it a nerf, but that's not at all what it is. It's a rotating Node. Nothing is changing about the Champs themselves. As for buffs, they've done a few and no doubt there's room for more. However, I think the list that people consider useless/less effective is much higher than can reasonably be reworked. There's a tendency to discard anything not God Tier. Buffs have to be calculated and done carefully, and within balance of other progress. It's not a matter of just sweeping all the old Champs.

The tendency to discard anything not God Tier is a natural consequence of too few resources. If Kabam wants diversity, people will need more ranking materials otherwise they’ll still bring their same old proven guys that they’ve ranked to usability and fight at a slight disadvantage because that’s all they have.

Everyone everywhere hates forced changes that make their situation worse. That's a terrible way to promote change. Offer incentives and the ability to dust off old champs a rank them and people will. Some of the old champs could be tightened up pretty quickly. It's not brain surgery or anything. Look at the successful champs and figure out what makes them successful. There's a few things that they know people find desirable in a champ and things that people hate. They could figure it out for a few champs without a tedious, overly long beta period.

DNA3000

OKAYGang wrote: »

What Kabam has done with Red Hulk, Luke Cage, Venom and Carnage is nothing short of awesome. People are ranking and using those champs now, when previously they were just the butt of many MCOC jokes. Great job Kabam you've figured out to encourage diversity! That formula works. This "Developer's Thoughts" one just discourages most players including myself.

When you buff old champs I want to grind and pay for more rank up materials so I can rank up more champs. When you nerf, I think why bother, they'll just nerf the good ones anyway making my efforts and money spent a waste.

Why the sudden 180 here? You were going in the right direction, then out of nowhere this.

They explain their position in the announcement. Although introducing new champs (and revisiting old ones) can change the strategic balance of the game, it does so extremely slowly, and not consistently either. They are attempting to change the way alliance war plays out strategically, so players perceive more strategic avenues.

Part of the problem is that buffing old champions or introducing new champions tends to only displace previous options by superceding them, they don't add new options as often. It doesn't add counterplay if the best AW attacker gets replaced with a different best AW attacker. That's not the change that the developers are interested in. What they want is more of a rock/paper/scissors gameplay where there game encourages players to place defenses that are better against the most common attackers than just placing the strongest defense period, and force attackers to then respond to that by reconsidering who they bring on offense to respond to the actions of the players.

Introducing new champions and buffing old ones does encourage players to either hunt for them or rank them up if they had them on the bench. But that's not the problem specified as the problem they are trying to attack with their Dev Diary. It isn't a 180 turn from their point of view.

ShaggyM

This thread keeps getting moved off the main page. This is very important for everyone to read. They are negatively changing the most important part of the game.

unknown

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MEKA5

BigPoppaCBONE wrote: »

The tendency to discard anything not God Tier is a natural consequence of too few resources. If Kabam wants diversity, people will need more ranking materials otherwise they’ll still bring their same old proven guys that they’ve ranked to usability and fight at a slight disadvantage because that’s all they have.

Perfectly explained.
Also buffing the (many) bad champs will help in the long term to diversify aq/aw/quest teams naturally.

I really hope Kabam drops this terrible idea and takes inspiration from the MANY ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS proposed in this forum. A lot of positive feedback and valuable ideas here.

@Kabam Miike

RagamugginGunner

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

People keep calling it a nerf, but that's not at all what it is. It's a rotating Node. Nothing is changing about the Champs themselves. As for buffs, they've done a few and no doubt there's room for more. However, I think the list that people consider useless/less effective is much higher than can reasonably be reworked. There's a tendency to discard anything not God Tier. Buffs have to be calculated and done carefully, and within balance of other progress. It's not a matter of just sweeping all the old Champs.

When the game only allows you to max out 3-5 total champs after playing for 3+ years then the players HAVE to discard non god tier champs. It's a self inflicted problem, that they have total control over.

Kabam, and many of their blind supporters on this forum, don't seem to understand that in a game like this any change, even a small one, has a huge impact on everyone. Of course people who are in tiers that won't change can speculate on how those changes will impact players, but they won't actually know.

RagamugginGunner

DNA3000 wrote: »

OKAYGang wrote: »

What Kabam has done with Red Hulk, Luke Cage, Venom and Carnage is nothing short of awesome. People are ranking and using those champs now, when previously they were just the butt of many MCOC jokes. Great job Kabam you've figured out to encourage diversity! That formula works. This "Developer's Thoughts" one just discourages most players including myself.

When you buff old champs I want to grind and pay for more rank up materials so I can rank up more champs. When you nerf, I think why bother, they'll just nerf the good ones anyway making my efforts and money spent a waste.

Why the sudden 180 here? You were going in the right direction, then out of nowhere this.

They explain their position in the announcement. Although introducing new champs (and revisiting old ones) can change the strategic balance of the game, it does so extremely slowly, and not consistently either. They are attempting to change the way alliance war plays out strategically, so players perceive more strategic avenues.

Part of the problem is that buffing old champions or introducing new champions tends to only displace previous options by superceding them, they don't add new options as often. It doesn't add counterplay if the best AW attacker gets replaced with a different best AW attacker. That's not the change that the developers are interested in. What they want is more of a rock/paper/scissors gameplay where there game encourages players to place defenses that are better against the most common attackers than just placing the strongest defense period, and force attackers to then respond to that by reconsidering who they bring on offense to respond to the actions of the players.

Introducing new champions and buffing old ones does encourage players to either hunt for them or rank them up if they had them on the bench. But that's not the problem specified as the problem they are trying to attack with their Dev Diary. It isn't a 180 turn from their point of view.

That is simply not possible in this game. With 3-5 maximum r5 chams and 85% of all champs being garbage on defense or offense, no one can or will actually adjust their teams to anything.

It actually scares me how little the dev team seems to understand about how the game works.

Werewrym

I don't understand why people are actually defending these changes... In reality I don't think they will have a huge effect on the difficulty of war, however, they most certainly will not accomplish the goals that Kabam has mentioned to us. In fact, it will have the opposite effect. These changes will limit even further the effectiveness of our rosters for this season of war.

Most players have at least 3-5 good champs for AW attack, and most likely at least 1 of those will have a heavy reliance on bleed. Take that ability away, and they are now left with only 4 viable attackers. This isn't some magical solution that forces us to diversify our attack team, it forces us to even further limit who we bring to the attack phase.

I previously had 4 champs that I rotated between using on AW attack, one of those was AA. With these changes, I have no choice but to sit AA on the bench which now leaves me with an attack team that will never change. Exactly the thing Kabam said they didn't want to do.

MEKA5

Mates @Werewrym @RagamugginGunner the proposed changes are untenable indeed.
Let's keep the discussion constructive and post new ideas, no need to argue with people defending the main post ;-)

For example, another option could be to provide, before the start of the AW season, some rank up/down material to let everybody adjust to the changing nodes.

Let's say 3 items to rank up a 5* and 3 items to rank down a 5*
5 items to rank up a 4* and 5 items to rank down a 4*

Just a rough idea.

unknown

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Destroyer

Kabam,

I am sure that you will stick with your plan of implementing global nodes in AW, so I'll have to adapt. However, the lack of rank up materials will make it very hard to adjust my rotation of AW attackers and defenders, which is something you have stated as a goal: More diversity.

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

It isn't just having the right champ though, it's also being able to get them to a suitable level in order to compete in high tier wars. For reference, I have finished in P3 the last two seasons, fighting in tier 3 all of last season. I have never been below tier 4 since Seasons started.

If you are going go forward with these global nodes AND will continue keeping the rate a player can acquire T2A and T5B at it's current level AND if you would like to see more diversity in AW, I would like to suggest the following to you for your consideration.

1. Increase the attack timer from three minutes to five or six minutes.

Three minutes is just not enough time in most cases for a r3 5* to be useful when every death counts. This would make an r3 5* champ much more viable as an attack option in the hands of a skilled player that takes very few hits over the course of a war.
It would also increase the number of champs to consider bringing to r4 for attack by adding high utility/lower damage output champs to the discussion. Rogue, Dorm, GR, Beast come to mind here. In addition to increasing the timers you could also

2. Remove the challenger rating in AW.

Again, this would give players more incentive to bring r3 5*/r5 4* champs in on AW attack, allowing skillful players to utilize more of their rosters. It may also allow players to consider taking strictly defensive oriented 5* champs to r4 more often as they would likely have more attack options to choose from in their pool of r3 5*/r5 4* champs.

3. Make all champs visible on the map.

This would be a controversial change, but it would also force us to carefully consider placements knowing our opponents can prepare for their paths in advance. And by implementing this along with #1 and #2 above, it would almost certainly encourage alliances to really plan out player's paths, thereby shaking up the monotony of players typically having one assigned path because they have the champs in their roster to allow for the most success based on the most likely defenders one would see on certain nodes coupled with the nodes themselves. Have an r4/r5 Void? Welcome to path 6/7...every time.

As an example, if AW season 5 is rolled out with the Amped Up and Bleed Immune global nodes and the above changes were also made, my r3 Rogue, Angela, Proxima, or Psylocke could come off of my bench. Those players with an r3 Void may be able to take path 6/7, allowing the player with the r4 Void to possibly take a different path using different champs. This would make things more "dynamic" from war to war as players would more than likely be taking different paths with different champs based on visible matchups.

I think changes like this could actually make AW fun again. I welcome any input from my fellow players on the above.

GroundedWisdom

RagamugginGunner wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

People keep calling it a nerf, but that's not at all what it is. It's a rotating Node. Nothing is changing about the Champs themselves. As for buffs, they've done a few and no doubt there's room for more. However, I think the list that people consider useless/less effective is much higher than can reasonably be reworked. There's a tendency to discard anything not God Tier. Buffs have to be calculated and done carefully, and within balance of other progress. It's not a matter of just sweeping all the old Champs.

When the game only allows you to max out 3-5 total champs after playing for 3+ years then the players HAVE to discard non god tier champs. It's a self inflicted problem, that they have total control over.

Kabam, and many of their blind supporters on this forum, don't seem to understand that in a game like this any change, even a small one, has a huge impact on everyone. Of course people who are in tiers that won't change can speculate on how those changes will impact players, but they won't actually know.

Yes, the impact is you can't rely in Bleed for a Season. Given your example, if all 3-5 rely on Bleed, that's more of a tactical issue than Resources. Personally, I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket, but that's how I Rank.
In any case, there are many other options besides Bleed. No doubt 6*s have been acquired as well. I doubt they're all Bleed. Nor do you need to use a Max Champ. Point is, there are choices.
The whole reaction is as if this is some type of permanent change. It's the first rotation. It's going to swap out. That's what I'm saying. The response is as if they've irreparably damaged Champs. It's a Node. One that won't stay indefinitely, and doesn't change the Champs at all. Still just as useful.
For the record, there are quite a few other Debuffs. I don't care what Tier I'm in. I wouldn't rely on one alone. There's Incinerate, Shock, Armor Break, Degen, etc. That brings me back to my original point. People will survive. They'll just have to do something different. That's the real argument in my opinion. The same tactic can't be used indefinitely if the game mode wants to be challenging.