Top 50 Alliances... what was your final Mercenary %?

cletus1985

We gave up on Prof. X early on to keep our alliance intact and not burn everyone out. It was just too much for too little. We did end up taking on one merc at the end to insure our top 100 finish, which we probably would've finished with anyway. Booted a member who hadn't really contributed in the last several events, so their time was coming to an end anyways.

I don't feel bad at all that we ditched the grind to get a 4 that most wouldn't have had any use for other than the essentials in the Heroics. Nobody had to lose sleep or feel betrayed, I'd say we won!

Unknown

I think Django ended up with 14 members out of 20, so 6 mercs. But two of those players who left during the event left for good. Not sure if any of the 6 that came in have become permanent replacements or not.

IamTheDanger

We had 2 mercs, (big thanks to THANOS and eh201207). But we also had 2 reserves. HRU has a Jr team where members from the main team can go to take a break due to real life, retirement, or burnout. So since they were previously members of HRU, and technically still members in good standing that were currently on the reserve team, I'm not sure if they would be considered mercs or not. If so then we had 4. And finished rank 40. The real scary part is that with 5 hours left, we 6th, then at 3 hours left we were 8th. After that, it went down fast.

Dauthi

babinro wrote:

100% technically.
My alliance creates a sub alliance strictly for PvE and it picks the highest scoring members from all of our several main alliances to join. From there, we then take on mercs as needed to reach our goal.

This is done for all PvE's...not just the 4* ones.

Why the game lets us exploit alliance hopping this badly is beyond me. Hence why I've been an advocate for locking playing into their alliance upon joining an event. If they leave the alliance during said event then they continue to score for the ORIGINAL alliance. It stops all this final day gutting of alliances to 'game' the system garbage.

Agreed. As a commander of a 2* PVE alliance and 3* PVP, I have found this meta game of mercing and swapping unintended and stressful. Your proposal is sensible, and would do away with this ridiculous swapping/mercing meta game that completely undermines the point of alliances.

Unknown

I think we took on 4 mercs? It's a well known fact within our alliance that if you rank the bottom 5 you are subject to being merc'd out for any event where the alliance cover is sought after. In the end my 98,000 points was only good for 34th place, but I am happy to have gotten the alliance cover as well.

PvE isn't everyone's thing and that's cool, I appreciate that we can fill gaps to still maintain a high alliance score near the events end. It's equally unfair to demand your alliance mates place top 50 if they just aren't feeling it as it is to leave an alliance hovering at top 50-ish to look for the sure thing.

During the final sub we went from rank 23, to low 40s to high teens to finally placing top 25. After adding 4 mercs. I also heard rumors of some alliance dropping all the way from #12 to #52. It's the system we have folks, have to work within it.

nic13

I know it's an old thread but I just saw this, and wanted to shout out to my alliance for making t10 without a merc. Everyone came together and did an amazing job.

I will confess however that we did poorly in pvp while we grinded.

JVReal

lokiagentofhotness wrote:

I was a merc for this event, and I have to honestly say, after 5 days of grinding to get 120k points (both me and the half of my alliance that did a lot of grinding - I think our scores ranged from 100-140+K), I decided to merc out because I felt I deserved that additional cover. I hear people saying that some of them have lives and therefore couldn't grind that much (and got kicked by their alliances) and if you want to talk about how the game mechanics suck (they do, I agree) and PVE need to be fixed (it does, I agree) then yeah the game mechanics suck. But I have a life too, so why do you deserve the cover more than I do for doing less work? And if you did accomplish really high scores and you didn't get the cover, your alliance let you down, not the mercs.

On a separate note, I'd like to publicly apologize to the commander of PhoenixxRising, no hard feelings I hope!

tl;dr - mercs are people too, etc. etc.

What mercs are saying, essentially, is that they want 2 individual rank rewards, not a rank reward and an alliance reward... like everyone has to deal with? They don't want the loyalty and group dynamics that is an Alliance, they just want the alliance reward without the effort of putting up with an alliance that wouldn't perform well that particular event. Only the high's not the lows?

Not personally attacking you, but the concept of mercs in general. Alliances are your in-game family... would you swap out members of your own family if they were performing same as usual, but just not as well as the Johnson's next door? I wouldn't.

This event, my alliance meant more to me than a cover, so although my score was not a bad score, for that event it was lower than the other scores of grinders out there and would have kept my alliance below top 50 so I stepped out until it was over, and hopped into a top 100 alliance instead for the event replacing one of their inactives.

I think its a broken system, and until they fix it, this is the reality of the situation because not enough people will do what is right over what is allowed.

Unknown

JVReal wrote:

Not personally attacking you, but the concept of mercs in general. Alliances are your in-game family... would you swap out members of your own family if they were performing same as usual, but just not as well as the Johnson's next door? I wouldn't.

This event, my alliance meant more to me than a cover, so although my score was not a bad score, for that event it was lower than the other scores of grinders out there and would have kept my alliance below top 50 so I stepped out until it was over, and hopped into a top 100 alliance instead for the event replacing one of their inactives.

So you wouldn't replace your family but you are ok with your family replacing you? It's a bad analogy. Your alliance are more like your friends and team mates. If one of your team goes on the DL you absolutely replace them friend or no.

There are some shady alliance practices, like kicking someone out with 10 minutes to go for a merc with no warning. But mercenary practices in general are not among the shady practices in my opinion. If it's clear to your alliance that you want to reach a certain point in a certain event and that anyone not pulling weight is subject to being merc'd out, then it's a personal choice. You can either grind it up with your mates to help them and yourself, or you can step aside and let someone with a high score help your mates (like you did). It's up to the Alliance commanders to make the alliance merc policies clear tho, bad communication can lead to hurt feelings and shady dealings like kicking that guy with 10 minutes to go.

cletus1985

Lerysh wrote:

JVReal wrote:

Not personally attacking you, but the concept of mercs in general. Alliances are your in-game family... would you swap out members of your own family if they were performing same as usual, but just not as well as the Johnson's next door? I wouldn't.

This event, my alliance meant more to me than a cover, so although my score was not a bad score, for that event it was lower than the other scores of grinders out there and would have kept my alliance below top 50 so I stepped out until it was over, and hopped into a top 100 alliance instead for the event replacing one of their inactives.

So you wouldn't replace your family but you are ok with your family replacing you? It's a bad analogy. Your alliance are more like your friends and team mates. If one of your team goes on the DL you absolutely replace them friend or no.

There are some shady alliance practices, like kicking someone out with 10 minutes to go for a merc with no warning. But mercenary practices in general are not among the shady practices in my opinion. If it's clear to your alliance that you want to reach a certain point in a certain event and that anyone not pulling weight is subject to being merc'd out, then it's a personal choice. You can either grind it up with your mates to help them and yourself, or you can step aside and let someone with a high score help your mates (like you did). It's up to the Alliance commanders to make the alliance merc policies clear tho, bad communication can lead to hurt feelings and shady dealings like kicking that guy with 10 minutes to go.

The way I look at this whole situation is if you're a single alliance (no secondary or more alliances to swap with) and you're loyal to your alliance and don't boot anyone for mercs you're basically destined to lose in an event for a 4* or even get above top 50 in regular events. Real life happens and expecting the same 20 people to dedicate their lives to MPQ is just absurd tbh.

The simple fix to this would seem to be expanding alliances (say 40 members?) and then just taking the top 20 scores into account for your alliance, keeping all scoring aspects exactly the same for D3 so they don't have to test any differences. This now allows 1/2 your alliance to have a real life every event and allows top alliances to take on some newbies who may not be able to compete yet and help them progress.

You could simply determine who was determined to grind and get rewards each event and tell some others to take a break if they'd like and rotate these players accordingly, which would do a lot in my opinion to preserve the health of the game long term. Keep rewards structure the same (double the people getting prizes seems adequate, since I'm pretty sure they've doubled their player base from it's induction) and let us all reduce the stress in our lives caused by a game that requires constant attention (remember when games were fun and reduced stress?).

All this won't completely phase out mercs or sister alliances, but it will go a long way in making alliances more even and overall more satisfying as you won't have to let your alliance down or leave them if you need a break (if I've grinded 2 or 3 PVE's in a row and been a top scorer for my alliance, someone else should step up and take that burden and get me the alliance reward when it burns me out), now I relax and reap the rewards that those others were reaping from me(balance, teamwork, and some peace of mind).

nic13

cletus1985 wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

JVReal wrote:

Not personally attacking you, but the concept of mercs in general. Alliances are your in-game family... would you swap out members of your own family if they were performing same as usual, but just not as well as the Johnson's next door? I wouldn't.

This event, my alliance meant more to me than a cover, so although my score was not a bad score, for that event it was lower than the other scores of grinders out there and would have kept my alliance below top 50 so I stepped out until it was over, and hopped into a top 100 alliance instead for the event replacing one of their inactives.

So you wouldn't replace your family but you are ok with your family replacing you? It's a bad analogy. Your alliance are more like your friends and team mates. If one of your team goes on the DL you absolutely replace them friend or no.

There are some shady alliance practices, like kicking someone out with 10 minutes to go for a merc with no warning. But mercenary practices in general are not among the shady practices in my opinion. If it's clear to your alliance that you want to reach a certain point in a certain event and that anyone not pulling weight is subject to being merc'd out, then it's a personal choice. You can either grind it up with your mates to help them and yourself, or you can step aside and let someone with a high score help your mates (like you did). It's up to the Alliance commanders to make the alliance merc policies clear tho, bad communication can lead to hurt feelings and shady dealings like kicking that guy with 10 minutes to go.

The way I look at this whole situation is if you're a single alliance (no secondary or more alliances to swap with) and you're loyal to your alliance and don't boot anyone for mercs you're basically destined to lose in an event for a 4* or even get above top 50 in regular events. Real life happens and expecting the same 20 people to dedicate their lives to MPQ is just absurd tbh.

The simple fix to this would seem to be expanding alliances (say 40 members?) and then just taking the top 20 scores into account for your alliance, keeping all scoring aspects exactly the same for D3 so they don't have to test any differences. This now allows 1/2 your alliance to have a real life every event and allows top alliances to take on some newbies who may not be able to compete yet and help them progress.

You could simply determine who was determined to grind and get rewards each event and tell some others to take a break if they'd like and rotate these players accordingly, which would do a lot in my opinion to preserve the health of the game long term. Keep rewards structure the same (double the people getting prizes seems adequate, since I'm pretty sure they've doubled their player base from it's induction) and let us all reduce the stress in our lives caused by a game that requires constant attention (remember when games were fun and reduced stress?).

All this won't completely phase out mercs or sister alliances, but it will go a long way in making alliances more even and overall more satisfying as you won't have to let your alliance down or leave them if you need a break (if I've grinded 2 or 3 PVE's in a row and been a top scorer for my alliance, someone else should step up and take that burden and get me the alliance reward when it burns me out), now I relax and reap the rewards that those others were reaping from me(balance, teamwork, and some peace of mind).

I belong to a single alliance and we didn't kick anyone for mercs.

But the entire pve grind was absolutely unpleasant

cletus1985

nic13 wrote:

cletus1985 wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

JVReal wrote:

Not personally attacking you, but the concept of mercs in general. Alliances are your in-game family... would you swap out members of your own family if they were performing same as usual, but just not as well as the Johnson's next door? I wouldn't.

This event, my alliance meant more to me than a cover, so although my score was not a bad score, for that event it was lower than the other scores of grinders out there and would have kept my alliance below top 50 so I stepped out until it was over, and hopped into a top 100 alliance instead for the event replacing one of their inactives.

So you wouldn't replace your family but you are ok with your family replacing you? It's a bad analogy. Your alliance are more like your friends and team mates. If one of your team goes on the DL you absolutely replace them friend or no.

There are some shady alliance practices, like kicking someone out with 10 minutes to go for a merc with no warning. But mercenary practices in general are not among the shady practices in my opinion. If it's clear to your alliance that you want to reach a certain point in a certain event and that anyone not pulling weight is subject to being merc'd out, then it's a personal choice. You can either grind it up with your mates to help them and yourself, or you can step aside and let someone with a high score help your mates (like you did). It's up to the Alliance commanders to make the alliance merc policies clear tho, bad communication can lead to hurt feelings and shady dealings like kicking that guy with 10 minutes to go.

The way I look at this whole situation is if you're a single alliance (no secondary or more alliances to swap with) and you're loyal to your alliance and don't boot anyone for mercs you're basically destined to lose in an event for a 4* or even get above top 50 in regular events. Real life happens and expecting the same 20 people to dedicate their lives to MPQ is just absurd tbh.

The simple fix to this would seem to be expanding alliances (say 40 members?) and then just taking the top 20 scores into account for your alliance, keeping all scoring aspects exactly the same for D3 so they don't have to test any differences. This now allows 1/2 your alliance to have a real life every event and allows top alliances to take on some newbies who may not be able to compete yet and help them progress.

You could simply determine who was determined to grind and get rewards each event and tell some others to take a break if they'd like and rotate these players accordingly, which would do a lot in my opinion to preserve the health of the game long term. Keep rewards structure the same (double the people getting prizes seems adequate, since I'm pretty sure they've doubled their player base from it's induction) and let us all reduce the stress in our lives caused by a game that requires constant attention (remember when games were fun and reduced stress?).

All this won't completely phase out mercs or sister alliances, but it will go a long way in making alliances more even and overall more satisfying as you won't have to let your alliance down or leave them if you need a break (if I've grinded 2 or 3 PVE's in a row and been a top scorer for my alliance, someone else should step up and take that burden and get me the alliance reward when it burns me out), now I relax and reap the rewards that those others were reaping from me(balance, teamwork, and some peace of mind).

I belong to a single alliance and we didn't kick anyone for mercs.

But the entire pve grind was absolutely unpleasant

I'm not saying it's impossible for certain tournaments, but to expect the same 20 people to grind that way all the time is absolutely absurd and illogical. Real life is real and there should be some breathing room within an alliance to account for it. Which is why I absolutely don't blame alliances that use sister alliances to swap out players, it's a great tactic for long term alliance life. I just think they should make it a priority to account for this and build single alliances to be able to do the same thing for everyone's sake.