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

unknown

This content has been removed.

GroundedWisdom

And did you fix matchmaking @Kabam Miike ?

Or will we see another season of 2 low prestige teams win top 3 because they didn’t fight anyone else at the top.
Sooooo... you're saying that in a points system, low prestige people dont belong on top to get big rewards and catch up to the big guys faster?

Could have sworn it was the place system, where there are elimination, semi final and final rounds, that allowed for that, not points.

Somewhat. The Matchmaking used to be a measure of skill because it was based on War Rating. By way of coming up against approximate Ratings, you beat out others in the same area. However, after manipulations through Tanking, side-effects of punishments, and a number of other issues with War Rating, it was no longer a measure of skill. People were all over the place because War Rating is tied into Points, and one was being used to alter the other. Technically, it's never been a Deathmatch situation where you beat out all others to the top. Seasons are a competition of Points. At the end of the Season, where you place is based on the Points you earned. Before Seasons, what you're saying was closer to true. With Seasons, it's a competition of what you can earn from start to finish and it's not even long enough to fight your way to the top. As long as people are all over the place and manipulating strengths, something has to mitigate. Otherwise it's not even a true representation of strengths, nor a fair Matchmaking metric.

Coatseyyyyy33

Can someone remind me what

“Best defence” node is?

Been added to node 43 and I’m not familiar.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Coatseyyyyy33

Thank you very much.

Can someone remind me what

“Best defence” node is?

Been added to node 43 and I’m not familiar.
Evade auto block accurscy
But heres this

Speeds80

Gotta say the prestige system came about from people complaining about stronger matchups after they had been doing really well, sometimes we would face huge number alliances who didn’t even show up enough to complete their war, someone else would get that matchup and take photos at the start and freak out, then sometimes that alliance probably did show up, the prestige system now is faulty, let the people fight it out, take prestige out of the factor and let skill align people properly, we are a reasonably high prestige semi retired alliance, we don’t focus on war, we don’t encourage spending, all this complaining about hard war doesnt seem to affect us we are tier 7 right now, almost no deaths before the minibosses, the problem I see is that the tiers aren’t growing with the game base, there are so many alliances at around the 20m mark now who are going to be stuck down tiers 6,7,8, only fighting other 20m alliances with easy nodes and diversity is a massive factor again

LeNoirFaineant

Deaths in AW are through the roof, even after two weeks of getting used to the map. The idea that the difficulty is about even is laughable. We are considering focusing on AQ.

OmegaMan

Gotta say the prestige system came about from people complaining about stronger matchups after they had been doing really well, sometimes we would face huge number alliances who didn’t even show up enough to complete their war, someone else would get that matchup and take photos at the start and freak out, then sometimes that alliance probably did show up, the prestige system now is faulty, let the people fight it out, take prestige out of the factor and let skill align people properly, we are a reasonably high prestige semi retired alliance, we don’t focus on war, we don’t encourage spending, all this complaining about hard war doesnt seem to affect us we are tier 7 right now, almost no deaths before the minibosses, the problem I see is that the tiers aren’t growing with the game base, there are so many alliances at around the 20m mark now who are going to be stuck down tiers 6,7,8, only fighting other 20m alliances with easy nodes and diversity is a massive factor again

True. We are stuck below 20M alliance and it’s very hard to grow rosters now. Unless you are the alliances in the top you don’t get the rewards to rank rosters and you don’t have the champs to compete for them in an arena where only the top few get the champions. Rosters are stagnant and every once in a while someone will get a new champion. Our entire alliance has T4 catalyst in overflow and can’t use them as T2 alpha is nearly impossible to obtain.

Rosters will not how until things change.

Madcat

Is it bad that I can and have used the 3 for 1 T4CC crystals to stockpile the extreme amounts of excess T4CC I have? 2k T4CC shard crystals, over 70 unopened whole T4CC crystals, glory/greater glory crystals, etc... cannot sell them for T5CC shards yet - T2As are not the restriction, it is T5Bs or being able to convert T4CCs into something meaningful. Expand the stockpile or allow us to sell them for T5CC shards.

SiriusBreak

Agreed @Madcat . T4ccs are SOOOO plentiful that I'm forced to trade the 3 for 1 or lose them to oblivion. Being able to sell them for a negligible amount of t5cc frags would be VERY WELCOMED at this point.

TacoScotty

Happy to see matchmaking seemingly returned to war rating being key factor. We faced a 20 top prestige alliance and then an alliance with 500k avg rating - both with similar ratings in the 2450 range.

This season will probably have some rating corrections going on due to all crappy prestige weighting last season. This is good for should clean it up before next season when rewards get revamped. I just hope Kabam plans to continue to leave war rating as the by far key factor for match making

My only guess is Kabam last season did prestige due to issues with MNG having two Bye wars. While prestige probably fixed that caused all sorts of other problems. As I suggested before, for matchmaking just start with the top war rating alliance queue, use an algorithm that randomly selects say one alliance within the next 20-25 highest rated - remove both off list, move to next highest and repeat. This will force similar war rated alliances to face off but still allow a little RNG with who you face. You can split entire pool into like groups of 500 based on war rating and just run the algorithm down each set simultaneously

With this logic if total alliances in the entire pool is odd, lowest rated gets a bye. You can write something that assigns bye to lowest rated as long they haven’t had bye in last X war, if they did check next lowest rated.

Stellar

One suggestion for war matchmaking system would be to separate "war rating" and "season war rating"

Actually some top alliances use the inter season top lower their war rating just to be sure to have low level alliance to fight during the war season and thus easily gains wars and point during the 3-4 first wars.
The drawback is that honest low level alliances find themselves unable to win or even grab points during war season as they can sometimes not even reach the bosses.

separating "war rating" and "season war rating" would resolve the problem as top alliance will no more be able to voluntarily decrease their rating and it will be in every alliance best interest to do the max to win during the season or between seasons.

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Lyra @Kabam Porthos would that be possible ?

Ultra8529

War rating is the best indicator of war ability.

Throwing prestige into the mix was just a confusion. It was never acknowledged by Kabam to the best of my knowledge, but pretty much the entire end game community was aware that the matchmaking algorithm was changed.

2+ weeks on the new map and deaths are way higher than before. There was obviously an increase in the difficulty. If it was not intended, it just shows how out of touch with the state of the game these content designers are.

Can't even imagine once we bring in the global defence buffs next season how war is going to look like.... All I can say is that the rewards will have to be HUGELY buffed, probably 3x what they currently are now, plus some T5CC, otherwise there will still not be any incentive to push hard in wars. Part of me is wishing that the revamped rewards are still lackluster.

Madcat

Aye - as it is, a single weekly AQ rewards >>> AW Season rewards for G1 and under assuming you are running at least 5x5... and you get those rewards more often, and can be done item free for 5x5, and with minimal glory costs for including several days of Map 6+

Willie_Arwontie

And did you fix matchmaking @Kabam Miike ?

Or will we see another season of 2 low prestige teams win top 3 because they didn’t fight anyone else at the top.
Sooooo... you're saying that in a points system, low prestige people dont belong on top to get big rewards and catch up to the big guys faster?

Could have sworn it was the place system, where there are elimination, semi final and final rounds, that allowed for that, not points.
You are not getting the point.... A war between two 10K prestige alliances at 2400 rating is much harder than a war between two 8K prestige alliances at 2400 rating, but still they get the same points... so the winner of the second matchup can be ahead of the loser of the fist matchup.... although the weaker one in the first match is significantly stronger than the stronger one of second matchup.
Here is what happens
A1 - 10k prestige, 25m rating, 2500 AW rating
A2 - 10k prestige, 25m rating, 2500 AW rating
A3 - 8k prestige, 20m rating, 2500 AW rating
A4 - 8k prestige, 20m rating, 2500 AW rating

A1 vs A2 - A1 wins 200k points, A2 loses and gets 150k points
A3 vs A4 - A4 wins 200k points, A3 loses and gets 150k points

in reality A2 would win over A4 any day, but using this system, the weaker alliance can get ahead of the stronger one with out actually facing a strong matchup... at the end, the top 100 will be a mix of various alliances good in their prestige range.... not a true ranking of alliance strength.

And you're missing the point that in a points system, that is TOTALLY acceptable and a valid thing to happen. What you described as being the issue is basically advocating for a place system rather than points. Where, EVERYONE starts the same, EVERYONE ends up fighting weaker/stronger alliances depending on placing, and there is ZERO hope for weaker alliances to ever beat out the top guys who just open their wallets for a win.