**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.

Now that tanking has been squashed, time to look at Shell Alliances.

ArylAryl Posts: 1,302 ★★★★
Possible solution:

Introduce Rating Degeneration for tiers 1-10.

During Seasons, if an alliance does not enlist for matchmaking they suffer a degeneration in points based on their current war tier.

I do not see any flaws in this, so please point them out if you notice them.

The degen only affecting tiers 1-10 protects smaller alliances that wish to only participate in wars occasionally.

The degen during seasons allows alliances of all tiers to take an AW break during off season.

Degen based on enlistment ensures alliances which failed to find a match not suffer the degen.

Alliances will either have to enlist and fight or not and suffer degen. This forces Shell Alliances to either suffer a degen or fight a war with no participants and lose... both resulting in a loss of rating.

Thoughts?
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Comments

  • digital-SOBdigital-SOB Posts: 261 ★★
    I am for punishment for shell alliance schemes, not rating decrease for not fighting.
    1. A lot of people take a break from AW in between seasons, like my alliance. Gives us time with our champs freed to tackle Variant and story that we couldn’t have with our champs locked in AW.
    2. Master rank 1&2 alliances completely left their alliance to join a shell alliance, the original alliances have low accounts. That’s the real problem now.

    A freeze/lockout to participate in AW on exiting & rejoining accounts in coming back into the alliance at the start of the season after leaving at the last seasons end would be nice. Like the treasury lockout but say for 3-5 wars as punishment.
  • ArylAryl Posts: 1,302 ★★★★

    Rating decay would cause lower alliance to often get matched against much stronger teams that decayed for whatever reasons (like taking one season off from war), and that wouldn't be good time for them

    I agree. This would be one legitimate issue.
  • Bear3Bear3 Posts: 996 ★★★

    Aryl said:

    Possible solution:

    Introduce Rating Degeneration for tiers 1-10.

    During Seasons, if an alliance does not enlist for matchmaking they suffer a degeneration in points based on their current war tier.

    I do not see any flaws in this, so please point them out if you notice them.

    The degen only affecting tiers 1-10 protects smaller alliances that wish to only participate in wars occasionally.

    The degen during seasons allows alliances of all tiers to take an AW break during off season.

    Degen based on enlistment ensures alliances which failed to find a match not suffer the degen.

    Alliances will either have to enlist and fight or not and suffer degen. This forces Shell Alliances to either suffer a degen or fight a war with no participants and lose... both resulting in a loss of rating.

    Thoughts?

    so every alliance regardless of ranking must enlist in war during season, regardless of whether they want to or not? since you can't tell the difference between an intentionally non-participating alliance and a "shell" alliance, this is discriminatory trash. my alliance avoided season 10 and now season 11 cause we think it's trash, and are holding onto our rating in the far off hopes that this trash blows over eventually. leave us out of your fascist plan, bro, come up with some other ideas.
    It actually makes perfect sense your war rating should drop taking two seasons off from war. Just like if a fighter is ranked 5 in the world. He can’t just take 2-3 years off from boxing or his respective sport and say “but hold my spot as number 5 in the world, when I do come back I’d like to be right where I was and not have to do anything to be where I was when I left. That’s cool right?” 😂. People actually shouldn’t get their spots “held” for them when they’re taking time off from war. Down side of not doing war honestly.

    🐻
  • Mathking13Mathking13 Posts: 988 ★★★
    edited July 2019
    I understand shell alliances to effectively be an almost empty alliance that just tanks during war, to prepare their alliance for the next season. Idelest has a very good video on the topic. And if I am correct and shells more commonly work like this, then the OP's recommendation would only make it easier for shells to tank, and make the next season easier for 30 people (and so much harder for like 300 or so other people).
    But hey I can't think of any counters for this shell movement that I think of as really good, short of Kabam just finding and punishing shell alliances somehow.
    Maybe temporarily or permanently restricting those players from participating in AW, depending on how long they've been in those shell alliances? Those guys would basically have the entire AW segment of the game shut off. So those guys wouldn't be able to start an Alliance War, or contribute to that war in any way. The only problem I can see with that is that the shell just has to recruit one person to help them tank while they have the lockout (for temporary bans), and then bam they have easy matches for the next war... it's not perfect but hey I'm trying.
  • TheTalentsTheTalents Posts: 2,254 ★★★★★
    We shouldn't punish alliances for not participating in the offseason of AW. I been in a lot of alliances that simply couldn't get full due to people leaving based on War discrepancies. Kabam should find another way. The offseason is called the offseason for a reason.

    If the top tiers want to cheese AW let them have it. The rewards aren't worth the effort in my opinion.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★

    We shouldn't punish alliances for not participating in the offseason of AW. I been in a lot of alliances that simply couldn't get full due to people leaving based on War discrepancies. Kabam should find another way. The offseason is called the offseason for a reason.

    If the top tiers want to cheese AW let them have it. The rewards aren't worth the effort in my opinion.

    The issue isn't whether they want to participate. The issue is they're place-holding and running in other Alliances. What this creates is a monopoly on spots, among other issues. Granted, solving Tanking is definitely a start, but I wouldn't say "let them" because that's a bit blind to other potentially harmful and unfair practices.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,558 Guardian
    Aryl said:

    I do not see any flaws in this, so please point them out if you notice them.

    I can think of one potentially huge one. Suppose you're the leader of a shell swapping alliance in tier 1. Kabam implements your idea, so now you have to enlist in the shell. Well, first of all you were going to enlist anyway, for at least a couple wars. That's the whole purpose to swapping: let the shell lose to lower rating for the next season. But normally they would stop enlisting when they got the rating they wanted. Your idea would cause them to continue to lose more rating if they didn't enlist.

    What if they enlist, but only one battlegroup? How many tier one alliances fight in only one group? Probably not a lot: many of them might even be shells. So if the game would have to match you against other tier 1 alliances enlisting one group, sometimes you'll run into a tough alliance and sometimes you'll just run into another empty shell. All you have to do now is win a few against the other shells to compensate for the losses against tier 1 alliance with actual tier 1 accounts in them, and you're back to where you started. If you were intending to lose, say, three or four wars to lower rating deliberately, a total record of 4 wins and 8 losses basically does the same thing. That might still be doable without difficulty if you avoid the genuinely competitive alliances by enlisting less than three full battlegroups. And you can't force alliances to fully enlist.

    I can't predict with certainty how this would all fall out, but I can see the potential to create a new collusion opportunity where shells trade off losses to maintain the desired rating delta.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    edited July 2019
    The problem with Rating degradation is that War Rating is based on Wins/Losses. You earn it with Wins. Ideally, that's a metric that is a gauge of ability based on performance. Outside of manipulation, that is. Which is why Tanking is being resolved. In relation to Rating declining from inactivity, you can't take away what an Ally has earned. That Rating has been won through Wars. You can fake Losses with Tanking. You can't fake Wins.
  • We shouldn't punish alliances for not participating in the offseason of AW. I been in a lot of alliances that simply couldn't get full due to people leaving based on War discrepancies. Kabam should find another way. The offseason is called the offseason for a reason.

    If the top tiers want to cheese AW let them have it. The rewards aren't worth the effort in my opinion.

    OP specifically stated during the Season. Not the Off Season. Also, turning a blind eye to a legitimate issue is not the way. Shells are a major aspect that's KILLING a legitimate Platinum 1 Alliance's chance at gettint into Master. Here's why. The Shells get brought up to Tier 1 status. Tiers are dictated by a certain percentage, which equates to a limited number of slots per tier.

    There's 9 Alliances in the top 50 for war rating that did not participate in Season 10. Some haven't participated since Season 7. Yet, due the percentage system, they get counted in as Tier 1. Which takes away a Tier 1 slot from an ACTIVE Alliance. Without the Tier 1 multiplier, a Platinum 1 Alliance doesn't have a prayer to move up to Master. This trickles down throughout the tiers BTW.

    While the idea of a degenerative war rating during the Season seems like a good idea, but it does have the ability to exploited just the same. They need to find a way to do 2 things here. First and foremost, create a way to NOT count in an inactive Alliance for the Season tier wise. Second, find a way to make Shell Alliances ineffective or a prerequisite that would shut them down. However, this is MUCH easier said than done without further infringing upon legitimate Alliances.

    Let's say they did something simple like the degenerative rating. This would be tantamount too tanking without any effort. At a certain point though, they'd be forced into action, keeping their rating viable to start the next Season. That's not too hard to avoid. Annoying, but avoidable. There's also been an idea thrown out there that would reset the rating to 0 if the Alliance was inactive for a full season. Again, easily avoided, but effective for getting rid of those dead Alliances that are taking up slots in various tiers. Doing that could potentially deflate the tier cutoffs a bit, and shake up the standings a tad.

    As it stands, there's nothing in the rules stating a group cannot move from 1 Alliance to another. Nor should there be because there's legitimate situations where this happens due to shotty leadership. Penalizing legitimate players for the actions taken by those who can't play straight up isn't right. While the introduction of the locked ratings in the Off Season for tiers 1-5 kind of blows for those of us who play straight up, it made sense to do it. I just hope the next action taken to shutdown foul play doesn't bonk the legit players too hard. Any other ideas on how this could be tackled without reprisals falling upon those that play straight up? (Please, keep it civil and respect eachother when giving criticism)
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    There's also a shift that takes place which Allies are not a part of when inactive, so they may have X amount of Rating while being inactive in War, but other Allies are moving on the board when they're not playing. So it's not the same as jumping in where they left off.
  • TacoScottyTacoScotty Posts: 407 ★★
    edited July 2019
    If people didn’t notice, they not only locked rating during offseason but also changed tier multipliers. There isn’t really much benefit from starting with a low war rating for AW season anymore for going 100% wins in lower tier doesn’t out pace 50/50 in higher tier (at least for t4+) last I checked math on multipliers. Ya can get easier wars but won’t finish as high as you could before.

    Those swapping now either 1) didn’t realize multiplier change (wasn’t announced - assume what they show now is live), or more likely 2) still swapping for purposes of AQ 7x5 donations and buying donations. Until they get m7 donations down into a more reasonable level (or more ways to earn things like loyalty / faster gold / BC earn speed) people will continue to look for ways to do this.

    As for shells taking up slots for higher multipliers, I previously brought this up and pretty sure a mod claimed their formula for tier placement would somehow consider that and they would be excluded from impacting others. Whether or not this is true is another story.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    What we have is a situation where that doesn't matter either way because Ratings are frozen in their Brackets, and they're jumping ship to play in lower areas. This is a problem for me because of the reason I've specified. It won't be very advantageous towards Seasons because presumably they'll return to their old Allies. Logic states that much. They'll want to keep their spot. My issue is it monopolizes the board. They occupy their spot, and peck off lower Allies in other spots, playing the Leaderboard like a Xylophone. Now, I'm not saying the current response is bad. I think it's great they're dealing with Tanking. I just also see the other issue, and that issue has been going on a long time. Allies will hold many spots and just dominate the whole system. That's something I think needs to be looked at.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    To be honest, it's an ongoing process of improvement, not perfection. I'm grateful it's making progress. More will be made. The only viable suggestion to minimize unfair advantages I can think of is to run War in Seasons only. That would require a bit of redesigning to accommodate Alliances starting out. It would also require reconsidering Loyalty costs to run AQ.
  • ArylAryl Posts: 1,302 ★★★★
    Gavind said:

    Wouldnt rating degen just make allainces run more shells as it would open up tanking during the season? To prep for the season to follow?

    You cant solve a problem by creating the problem

    And entire season worth of tanking would drop the alliance's rating so low it would nullify the benefits.

    You would have to win the entire season to get back to a lower or on par rating. Breaking even would be the best case scenario here, and that doesn't cut it for top tiers.
  • ArylAryl Posts: 1,302 ★★★★

    We shouldn't punish alliances for not participating in the offseason of AW. I been in a lot of alliances that simply couldn't get full due to people leaving based on War discrepancies. Kabam should find another way. The offseason is called the offseason for a reason.

    If the top tiers want to cheese AW let them have it. The rewards aren't worth the effort in my opinion.

    Do people just not read? Holy ####.
  • ArylAryl Posts: 1,302 ★★★★
    Aryl said:

    Rating decay would cause lower alliance to often get matched against much stronger teams that decayed for whatever reasons (like taking one season off from war), and that wouldn't be good time for them

    I agree. This would be one legitimate issue.
    @DiablosUltimate

    One of my previous posts made me realize this wouldn't be much of an issue as shell alliances that suffer an entire season of war rating loss would remove the actual benefit of a shell alliance... meaning, there would be no point in it.
  • Timone147Timone147 Posts: 1,276 ★★★★
    This is counter productive. You do this you will have more of this happening because

    A solution to tanking was just implemented so what we should do is have alliance tank from doing nothing while playing in a shell alliance for more rewards. That’s just a win win for the tanking alliances.

    Other problem is off-season is a break for more hardcore alliances. You can force them to participate if they want to take a break from the grind as seasons take there toll on alliances.
  • Timone147Timone147 Posts: 1,276 ★★★★
    edited July 2019
    Also other problem is even when people leave to a shell alliance the leave profiles there. So they can enlist for war easily still. Since ratings are practically locked at higher tiers they don’t have to worry about dropping.

    So in the end this whole plan would accomplish nothing really other than hurting alliances that want a break


    Also just caught you said during seasons.... so I get what you are going for but still alliances sometimes take seasons off which I don’t think that’s fair to those alliances.


    Kabam needs to looks for deliberate patterns of these alliances and act on it. Only way to not impact others in the game.
  • Solrac_2Solrac_2 Posts: 497 ★★
    You want to get rid of tanking, get rid of the off-season--very easy solution.
  • ArylAryl Posts: 1,302 ★★★★
    Last three replies...

    Reading is fundamental.

    Seriously... how can you actually reply to a topic without reading the post?

    @Timone147 @Solrac_2
  • qqt700qqt700 Posts: 1
    The main point of a shell at higher levels at the moment is to find a way to get donations in for AQ currently. AW related reasons took a huge backseat when the treasury donation waiting period was instituted. There are some side benefits in AW, but right now bread and butter rewards are in AQ and many top alliances, that arent just pure whales that can buy into AQ, need to fund their donations via alternative methods. The most straightforward is to bring alts in to donate.

    I would venture to guess that tier 1 alliances are not willing to just completely forgo AW, it is more of a feeling of rewards for p2 p3 are good enough for a 0 effort/cost season.

    Taking that knowledge, one proposal is there could be some sort of metric to gate participation in 2 and 3 bg wars. For example, alliances with a high turnover ratio (defined by kabam), be locked out of 2bg and/or 3bg wars for extended periods. This would solve most of the shenanigans that remain.
  • WerewrymWerewrym Posts: 2,830 ★★★★★
    Just revisiting this because my alliance is facing one of these shell alliances during off season. I'm in a plat 4 alliance currently focusing on AQ and we are facing a silver 2 alliance that clearly does not belong in silver 2. Not much I can say other than this is extremely frustrating to see other players taking advantage of a broken system. I can't wait for losers that do this to get punished. There's basically no scenario where all 30 members from an alliance in Plat 4 or above should be switching alliances during off season, so it seems like it would be easy to find the people doing this.
  • ArylAryl Posts: 1,302 ★★★★
    ^^^yep

    I still don't understand those people disagreeing and defending this behavior.
  • WerewrymWerewrym Posts: 2,830 ★★★★★
    Aryl said:

    ^^^yep

    I still don't understand those people disagreeing and defending this behavior.

    Yep. Also something I didn't mention is that these guys last placed in season 8 in silver 2. They aren't even trying to hide that they are a shell alliance. It's honestly pathetic and I legitimately don't understand what motivates people to cheat like this.
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