Alliance "Bank/"Stash" Suggestions.

GothicKratos

I'm not familiar with the metrics of expanding the Alliance roster, so bear with me a little bit, but I'm sure it's right above the normal Hero roster, so I'll just use 600 HP as a baseline, for the sake of this post. If anyone could fill me in on actual metrics, I could retweak the numbers and statistics to reflect that, in this post.

Let's assume for a minute that there is an Alliance "Bank"/"Stash". I feel like every Alliance should get /something/ in terms of expansion, no matter what placement, and there's a few ways you could realistically go about distributing these rewards;

• Point Progression: This would be based solely on the amount of points collectively amassed by the Alliance. I feel like a good baseline would 1HP per 100 Event Points. In this scenario (and I'm going to use my own personal experience in events as metrics) we'll say I average about 6000 Events Points per PvE event, and so does the other four members of my Alliance - that's a total of 30000 Event Points, which in turn boils down to 300 HP. If we use my about baseline of 600 HP for reference, that's half a roster spot in one PvE event. Additionally, this will give PvE an added bonus, especially for your average Alliance, to play PvEs to their fullest and not just play to a certain progression reward and drop, since PvP will yield much smaller rewards in this respect.
  Pros: Incentives PvE Events. Relatively low success thresh hold allows smaller Alliances a higher rate of success and greater feeling of accomplishment.
  Cons: Established Alliances will gain a gigantic boost in acquired Hero Points, which will in turn greater devalue the Premium Currency.
• Rank Progression: This would be based solely on your Alliance's overall placement and ranking in each Event. My suggestion, if this was the chosen path of action, would to make Alliance Leaderboards bracketed. My initial thoughts would be to bracket it based on Alliance size, but realistically, that has no bearing on the actual ability of an Alliance, when placed into said brackets, because it would likely lead to people purposely playing with smaller player pools and ruining the bracketing effect anyways. MMR is an option, but community overall opinion of the MMR in MPQ seems to be pretty low, so I feel like that's a poor HR decision. You could base it off of previous ranking and placement of either the Alliance itself or an average placement 'score' of each member, though they are they're both flawed in their own way. Alliance hopping is pretty prevalent so Alliance Ranking could really hobble an Alliance if a few key members leave, especially so in a smaller Alliance, and if we choose to bracket based on individual scores, I feel like smaller Alliances will see a lot of skewing in bracketing based on individual preferences in event types, since smaller alliances cannot pick and choose their members, so to speak.
  Pros: In a properly bracketed environment, this system could lead to additional competitive scenes, as well as a greater sense of achievement, as Alliances not only top brackets, but as they climb to new brackets as well. Could allow for larger lumps of Hero Points to be distributed, as rewards could be scaled to each bracket (i.e. low brackets could receive a larger lump sum of Hero Points, while higher brackets could receive smaller amounts), as to not devalue the premium currency, nor flood the market with it unnecessarily.
  
  Cons: Without a proper bracketing system, this will simply turn into another reward for the top dog Alliances and won't have any trickle effort at all (quite the opposite, realistically). Proper bracketing system would require a lot of metrics.
• Alliance Participation: This would be based primarily on overall Alliance participation. We'll say there are five overall stages of this. First stage is 20% participation (one person for a 5 man Alliance) and would reward, let's say 25HP. Stage two would be 40% participation (i.e. two people) and would reward an additional 25 HP, for a total of 50. Stage three would be 60% participation and would reward an additional 50HP, for a total of 100. Stage four would be 80% participation earning an additional 100 HP, for a total of 200. The final stage would be 100% participation and would award an additional 100 HP, for a total of 300, which again, if we look at my earlier baseline, would be able half a slot, for a single event. It is important, in my opinion, to maintain percentiles in this particular situation, over baselined numbers, because it, in a manner of speaking, balances itself, without a need for actual balancing, for larger Alliances, but is still extremely attainable for larger Alliances (i.e. a 20 man Alliance would need 4 participants for the first stags - so on and so forth).
  Pros: Naturally scales well. Doesn't require Alliances or it's members to reach any predetermined metrics (allowing the Alliance to be as laid back as it would like to be).
  
  Cons: Essentially a free gift to established Alliances.

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Now, for a second here, let's get back to the very idea of a "Bank" and/or "Stash" for each Alliance. What would this detail exactly? What's in it for the Alliance? What's in it for the company footing the server bills?

If I had my way, Alliances would be a small bit different than they are now. In my little setup, Alliances would have what I will refer to as both a "Stash" and a "Bank" to store Covers and ISO/HP. Your "Stash" would hold Character Covers. Your "Bank" would hold ISO and Hero Points. All players in the Alliance could put into both pools. From here, I would envision an additional role, aside from Commander, that would simply be able to interact with the "Stash" and "Bank" (a treasurer, if you will). They, as well as Commanders, would be able to delegate ISO, Hero Points, and Covers to individual members of the Alliance through a simple in-game pop-up (akin to Daily Rewards or Event Rewards). This is especially useful for Covers, as not everyone is going to build the same characters, some members may have certain characters finished, or you may know an Alliance mate is close to fully covering a character and needs a cover you just got - you'd then be able to give this cover to them to help them out or if you just don't need it, you'd be able to throw it in the "Stash" so players down the road could use it. I feel like the "Bank" portion would be fairly underused for the most part, but it would allow players to help each other out leveling their covers if they needed it or help the Alliance leader expand the Alliance Roster.

Now, all that being said, I still haven't gotten into what the developers get out of all these man hours and effort, and I'm about to get to that. If I had it my way, the Alliance would no longer be expanded by Hero Points. There would be a separate currency for expanding the Alliance Roster, the Alliance Bank, and the Alliance Stash. A couple of reasons for this; money is of course the main reason, but there is also the fact that removing the correlation between Hero Points and the Alliance Roster allows them to give away said new currency easier as a reward without having to worry about feeding it to the sharks, devaluing their premium currency, and any kind of reward scaling. It simplifying everything (not streamline, mind you). This way, they could continue giving away Hero Points as they are, but then additionally give away this other currency that doesn't negatively impact the game in any (major) way. Furthermore, the developers could continue to sell Hero Points as they are, but also additionally sell the new Alliance currency, for those that don't want to wait or for the group of friends that want to jump in together. This would also prevent people from creating single man Alliances to reap free Hero Point bonuses. As well, this also prevents mismanagement of earned Hero Points, such as Commanders using Alliance earned Hero Points for non-Alliance gain.

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So, I've detailed potential rewards systems to help Alliances thrive, especially at lower levels of play, what I think could be added to Alliances in terms of a "Stash" and "Bank", and how I think the community and developers could benefit from these changes, but really, there's a lot of information here, and a lot of unlisted options and variances - what would I do exactly?

As I mentioned, I would do away with the tie of Hero Points to expanding Alliance Rosters and would not associate Hero Points with any form of Alliance expansion - I would introduce a new currency. From there, I would implement a hybrid system of the Point Progression and Alliance Participation systems I mentioned; Point Progression would manifest itself as I talked about it, awarding a baseline amount of the new currency per a specific amount of Event Points, but as far as participation is concerned, I would implement it largely as I spoke about it earlier, but I would scale it as such that the smaller your Alliance Roster, the larger lump sum is attainable, and scaling it down as the Alliance Roster expands. This allows for an Alliance to decide how and where it wants to spend it's resources first; do they want to expand their "Stash" while they're still getting hefty beginner bonuses, or do they feel like with the added roster spot, they can make up the difference in point progression? I feel like it would add a lot of depth to Alliances, as well as add a lot of community opportunity, while also allowing the developers not feel like their doing something for nothing (which they should never have to do, this is their job after all, they do deserve compensation).

{Edit #1 - 8/7}

Added my personal opinion on pros and cons of each reward system (in Spoiler Tags) - please note all Pros and Cons are assuming the usage of Hero Points for all Alliance functionality. Added a breakdown of what I think the "Stash" and "Bank" should be and the benefits the community and developers would gain. Added what I feel is the best potential setup and implementation of this system.

Unknown

What about a passive alliance tax, that a commander can turn off if not wanted. 10% of HP earned from alliance rewards is collected in an alliance bank and goes towards buying any available roster slots. Once you reach 20 slots the tax is removed. If they ever implemented alliance upgrades this would be a really good way of funding those also.

GothicKratos

Cryptobrancus wrote:

What about a passive alliance tax, that a commander can turn off if not wanted. 10% of HP earned from alliance rewards is collected in an alliance bank and goes towards buying any available roster slots. Once you reach 20 slots the tax is removed. If they ever implemented alliance upgrades this would be a really good way of funding those also.

I feel like this is doable, but personally, I don't like this type of implementation. It feels too, brutish, I guess? Furthermore, I don't see how this will really benefit anyone at 10%, since realistically, that's 5 or 10 Hero Points per person (so overall a minimum of 25 Hero Points), but sapping more than 10% just feels outrageous.

Also, updated original poster with more wall'o'text.

Unknown

Yes at 10 % it would take a long time to grow, but as more players join more taxes would be collected making more of an effect. And this way the cost of expansion comes out of the rewards players are getting for being in an alliance instead of forcing them to use their personal gains/purchases to grow. But the tradeoff would be it works very slowly.

Enoc99

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Yes at 10 % it would take a long time to grow, but as more players join more taxes would be collected making more of an effect. And this way the cost of expansion comes out of the rewards players are getting for being in an alliance instead of forcing them to use their personal gains/purchases to grow. But the tradeoff would be it works very slowly.

The tax idea is honestly a really good idea.

And I think that alliance upgrades would be worth it too. Can spend HP from the alliance "bank" to purchase upgrades like the following, probably for a few hundred HP each upgrade:
-Alliance members get a 5% discount on purchasing new character slots with HP.
-Whenever boots are purchased with HP or ISO, alliance members gain an additional 1 boost with their purchase.
-Reduce ISO costs for leveling a character by 1% (additional upgrades on this can increase the reduction to 2%, 3%, 4%, and 5%)
-In PvP events, Purchased shields last an additional 5 minutes for alliance members (upgradable further to additional 10 minutes, and 15 minutes)
-Reserve Alliance Slots - Can Purchase additional slots in the alliance roster beyond the standard 20. However, alliances can still only count the top 20 scores for alliance rewards, and only those top 20 individuals receive said alliance rewards.
...And likely several others.

GothicKratos

Dig the idea of Alliance specific upgrades/boosts.