**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
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Will there be issues? Definitely. Not even free gifts can please everyone in the community.
Are the problems unsolvable? No.
Have they tried making changes to see if such issues can be solved? I doubt so.
The problem with varied start times, is the issue with varied end times, which will make it such that collusion becomes possible again as people are separated into tranches.
Yes, I agree international alliances are harder to coordinate but all alliances fall into several country segments. For example, an international alliance might have 4 Indians, 8 Americans, 6 Europeans, 6 Australians and 6 Chinese from China (which is unlikely given how diverse such a group is. Most of the time there’s a majority [or two] amongst nationalities.)
Instead of looking at it from a micro perspective of individual BGs, look at it from an alliance perspective and shift the members amongst the BGs to facilitate coordination.
Like I said, such issues can be worked around. It just depends on whether the leadership of the alliance wants to put in the effort and whether they are willing to go through a transition phase.
Somethings shouldnt have to be worked with.
I co-ordinate my alliance too.
I know this is going to creat unnecessary headache and drama.
If i send the people on paths based only on timezones to ensure completion of bg with 8hrs left then i will have the wrong people on the wrong paths.
If i co-ordinate based on who is best for which path as i do now the bg wont be clear until 3-4 hrs before war ends at which time my boss killers will be sound asleep as it will be like 3-4 am for them.
So this leaves me with 2 options.
Kick people and recruit based in timezones to make things easier.
Or take the chance we may not get done.
Whether or not this is possible for your alliance is not the question.
The fact is it is evident that a large amount of the community are going to have issue working with this and for benifit of the community it should be looked at.
There are options.
But there is no need for memebers of the communitity here to attack other memebers of the community
Players could adjust to having to play with only one hand or underwater. It is a meaningless statement to make that players could adjust. They could also adjust by doing nothing and just failing, and getting used to failure.
You can say that if AW now ends when I'm asleep the alliance can adjust to that by having someone else do what I do. That's not true, but lets assume it is true. How do *I* adjust to that? Do I quit my job and move to shift work, or do I set an alarm and wake up in the middle of the night to participate? Both of those are theoretically possible, but it is an unintended hardship. Moreover, there are solutions to them.
Players could also adjust to the current match making system. They could change their match times, they could take steps to avoid match failures. And they could just get better when fighting alliances far higher in rating. And statistically speaking, bad matches almost certainly affect fewer alliances than inability to shift times do, because bad matches are a very small percentage of all matches.
Players can adjust to anything. If that's a valid reason for not exploring solutions to the start time problem, it should have been used as a valid reason to not change AW and we could have saved a lot of time and resources.
The way I intend to adjust to the change is to advocate for adjusting it to account for the new problems associated with fixed start times. I'll keep doing so until the problem gets addressed.
Incidentally, and for the record, at no time did I argue for staggered start times. In fact, I argued against staggered start times in this kind of match system both in the past and in this thread.
As i have said many times.
We should be wanting what is best for people.
Yes i can wake at 4am to kill my boss but i shouldnt have to.
And fyi
My alliance is 8 aussies (3hr time diff just between them too, 2 philipinos, 2 chinese, 1 indian, 4 uk, 2 western eu, 3 eastern eu, 8 americans and 1 african.
We are very very diverse. We span all timezones.
As i said before. I can base people paths on when they are awake but still with links someone will be waiting for someone who is asleep.
Even if we do timezone paths, i will end up with someone fighting a bleed node who doesnt have a stron bleed immune, someone fighting debuff immune who sucks at it.
There is no “easy” solution.
Its alot of work that may or may not get the result we need.
When kabam could do something to make it better.
What if they adjusted the time forward 6hrs to make it rasier for those who are complaining now? Would that make everyone happy? No. You would just get a new set of peeps complaining.
How about they do this.
War 1 starts at 10:00am, war 2 starts at 1pm, war 3 starts at 4pm. That way everyone has a war that suits and one or two that doesnt.
Would that make everyone happy?
No it would make everyone upset...
But they could easily have 3 matchmaking times.
And wat would be wrong with only 12 hr defense window? And longer attack window. You didnt like that ifdea. Yet you would ve able to make it work.
Rn war takes 48hrs
4hrs matchmaking.
20hrs defence,
24hrs attack.
Surely
4, 16, 28 would work..... if someone cant log on in a 16hr window they are not gunna be much good to you when it comes to attack anyway.
My defense is structured for doversity.
We have very close to perfect diversity.
If i start moving peeps around there goes my diversity.
Or if i then change peoples defences to keep high diversity we will end up with useless 4* 3/30 defenders amd it will take and entire season to build up strength in defence.
All this for something that kabam could easily address by making a change to start and finish times.
I couldnt care when aw starts that is not so important if someone cant jump in for 8 hrs there is plenty of time to clear paths.
But if someone cant jump in for 8 hrs and someone else cant be around for the last hours it suddenly looks bad.
Personally i suggest longer attack window and shorter placement window.
Now this may not be the best option and thats fine but there will be a right option that kabam can look at and should implement
As the leader of my alliance, I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. As a primarily SE Asia alliance, we are now inherently at a disadvantage. People say "just change paths", that's with the assumption that your members roster depth is capable of the path adjustments, as well as the time & availability to take on the new path. We started wars when it was best for our group, it was a general time. With linked nodes and energy restrictions to 5, this significantly reduces less mobile alliance that don't have the same flexibility as top Alliances. AW is fun but it's hard to swallow having to tell my teammates they need to set alarm clocks for us to be the most efficient.
TL;DR
Increase AW energy to 6-7 so that we can at least advance to each three phases of the map. This gives every ample opportunity to participate without reinventing the wheel.
The problem with shifting members amongst BG's is that for a lot of alliances BG's are not only based on timezone, but roster dependent too so that they have counters to most issues one might face in AW and are still able to do Map 5/6 smoothly. When you shift BG's, you mess that up. And you can't 'make' members get champs from anywhere, seeing that pulls are entirely RNG and we get **** pulls 90+% of the time.
I actually suggested increasing to 10 a bit further down: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/721913/#Comment_721913
In my alliance, I'm in the one battlegroup that is specifically allocated for English speaking players. The other two speak almost exclusively Italian.
Yeah there are a variety of factors that have to be considered. Even in an alliance where you have all people speaking the same language, rosters have to be considered.
On another note, how does your BG work for you? If you guys have counters to most champs, well and good. But if not, wouldn't it pose an issue?
Give Alliances the ability to choose a power level for each war; each power level is a multiplier of points.
Power Level 0- All champs revealed .8x standard war points
Power Level 1- Standard war
Power Level 2- Global buff active; 1.2x standard war points
Power Level 3- Defensive synergies active; 1.4x standard war points
Power Level 4- Global buff and defensive synergies active; 1.6x standard war points
This would allow alliances the ability to move up in the rankings faster during the season; It would also allow alliances to throw a hail mary during the last week to jump tiers. This would also allow some alliances to pick an easier war if they were going to have one player not available (as oppose to dropping them, which some alliances understandably do).
This would eliminate the excuse of not having defensive synergies active. No need to create and add icons for a unique synergy. Alliances should be prepared to face champs with unique synergies if their alliance chose that power level.
Alliances that face each other would not have to pick the same power level.
The values of the multiplier can be tweaked. Was only recommending a way to allow alliances to gain additional points and implement defensive synergies.
But, my alliance is a bunch of working class guys. We start our wars at 7pm CST so that way we can work, come home and engage with our families, then enjoy the game. Locking us into a timeframe outside of that takes away all of our flexibility and will lower our effectiveness and motivation for war.
This is going to put a new pressure on an alliance that is a high functioning one...but keeping us high functioning at 30 guys is a part time job now...how much more time will it take after this artificial bottleneck is placed on wars?
I don't appreciate this at all kabam.
The timing. The changes state that you can enlist for the next war while you are currently in one. So no one will ever miss getting to match up unless you just forget to enlist. And you still have 20 hours to place which is plenty of time regardless of time zones and 24 hours of attack so it really doesn’t matter where you live or what kind of schedule you have. You still have the same amount of time to complete war rather it starts at 2am or 2pm.
Valid question. I am not apart of condoning shell swapping, but I am taking a look at this from both sides.
Here’s the conundrum. Just because someone or some alliance has an end game roster, doesn’t mean they HAVE to face master alliances in AW every time AND win half of the matchups to stay at that level. Guess what happens if you get an end game alliance that decides “forget this. Don’t boost because it’s too espensive, we’ll probably lose and eventually fall back a tier.” Lower alliances will then see these big rosters.
I’m low-balling when I say 85-90% of plat 1 and master alliances boost every way (it’s more like 95-100%). If you aren’t boosting, the chances of you winning drops significantly.
Considering that, It’s inevitable that lower alliances will face these former master/plat 1 alliances. It’s unfair and unjust to say that those alliances must pay for boosts and win so lower alliances won’t face them.
So some alliances start AW seasons with a lower rating and face lower alliances in the beginning of the season, while other alliances stay put and fall back and face lower alliances towards the end of the season. Either way, lower alliances will face tougher matchups.
Also consider with more content to complete, more players/alliances are putting out better defenses.
I might be incorrect in my perception of this since I don’t have any direct insight on how shell swapping works. Just how I see things from the outside.
We are upset that we cannot pick the 24 hours we fight @Batman_6809 . In the old system, we would start a war search at 6:30pm CST, then fight from 7pm day 1 through 7pm day 2, finishing up when we could focus. With this new system, we are locked into the 2pm to 2pm the next day...finishing up while we are all busy at work. It will decrease our ability to focus on work or war...
War has different stages of attack. People keep saying there are 24 hours regardless. This shouldn't be hard. If much of the alliance is asleep at the start of attack phase it's all well and good. If much of the alliance is asleep for the end of the attack phase it's very different.
1. How an alliance chooses to fight wars factors into their performance, and match making by war rating matches conceptually by performance. This is generally considered to be fair match making in ratings-based competitions. In other words, if alliance A has a huge roster but chooses not to spend any resources on war and alliance B has a small roster but chooses to spend a ton of resources on war, and they end up with the same rating because in actual play they are about equally strong overall, it is considered fair to match them against each other. Yes, alliance B is spending more, but that is their choice and they benefit from that choice by being in a higher tier that earns higher rewards. Alliance A gets those same opportunities by virtue of building a stronger roster, which is an intrinsic advantage of building rosters.
2. This has nothing to do with shells. The idea behind shell alliances, at least in the form that most people complain about, is that there are advantages to fighting in lower tiers or just at lower rating in the same tier relative to higher ones in some cases, but the only way to get to a lower tier normally is to lose, which costs points. So there's an opportunity to manipulate the rating system by having two alliances: in one you put your main accounts that you want to win the best rewards, and you play as hard as possible to try to win as much as possible. This means you will likely end the season with a high rating. In the second alliance you put secondary or place holder accounts and you deliberately lose just enough to lower your rating to exactly the point you want. Then at the start of next season you swap: you put your mains in the shell, and you transfer the secondary accounts to the first alliance. Now you repeat: you go all out in the shell, while you deliberately lose in the first alliance just enough to reset your rating to what you want. Continue indefinitely. This allows you to start every season with the rating you want even if it is lower than the rating you deserve for the amount of times you won. This is very oversimplified just to illustrate the concept: in practice this is often done in more complex ways or in combination with dumping rating during the off season. The idea is if a bunch of people leave their alliance and join a shell, they will inherit the rating of the shell. Done right, they can reset their rating to whatever they want. Shells are used mostly because if you make a new alliance instead your rating gets set to zero, and that's lower than desired. The shell lets you "hang on" to a higher rating to reset to.
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The start and end time has nothing to do with kabam though. If most of your alliance is asleep at a certain time than you should recruit for your area or have separate bgs for specific time zones. It doesn’t matter when it starts you still have to communicate with your alliance mates to clear each one of your paths.
The start and end time has nothing to do with kabam though. If most of your alliance is asleep at a certain time than you should recruit for your area or have separate bgs for specific time zones. It doesn’t matter when it starts you still have to communicate with your alliance mates to clear each one of your paths.
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I think this is the problem. Most alliances have already recruited for that very reason. Now with this round of changes they’re expected to do it again. Many alliances have been together for years and are getting a little sick of being jerked around every couple of months when Kabam wants to try something different. War has been a cluster f ever since seasons came out. It’s split up many alliances and now looks like it might do it again. A lot of these guys are only hanging on because of friends anyway and the more unrest that war keeps causing is just making people quit.
On that same line, would you also complain and blame Kabam if you were unable to get your 3rd match of AW in?
But this also means that much of the alliance were awake since the start of attack phase, is that not right? It's 24 hours so assuming much of the alliance is asleep at the end of attack phase, this means they still had at least 13-14 hours awake when they could spend their energy..