While not a bad start, it needs tweaking @Kabam Miike .
For starters, not all alliances have people in the same timezones. This is gonna cause huge problems.
The fix is VERY easy though.
Have everyone place defense like you outline. Have everyone opt-in to AW, as you have said, however, have a sliding 6 hour attack window, when the alliance can pick a more optimal time for THEM. Yes, alliances won't finish at the same time, but, who cares. The leaderboard scores will only be updated when BOTH alliances from the war are done.
For this to work correctly, you can't lock champs in AW anymore, but, that is a small price to pay to have everyone play at a more reasonable time at their choosing.
It sounds easy, but this basic idea has been kicked around the forums since season one and this has been discussed previously. It is problematic to have that sliding window because there's no obvious place that time can come from. You can't shorten the attack phase. You could shorten the placement phase but then it has already been shortened by five hours for the match making calculations. An additional six hours means defense placement drops to only thirteen hours and now some alliances might not be able to place properly. You can't steal it from maintenance since match making itself occurs in a specific time: to distribute the maintenance time across all three wars requires shifting match making windows forward six hours, drifting them around during the day. That's probably less desirable so everything else must compress into the same time windows between match making.
No, you are missing the point, nothing is shortened here at all. The ending time can change though, but, that is fine as long as the champs aren't locked in AW, and you can still place AW defenders on time.
Think of it like a queue, and for the next game, you place them as you normally would, but that match wouldn't go live. It is a different map than the current one you are playing.
Basically a "Placement for upcoming game" button would appear, and that hops to the new map, and place like you normally would.
Could you please go into constraints the system will have. Will it be possible for us to play the same alliance 3 times a week? Will it take previous matches / wins / losses into account ?
Good start and it's nice to see you guys trying to address some of the problems with AW and matchmaking. This is gonna come off super salty but if you're going to acknowledge people for guessing the solution or helping you guys come up with the solution it should really be the people who have been suggesting this idea 7+ months ago and I'm sure it was brought up even before that. People have spent hours on end posting ideas and suggestions so any indication that they've helped you shape a better game would go a long way to keeping those people motivated and appreciated.
Paging @Lagacy: You were pretty close! Reading minds over there...
IM glad MANY of the suggestion i made a month ago or so were implemented. Very satisfied.
ALtho.
Please remove the +/- rating effect during placement phase, that too is easy to add and will prevent allies fishing for opponents defense with 20 hr time to get them in the bag. It would be very hard to obtain defences from friendly allies if they're head on inside their own war.
That would be the last nail in the coffin for collusion.
What's the cut off to have all members in your alliance to participate? Does it have to be before matchmaking or before enlistment?
It will be before matchmaking. You can find a new recruit during Enlistment.
Matchmaking start at 3PM PST and new members need to join until that time in order to participate the war, but sometimes AQ and SA rewards are release later than that. why not changing the time to 5-6 PM?
Could we have 30 minute (or no energy requirements) so we can make it easier to coordinate with TZ shifted alliance members? Seems a shame to have to see good game friends depart simply because they can’t be on when people need them to be.
My only question is exactly how will the matchmaking work?
Wat determines you opponent being a suitibale match?
Cus as we have seen two alliances with same alliance rating can be very different strengths when it comes to war. Due to peeps selling / not ranking champs.
Can you please elaborate as a alot of people will be wondering the same thing. @Kabam Miike
Aren't there going to be people in a time zone where this fixed ending time happens to be at 4 in the morning? I'm not quite sure how much of a range in start/end times are possible now, but it seems like it's about 6 hours or so. Some people are going to be really stung by this new lack of flexibility.
Since the matching is done with even more advance time now, it doesn't seem like it was necessary to give everyone the same starting and ending time. That can't be a plus for Kabam's servers either, where activity is now going to spike at the exact same time.
Why don't they let people choose their own start time for each war when they enlist, within a defined range?
Have to come with new plan for the Aw getting tied and not awarding any points to any alliances? and also not awarding the rewards!!.
will we have to same systems for aw getting tie? @Kabam Miike
My only question is exactly how will the matchmaking work?
Wat determines you opponent being a suitibale match?
Cus as we have seen two alliances with same alliance rating can be very different strengths when it comes to war. Due to peeps selling / not ranking champs.
Can you please elaborate as a alot of people will be wondering the same thing. @Kabam Miike
We don't talk about our Matchmaking criteria in much detail for a few reasons, including the potential for manipulation with that information. The important part will remain your war rating, as this is a performance based metric that increases and decreases with your wins and losses.
Good start and it's nice to see you guys trying to address some of the problems with AW and matchmaking. This is gonna come off super salty but if you're going to acknowledge people for guessing the solution or helping you guys come up with the solution it should really be the people who have been suggesting this idea 7+ months ago and I'm sure it was brought up even before that. People have spent hours on end posting ideas and suggestions so any indication that they've helped you shape a better game would go a long way to keeping those people motivated and appreciated.
That's actually a great point! We've heard many ideas like this from our players for quite some time now. We started working on this new form of Matchmaking just after Alliance Wars seasons started, and even then we'd heard of something like this from many of our Players.
This kind of system isn't built and implemented in just a few months though, and we'd gone back and forth on how to do it, and when we'd have the capacity to do it.
Our players gave us a lot of great input on this one, so we want to thank you all for your suggestions, and look forward to seeing what you guys come up with next!
While not a bad start, it needs tweaking @Kabam Miike .
For starters, not all alliances have people in the same timezones. This is gonna cause huge problems.
The fix is VERY easy though.
Have everyone place defense like you outline. Have everyone opt-in to AW, as you have said, however, have a sliding 6 hour attack window, when the alliance can pick a more optimal time for THEM. Yes, alliances won't finish at the same time, but, who cares. The leaderboard scores will only be updated when BOTH alliances from the war are done.
For this to work correctly, you can't lock champs in AW anymore, but, that is a small price to pay to have everyone play at a more reasonable time at their choosing.
It sounds easy, but this basic idea has been kicked around the forums since season one and this has been discussed previously. It is problematic to have that sliding window because there's no obvious place that time can come from. You can't shorten the attack phase. You could shorten the placement phase but then it has already been shortened by five hours for the match making calculations. An additional six hours means defense placement drops to only thirteen hours and now some alliances might not be able to place properly. You can't steal it from maintenance since match making itself occurs in a specific time: to distribute the maintenance time across all three wars requires shifting match making windows forward six hours, drifting them around during the day. That's probably less desirable so everything else must compress into the same time windows between match making.
No, you are missing the point, nothing is shortened here at all. The ending time can change though, but, that is fine as long as the champs aren't locked in AW, and you can still place AW defenders on time.
Think of it like a queue, and for the next game, you place them as you normally would, but that match wouldn't go live. It is a different map than the current one you are playing.
Basically a "Placement for upcoming game" button would appear, and that hops to the new map, and place like you normally would.
I'm presuming that the devs cannot allow anyone to be actually fighting a war while match making itself happens. When match making begins, all wars must end. And the primary reason is that match making requires knowing what the alliance's war rating is, and you won't know what the correct war rating will be for that match if that alliance is still in the middle of the war that determines that rating.
Wow, there is some real hyperbole in this thread about how timezones are going to effect people...
Some, but it will have some impact. Our alliance generally starts matching around 10am (now) or 9am (daylight savings which I don't get) my time, which therefore is also when our wars end. Because of the way timing works in my battlegroup I sometimes take out my miniboss before I head to bed, and sometimes after I wake up in the morning. That start time works well for me. Now, wars will start 9am (now) or 8am my time, and that means during daylight saving days the window for me to wake up and jump in is a lot smaller. I normally wake up about 7:30am, and that will be extremely tight in the future.
Basically wars go from something I can participate in relatively flexibly to something I will have to set an alarm for during half the year. I'll live, but it is an inconvenience and a potential sleep disruption. If I was in Asia and wars were ending at 3am or 4am, things would become very tricky for me to work around. I simply wouldn't be there for the end of any war, which means I would have to make certain my path was done before signing off, and I would be unavailable for any boss kills more or less permanently.
@Kabam Miike what are the "rewards" of the "Bye" if an Alliance gets it?
The win AW awards? The lose AW awards?
And how about points??? What will be given? Just the 50k plus the 20k for each bg?
Please explain this part.
Since at most three alliances can get the bye (one for one BG war, one for two BG war, one for three BG war), and since they will be matching from top to bottom, the alliance that gets the bye will be some tiny Stone bracket-inhabiting alliance that basically wins the lottery. A very tiny lottery. Since you can only win the bye once, it will, based on my data on brackets, propel a bottom dwelling Stone 3 or Participation alliance perhaps into Stone 1 or maybe Bronze 3 even if they got full points (i.e. a perfect completion plus win bonus).
In other words, it will be a small jackpot for some alliance that barely participates in war, but otherwise is unlikely to affect the rewards for anyone else by any significant amount.
I see a few people have commented about time zone issues. I don't think it is a big deal, however, I do think that that and the problem of linked nodes come into play here.
Please consider removing some, if not all, of the linked nodes so people aren't waiting for a long time, or increase the energy cap. I understand that linked nodes assist with your goal of <100% completion rate for AW, but it is more of an annoyance than anything else. If I am keeping your goal in mind, I will say that there is absolutely no point in linked the first tiles of each path on the map.
Everyone who is commenting about start changes - it is still 24 hours any time that is inconvenient for you with the new season must also be inconvenient for you now so nothing changes. Cause if you wait 3 hours to start to be more convenient then the last 3 hours of war must be inconvenient for you. So that does not change - now those with different time zone players I can see you saying player A usually clears a section but now with the new time start he will still be sleeping so you would lose those hours. But unless he is a pilot or your only great player then someone else should be able to adjust to his line.
My only question is exactly how will the matchmaking work?
Wat determines you opponent being a suitibale match?
Cus as we have seen two alliances with same alliance rating can be very different strengths when it comes to war. Due to peeps selling / not ranking champs.
Can you please elaborate as a alot of people will be wondering the same thing. @Kabam Miike
We don't talk about our Matchmaking criteria in much detail for a few reasons, including the potential for manipulation with that information. The important part will remain your war rating, as this is a performance based metric that increases and decreases with your wins and losses.
The problem with this is people intentionally dropping wars in offseason and using shell alliances to drop rating. You could increase the time it takes to get rewards in joining a new alliance, but that will end up screwing a lot of ppl over as well.
Have you all found a fix to this problem yet by chance?
The idea is Good behind this war matchmaking system but only thing that will be bad is the timing...we people from India will be at Mid Night in the suggested time...what would be a solution for us ?? No matchmaking for Asian time zone ?? Please try to work with that timing but the idea is cool.
I'm EET. For me attack will start Friday night and end Saturday night. Dunno about the rest but this is ok till the part where I'll be missing a lot of wars, not because of time zone but Friday to Saturday is down time from everything. I won't be putting off my life every Friday and Sunday because kabam wants me in game. Terrible decision with attack phase in people's down time!
The problem with this is people intentionally dropping wars in offseason and using shell alliances to drop rating. You could increase the time it takes to get rewards in joining a new alliance, but that will end up screwing a lot of ppl over as well.
Have you all found a fix to this problem yet by chance?
Changing more than one thing at a time makes it difficult to determine whether changes have their intended effects. Additionally, Miike recently commented the upcoming matchmaking adjustment was in development for nearly a year. I wouldn’t interpret Kabam not issuing a statement as Kabam not working on a fix for shelll alliance manipulation.
Everyone who is commenting about start changes - it is still 24 hours any time that is inconvenient for you with the new season must also be inconvenient for you now so nothing changes. Cause if you wait 3 hours to start to be more convenient then the last 3 hours of war must be inconvenient for you. So that does not change - now those with different time zone players I can see you saying player A usually clears a section but now with the new time start he will still be sleeping so you would lose those hours. But unless he is a pilot or your only great player then someone else should be able to adjust to his line.
I feel much better knowing that you've solved the problem of fixed start times by declaring me to be completely redundant to my alliance. I'm sure they will be happy to be informed of this.
I'm not arguing against the new system by the way. I'm simply stating that the problems associated with fixed start times aren't an imaginary phantom. They *will* affect us, and me specifically, and not in a hypothetical way, just the way it has been announced. But if I was in Asia, it would have basically eliminated me from the most critical part of the war.
By the way, I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean "cause if you wait 3 hours to start to be more convenient then the last 3 hours of war must be inconvenient for you" but it reads nonsensical to me. The purpose to starting at a particular time is usually to make sure that the war ends at a particular time because the start of a war is not important, the end is. Because that's when we fight all the bosses. I would have thought that would be obvious.
What you will do against alliances that drop down his war Rating in off Season? And against alliances that switch After every Season in a lower Rating Alliance?
Like others, I am concerned over the forced start time. Attack phase will now start and end at 5am for myself and many members of my alliance, robbing us of the opportunity to recharge our energy overnight. This is a pretty clear disadvantage for those in my or similar time zones.
@Kabam Miike while this is good, this doesnt stop alliances to move to shell alliance to match lower rating alliance. are you guys going to take this into consideration?
one possible solution to the player movement challenges that these changes create:
If matchmaking occurred AFTER defense placement, and defense placement was open meaning that players that joined an alliance anytime during defensive placement would be able to place in that war (as long as they placed before matchmaking started). There's really no good reason you'd need to already have a matched opponent when setting your defenders, as you're not supposed to know who your opponent in the war might be and therefore shouldn't have any more information after matchmaking than before that would modify your strategy on setting a defense.
This would carve out an almost 24 hour window each war when people could move between alliances, allowing them to wait for other rewards, finish their own wars, etc. It would actually make the issue of coordinating alliance movements/recruits way easier than today, where you need to create a gap by delaying AW start (or asking your new ally to do so in order to wait for you to join).
And theoretically this would allow you all to let people start their 24 hr attack clock at a time that was variable but convenient for them, with the caveat that delaying their start would eat into their time to place defenders in the next one. I.e. matchmaking could all be started at the same time for every alliance (and defenders would need to be locking in by that time), but Alliance XYZ could choose to start their 24hrs of attack with a 3 hour delay (eating 3 hours of their 20 hr clock to set defense for the next one). Matchmaking has been done, but they're simply holding off until a time convenient for them (selected by officers ahead of time). You'd have alliances finishing attack at a different time (so real time scoreboard watching takes a hit), but all wars would be completed and results would be known before the next matchmaking began.
Good start and it's nice to see you guys trying to address some of the problems with AW and matchmaking. This is gonna come off super salty but if you're going to acknowledge people for guessing the solution or helping you guys come up with the solution it should really be the people who have been suggesting this idea 7+ months ago and I'm sure it was brought up even before that. People have spent hours on end posting ideas and suggestions so any indication that they've helped you shape a better game would go a long way to keeping those people motivated and appreciated.
That's actually a great point! We've heard many ideas like this from our players for quite some time now. We started working on this new form of Matchmaking just after Alliance Wars seasons started, and even then we'd heard of something like this from many of our Players.
This kind of system isn't built and implemented in just a few months though, and we'd gone back and forth on how to do it, and when we'd have the capacity to do it.
Our players gave us a lot of great input on this one, so we want to thank you all for your suggestions, and look forward to seeing what you guys come up with next!
Haha thanks Miike it’s pretty funny I made the video a day before the announcement what a coincidence. 😂
Well kabam certainly putting in efforts and moving in right direction in making it a fairer aw with these changes . They can’t please everybody on timings I’m sure . Another thing I hope can be implemented in future is I know most have seen alliances docked points list . Shouldn’t the alliance who played fairly against these (docked alliance) actually get the win points ? If not it will just be a scenario where whenever we meet these alliances that pilot or use mods just means losing win bonus points for the fair alliance . If that’s the case the rich alliance just gonna create lots of shell alliance n mod it . It affects whoever they face anyway . Kabam can never stop the cheaters who buy sub accounts and place them in other alliance to purposely spy or give dk . But to those who does it , come on guy , it’s just a game . It’s for enjoyment . Kabam created a fair platform for people to enjoy . If u cheat in such a way , imagine what u do in real life . How can you face your kids / friends etc knowing deep inside u scheme and cheat just in a game . Hahaha
My alliance always starts wars in the evening around 7-8pm CST because that’s the best way it works with everyone’s schedules. Not being able to have this flexibility for choosing what works best for the alliance is awful. Not to mention how it affects groups with a mix of international players, or those in other time zones.
oh well. Nothing will ever work out for everyone. Just have to adjust to it or don't join.
Comments
No, you are missing the point, nothing is shortened here at all. The ending time can change though, but, that is fine as long as the champs aren't locked in AW, and you can still place AW defenders on time.
Think of it like a queue, and for the next game, you place them as you normally would, but that match wouldn't go live. It is a different map than the current one you are playing.
Basically a "Placement for upcoming game" button would appear, and that hops to the new map, and place like you normally would.
IM glad MANY of the suggestion i made a month ago or so were implemented. Very satisfied.
ALtho.
Please remove the +/- rating effect during placement phase, that too is easy to add and will prevent allies fishing for opponents defense with 20 hr time to get them in the bag. It would be very hard to obtain defences from friendly allies if they're head on inside their own war.
That would be the last nail in the coffin for collusion.
Well done.
Matchmaking start at 3PM PST and new members need to join until that time in order to participate the war, but sometimes AQ and SA rewards are release later than that. why not changing the time to 5-6 PM?
Wat determines you opponent being a suitibale match?
Cus as we have seen two alliances with same alliance rating can be very different strengths when it comes to war. Due to peeps selling / not ranking champs.
Can you please elaborate as a alot of people will be wondering the same thing.
@Kabam Miike
Since the matching is done with even more advance time now, it doesn't seem like it was necessary to give everyone the same starting and ending time. That can't be a plus for Kabam's servers either, where activity is now going to spike at the exact same time.
Why don't they let people choose their own start time for each war when they enlist, within a defined range?
will we have to same systems for aw getting tie? @Kabam Miike
We don't talk about our Matchmaking criteria in much detail for a few reasons, including the potential for manipulation with that information. The important part will remain your war rating, as this is a performance based metric that increases and decreases with your wins and losses.
That's actually a great point! We've heard many ideas like this from our players for quite some time now. We started working on this new form of Matchmaking just after Alliance Wars seasons started, and even then we'd heard of something like this from many of our Players.
This kind of system isn't built and implemented in just a few months though, and we'd gone back and forth on how to do it, and when we'd have the capacity to do it.
When I called out @Lagacy in that post for coming close, it's because he just happened to put out a video yesterday that was something pretty close to this. Check it out here and you can see just how close he was.
Our players gave us a lot of great input on this one, so we want to thank you all for your suggestions, and look forward to seeing what you guys come up with next!
I'm presuming that the devs cannot allow anyone to be actually fighting a war while match making itself happens. When match making begins, all wars must end. And the primary reason is that match making requires knowing what the alliance's war rating is, and you won't know what the correct war rating will be for that match if that alliance is still in the middle of the war that determines that rating.
Some, but it will have some impact. Our alliance generally starts matching around 10am (now) or 9am (daylight savings which I don't get) my time, which therefore is also when our wars end. Because of the way timing works in my battlegroup I sometimes take out my miniboss before I head to bed, and sometimes after I wake up in the morning. That start time works well for me. Now, wars will start 9am (now) or 8am my time, and that means during daylight saving days the window for me to wake up and jump in is a lot smaller. I normally wake up about 7:30am, and that will be extremely tight in the future.
Basically wars go from something I can participate in relatively flexibly to something I will have to set an alarm for during half the year. I'll live, but it is an inconvenience and a potential sleep disruption. If I was in Asia and wars were ending at 3am or 4am, things would become very tricky for me to work around. I simply wouldn't be there for the end of any war, which means I would have to make certain my path was done before signing off, and I would be unavailable for any boss kills more or less permanently.
That's not a trivial imposition.
The win AW awards? The lose AW awards?
And how about points??? What will be given? Just the 50k plus the 20k for each bg?
Please explain this part.
On the rest, I believe you have found a good way to ensure a good matchmaking system.
AequitasDominus
Since at most three alliances can get the bye (one for one BG war, one for two BG war, one for three BG war), and since they will be matching from top to bottom, the alliance that gets the bye will be some tiny Stone bracket-inhabiting alliance that basically wins the lottery. A very tiny lottery. Since you can only win the bye once, it will, based on my data on brackets, propel a bottom dwelling Stone 3 or Participation alliance perhaps into Stone 1 or maybe Bronze 3 even if they got full points (i.e. a perfect completion plus win bonus).
In other words, it will be a small jackpot for some alliance that barely participates in war, but otherwise is unlikely to affect the rewards for anyone else by any significant amount.
Please consider removing some, if not all, of the linked nodes so people aren't waiting for a long time, or increase the energy cap. I understand that linked nodes assist with your goal of <100% completion rate for AW, but it is more of an annoyance than anything else. If I am keeping your goal in mind, I will say that there is absolutely no point in linked the first tiles of each path on the map.
The problem with this is people intentionally dropping wars in offseason and using shell alliances to drop rating. You could increase the time it takes to get rewards in joining a new alliance, but that will end up screwing a lot of ppl over as well.
Have you all found a fix to this problem yet by chance?
Changing more than one thing at a time makes it difficult to determine whether changes have their intended effects. Additionally, Miike recently commented the upcoming matchmaking adjustment was in development for nearly a year. I wouldn’t interpret Kabam not issuing a statement as Kabam not working on a fix for shelll alliance manipulation.
I feel much better knowing that you've solved the problem of fixed start times by declaring me to be completely redundant to my alliance. I'm sure they will be happy to be informed of this.
I'm not arguing against the new system by the way. I'm simply stating that the problems associated with fixed start times aren't an imaginary phantom. They *will* affect us, and me specifically, and not in a hypothetical way, just the way it has been announced. But if I was in Asia, it would have basically eliminated me from the most critical part of the war.
By the way, I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean "cause if you wait 3 hours to start to be more convenient then the last 3 hours of war must be inconvenient for you" but it reads nonsensical to me. The purpose to starting at a particular time is usually to make sure that the war ends at a particular time because the start of a war is not important, the end is. Because that's when we fight all the bosses. I would have thought that would be obvious.
If matchmaking occurred AFTER defense placement, and defense placement was open meaning that players that joined an alliance anytime during defensive placement would be able to place in that war (as long as they placed before matchmaking started). There's really no good reason you'd need to already have a matched opponent when setting your defenders, as you're not supposed to know who your opponent in the war might be and therefore shouldn't have any more information after matchmaking than before that would modify your strategy on setting a defense.
This would carve out an almost 24 hour window each war when people could move between alliances, allowing them to wait for other rewards, finish their own wars, etc. It would actually make the issue of coordinating alliance movements/recruits way easier than today, where you need to create a gap by delaying AW start (or asking your new ally to do so in order to wait for you to join).
And theoretically this would allow you all to let people start their 24 hr attack clock at a time that was variable but convenient for them, with the caveat that delaying their start would eat into their time to place defenders in the next one. I.e. matchmaking could all be started at the same time for every alliance (and defenders would need to be locking in by that time), but Alliance XYZ could choose to start their 24hrs of attack with a 3 hour delay (eating 3 hours of their 20 hr clock to set defense for the next one). Matchmaking has been done, but they're simply holding off until a time convenient for them (selected by officers ahead of time). You'd have alliances finishing attack at a different time (so real time scoreboard watching takes a hit), but all wars would be completed and results would be known before the next matchmaking began.
Haha thanks Miike it’s pretty funny I made the video a day before the announcement what a coincidence. 😂
oh well. Nothing will ever work out for everyone. Just have to adjust to it or don't join.