Alliance question/discussion

Bacon Pants

Just thinking about this today as I look at the Alliance leaderboards in various events. I see every iteration of the xmen and the 5 deadly folks in or arond the top ten. These two groups have seemingly broken the point of alliances to me. There's not much incentive to compete for top placements as the aforementioned groups will usually occupy the top spots.

It's nice to see the folks of S.H.I.E.L.D holding firm as they are the OG Alliance.

So I ask you wonderful forum folks, Is there any way to fix this?

esoxnepa

The top alliance competition is driving way too many sales for them to want to change the situation.

Sure, when I was told alliances were "just going to be a bonus," I bought and spent HP to bring an alliance to 10 slots. This has turned out to be an absolute waste of money. Oh well, lesson learned.

I'd love to see the alliances do something more beneficial for the non-hardcore, but I doubt we will see it.

TheHueyFreeman

It depends on what you consider your expectations to be. If you want first or second, you will have an uphill climb as it's essentially 20 vs 100. However, top ten or even five is possible with a large variety of strategies like coordinating shield hops or targetting certain alliances. Heck, somehow we got top 6 last season without strategies.

Also, there have been some alliances that compete for top ten like immortal rage, deadpooltacos, Sparta, and us. This proves that you don't have to be deadly or an xman to get good prizes. I don't think it's an unbeatable wall, just that the super alliances give an advantageous buffer.

Unknown

This is one of those things that I ask, is it really broken? I for one have no desire to grind/spend my way into the top 10 or higher, thankfully there are still lots of nice rewards in the top 100 which has a lot more wiggle room than the top 10. I see the tactics, time, and money that goes into the chase for the elite of the elite title. If you want to be part of that, well if you can't beat em, prove yourself and try to join them, if you are not willing to join them nor able to beat them, why should something be done so that you can, are they not earning what they get?

Why is 12th or 20th or 79th unacceptable to you?

FaerieMyst

I completely agree with the above post. If you want to chase the covers, the top 100 still has 90 more spots to compete for.

I love MPQ. I could talk for hours about it. My immediate family all plays to one degree or another. That said - it is still a match three game and there is a limit to the resources I will allocate to it. Let the X-Men have their top spots. They work for it. I won't.

Spoit

Al$o: money

avs962

I've learned to live with this. Granted, I'm in an alliance with my brothers that is nowhere near being a top 100 alliance. Though I feel I'm good enough to be in a top 100 or so, I think it's fun to share the 250 iso from the events with my bros.

If all those mutants and diseases want to hold their cult meetings at the top of the leaderboards, I guess they've earned that right through all the work (money, I'm some cases) they put in that I, and many others don't care to put in.

Unknown

Last season the threshold for top10 alliance averaged about 875 per player for a 20 man alliance. Given that anyone who's got a few 3*'s and knows what they're doing can hit 900 with a single shield and a couple of hours of play, I don't think the bar is really that high at the moment.

The alliance HP/cover rewards are the same down to top50, so there's only a bit of iso and pride at stake beyond that. I don't know what the average alliance score for the individual events was last season around the 50th place mark, but I'd imagine that it was probably under 800 points per player.

20 consistent players is really all that you need, but that's not really as easy as it sounds.

JamieMadrox

Bacon Pants wrote:

Just thinking about this today as I look at the Alliance leaderboards in various events. I see every iteration of the xmen and the 5 deadly folks in or arond the top ten. These two groups have seemingly broken the point of alliances to me. There's not much incentive to compete for top placements as the aforementioned groups will usually occupy the top spots.

If they were named differently would you still complain? Just because the X-Alliances and 5DAlliances are a group of alliance doesn't meant that alliances that are just as good as them wouldn't form and hold those spots anyways. You make it out like there is some great injustice to realy good players daoing really well in a competitive game.

Bacon Pants wrote:

It's nice to see the folks of S.H.I.E.L.D holding firm as they are the OG Alliance.

You seem to forget that 5 Deadly Venoms are an OG alliance too. They were formed at the start and have been a top alliance for almost as long. Yes, S.H.I.E.L.D set a bar with their dominance in Season 1, but that doesn't make them the be all and end all of alliances. There are lots of other great alliances that could have placed first it hey had spent HP as freely.

Bacon Pants wrote:

So I ask you wonderful forum folks, Is there any way to fix this?

There is nothing broken here. If not them, then someone else would occupy that spot and you'd probably still be mad.

WilsonFisk

The way I see it the X-Men basically have the top spot and will keep it. They've got a pool of 100 players to shift guys around, and obviously will be able to recruit well because of the visibility. You also have several of them willing to spend crazy HP to stay on top. We have fun trying to get into the top 10, and when we miss it, it's just a little less ISO we get. I can deal with that and still be satisfied with my game and my alliance. If you're not, contact the X-Men and get ready to buy lots of shields!

mohio

I'm not even sure why there's a competition for the top alliances. Just let those guys have it. *Maybe* top 10 is worth going for since the iso bonus is really nice, but otherwise top 50 for the extra hp is plenty good enough. The effort and resources required to get top 2 is certainly not worth the rewards, and I imagine the same is mostly true for top 10 unless everyone in your alliance is committed and capable of putting up 900+.

Unknown

Thanks for the shout out, but Jamie is right - there are plenty of OG Alliances floating around the Top 10. We're one of the few mom-'n-pop shops left near the top, and we're proud of that, but that doesn't take anything away from the Walmarts and McDonald'ses of the MPQ world.

Not sure that there's anything that can be fixed, really. Shields were a pay 2 win mechanic for individuals long before alliances ever showed up on the scene. SHIELD blitzed season 1 because we all had huge stockpiles of HP that we had won in the early days. Once those warchests started getting low and the top prize got redistributed to top 2 spots, there really wasn't any reason to fight for it anymore.

Holding the top spot now means a continual running of HP negative events - meaning you're playing out of your wallet. Don't get me wrong, X-men have to coordinate, use proper strategy, and execute correctly during shield hops. They've got optimal play down. But plenty of alliances do as well, so the only distinguishing factor at the very top of the boards is how many of your alliance are willing to invest money or hoarded HP on an ongoing basis. Not much glory to be won that way, but I don't begrudge them their spot(s) on the top of the mountain. I'm personally happy to draft off their points!

Unknown

PvP is kind of broken but even if it's not, someone has to be at the top and the people who are willing to spend/coordinate more will likely win under any system. Let's say they just got rid of shields and the HP consuming boosts, so PvP is relatively fair now. Does that actually make the game better? You'll have these huge fluctuation in score at the last hour and does that add anything to the game? I don't think the shields and shield hopping add anything meaningful to the game either, but they at least add revenue. Take them away and you wouldn't have made the game any better but the game would make less money.

Spoit

And people were shouting me down when I said that the shift to HP boosts were a pay to win mechanism

Yup, the pace of the game sure was too fast back before the release of LT/BP, much less sentry

Unknown

Like others have already said, you're not missing out on any covers by not being top 5 alliance rank, so why worry so much about it?

If anything you should be worried about how those alliances have basically frozen everyone else out of the 4 star first place prizes in the individual rankings...and the only thing you can really do about that? Get in a decent alliance and power up faster.

Unknown

I don't have any real problem with these alliance networks. If they want to spend time coordinating all of that for fun and profit, more power to them. I never would. I'm WAY too lazy, and frankly I don't care that much about their definition of "winning". That said, I think the member swapping to maximize placements for all their franchises is a little over the top.

To that point, I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of delay between when you join an alliance and when your score starts to count for that alliance. Enough at least to discourage shuffling during events. 24 hours? 48 hours? Not sure exactly what would be effective but still reasonable. Would stop some other desperation tactics like picking up last minute mercenaries to improve standing as well.

Spoit

Thugpatrol wrote:

I don't have any real problem with these alliance networks. If they want to spend time coordinating all of that for fun and profit, more power to them. I never would. I'm WAY too lazy, and frankly I don't care that much about their definition of "winning". That said, I think the member swapping to maximize placements for all their franchises is a little over the top.

To that point, I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of delay between when you join an alliance and when your score starts to count for that alliance. Enough at least to discourage shuffling during events. 24 hours? 48 hours? Not sure exactly what would be effective but still reasonable. Would stop some other desperation tactics like picking up last minute mercenaries to improve standing as well.

A lot less than a day. Shuffling is a major consideration compared to a much larger alliances getting screwed out of top 100 if they lose a single player, since most alliances can't play competitively a player down

mohio

Yeah I wanted to chime in on the shuffling thing too. We had a team member recently decide he needed to be more casual due to work/life/etc. and instead of just drop out he created a new alliance meant to be the noob/casual arm of our main alliance. Since we're cool people and all that, a bunch of us pitched in to open up slots, so now it's almost full. Anyway, long story short(er), we can now swap people in/out whenever some of the vets in the main alliance either want a break or don't need the rewards, and someone from the other alliance can come get a cover they otherwise wouldn't have. Because we're often in the 70-100 range, this is a delicate proposition so it is often crucial to be able to make swaps near the end of events and occasionally swap guys back if we miscalculate and wind up on the wrong side of 100. Any meaningful delay in when "new" members can contribute would make this kind of thing really hard to do optimally, and I don't think many people would consider what we're doing part of the problem.

Unknown

Then there is the other side of this coin, from suggestions and feedback we have this post.
The complaint is similar talking about losing the drive to play, but based on being shut out of cover reward tiers entirely. It would be awesome if there was a reward structure that provided an ever present carrot for people at all levels. Elite and Newb alike.

Season Progression rewards at individual and alliance level could be reworked towards this goal. Move the bulk of ISO and HP rewards to placement (leaving a few covers to really fight over at the top), move the bulk of covers to progression so every ~500 pvp points a new 3* cover is awarded, add in another one for every ~7500 alliance points, have everything reset back to zero with each season and start again. The elite would still need to collect all the progression and as much HP and iso as they can, while securing the few covers still being left for competition, and everyone else would still have ever present goals to work at and most importantly enjoy the rewards from, the end of season would be a mad push for everyone and every alliance to secure one last cover. It *could* be awesome.

This is my view as a middleweight player, I am certain the casuals would love this as well. Thoughts from the top 10 crowd?

Unknown

mohio wrote:

Yeah I wanted to chime in on the shuffling thing too. We had a team member recently decide he needed to be more casual due to work/life/etc. and instead of just drop out he created a new alliance meant to be the noob/casual arm of our main alliance. Since we're cool people and all that, a bunch of us pitched in to open up slots, so now it's almost full. Anyway, long story short(er), we can now swap people in/out whenever some of the vets in the main alliance either want a break or don't need the rewards, and someone from the other alliance can come get a cover they otherwise wouldn't have. Because we're often in the 70-100 range, this is a delicate proposition so it is often crucial to be able to make swaps near the end of events and occasionally swap guys back if we miscalculate and wind up on the wrong side of 100. Any meaningful delay in when "new" members can contribute would make this kind of thing really hard to do optimally, and I don't think many people would consider what we're doing part of the problem.

We actually considered doing something similar but haven't actually gone down that path yet due to logistical/management effort concerns and worries about being fair in our swapping. Have you run into any hard feelings or decisions that everyone isn't happy with when swap time comes or has it pretty much worked itself out so far?

Unknown

I'm not begrudging anyone the ability to swap alliance members when people need to take a break or what have you, my issue is with using these member swaps to gain score advantage within an event. This is supposed to be a competition, and competitions rely on a degree of fair play to remain legitimate. Swapping members in and out down the stretch of an event is a little like a professional sports team adding an all-star player off another team right before the finals start. It undermines the competition, which is why every sports league has rules restricting such player movement.

If there were, let's just say a 36 hour delay between when a member joined an alliance and when his points would begin to register for event scores, that gives you a full day into a normal 2.5 day PvP to have your alliance membership set and locked in to be fully competitive. I don't think that's unreasonable. Shuffle all you want between events-- life happens, **** happens, all understandable--but shuffling during the prime hours of events to gain an edge cheapens the competition.