Early Look: New Alliance Wars Maps - Discussion Thread

Hey Everybody!

We've got another Early Look for you all! This time, we're introducing brand new Maps for all Tiers of Alliance Wars!

We recently ran a Beta for Alliance Wars that featured a number of different Updates to the Mode, and our Beta Players offered us a wealth of feedback. We’ve parsed the data and feedback that we collected, and want to give you all a glimpse into our plans moving forward.

In our Beta, we updated the map and also introduced a new feature called “Defense Tactics”. The Map update introduced a new layout and new Buffs, while Defense Tactics allowed Alliance Leadership to choose a Global Buff to apply to the Map, which allows for Defenses to be more customizable and setup in a more meaningful way.

The feedback we received was that these two major changes together were quite jarring, and that it was too much all at once. We agree with this sentiment so we have decided to stagger the release of the Map update and the release of Defense Tactics (currently scheduled for Season 11).

Read all about the upcoming map changes in the Early Look here!

Comments

Greywarden

Any update on whether or not match making is being looked at.

Look at your top 3,....look at some of the groups in master and platinum 1....

Tasty_Yum_Yums

I’d like to be optimistic but I see “burnout” in high numbers when the new map kicks off. We won’t be able to assign paths and allow some people to run them on a normal/routine time, as we won’t be able to advance into the 2nd/3rd sections until all 9 paths are completed in the previous section. In the current setup, the middle paths usually wait until the last 1/3 of the war to coordinate and go. We’re now needing officers to arrange paths by section and try coordinating efforts for each section for each war. And this is after the I’ll-received change to not allowing alliances to schedule war start times.

This isn’t even considering the new (more difficult) nodes to adjust too. Oh, and of course no increase in rewards.

I’d like to be wrong with my anticipation of this being a failure, but all signs point otherwise. The two weeks will see players give a fair chance for this to work, but we’ll see an increase in drop outs just days before season 10 kicks off.

RagamugginGunner

Still looking for a picture with the linked nodes. Is everything going to be linked?

QuikPik

Is each section self contained as in no links between them?

TacoScotty

Please let everyone know if prestige will continue to play a large role in matchmaking in upcoming season(s)? I enjoy seeing master alliances with players that don’t even have 4 r5 5*s. Various gold1 alliances would stomp them. You are now effectively making the platinums and master ranks 10-20% smaller (or more) for higher prestige alliances since those spots are reserved for lower prestige. If you want to keep it that way at least increase all the size of the brackets by like 25% to address this for s10.

However, when you roll out new rewards on s11, which may include t5cc, you can’t give prestige the weight you are giving now as that should be limited to the best (e.g. all weight to war rating).

GroundedWisdom

As long as the system doesn't allow for manipualtion of that War Rating, so be it. Otherwise, it becomes a useless measure of ability.

xNig

Please let everyone know if prestige will continue to play a large role in matchmaking in upcoming season(s)? I enjoy seeing master alliances with players that don’t even have 4 r5 5*s. Various gold1 alliances would stomp them. You are now effectively making the platinums and master ranks 10-20% smaller (or more) for higher prestige alliances since those spots are reserved for lower prestige. If you want to keep it that way at least increase all the size of the brackets by like 25% to address this for s10.

However, when you roll out new rewards on s11, which may include t5cc, you can’t give prestige the weight you are giving now as that should be limited to the best (e.g. all weight to war rating).

In Xtum’s defence, they are very good players. My alliance fought them during Seasons and we lost by 2 deaths I think. They ceded about 15 deaths and were very heavily boosted for all fights.

synergy247

I’d like to be optimistic but I see “burnout” in high numbers when the new map kicks off. We won’t be able to assign paths and allow some people to run them on a normal/routine time, as we won’t be able to advance into the 2nd/3rd sections until all 9 paths are completed in the previous section. In the current setup, the middle paths usually wait until the last 1/3 of the war to coordinate and go. We’re now needing officers to arrange paths by section and try coordinating efforts for each section for each war. And this is after the I’ll-received change to not allowing alliances to schedule war start times.

This isn’t even considering the new (more difficult) nodes to adjust too. Oh, and of course no increase in rewards.

I’d like to be wrong with my anticipation of this being a failure, but all signs point otherwise. The two weeks will see players give a fair chance for this to work, but we’ll see an increase in drop outs just days before season 10 kicks off.

Fully agree 1,000%. I would like to know if the mods are in an alliance and if so will also be participating in the off season to gain some first hand exposure to this... @Kabam Miike @Kabam Lyra

synergy247

Also this is no longer an early look we kinda need to know details since we now have one less war to plan for the season...

synergy247

Any update on whether or not match making is being looked at.

Look at your top 3,....look at some of the groups in master and platinum 1....

I would like to know this as well, matchmaking needs an overhaul. Missing the forest for the trees to be focusing on changing maps and defence tactics when the fundamentals of working out who will be placed where still need to be resolved to avoid any obvious disparity

unknown

This content has been removed.

Longtimegamer

Seasons ruined the alliance aspect of this game.

When it first came out last year, rewards suddenly took precedent over friendship, and life long teams dissolved, imploded, or disbanded.

After the dust settled and players started finding equally skilled mates, we came across another huge problem. Cost and burnout. War has become harder and harder. Progressively harder nodes, significantly harder defenders, and when you combine the two it adds up to a very high cost and it keeps going up.

Burnout is now the big issue, and HAS BEEN a big issue for many seasons..

And this new map won't do anything to change. In fact it will make it worse. Nobody asked for global nodes, nobody asked for the ridiculous nodes, and nobody wants to boost 2x as much because of empty spaces and intentionally poor map layout.

If you guys want to keep this game mode alive, REDUCE OVERALL COSTS. You can't give us cheaper potions and then dial up the difficulty and design ridiculous defenders. Overall cost needs to go down.

I'm in the thick of it all...the most skilled players in the game are sick of war. Buffing rewards doesn't change anything. Costs need to go down.

V1PER1987

Sorry if this has already been addressed, I didn’t see it. Is anyone immune to the confusion node?

Feeney234

You guys are crazy with these nodes but no updated rewards yet. Way to make war even way more unejoyable. Keep at it!

SCZ

Sorry if this has already been addressed, I didn’t see it. Is anyone immune to the confusion node?

MrS

Zsaurabh

Does anyone calculated how much energy is needed to reach final boss?

Minimum 18

Max 24.

No matter how you play..You can't reach final boss.. Unless you chase behind someone .

LeonBeni93

So we got a new war map,and that’s very intresting!!(at least for me!)

About the rewards I do agree with most people that they should have been updated,but since Kabam decided not to,I think there is no need to fill this discussion chat asking the same thing!And as I said I am with you guys in that..

About the new map,haven’t yet really read every node,and even if I had I couldn’t say for sure how challenging it would be before getting some real practice.

What surprised me though is The fact that every node will be visible besides a whole path!!!While I do understand that there some specific counters in the game and it can cause a mess to have too many hidden nodes,I don’t think it’s balanced if 8 people know the opponents they gonna face and just 1 people in each bg has to face hidden nodes and possibly be a better fighter than the rest!I mean all 30(or at least 27..since it makes sense to have a back up) people should be equally great players and that should decide the best alliance!! Lastly having a few hidden nodes like the previous setup(there were visible minis and hidden nodes distributed in nearly all paths) adds an extra point of strategy on selecting the best team of champions for each path or even each time finding which player best suits a certain path!!So I think it would make more sense to reconsider the balance of hidden and visible nodes in the map,as I think the right balance would make up for better,fairer and more intresting wars!!

P.S I have no clue which path I will be taking in the new map,and in no case and I am not writing this thinking I am gonna have the hidden nodes path and it will be unfair for me...it’s only because I really believe both visible and hidden nodes are needed to get the best war setup!!

OmegaMan

So a little background on Season 11 Rewards Update:

While the Maps are new, and getting used to something new is never without Challenge, there isn't really an intended bump to difficulty with this Map update. There are more "mini-bosses", but not all of them have strong Buffs on them (nodes 15, 18, 20, 37, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47 don't have the big boosts found on other mini-boss nodes), and you will no longer be on your own to take them down.

Defence Tactics is the biggest update we've made to Alliance Wars since Seasons were introduced, and while we wanted to have them live for Season 10, the feedback we received that it was soon, and we needed to get these Maps out to everybody first.

You are serious? Not a change in difficulty? That is absolute absurdity. The map has some ridiculous BS node buffs on it, more minibosses, and an all new way to try and clear it. How is this not added difficulty? You have no touch with your player community, ZERO.

Laughable it’s expected to spend more units, revives, and potions without any better rewards to show for it. I hope everyone stops playing AW. Simply ignorant and arrogant thinking.

Tehsigzorz

Is there a general consensus to which paths are the hardest? I am currently going to take path 4 but not sure how hard it is relative to other paths

OmegaMan

You are serious? Not a change in difficulty? That is absolute absurdity. The map has some ridiculous BS node buffs on it, more minibosses, and an all new way to try and clear it. How is this not added difficulty?

Laughable it’s expected to spend more units, revives, and potions without any better rewards to show for it.

Gamer

I’m hav find a pretty much a bad node combination with the champ one fix agis itersup wher u hav to itersup. But put thor rags one that node and get parry it’s skil that just steak op bs you guys at kabam HQ haven’t thinking of all the champ you designed need to be node ther not impossible without somone like Emma fros to get arund that. Not many is imuns to stun so either drops that node all totgher lucky I’m didt face him but can we the node completely destroyed the fun of war I’m do like war Ben new but somone node is completely bs and no matter what we said to you you ain’t lissins war shuld Hav more rewards spice with all that change to it change the dynamic you need so many counter to ever thing one the map and even one more just com to my min is rihone wil get unstoppable how can u itersup him

1haunted_memory

The degen is total BS!!!!!

Either have willpower work against it or simply tell the truth

Hey everyone we aren’t making enough money so here is a fresh BS node to cause you to buy pots and revives

Also AQ and war we lose 7 seconds off the timer before we can fight at the beginning when the 2 champs are running towards each other

Day 4&5 boss fights and boss fight in war those 7 seconds are critical

Ok stepping down of my soap box now

Logaroo

Thoughts on dealing with Rhino on the node that requires 2 intercepts and 4 heavies? His dash attacks are unstoppable so I'm assuming you'd need to try to intercept his light attack? This node is a little much when facing certain champs.

QuikPik

At first glance I thought the map design was ok as only the left and right mini's powered the middle mini's. This would've meant that the 3 sections were pretty much independent of one another. I'm on the right hand side, I get to the portal and it teleports me back to the middle, WTF.

Funneling everyone back to the middle is a terrible design. This design is a nightmare for alliances with varying play times (which is pretty much every alliance). Now you need 9 people to get the first 3 sections cleared before you can clear the middle mini's. This would've worked much better if you had moved that first central teleport to the second section.

In addition, each mini has a powering node from all 3 sides. There are no paths now that a person can just run without waiting on other people. If you wanted to add more stress to AW you just succeeded.

VanillaCoke

I think you should consider hiring somebody from the player base. I think you guys are suffering from group think. It’s hard to believe that somebody did not think to reconsider the decisions that were made when it came to Alliance War & Alliance Quest. It’s decisions like these that make the community believes you’re Pay to Win. You want to change that consensus? Start making better decisions, go back to your 12.0 roots of being transparent with the community, and start bringing value to the table.

SiriusBreak

I had a feeling comments like this were coming. I wanted to remain hopeful that the Map would be interesting. Instead it appears to be exceedingly stressful. In a certain sense, we lucked out in our Alliance. Our opponents apparently are tanking. So we have NO idea how this map works yet. Total waste of time doing defense grid layouts, yay!! So, hopefully Kabam is listening well.

This isn't looking good. A couple more wars like this and I can see a lot of backlash coming. I hope not. I hope it's just 1st war hiccups. However the amount of bug reports is climbing, and the nasty champ/node combos making the fight next to impossible to win also seem to be climbing. Day 1. That makes me nervous for the next war.

tkhan08

Seriously, reverse controls for 20 seconds in multiple fights. This is ridiculous. Please remove it. There isn't a possible to even practice it. The new map of aq and aw are the worst i have seen so far. They are looking all the fun. Please stop judging everyone to end game players.

LoPresti

AW is hot garbage now. Great change... it was easy giving up on AW with all these recent changes.
My real life friend was looking for any excuse to quit the game, and you just gave it to him

GroundedWisdom

Seeing the latest reactions has me rethinking. Clearly the new Maps are more than I expected. What I'm wondering is will people adjust? It's still new. Should they be adjusted? Would it have been more motivating if they came out with Defense Tactics and the new Rewards? Definitely has me rethinking since the reactions seem more than previous Map changes.

Gamer

Seeing the latest reactions has me rethinking. Clearly the new Maps are more than I expected. What I'm wondering is will people adjust? It's still new. Should they be adjusted? Would it have been more motivating if they came out with Defense Tactics and the new Rewards? Definitely has me rethinking since the reactions seem more than previous Map changes.

Wow you admind it was snit to Much wioit rewards chance