**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.
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.
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.
Comments
Not bothered by the cold hard truth lol. There is an identifiable problem that can be fixed. I don't have a problem with lower alliances losing to groups with a guy that has a road block defense per se. I don't have a problem with 30 guys getting together and forming a new alliance and working their way up (which will also result in mismatches). There will always be some mismatches. The problem is groups intentionally creating mismatches because they want to win wars and get high tier rewards while facing lower competition. Did an alliance break up and 15 guys joined another group that was active and had some people leave? No problem. Did 25 guys leave a perfectly viable alliance and join a group that had a few placeholders but a reasonable war rating? Different story. Might you find a gray area that would be hard to identify? Sure. Should we then throw our hands up in the air and say welp, guess we can't do anything when we all know what is going on? Not so much.
None of this has anything to do with me losing to these groups or not losing to them. I think Kabam should put a stop to the manipulation of war rating by alliances. Personally I've been far more affected by facing groups who were piloting and later penalized for it.
Up till now, nobody has even engaged me on my suggestion that the root of the problem is the scoring and matchmaking system.
There is a solution. Tag individual players with a war rating based on the last 20 wars they have done. An alliance’s war rating is the average of all members’.
So no matter what Alliance such members are swapped into, the average war rating remains true to serve as an indication of war ability.
Did you suggest an alternative? If so I missed it.
My suggested solution to the problem, which I identify as one of scoring. @LeNoirFaineant
My suggested solution to the problem, which I identify as one of scoring. @LeNoirFaineant
Your suggestion is entirely unprincipled. You are ok with 30 master guys dropping down to 0 war rating, but not 2000 war rating. There is no principled basis. It is simply because on situation does not affect you (0 war rating), but the other does (2000 war rating). As you mentioned, your problem lies in the alliance managing to still get "high tier rewards while facing lower competition", and not in mismatches or dropping down per se. If that is the problem, then the obvious choice is to fix the scoring/rewards system as per my post above. Rather than try to limit players' freedom to move where they want to with arbitrary rules.
No, it isn’t. Starting a new competitive alliance is fine, and the people that do it sacrifice rewards for awhile building it. Totally different from joining a war rating manipulated shell alliance. One is legit gaming, the other is gaming the system. You really can’t see the difference? Also, 2k war rating alliances don’t affect me lol and nothing we are discussing has anything to do with trying to stop something because it affects me or my alliance personally. The repeated suggestion that I’m objecting to something simply because it affects me is a little insulting and in this case entirely untrue
So would you object to 30 guys leaving their alliance and starting a brand new one from scratch? What about finding and joining one that has 100 war rating?
No, because the next season they may start with 2500 and that could, depending on the scoring system again, put them in range for Platinum 1 rewards or so.
Because weight gives boxers a clear advantage. How do we determine the appropriate measure of "weight" in the context of AW? Player PI or roster size? Prestige? Number of r5 5*s? Some measure of individual player's skills by a historical measure of their AW performance (as has been suggested above)? There is no clean cut method, contrary to boxing.
It would be akin to imposing a weight class on sports like football or hockey. What is the proper basis other than leagues - professional, semi-pro, amateur? And in those cases, is there ever a ban on a professional going to play one day in the amateur league?
Can’t think of a legit reason why 30 would leave and start over. But all your slippery slope arguments are irrelevant. Whatever system is put in place I’m sure some will still push the boundaries. That’s not a reason to not stop the current abuses.
There is, as I've suggested. Prestige.
It is a huge reason not to implement a system that will be extremely over-inclusive. You will end up penalising perfectly legitimate intentions, surely that is a mark of a bad rule/system.
You may not see a reason as to why 30 would leave and start over, but can we rule it out? We can't. Same way we can't rule out 30 members wanting to move to an alliance with 500, or 1000, or 2000 war rating for instance, for perfectly legitmate reasons. Stop trying to ban player choices, and think of how to fix the system.
Some here are already moving on to that discussion, which I think is a great start.
I dunno why your compring ringers to sandbaggers as those are two different beasts.
Anyways, you’re obviously heavily invested in protecting your ability to sandbag, GL with that.
*Furthermore they have a system in place for dungeons which tallies a rosters strength based on the number of champions at a certain rank and places people into a “league” or “weight class” based on what they’re capable of acheiving. I’m not sure of the viability but something similiar could be applied to war rating where alliances are not capable of selecting thier WR but instead granted it at the start of a season if they attempt to sandbag to start.
The only thing I'm "heavily invested" in is my option, one day, to quit playing at the master level and play with a couple of my friends in a small alliance, without the risk of getting penalised for that, or fingers pointed at us for 'cheating'. The ideas some are proposing here are so dangerously over-inclusive -- its using a scattershot approach to solve a narrow problem, and not caring who else gets hit in the process.
That said, I do see som value in your suggestion of factoring in defensive and offensive rating into the scoring system somehow. But the way it was done in the past was merely as a scoring factor, and not part of the matchmaking system. Not sure if that would solve the problem entirely.
Not sure why you think people are trying to penalize you for joining a small allaince, as you’ll be incapable of competing for serious rewards under that scenario anyways which isn’t what people are discussing. People are discussing how to prevent and punish people who abuse and game the AW point system to increase their rewards by sandbagging as a group.
*Furthermore that, to my recollection of this thread, is the least touched upon subject as you seem to be focused on protecting groups of people being able to manipulate their AW rating at will by swapping thinking they are somehow entitled to win the vast majority of season matches whilst minimizing risk from playing at their own level, that’s the very definition of sandbagging.
Because there will be that risk to me if I ever choose to do that. Read up a few posts back and you'll see my supposition that a team of 10 players joining any alliance with 2000 war rating will almost definitely allow that ally to win all its matches up to 2500 rating. Would that be considered "sandbagging as a group", or an "abuse and gaming the AW point system to increase rewards" by your definition or not? It is inherently vague with no principled method to draw the line.
I merely highlight that there is no principled way to do this, and that is food for thought for the developers if/when they decide to make rules to govern this. My point is simply that they can try to introduce something stopping 30 people from swapping, but then what are they going to do about 10 people? A more fundamental change to the scoring and matchmaking system is needed, rather than a superficial attempt at constraining people's choices.
The scoring system needs to be able to absorb and correct itself for alliance swaping, group transfers, ect.
As I stated earlier in this thread, the scoring system rewards too many points for winning thus making winning the only thing that actually matters. It's always better to win in tier 5 than lose in tier 3. Even though the competition and difficulty in tier 3 is significantly harder, an alliance that loses in tier 3 will ultimately get less rewards than alliances that win in tier 5.
*Player behavior is the problem, and people are proposing there should be punishments/adjustments for engaging in that behaivor.
Make it substantial, so the bonuses of exploiting the system are devalued.
Change brackets, lose the bonus.
Change team, lose the bonus.
Don't alter the actual war.
You can win all you want, but you won't get a bonus for exploiting the weaknesses of the system.
People generally war for resources, not wins.
I've said that AW seasons have killed much of the enjoyment of this game. You have to go hard for 12 straight wars to get the rewards you need. That instinctively leads to all the cheating we've seen plus all the BS that goes on for everyone in competitive alliances with the constant cycle of kicking the worst players to try to get better players. It's led to so much burnout and distrust amongst the community.
If they did away with seasons and just broke up the rewards into the war rewards it would solve so many issues. Each war would be so much less important and if, for example, there is a war running on Christmas or New Years (I know that's a silly thought because no smart company would put mandatory content on those two days) you could just choose to not do them and not sacrifice an entire season of rewards.