Alliance Reward Change

Unknown

Does anybody know the reasoning behind this change? Used to be that you'd get the hardest to get solo color as an alliance top 100 reward. Now, you get the easiest to achieve. (Colossus red as a top 150 solo achievement, Colossus red for a top 100 alliance achievement.) It's a bit aggravating, to be honest.

Unknown

It is awfully aggravating to be honest. The devs nourish a zenlike atmosphere by avoiding it.

IamTheDanger

This was discussed in another thread, yet D3, or anyone for that matter, has not come out with an answer.

When/if they finally DO come here to give us an answer, it will be some long drawn out bullsh!t line that side steps the question without giving an answer. I here enough politician slick talking lies from the government, I Don't want to hear it from a video game. The previous way made everyone happy, and it worked. So why, WHY did they change it?

Come on D3/Demiurge, answer this question with an answer that actually answers the question! (WoW, that was a mouth full)

Unknown

Metrics.

Also, money.

hurcules

David already answered in the sticky thread. Essentially to discourage people from doing alliance swap.

Unknown

"Similar to lowering percentages on our cover packs, our metrics tell us that making one cover of each character much harder to obtain actually increases player happiness, leading to higher sales."

"We have seen that newer players struggle with the decision of which covers to max for any particular character. Thus, by eliminating one of the available choices, we hope to gently nudge them toward spending their HP reserves on upgrading the two easier to obtain covers."

IamTheDanger

EDIT:

Having read everything on every post from every web site related to MPQ that I can find about this topic, I now better understand why it was done.

However, just because I understand it, does NOT mean I like it. If how I feel about this change is anything like how others felt over "true healing", then I'm surprised this game has any players left at all.

With true healing, the only players that really suffered the most, were the ones abusing proloque healing. The players that didn't abuse it, didn't notice much difference. So, if a few alliances swap around, find a way to stop them, not punish everyone.

Unknown

Discouraging alliance swapping by making the alliance reward redundant for everyone...brilliant...

Unknown

It's a double edged sword. If the alliance cover is one that is desirable to be maxed at 5, it is good. The con is it makes it harder to get a full color set

Unknown

gobstopper wrote:

"Similar to lowering percentages on our cover packs, our metrics tell us that making one cover of each character much harder to obtain actually increases player happiness, leading to higher sales."

"We have seen that newer players struggle with the decision of which covers to max for any particular character. Thus, by eliminating one of the available choices, we hope to gently nudge them toward spending their HP reserves on upgrading the two easier to obtain covers."

Alright, so congrats to D3P on aiming to attempt to bring in new players, and somewhat disregard those that have put in ridiculous hours to get their team to a competitive level. (Especially those of us who choose to not spend money at all.) It's beginning to frustrate, even annoy, those that are aligning themselves to succeed; whether it's finding a successful alliance, or building one.

/rant (for now)

Unknown

I didn't notice this change, but I agree. It was preferable to have a harder to get, or at least a different color cover as an alliance reward. Serious players who are likely to push for such covers are the most likely to join an alliance. This was part of why I joined an alliance and I'd suspect it would be preferable to encourage those players to join alliances. Being in an alliance, though it fast-tracks your progression, has it's costs. There is more pressure to perform consistently on every event. Solo players can take breaks more easily. The bonus of having the separate cover for the alliance award was one of those perks that "made it worth it".

I don't see this change as discouraging alliance swapping. Lots of swaps still occur so that alliances can maintain top100, or top50 -- i.e. getting a cover vs. getting nothing. Instead, I see this change as marginally diminishing the value of being in an alliance.

I would imagine that one way to discourage alliance swapping would be to increase the brackets for the awards: top 200 alliances get a (different colored) cover instead of top100.

Unknown

How, exactly, does this discourage alliance swapping?

simonsez

The only thing this change does is change the order in which you get the covers on your way to maxing it.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

The only thing this change does is change the order in which you get the covers on your way to maxing it.

if anything it discourages playing a bit when you know either solo or team your about to achieve the same reward. Where as if it were different, you will fight until the last minute and push harder. I am surprise they would do something to hurt their pocket books