Alliance Wars Beta: The Haywired Edition Part Deuce

[Haywire0311]

The Kickoff

What seemed like an eternity was really just a couple days but I was getting the itch so I’m glad my fix is coming soon.

We just got the message that the next war kicks off tomorrow.

Based off the message, we’re definitely getting 20 points this go around. That should definitely help a bit with strategy and such. Best of all is open Beta will be next month so you all get to participate!

There’s not much for us to see right now. The leaderboard from last go around is visible and we’re still in 5th.

And the war is back in the alliance tab but there’s not much we can do with it other than watch the countdown and check the leaderboards.

What’s new is that we can see what members are allowed to participate in the war. Well, we are supposed to be able to see. When I tap the button, nothing happens.

One thing that hasn’t changed? That annoying patrol crate red dot that makes you think you have something going on in the members button but it just the frame scrolled to the right and the patrol crate dot being pushed into the button. Me love you long time if you fix that devs.

Finally, something I noticed is that it says roster is locked and match makingnis in progress. Makes me think we won’t be paired up with the same alliances we battled last round. Who knows. We’ll find out in 16 hours.

Til then, feel free to post questions, suggestions, comments, etc.

[Poobgloob]

What I am really hoping for are manual, player-controlled matches when attacking.

I feel like the instantaneous, auto-outcome, chance-based matches take away from the whole experience and make it quite dull…

Additionally I feel like Battlepoints could be utilized better if we were able to control the heroes we choose to use in our attacks, since we could actually come up with a battle strategy to use, rather than leaving it to probability.

An exclusive ‘Gladiator Arena’ type game map specifically for Alliance Wars matches would be pretty cool too.

[Haywire0311]

@Poobgloob

What I am really hoping for are manual, player-controlled matches when attacking.

Based on the after-war survey questions, I believe they may be thinking about this.

@Poobgloob

An exclusive ‘Gladiator Arena’ type game map specifically for Alliance Wars matches would be pretty cool too

This would be nice!

[Haywire0311]

War 2 - Day 1: Highway to Hell

Day 1 was much crazier and faster paced than the first day of the last war. Seems everyone’s got a hang the game and made a dash for the middle of the board. Smart little buggers.

We’re doing alright so far. Still 5th overall in the season and right now sitting at 3rd but that can soon change either way.

Like I mentioned above, rather than taking tile by tile, it seemed we ran right for the sweet spot of the map to get the most points.

We quickly ran into two other alliances that had the same idea. This time around, no discussions on teaming up yet so we’re fighting on both fronts.

Couple of things about this.

• seems they changed up who our opponents were on this map. I kinda like that actually. Changes up the gameplay and gives everyone a chance regardless of how they did last war.

• since it’s the same map, everyone knows where to go. Not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, you have a hunger games scenario where everyone rushes for the middle. On the other hand, that may get tiring fast. Hopefully they change up maps during the open beta.

With that said, I’m glad we got a new war going. I was missing it. No new items that I discovered so sorry to disappoint there.

Got some ideas from fellow members and myself that would be nice to see (different from what I’ve mentioned in the other thread).

• Alliance leadership should be given ability to remove member teams from a tile. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have to wait til someone comes online so I can ask them to remove their defense so I can have someone else get in there with a stronger team.

• Alliance chat breakouts. This is more of a strategic idea I had so not sure if it would be beneficial to all. Coordinating 25 people at once when they are geographically dispersed and on different time zones is extremely difficult. Being a USMC grunt, I was considering breaking us down into small unit teams of 4-5. Would be nice if each individual team could chat and coordinate attacks outside of the main alliance chat so as to avoid confusion. We can do it in discord but would be nice to do it in game instead.

• Marker types: I think maybe this was mentioned but can we get different color markers, some for defense and some for offense?

• Alliance contribution can be similar to bounty but show on a daily basis how many points each player expenses per day.

I’m gonna call it a night. Would love to hear from some of the others playing as to what they think. Also, if anyone who isn’t playing has questions, let me know!

Semper Fi

Haywire

[Haywire0311]

Day 2: This is Sparta!

Sorry for the late post on this one folks! I’m sure you were all at the edge of your seats waiting.

Big developments happened on Day 2. We moved up a spot but TCHN still has a very comfortable lead on the whole board.

It really looks like everyone’s strategy from the get go was to get to the center and hold it. TCHN got there first so I’m guessing that is why they have such a huge lead. With that said, I’m wondering if that is always the best strategy.

We ended up going in from the side and attacking their HQ area which cut off their supply line for a while until they broke the line again.

You can see that when you cut the supply line, the tiles cut off can’t reinforce themselves which leaves them vulnerable to attack. This is why I’m a bit concerned that the rush to the middle strategy could end up backfiring.

As far as our other opponents on the map, I know we have a sister alliance on the same map. This is a concern I have moving forward just because it means you automatically have a partner in the war. I’d rather you have to communicate and develop treaties amongst alliances rather than just have it handed to you but I don’t know if it’s possible to avoid allowing this to happen.

As far as the other alliances, seems they just wanna knock down TCHN a bit to avoid them running away with the lead. Everyone looks to be attacking the middle of the map to get those points back from them.

We’re still 5th overall on the leaderboard. Which brings up something I’m not sure is working correctly. I thought after the first day of the war, we get ranked overall amongst all alliances. On the leaderboard itself we’re still 5th.

But you’ll notice in the alliance screen shot at the beginning of this post, it still says unranked. Not sure why that is happening.

Other than that, don’t have any ideas that I or others haven’t already mentioned. I’ll keep you all posted on how this next day progresses!

EDIT: I remembered one thing I wanted to mention. One of the post-war one surveys asked something about the system being fair and allowing for less powerful alliances to have a shot (at least I think it did). While the lowered powered alliances have a shot on their individual maps, there’s no way they will compete on the overall leaderboard. The top alliances have very powerful players that can take tiles with just two heroes. The lower powered alliances have players that may need all 5. So there’s going to be a huge disparity in scores between the big guys and everyone else. I don’t know if this matters or not. Hopefully there will be map based awards and not just overall leaderboard awards.

[Funknfritz]

Thanks for the great Work Haywire!

[Haywire0311]

Day 3: Giant Purple People Eater

A bit late with this post as day 4 is about to kick off but wanted to keep you all updated as to how the war is progressing.

We’ve taken the lead into first place but only by a little. Whenever you’re at the head of the board, you have a target on your back so I’m sure things will change in the coming days.

We’ve moved up to 4th overall and have a little bit of a lead over 5th place but like I said, things can change.

With that said, we’ve been closing in on TCHN but they’ve been putting up a good fight. We’ve been going back and forth cutting off each other’s supply chains which stops the opponent for assisting tiles under attack.

We’ve also got 25R taking some shots to our right flank so fighting on two fronts at the moment.

A couple of suggestions for the devs to consider:

• To adjust for the lower alliances, perhaps consider lowering the power of the KLG merc teams in unoccupied territories?

The rationale behind this is that on maps where the alliances are fairly high powered, we can take tiles like this with 2-3 heroes whereas lower powered players need to use a full squad. To put everyone on a fair playing field so that lower powered alliances have a shot at the top of the boards, lowering the KLG team power will let these lower powered players take tiles with the same amount of heroes as the high powered players. Maybe make them 17k power or something. Just a thought.

• I mentioned this before but also consider allowing team power to go down after multiple attacks. There are a few top tier players with team power well over 100k. An alliance with just a handful of these players becomes unstoppable as there is no way to beat the teams, regardless of how well the matchup is. However, I’m sure that the hero health diminishes after each attack as it does in gauntlet. Perhaps if after an attack, maybe one of the defending teams heroes dies leaving just four to defend. This should assist in avoiding the situation where tiles become unbearable.

That’s it for now. I’ll update you all tonight.

[Gentjan1987]

Whenever you ready. Please say that the best way and strategy to block others is to team up with everyone in there. In the same map there is OWN2 and OWNED. plus you have teamed up with SOD. Basically stop putting lies and say it exactly how come you are there. And don’t take it as good or bad. But actually teach others how you can cut alliances by teaming up as that way obviously they can only do 1/3 of it. 3vs1 mate. Teach that in here how it gets done. And stop making your self you are first as you fought hard and deserve it.

[The_Green_Goblin]

I think cutting supply lines should mean more. Maybe stop hourly point production at least. If you have high enough heroes having your supply line cut to a high point sector doesn’t truly affect you.

[Haywire0311]

Day 6: Closing Time

Well, the second war is coming to a close and most of the fighting has settled down.

We’ve been lucky to maintain our overall lead to stay in 4th but due to several issues which I’ll discuss in a bit, we’ve dropped to 3rd on the map.

The map ended up shaping differently than what it looked like after day 3.

So a few thoughts in regards to the overall war:

• Despite the one concern from the troll of the thread, alliance wars is good. Alliances are formed, treaties amongst alliances are made and broken, and positions of power come and go. Overall, a well thought out event that I’m sure many will love other than the semi-literate trolls that don’t understand the concept of alliances in general.
• Rewards for this event need to be worthwhile or it will die and suffer a quick death. I have no idea how the rewards will be structured but it would be good to get rewards for not only the season but also for each individual war. It might not even hurt to do daily rewards based on positioning.
• Referencing the quick death mentioned above, alliance wars requires a lot of thought and strategy. If the rewards aren’t worth it, if they are not constant, the need to participate ona daily basis will dwindle. As a reference, look at some of the multi-day pvp tournaments. After the first day of grinding in pvp, the majority of the battling is done in the top 50-100. The rest of the user base seems to give up and let it ride til it’s over. These wars are meant to last a week. I found that after day 4-5, with no motivating factor in place, it was a grind to get folks to engage and participate in the war, especially when other events are going on that pay out more.
• Communication tools need to be upgraded in order to facilitate coordination amongst the alliance and other alliances.
• As the @The_Green_Goblin referenced above, I don’t see the point of cutting supply lines as it currently works. There’s actually no serious consequence other than the fact you can’t attack the surrounding tiles from the cutoff tile. You still get points for that cutoff tile and somehow you can still defend it even though there’s no supply line to it. So, again, what’s the point of a tile that has isn’t supply line cut off. Perhaps the devs can either answer that question or fix it to make it have some type of consequence. Personally, I think all of the above should happen - lose the points as well as ability to add reinforcements for defense.
• There should be a reset in attacks so it occurs twice a day. Drop battle points down to 15 again if needed but the limitation of just once a day severely limits the ability to change the tide of war.

Here’s my strategy thoughts:

• If it’s possilbe to come up with a way to avoid having sister alliances in the same map, that’s great. Despite what the illiterate troll says, the purpose of this kind of war is to work with others to dominate the map. However, the treaties and relationships should just be handed to you on a silver platter.
• I originally thought that it’s a great idea to shoot for the middle as fast as possible to get points. While that’s still the goal, you need to build a solid foundation of support as you try to accomplish that goal. The troll figured he gets the middle and he should win. But if you don’t provide enough support to your base as well as the chain you made to the middle, you open yourself up to attacks and a cut in supply line. Whether we had none or all alliances working against a common enemy, it doesn’t matter; we still would have cut them off at the base due to lack of defense at the base. So make sure to protect yourself as you expand.
• The ability to whittle down a defending team should be considered. There is bound to be mismatches in team power amongst alliances situated on a map. To give even the weakest alliances a fighting chance, the ability to take a defending team down, one hero at a time would be useful. I’m mentioned how to implement this in previous posts.
• The ability to manually control the attack through a PvP type environment would be nice. Not just a quick win type attack. But if quick win is the only solution, at least tell us % win similar to patrols.
• Menber contribution. I originally didn’t mind the fact that new members couldn’t help contribute to the war. But then we had an internal restructuring and lost 5 guys and gained 5 in return. What sucks is that the new 5 couldn’t help at all so we were fighting with 100 less battle points. The ban on bounty is one thing since bounty is only 3 days. However, if alliances wars are meant to be a week long event, perhaps consider limiting a new members contribution until they’ve been with the alliance for 3 days? I believe something like the above will limit abode of churning people through but also allow alliances to recruit new talent to participate.

I’m sure there’s some other ideas I missed but that pretty much sums it up. Look forward to hearing how others thought it all played out and what can be fixed or added. Thanks again to HHG for allowing us to participate. Can’t wait for open Beta

[Checkpoint]

2 Questions: 1. If I see that correctly, does it matter who has 1 place at the end of the 3 wars? (in theory, therefore, an alliance that has always made the 2 and there are different 1 places to win at the end?) 2nd and the more important question, what will there be for rewards? (Here’s a little bit of thinking, considering the Bounty, 4 days, what will be the reward for Alliance War, which is much longer?)