Another argument to expand alliance rewards

simonsez

This last PvE really highlighted why T50 as the top tier alliance reward needs to be expanded. The rewards should be decided by who puts in the most effort in the event, not who puts in the most effort in finding mercs. In the last hour or two, we went from sitting 17th, doing a victory lap, to 35th with under an hour to go, finally finishing in 48th.

I don't mind losing via getting outworked, but losing like that would've left a bad taste. I've argued in the past against calls to limit roster movement, and I still feel that way, but based on how this event played out, T50 puts WAY, WAY too much pressure on the alliances to maximize scores via any means possible.

SnowcaTT

I've been thinking about running a poll to see not -if- people were moved, but how many people each alliance moved to get to T50 (and maybe how many they moved and weren't successful).

I didn't think I'd merc out but then circumstances changed, I had a fair amount of points: thank you to Chaos League, and gratz on T50.

Gratz and thank you to Ace of Blades, who kicked HALF OF THEIR MEMBERS to take in the top half of Wrecking Crew. Really D3 - this is what you want the alliances to do?

We tried to get our top half into another alliance because last time there was a T50, we kicked somewhere between 6 and 10: folks who had fine scores, but just hadn't grinded quite as heavily for seven straight days. That alliance is not the one we have today, because it creates quite sore feelings to simply kick folks out of your alliance who are trying to help your alliance accomplish a goal. So this time we left the "alliance" alone -sort of- by trying to get at least half to abandon it for the day.

And to the point of scaling - this is an alliance that just took T50 in the season. We all have fine rosters, we all play hard - but you almost by necessity have to remove some people with great rosters to get in folks with huge scores that haven't been effected by scaling as heavily.


D3 - LEAVE THE ALLIANCES ALONE! T50 destroyed many last time, and to many swaps this time. Alliances are a good part of the game FOR you, they bring people back both for comradery and for sense of duty to alliance. Those are not the kind of people you want to drive away! T100 for 4* covers please - and T150 for 3* covers!

Unknown

I've been saying it the whole tat pve. There is no justification for truncated rewards simply because the new character is a 4*. This is a one time event in which that 4* will be given out outside of top 1 or 2. Moreover, many players can't get 1st or 1000 in pvp, so this is their only chance outside of tokens to get a cover. We're talking 1 (or 2 with alliance) for most players that try really hard. We're not talking enough to make the 4* useful.

I'll say this again as well. No one can convince me that having a normal reward to celebrate the release of a 4* character is a bad thing or will break the game.

What a truncated rewards tier will do is tick off a bunch of players.

The cost-benefit analysis on this one seems pretty simple. My only guess is that someone is confusing that just because something is special does not automatically make ita good thing.

dkffiv

SnowcaTT wrote:

I've been thinking about running a poll to see not -if- people were moved, but how many people each alliance moved to get to T50 (and maybe how many they moved and weren't successful).

I didn't think I'd merc out but then circumstances changed, I had a fair amount of points: thank you to Chaos League, and gratz on T50.

Gratz and thank you to Ace of Blades, who kicked HALF OF THEIR MEMBERS to take in the top half of Wrecking Crew. Really D3 - this is what you want the alliances to do?

We tried to get our top half into another alliance because last time there was a T50, we kicked somewhere between 6 and 10: folks who had fine scores, but just hadn't grinded quite as heavily for seven straight days. That alliance is not the one we have today, because it creates quite sore feelings to simply kick folks out of your alliance who are trying to help your alliance accomplish a goal. So this time we left the "alliance" alone -sort of- by trying to get at least half to abandon it for the day.

And to the point of scaling - this is an alliance that just took T50 in the season. We all have fine rosters, we all play hard - but you almost by necessity have to remove some people with great rosters to get in folks with huge scores that haven't been effected by scaling as heavily.


D3 - LEAVE THE ALLIANCES ALONE! T50 destroyed many last time, and to many swaps this time. Alliances are a good part of the game FOR you, they bring people back both for comradery and for sense of duty to alliance. Those are not the kind of people you want to drive away! T100 for 4* covers please - and T150 for 3* covers!

I think the Best ended up with 3 alliances top 50. 4* reward structure is stupid, especially if you want players to make a 3->4* transition. If it were up to me I'd set the following structure:

1000 player brackets. Both 3* and 4* events give out covers to top 250, 4* events have only occurred on their initial releases so give the players a bonus for playing when those characters were introduced.

Top 5 (.5%)
4* cover. In 4* Events give an extra other character 4* cover (4* + all 3 of the featured character reward). Give first place a nice ISO/HP bonus but no additional covers.

Top 15 (10 additional players, 1%)
All 3 covers.

Top 125 (110 additional players, 11%)
2 covers. Can have top 50 / top 125 break points for bonus ISO or HP.

Top 250 (125 additional players, 12.5%)
1 cover and an event token. Perhaps no HP or only HP for top 175 (since you get a "free" even token).

Top 500 (250 additional, 25%)
3x 2* and an event token.

Top 750 (250 additional, 25%)
2x 2* and an event token.

Top 1000 (250 additional, 25%)
1x 2* and an event token.

For 4* events you could not give out event tokens for bottom 875 players (since top 250 get a 4* anyway) and have the bottom 750 give out an old 3* instead of a 2*. Players would get really excited about 4* releases, I'd love 3x Iron Man 40 covers (as a new player) for getting Top 251-500. If the amount of HP is reduced from bottom PvE placement but the number of 3* covers distributed goes up I think more players would be willing to spend a little on roster slots (a reduction in those prices would be nice as well).

Alliance wise I'd expand it to top 150. I was initially leaning toward an extra cover for top 5 alliances (2nd and 3rd covers for 3*, a different 4* for 4* events) but that might lead to problem of the member swaps that was being discussed above.

Unknown

I joined a new alliance this past season after my previous one disbanded. I'm in the 2*->3* transition, and was lucky enough to find a pvp alliance that was looking for some extra help on the pve. They get me my pvp covers, and I help with the pve score. I had to abandon the last 30 minutes of grinding due to real life, and unfortunately fell out o T50 by about 1 node. I was in a tough bracket as evidence by several lesser scoring teammates that walked away with the 4* cover.

Half my alliance was half-hearted in their pve play, so I figured there was likely little chance at T50. I had a score of 123K, which is more than most people were looking for to boost scores. My commander did spend considerable time trying to coordinate trades with sub alliances, but it was still unlikely to get us where we needed due to other alliances making their trades.

In the end, I stuck with my alliance, and knowingly skipped out on the opportunity to merc. I missed the 4* cover, which will hurt my next pve score. It would be nice not to have to make that choice next time.

JVReal

Personally I've never been a fan of alliance jumping or dumping at the end of an event to make alliance rank.

Anything that offers rewards for alliance efforts during an event/season, should have restrictive alliance movement. A different Marvel game I played locked Alliances down before an alliance based event.

I think Alliances should be locked down 1 day before the last shard ends for an event. No dumping and no adding until the event ends and rewards have been distributed.

I can see where some may not like the idea, but people artificially inflating their Alliance score by dumping low scoring regular members for high scoring mercs is just bad form.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

I've been saying it the whole tat pve. There is no justification for truncated rewards simply because the new character is a 4*. This is a one time event in which that 4* will be given out outside of top 1 or 2. Moreover, many players can't get 1st or 1000 in pvp, so this is their only chance outside of tokens to get a cover. We're talking 1 (or 2 with alliance) for most players that try really hard. We're not talking enough to make the 4* useful.

I'll say this again as well. No one can convince me that having a normal reward to celebrate the release of a 4* character is a bad thing or will break the game.

What a truncated rewards tier will do is tick off a bunch of players.

The cost-benefit analysis on this one seems pretty simple. My only guess is that someone is confusing that just because something is special does not automatically make ita good thing.

I would also argue that alliances should consist of 20 players for PVE and PVP, but only the top 15 or 18 players' scores should count in calculating the scores. This way, stronger alliances could help out newer players, or a player has to miss an event due to work, life, etc.

This would help limit alliance-player turnover at the end of events.

More importantly, it should bring more of a team atmosphere to alliances, instead of cutthroat individuals stepping over their alliance mates for rewards.

mischiefmaker

Just wanted to add some color from the perspective of an alliance commander trying to keep his alliance in the top 50:

Yesterday was miserable, easily one of the worst grinds I've ever done for this game, and that had nothing to do with 3h refreshes. I must have contacted a dozen or more mercs throughout the day, I refreshed forums every five minutes, I checked alternate forms of communication roughly as often, and wound up staying up quite a bit later than I wanted to in order to make sure the guys in my alliance who worked their butts off got the extra cover they deserved.

We did end up in the top 50 -- thanks ChewDaddyKing, SnowcaTT, and I am Zero! -- so this is not sour grapes. But it took literally an entire day of monitoring out-of-game communication (I thought the idea was to cut down on the necessity of that?), because I missed out on a lot of guys who got contacted by someone else first, which means I wasn't the only alliance commander sitting there doing nothing else but monitoring.

Now, you might say, hey, you're a commander, this is why they pay you the big bucks, right? But the issues aren't just limited to commanders. I had multiple members of my alliance consider quitting the game rather than have to grind overscaled nodes they'd already gotten all the rewards out of 3 more times, especially since they were safely in the top 50 and had no shot at the top 10. I also saw several mercs who had to alliance hop 2 and 3 times as their initial choices fell out of the top 50 -- I'm sure those guys would have been happy not to have to stay up 6 hours past their shard ending to make sure they ended up with a top 50 alliance.

I understand that 4* rewards are supposed to be rare, but it's hard for me to see how giving awards to an additional 1000 players (estimated less than 1% of the playerbase) affects that enough to be worth inflicting this much misery on so many of your most dedicated players, commanders, and community builders.

As for solving the problem by limiting alliance hopping, I'm pretty sure that would only make it worse, since then this crazy scramble just happens earlier, before the lockdown, when there's less information available and more likelihood of both unnecessary movement and hurt feelings.

Wobby

mischiefmaker wrote:

I also saw several mercs who had to alliance hop 2 and 3 times as their initial choices fell out of the top 50 -- I'm sure those guys would have been happy not to have to stay up 6 hours past their shard ending to make sure they ended up with a top 50 alliance.

That's why I only asked the #1 alliance in the event if they needed a merc. Thanks again and congrats to We Are Gr00t! (Also got to make room to let another Ace of Blades person stay to get top 50 prize.)

slidecage

there is no reason to expand the Rewards Like i said before LOCK The players in the teams within 24 to 48 hours of the start of the event. OR Anyone who joins a team in the last 24 hours of an event their score will not count. Simple as that. You said they dont reward the people who earn top 50, moving the rewards to 150 just screws over the people who PLAYED to make it to the top 50

LOCK THE TEAMS SIMPLE AS THAT


I was looking for a new team to join last night after out team missed out on the Team reward top 50 (came in single 13th) there was at least 6 people who emailed me asking me to jump to their teams just so they could make it to top50. one even admited that i would be dumped as soon as the event is over cause i was not good enough for the team (Yet my score was huh)

I told them i be more then happy to join them WHEN THE NEXT EVENT STARTS and heard back from 1 person (showing the others had no interest in me but just the score just to cheat the system)

SnowcaTT

I'd much rather see stephen43084's idea - only take 17-18 top scores. Life happens, alliances sometimes have to make a swap or two.

Always people talk about trading covers - how about make it that you can trade covers within alliance if both traders have been in your current alliance for 30 days. Then people wouldn't go out as quickly, give a benefit for staying rather than a punishment (lock-down) for under performance for any reason (like say...crazy scaling).

rednailz

SnowcaTT wrote:

I'd much rather see stephen43084's idea - only take 17-18 top scores. Life happens, alliances sometimes have to make a swap or two.

Always people talk about trading covers - how about make it that you can trade covers within alliance if both traders have been in your current alliance for 30 days. Then people wouldn't go out as quickly, give a benefit for staying rather than a punishment (lock-down) for under performance for any reason (like say...crazy scaling).

I like the trading covers idea, but from D3's standpint it's a stupid idea. Then all the guys with full rosters could trade off their 3* they don't need after a pvp event in exchange for a shiney Yulanda or Beast cover.

They'd have to put some limitations on it.

dkffiv

slidecage wrote:

there is no reason to expand the Rewards Like i said before LOCK The players in the teams within 24 to 48 hours of the start of the event. OR Anyone who joins a team in the last 24 hours of an event their score will not count. Simple as that. You said they dont reward the people who earn top 50, moving the rewards to 150 just screws over the people who PLAYED to make it to the top 50

LOCK THE TEAMS SIMPLE AS THAT


I was looking for a new team to join last night after out team missed out on the Team reward top 50 (came in single 13th) there was at least 6 people who emailed me asking me to jump to their teams just so they could make it to top50. one even admited that i would be dumped as soon as the event is over cause i was not good enough for the team (Yet my score was huh)

I told them i be more then happy to join them WHEN THE NEXT EVENT STARTS and heard back from 1 person (showing the others had no interest in me but just the score just to cheat the system)

I'm a top .5% player, moving it to 150 won't affect me at all. I've been earning 10 covers for every new character release since like Beast.

I propose these changes for the good of the community. For personal rewards, giving 25% of the population 1 cover gives them a feeling of accomplishment. For people actually playing, 12.5% can earn something going toward a usable character and 1.5% actually get the same benefits I'm currently receiving. Helping .5% of the population transition to a 4* as opposed to the current .2% doesn't make much of a difference on paper but would provide a larger motivation to try hard.

There are so many threads about how the 2*->3* transition sucks and its impossible to advance. Tokens suck, PvE rewards are cutthroat and PvP is not possible without a roster. The rate at which characters are rotated through as rewards (especially with these 6 or 7 day PvE's) is terrible. Giving a chunk of players 1 or 2 covers for a character that shows up every 2-4 months is still going to be a slow process, but its a hell of a lot better than it currently is.

Alliance rewards need a revamp because its been top 100 (50 for 4*'s) for about a year or so and the number of active alliances and players has greatly expanded in that time. The number of players doesn't matter for individual placement since brackets are sharded at 1000 each but there is no sharding for alliances. Alliance rewards should be for the top x % of the population with the number increased as the player base expands sufficiently. With current numbers I think top 150 sounds right.

slidecage

dkffiv wrote:

slidecage wrote:

there is no reason to expand the Rewards Like i said before LOCK The players in the teams within 24 to 48 hours of the start of the event. OR Anyone who joins a team in the last 24 hours of an event their score will not count. Simple as that. You said they dont reward the people who earn top 50, moving the rewards to 150 just screws over the people who PLAYED to make it to the top 50

LOCK THE TEAMS SIMPLE AS THAT


I was looking for a new team to join last night after out team missed out on the Team reward top 50 (came in single 13th) there was at least 6 people who emailed me asking me to jump to their teams just so they could make it to top50. one even admited that i would be dumped as soon as the event is over cause i was not good enough for the team (Yet my score was huh)

I told them i be more then happy to join them WHEN THE NEXT EVENT STARTS and heard back from 1 person (showing the others had no interest in me but just the score just to cheat the system)

I'm a top .5% player, moving it to 150 won't affect me at all. I've been earning 10 covers for every new character release since like Beast.

I propose these changes for the good of the community. For personal rewards, giving 25% of the population 1 cover gives them a feeling of accomplishment. For people actually playing, 12.5% can earn something going toward a usable character and 1.5% actually get the same benefits I'm currently receiving. Helping .5% of the population transition to a 4* as opposed to the current .2% doesn't make much of a difference on paper but would provide a larger motivation to try hard.

There are so many threads about how the 2*->3* transition sucks and its impossible to advance. Tokens suck, PvE rewards are cutthroat and PvP is not possible without a roster. The rate at which characters are rotated through as rewards (especially with these 6 or 7 day PvE's) is terrible. Giving a chunk of players 1 or 2 covers for a character that shows up every 2-4 months is still going to be a slow process, but its a hell of a lot better than it currently is.

Alliance rewards need a revamp because its been top 100 (50 for 4*'s) for about a year or so and the number of active alliances and players has greatly expanded in that time. The number of players doesn't matter for individual placement since brackets are sharded at 1000 each but there is no sharding for alliances. Alliance rewards should be for the top x % of the population with the number increased as the player base expands sufficiently. With current numbers I think top 150 sounds right.

then the PVP rewards need to be pushed up 200% as well. That way more players can get 3 star covers who cant get to the top100 of the pvp. It should be the TOP 250 get the 3 star covers in PVP then we all can have great rosters

also if you want MORE people to get covers Why do you need 2 covers Why not allow the other team to get the team reward you got your single reward .

How they are moving the game into more and more of PAY to win anyways many will be long gone soon enough

dkffiv

slidecage wrote:

then the PVP rewards need to be pushed up 200% as well. That way more players can get 3 star covers who cant get to the top100 of the pvp. It should be the TOP 250 get the 3 star covers in PVP then we all can have great rosters

also if you want MORE people to get covers Why do you need 2 covers Why not allow the other team to get the team reward you got your single reward .

How they are moving the game into more and more of PAY to win anyways many will be long gone soon enough

PvP brackets are 500 players so 20% of the population gets a cover (top 250 would be 50%). The alliance rewards should be expanded to 150 players.

PvE expanding to 25% is reasonable because they tend to last nearly 3x longer than PvP runs and require constant play over the duration. They also are a lot more competitive for 2* rosters.

I've come in top 2 PvE a lot of times and sold the 4* cover just because my alliance needed my score to stay competitive.

GrumpySmurf1002

dkffiv wrote:

Alliance rewards need a revamp because its been top 100 (50 for 4*'s) for about a year or so and the number of active alliances and players has greatly expanded in that time. The number of players doesn't matter for individual placement since brackets are sharded at 1000 each but there is no sharding for alliances. Alliance rewards should be for the top x % of the population with the number increased as the player base expands sufficiently. With current numbers I think top 150 sounds right.

I agree with the general point, as someone in an alliance that finished 188 out of 26120 alliances (top .7% of all), top 50 seems a bit tight.

That said, the effort required for top 200 (and presumably 150, since it can't be that far off) was somewhat laughable. We only had 19 guys (we let one merc himself). We had 6 guys not crack 25k. Only 4 cracked 80k. We're 2 million (?!) behind the leader. Do we deserve the cover with that kind of effort? Selfishly I'd say yes, but realistically, that seems silly.

FWIW, this isn't uncommon in PvE. It really doesn't take much to be a top 150 alliance in PvE. Heck, you can have 1/2 the alliance ignore it and get top 500. (I know, we've tried)

babinro

slidecage wrote:

there is no reason to expand the Rewards Like i said before LOCK The players in the teams within 24 to 48 hours of the start of the event. OR Anyone who joins a team in the last 24 hours of an event their score will not count. Simple as that. You said they dont reward the people who earn top 50, moving the rewards to 150 just screws over the people who PLAYED to make it to the top 50

LOCK THE TEAMS SIMPLE AS THAT


I was looking for a new team to join last night after out team missed out on the Team reward top 50 (came in single 13th) there was at least 6 people who emailed me asking me to jump to their teams just so they could make it to top50. one even admited that i would be dumped as soon as the event is over cause i was not good enough for the team (Yet my score was huh)

I told them i be more then happy to join them WHEN THE NEXT EVENT STARTS and heard back from 1 person (showing the others had no interest in me but just the score just to cheat the system)

Great idea!

By lock the teams I'm imagine the OP means just that. Only the teams are locked in...not the alliance. Meaning if someone leaves the alliance after being locked in they are still a member of that alliance for the purpse of rewards and additional scoring. This concept shouldn't prevent the ability force players to move around on the in-game schedule.

dkffiv

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

I agree with the general point, as someone in an alliance that finished 188 out of 26120 alliances (top .7% of all), top 50 seems a bit tight.

That said, the effort required for top 200 (and presumably 150, since it can't be that far off) was somewhat laughable. We only had 19 guys (we let one merc himself). We had 6 guys not crack 25k. Only 4 cracked 80k. We're 2 million (?!) behind the leader. Do we deserve the cover with that kind of effort? Selfishly I'd say yes, but realistically, that seems silly.

FWIW, this isn't uncommon in PvE. It really doesn't take much to be a top 150 alliance in PvE. Heck, you can have 1/2 the alliance ignore it and get top 500. (I know, we've tried)

Ironically expanding it to top 150 would probably increase the competition down that far. During the 4hor PvE competition was ridiculous because the hardcore PvPers were actually PvEing like beasts (most of if not all the X-Men alliances ended up top 50). A lot of hardcore PvPers ignore PvE because unless they grind the whole duration they aren't getting a reward anyway. If top 150 got rewards they may be inclined to PvE once a day to try to get enough points for their alliance to place. The current difference between top 150 to top 100 is massive but a lot of that is people giving up PvE wise because they've fallen behind and only the top 10% get personal 3* rewards (hence why expanding to 25% would help).

Kiamodo

This is entirely why I don't push for PVE in my alliance. It's just asking for player burnout. The rewards aren't that great to begin with. Getting few covers just a two weeks before they hit tokens? The stress most people receive they are putting on themselves. Just have a drink, get a few more hours of sleep, and take it easy. I guarantee your alliance turn over rate will drop overnight.

GrumpySmurf1002

dkffiv wrote:

Ironically expanding it to top 150 would probably increase the competition down that far. During the 4hor PvE competition was ridiculous because the hardcore PvPers were actually PvEing like beasts (most of if not all the X-Men alliances ended up top 50). A lot of hardcore PvPers ignore PvE because unless they grind the whole duration they aren't getting a reward anyway. If top 150 got rewards they may be inclined to PvE once a day to try to get enough points for their alliance to place. The current difference between top 150 to top 100 is massive but a lot of that is people giving up PvE wise because they've fallen behind and only the top 10% get personal 3* rewards (hence why expanding to 25% would help).

It would help, but there's definitely a threshold of 'competitive' alliances, and it's not much higher than 250, IMO.

4Thor's an exception more than the rule, unless there's another 4* like her on the way (hasn't appeared yet). As far as 25% personal, I'd gladly take that, but that's again speaking as a lazy bones who finished 205th out of 251, with a whopping 7600 points (late joined for the free iso). That's more of an exception, you need to find good brackets for that, but even my cruddy day 13 second account pulled top 250 in Thieves, with minimal effort. (though again, newb bracket exemption.)

Repeating myself, but I'm definitely in favor of expanding alliance rewards. I'm just pointing out that competitive play is a smaller portion of the base than we sometimes believe. Tiny enough that everyone recognizes a tough bracket almost immediately, because you know most of the names by heart.

Raffoon

My alliance finished 602 out of 28552 for Season X. That is the top 2.1% of alliances. We all got 2 heroic tokens filled with 2*s as compensation for beating 98% of the playerbase.

We used to finish just outside of top 100 before the 20 slot alliance change. Every season since season 1, just outside of 100 (like 110-101 range).

I understand making 4* characters rare, but honestly I'm at the point where there's really nothing to play for. Xforce and Fury are maxed. The other 4 stars are out of range for anything other than an obsessive grind or intense coordination. After a month of PVP, the reward is enough ISO to level up a character twice and 2 2* covers? It's not like creating rewards for the players actually costs them anything in materials.