**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.
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.

An end to tanking! An end to tanking?

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Comments

  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,189 ★★★★★
    Drooped2 said:

    I'm absolutely fine with it. Without doing something proactive, it will continue to be manipulated regardless of the plausible reasons.

    Does this even affect your aw tier? Highly doubt it but as long as you’re fine with it I guess you must let everyone know.
    It affects everyone. People aren't playing on an island. It's an interconnected system, a Leaderboard that moves based on who scores what. Manipulate one area, and it dominos down. People manipulating one area affects everyone else under them. Does it affect me? Yes. I'm not in Tier 15. Does it affect everyone else under them? Absolutely. Does it throw the whole Matchmaking system off? You betcha. It stops it from being a measurement of skill and makes it a tool for manipation.
    And locking it makes it.so their alts can run tier 1 wars for loyalty as they farm resources foe next season in the shell.

    This rewards bad behavior more then curbs it
    Shells is a separate issue that will have to be looked at. Progress is progress, and I consider steps forward better than none at all. Nothing will resolve all problems in one fell swoop. Unless you get your Ban Hammer out. Hahaha.
  • MauledMauled Posts: 3,957 Guardian
    In terms of fixing ratings for seasons I like it. I was in an alliance that tanked in off season and regularly fought many other alliances that also tanked in the off season, I hated it because I don't like losing, there's a reasonable amount of rewards that I'm not getting access to and if everyone is tanking, it makes more sense for nobody to tank as the status-quo is remaining roughly the same for the most part.

    This sounds like you can be as committed to AW as you like in the off season - test nodes/placement or just throw in randoms to get the rewards.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,189 ★★★★★
    edited July 2019
    Drooped2 said:

    Drooped2 said:

    I'm absolutely fine with it. Without doing something proactive, it will continue to be manipulated regardless of the plausible reasons.

    Does this even affect your aw tier? Highly doubt it but as long as you’re fine with it I guess you must let everyone know.
    It affects everyone. People aren't playing on an island. It's an interconnected system, a Leaderboard that moves based on who scores what. Manipulate one area, and it dominos down. People manipulating one area affects everyone else under them. Does it affect me? Yes. I'm not in Tier 15. Does it affect everyone else under them? Absolutely. Does it throw the whole Matchmaking system off? You betcha. It stops it from being a measurement of skill and makes it a tool for manipation.
    And locking it makes it.so their alts can run tier 1 wars for loyalty as they farm resources foe next season in the shell.

    This rewards bad behavior more then curbs it
    Shells is a separate issue that will have to be looked at. Progress is progress, and I consider steps forward better than none at all. Nothing will resolve all problems in one fell swoop. Unless you get your Ban Hammer out. Hahaha.
    This creates more shells.
    While I agree no solution will solve every problem I counter no solution should make a different problem worse and more rewarding to manipulate.

    That's all this *solution* does is shift the people manipulating it to the other way of manipulation. No net gain on fairplay at all
    It's not creating a problem that isn't already going on. Shelling is the OG manipulating tactic. Been going on for years.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,189 ★★★★★
    You certainly don't solve them by doing nothing and allowing people to manipulate it with Tanking.
  • Jeramy6815Jeramy6815 Posts: 67
    They actually solved the 8 day donation drop issue with this and it’s great. All we will do is move to a shell ally every season and swap back and forth. We can bring alts into the shell to drop resources while they are tanking and then swap at the beginning of each season. Thanks Kabam
  • Bear3Bear3 Posts: 996 ★★★
    Do you not think that mainly only the very top tiers will be doing that though? As opposed to current where all tiers tank as it’s beneficial and easy? I do like the solution of dropping war rating if there not war ing also there could be a minimum defender rating by tier... obviously a tier 1 alli won’t have a defense that’s 25k a person.. would be closer to 60k. Maybe this isn’t a solution but a step in the right direction?

    🐻
  • Bear3Bear3 Posts: 996 ★★★
    I do understand the shell alliances are an issue still. Doesn’t this prevent the Jedi losers from being able to tank their war rating though? They’ll start season 11 at the top tier still. Yes?

    🐻
  • Bear3 said:

    I do understand the shell alliances are an issue still. Doesn’t this prevent the Jedi losers from being able to tank their war rating though? They’ll start season 11 at the top tier still. Yes?

    🐻

    During the Off Season, they no longer can. However, their Shell Alliance certainly can during the Season, and that's an issue when it comes to Shell Alliances. Even with the new measures put in place to prevent Off Season tanking, it doesn't prevent tanking, and in turn staging a Shell Alliance during the current Season for the next.
  • Ultra8529Ultra8529 Posts: 526 ★★★
    Kabam's as usual 6 months behind the curve.

    The problem with trying to stop manipulation is that players will always find a way to get around any restrictions. Either that or you end up with such draconian restrictions that you end up hurting innocent players.

    The far better way is just to change the incentives/rewards structure so that manipulation is not rewarded. Been saying for ages that the far more elegant solution would have been simply to ensure that starting at a lower war rating will never benefit the alliance in a War Season (such as by adjusting the multiplier). Another way would have been to make individual war win rewards at higher rating sufficiently high that alliances would not want to miss out on those individual war rewards. Kabam had opportunity to do either of these, but dropped the ball.
  • Msyounus1288Msyounus1288 Posts: 221 ★★

    Bear3 said:

    I do understand the shell alliances are an issue still. Doesn’t this prevent the Jedi losers from being able to tank their war rating though? They’ll start season 11 at the top tier still. Yes?

    🐻

    During the Off Season, they no longer can. However, their Shell Alliance certainly can during the Season, and that's an issue when it comes to Shell Alliances. Even with the new measures put in place to prevent Off Season tanking, it doesn't prevent tanking, and in turn staging a Shell Alliance during the current Season for the next.
    Considering these shells are mainly used by top tiers and their war ratings aren’t that far apart from their main alliance doesn’t seen logical to run both during the season over 12 wars and try to tank war rating for the shell just enough to be able to benefit from it the following season not knowing what new changes will be made during that time to aw since you can’t tank during off season anymore. All for what? Just to make it easier to get back to where they already are?
  • ZjieeeZjieee Posts: 45
    This "solution" is another example showing kabam does not feel the game. Shoving problems from one to another.

    Every war rating should be reset to 0 at the start of the season.

    Maybe just leave the alli's ever top war rating as a recognition emblem or trophy. It would solve the problem of tanking and shell alli's all at once.

    From there on, you can try to work on a proper solution for the "mismatching".
  • WorknprogressWorknprogress Posts: 7,233 ★★★★★
    Bear3 said:

    Do you not think that mainly only the very top tiers will be doing that though? As opposed to current where all tiers tank as it’s beneficial and easy? I do like the solution of dropping war rating if there not war ing also there could be a minimum defender rating by tier... obviously a tier 1 alli won’t have a defense that’s 25k a person.. would be closer to 60k. Maybe this isn’t a solution but a step in the right direction?

    🐻

    The very top was already doing this. All this does is incentivize it enough for a lot of alliances that weren't doing it before to now start.
  • WorknprogressWorknprogress Posts: 7,233 ★★★★★
    Zjieee said:

    This "solution" is another example showing kabam does not feel the game. Shoving problems from one to another.

    Every war rating should be reset to 0 at the start of the season.

    Maybe just leave the alli's ever top war rating as a recognition emblem or trophy. It would solve the problem of tanking and shell alli's all at once.

    From there on, you can try to work on a proper solution for the "mismatching".

    That makes no sense as there would be no way to start a season in tiers. If everyone started at zero you could have a bronze alliance matched with a masters alliance at the start of the season and it would be even worse than it was before
  • DrZolaDrZola Posts: 8,479 ★★★★★
    edited July 2019
    Doesn’t affect me much, but this seems like yet another effort to fix a matchmaking system that has been flawed from the start. And it likely makes the off-season a totally off season for some.

    How many tankers are there outside of Plat? Is it really that hard to tell who tanks? I would think it would be quick work to trace the flow of players from alliance to alliance at the most competitive levels. I realize there is a potential ripple effect, but I doubt anyone is that concerned about an ally barely in Silver 3 dropping to Bronze 1 to start out the next season to get extra 3* shards. That doesn’t seem game-breaking.

    Dr. Zola
  • BoostergoldrulzBoostergoldrulz Posts: 150
    After all the time, effort, and sometimes units wasted in each war just to get ahead and then you get pitiful rewards at the end of the season, now you can't get ahead off-season? Why even play wars? They only truly benefit top tier alliances anyway. Most alliances silver 1 and below feel hopeless and barely want to compete. I'd say, if none of those alliances played for an extended period of time, drastic changes would result because the wars would inevitably have to change. This is almost a pipe-dream, though, because like people paying for crappy offers, people are still going to participate.
  • V1PER1987V1PER1987 Posts: 3,474 ★★★★★
    Well considering some alliances (including my own) will start to push to be in plat 4 instead of gold 1, this solution is a bummer. I get why it was done but once again, the innocent get punished for something that “cheaters” do. I know the reward increase isn’t much but that’s a different topic.

    I think in this instance the proper way to resolve is just to change the war rating loss to 0 instead of a negative number. That way if alliances still wanted to move up, they can and alliances can no longer lose war rating to drop them down to a lower tier.

  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    V1PER1987 said:

    Well considering some alliances (including my own) will start to push to be in plat 4 instead of gold 1, this solution is a bummer. I get why it was done but once again, the innocent get punished for something that “cheaters” do. I know the reward increase isn’t much but that’s a different topic.

    I think in this instance the proper way to resolve is just to change the war rating loss to 0 instead of a negative number. That way if alliances still wanted to move up, they can and alliances can no longer lose war rating to drop them down to a lower tier.

    That doesn't work for two reasons. First, if we can have a lot of wars where one alliance gains rating but the other doesn't lose rating, that will inject ratings points into the system which will cause ratings inflation over time, but only below tier 5. This will eventually cause problems in the vicinity of the tier 5/6 boundary.

    Second, I'm not sure why so many people think this, but just because you don't lose rating doesn't mean you're not going to drop to a lower tier. You don't drop to a lower tier because you lose rating, you drop tier when enough alliances gain a higher rating than you. That can happen if you lose rating obviously, but it can also happen if enough alliances lower than you gain rating while you stay the same.

    Alliances that lose wars will still drop in overall placement relative to alliances that win wars even if the losers lose no rating, because the winners are still gaining. They will just drop half as fast. That still means they can drop to a lower tier eventually, unless everyone immediately below them fails to win any wars.
  • V1PER1987V1PER1987 Posts: 3,474 ★★★★★
    DNA3000 said:

    V1PER1987 said:

    Well considering some alliances (including my own) will start to push to be in plat 4 instead of gold 1, this solution is a bummer. I get why it was done but once again, the innocent get punished for something that “cheaters” do. I know the reward increase isn’t much but that’s a different topic.

    I think in this instance the proper way to resolve is just to change the war rating loss to 0 instead of a negative number. That way if alliances still wanted to move up, they can and alliances can no longer lose war rating to drop them down to a lower tier.

    That doesn't work for two reasons. First, if we can have a lot of wars where one alliance gains rating but the other doesn't lose rating, that will inject ratings points into the system which will cause ratings inflation over time, but only below tier 5. This will eventually cause problems in the vicinity of the tier 5/6 boundary.

    Second, I'm not sure why so many people think this, but just because you don't lose rating doesn't mean you're not going to drop to a lower tier. You don't drop to a lower tier because you lose rating, you drop tier when enough alliances gain a higher rating than you. That can happen if you lose rating obviously, but it can also happen if enough alliances lower than you gain rating while you stay the same.

    Alliances that lose wars will still drop in overall placement relative to alliances that win wars even if the losers lose no rating, because the winners are still gaining. They will just drop half as fast. That still means they can drop to a lower tier eventually, unless everyone immediately below them fails to win any wars.
    I never said the alliances that lose can’t drop a tier, but typically if you’re a higher rated alliance facing a lower tier alliance, you risk more war rating and therefore will drop a lot faster than vice versa. It’s usually something like the higher rated alliance will lose 70 points if they lose to a lower rated opponent and gain 20 on a win (don’t quote me it’s just an example). Likewise if the alliances are more evenly matched, it’s generally the same whether you win or lose. If you placed a 0 war rating change on losers, they’re not losing any war rating compared to the 70 or so they would lose normally. This would drastically reduce the rate at which those upper alliances fall and they may not even fall much at all. We’re talking about roughly 6 wars in the off-season, which doesn’t really give them much opportunity to drop at a 0 war rating change. Even lower alliances manage to win and move up a bit, it’s not going to drastically alter the standings much, but it will give alliances an opportunity to start at a high tier that they are aiming to achieve. Maybe I’m short sighted and don’t see the overall picture but I don’t see how 6 wars in the offseason with this system would drastically affect the overall standings
  • Bear3Bear3 Posts: 996 ★★★
    edited July 2019
    is there a winning solution that covers everything?

    🐻
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