The Plight of a Casual/Competitive Alliance - A Letter to D3

Dauthi

This is in response to the insane competition that was the Punisher PVP.

I created Shake N Bake around the start of the creation of alliances, and from the very start my goal was to create an alliance that could do the bare minimum to hit top 100. This was incredibly easy at first, because having 20 active members guaranteed top 100. As more alliances grew, it became more competitive and settled in at what I would consider casual/competitive, and the rewards felt more deserved.

Then you opened the flood gates, and made all alliances 20 man. This was a great move, it put everyone on an even playing field. The problem was you didn't change the rewards structure when doing so, so slowly many casual/competitive alliances got snubbed out by new ones, and all had to step up their game to keep top 100. It also paved the way for the creation of multi-alliances and swapping players. This is when I believe we started leaving actual casual/competitive play and the ability to hold top 100, and this has gotten worse progressively.

Next came the wave of 4* Thor as an alliance reward for seasons. Try as we might, we couldn't keep up with bigger alliances swapping members coupled with the influx of new alliances and lost our first Thor, then a second. This was the first wipe my alliance had, all we had left was our core members, but I built us back up and we were back in the game in a month or so hitting top 100.

Now, since there are more alliances but the reward structure still hasn't changed, it is nearly impossible for alliances like us to compete for events with important rewards. When casual/competitive alliances lose these, they are stripped of their top scorers who only need the new characters. They move onto other alliances, usually multi-alliances where there is little risk. I have seen many alliances completely break apart after theses losses.

So by allowing swapping and keeping reward structures the same D3, you are pigeon holing players into large scale "chain store" alliances who swap at the end of an event, and snub out smaller "ma and pa" alliances who don't want that kind of stress (I thought it was a good analogy ; ). You evened the playing field once in alliance competition by giving everyone 20 slots, can you look into fixing this before single alliances go extinct?

IamTheDanger

This is something I agree with. My alliance has lost quite a few members from this. And I really don't like to use mercs. No offense to them, or what they do. I have used them in the past and will again. But I would really like it if I could have 20 people that are loyal members. Players that I enjoy playing in the same alliance with. People that all get along so we could play the game together as a team without everyone worrying about getting kicked.

Now, to be clear, I am not saying anything against mercs. Some players like to be competitive, and that's how they play. It's fun for them. And I do it myself sometimes. There are times that I really want to win, so I go all out.

Yet sometimes, it would be nice to, instead of playing against other teams, actually play with mine.

But when I have to remove a loyal alliance mate to take on a merc just to get an extra reward, I always feel bad about it. In the past, I've occasionally purchased the alliance reward cover for the player that I had to remove because I felt so bad. This is becoming more of a competition than a game IMO. I understand it's a game, and games have winners and not winners. But the structure for awards really needs a few changes.

In a perfect world, the PvE aspect of MPQ would actually be PvE. Not PvP under a different name. Instead of alliance rankings, they should have alliance progression. Of course, all alliance progression awards would need to be awarded at the end of the event to prevent players hopping around just to get multiple awards.

SnowcaTT

Lokitty created Wrecking Crew as on original 20 person alliance, and in my time we had been hitting T100 in basically every PVP/PVE.

T50 4* I've been on record saying it destroys alliances - we did the first two or three, and then started mercing out after having to kick half of our members on one of them, with only a few that returned.

This season we gave up -all- PVE in part because it takes all 20 people extremely pushing for the rewards, and it was burning us out. I agree with OP, the mega-alliances have pushed the casual/single alliances out, it was getting difficult to maintain T100 without taking one or more mercs almost every time.

We tried to maintain PVP and PVE and it just burned people out, everyone had to push really hard for every event. This is why the mega-alliances work; take the best of either/or. Good job to all those out there that are doing both events still, but I worry for your alliances in the long term. Hard to recruit people who can (and want to) do both.

All this pressure also makes people leave these alliances, and become mercs. We've had lots in that came from the large alliances and either were tired of the grind and enjoy the more casual "home", or mercs that came from the big alliances but didn't want to keep up with the constant push for every event.

KrazyKeylime

maybe an incentive, giving people that stayed in the same alliance better daily rewards like 10 daily for every 3 month you stayed in the alliance.

Clintman

Make the rewards more plentiful, change it from top 100 to top 200. Keep up rewards with the growth, more players means more people should be able to get the better rewards. It is a disincentive to force people to go to these lengths to stay competitive.

Vinmarc43

Maybe get rid of alliances all togheter....

babinro

There are a few changes they could make that would MASSIVELY impact out of game communication advantages and without really hurting the core game play experience. Without having fully thought out all the repercussions I'll toss out these ideas. Some of which I've mentioned before.

1) Upon staring an event you are locked into your current alliance for scoring. If you leave the alliance you'll still score for them. Alliances cannot have more than 20 scorers for an event.

1b) The same rule structure applies to overall Seasons but only after you've played a minimum number of events with a single alliance (7 pvp events for example). At this time if you leave for another alliance your season score will still be locked into the originals.

2) Player names are no longer revealed in PvP except in the leaderboards. The game will NEVER match you against a player in your own alliance.

3) Rework the Matchmaking system to be a little less predictable than it is now. This could be done by allowing the pool of competitors to come from all 5 time slices. It could also check on people who shielded within the last 5 hours rather than exclusively those who are currently active or very recently shielded. The more variety, the less it can be exploited. Another consideration would be to artificially bump points so they are a bit less variable. Rather than ranging from 3-50 awarded per battle they could range from 20-30 for example.

Admittedly, despite being in a top alliance I'm ignorant to many of the out of game communication tricks to consistently perform higher than 'intended'.
Feel free to offer other suggestions to make unification of a single 20 person alliance the key defining factor to success.

atomzed

babinro wrote:

Without having fully thought out all the repercussions I'll toss out these ideas.

Let's look at some of the possible repercussions, and how the players will work around the new rules (cos we know people will always strive to gain an advantage.

babinro wrote:

1) Upon staring an event you are locked into your current alliance for scoring. If you leave the alliance you'll still score for them. Alliances cannot have more than 20 scorers for an event.

I foresee players will work around this by staying alliance less at start of the event. Then they will start applying to different alliances after they reach a certain score. Commanders will only accept those players with a certain scores. This will make the ranking more fluid, as an alliance can be top 100 in slice 3, but drop out of top 100 when all the mercs start streaming into their new alliance.

This method is not new, as some top alliance members will quit their alliance at the start of the pvp, so that their alliance don't show up in top 10. This helps them to avoid snipers. Only towards the close of pvp, they will join back to their alliance so that their alliance will get back to top 10.

babinro wrote:

1b) The same rule structure applies to overall Seasons but only after you've played a minimum number of events with a single alliance (7 pvp events for example). At this time if you leave for another alliance your season score will still be locked into the originals.

Locking them in their alliance for a month may be a good idea. I just wonder whether people will complain when a few of their members stopped playing because of RL events. Then the whole alliance will suffer. This will also create more stress for the commander as they need to get members who can commit for an entire month.

babinro wrote:

2.Player names are no longer revealed in PvP except in the leaderboards. The game will NEVER match you against a player in your own alliance.

Again this is a good idea....But I can imagine players quitting their alliance at beginning of pvp. They can the bounce off each other like what they are doing now.

babinro wrote:

3) Rework the Matchmaking system to be a little less predictable than it is now. This could be done by allowing the pool of competitors to come from all 5 time slices. It could also check on people who shielded within the last 5 hours rather than exclusively those who are currently active or very recently shielded. The more variety, the less it can be exploited. Another consideration would be to artificially bump points so they are a bit less variable. Rather than ranging from 3-50 awarded per battle they could range from 20-30 for example.

If you allow the nodes to come from all 5 slices, then it will benefit players who choose the later slices. This has been discussed before.

Edit: I am not trying to disparage your suggestions. Some of it are workable with some tweaking. My post is to highlight the fact that regardless how we tweak things, there will be gaps that people will exploit to gain an advantage. It is extremely extremely difficult to design a foolproof system, and such a system will make it very inflexible.

cletus1985

atomzed wrote:

babinro wrote:

2.Player names are no longer revealed in PvP except in the leaderboards. The game will NEVER match you against a player in your own alliance.

Again this is a good idea....But I can imagine players quitting their alliance at beginning of pvp. They can the bounce off each other like what they are doing now.

Actually player names not being revealed really destroys the meta game, if you can't see who you're attacking then how can you coordinate? The only real way would be to have distinguished rosters in to verify and we all know the top of the class is very narrow in roster composition.

The downside of this would be you couldn't identify cheaters by looking at their roster and for lower end players you wouldn't be able to check cover spread on characters. The cover spread could be added to the fight screen though, if this were actually implemented.

rawl316

The easy answer is to have your points stay where you earned them at the time. If you leave your alliance, any new points goes to the new one, old points stay.

SnowcaTT

cletus1985 wrote:

atomzed wrote:

babinro wrote:

2.Player names are no longer revealed in PvP except in the leaderboards. The game will NEVER match you against a player in your own alliance.

Again this is a good idea....But I can imagine players quitting their alliance at beginning of pvp. They can the bounce off each other like what they are doing now.

Actually player names not being revealed really destroys the meta game, if you can't see who you're attacking then how can you coordinate? The only real way would be to have distinguished rosters in to verify and we all know the top of the class is very narrow in roster composition.

The downside of this would be you couldn't identify cheaters by looking at their roster and for lower end players you wouldn't be able to check cover spread on characters. The cover spread could be added to the fight screen though, if this were actually implemented.

I love this idea. How about the name popping up AFTER you beat them, so you know who it was? Fixes the downside!

thbrown81

cletus1985 wrote:

atomzed wrote:

babinro wrote:

2.Player names are no longer revealed in PvP except in the leaderboards. The game will NEVER match you against a player in your own alliance.

Again this is a good idea....But I can imagine players quitting their alliance at beginning of pvp. They can the bounce off each other like what they are doing now.

Actually player names not being revealed really destroys the meta game, if you can't see who you're attacking then how can you coordinate? The only real way would be to have distinguished rosters in to verify and we all know the top of the class is very narrow in roster composition.

The downside of this would be you couldn't identify cheaters by looking at their roster and for lower end players you wouldn't be able to check cover spread on characters. The cover spread could be added to the fight screen though, if this were actually implemented.

Actually, hiding player names completely fixes the meta game! Very simple solution to the problem of the secret chat detante.

GrumpySmurf1002

I went back and checked, and yes, there's a noticeable bump on an event basis when alliances were expanded (end of season 7)



Now that includes Simulator since I don't have a good way of stripping that out of the season scores, so the true event number is a bit less. That just shifts the lines down, however, since generally speaking Sim contribution should be fairly stable.

It really hasn't gotten any worse since the change, but yes, an impact of 150 pts per user at the top 100 level is impactful.

I don't have anything else constructive, I actually thought the alliance change didn't move the needle much because the overall alliance scores seemed stable without adjusting for events (viewtopic.php?f=20&t=20396#p314300).

Dauthi

Thanks for all the responses!

Last PVP to obtain Cyclops was pretty bad. Our alliance ended at 102, despite our lowest guy having almost 600 points, 4 guys at the top with 1k - 900, and everyone else sitting at an average of 750. I'm positive the score to reach top 100 was stretched pretty bad. This is only going to get worse now that maxing new 3*s quickly is going to be extremely valuable due to the new changes (if they stick around).

The biggest culprit hands down is the top 50 PVE's. I would guess most alliances that got Xavier had to swap/merc (though swapping is easier and a bigger advantage). It is extremely difficult, if possible at all, for a single alliance to ever get good new 4*s, so these especially will continue to rip alliances apart.

SnowcaTT wrote:

We tried to maintain PVP and PVE and it just burned people out, everyone had to push really hard for every event. This is why the mega-alliances work; take the best of either/or. Good job to all those out there that are doing both events still, but I worry for your alliances in the long term. Hard to recruit people who can (and want to) do both.

All this pressure also makes people leave these alliances, and become mercs. We've had lots in that came from the large alliances and either were tired of the grind and enjoy the more casual "home", or mercs that came from the big alliances but didn't want to keep up with the constant push for every event.

Great point. Single alliances can't have players who specialize in PVE or PVP (unless that is what the alliance does), players have to do both and this does burn players out. I can attest to that, I have had many players leave permanently or temporarily.

If this issue was fixed all the alliances who legitimately work hard on both PVE and PVP would get their fair due, and I suspect the competition (point totals) to reach better scores would drop too since scores would be more balanced.

atomzed wrote:

babinro wrote:

1) Upon staring an event you are locked into your current alliance for scoring. If you leave the alliance you'll still score for them. Alliances cannot have more than 20 scorers for an event.

I foresee players will work around this by staying alliance less at start of the event. Then they will start applying to different alliances after they reach a certain score. Commanders will only accept those players with a certain scores. This will make the ranking more fluid, as an alliance can be top 100 in slice 3, but drop out of top 100 when all the mercs start streaming into their new alliance.

What if alliance-less players are locked into being alliance-less until the event ends, or their score doesn't contribute to alliance scores if they started alliance-less.

ClydeFrog76

Vinmarc43 wrote:

Maybe get rid of alliances all togheter....

I've struggled to see the point of them since their introduction.

PeterGibbons316

The way alliances work in this game is kind of stupid. There is hardly any sense of teamwork or loyalty to an alliance, and since there is no penalty for leaving they are practically encouraging mercing at the end of events. I think the idea of only being able to count scores from members in the alliance at the start of the event is a good one. Also, if you leave an alliance you should have a cooldown of 24-72 hours (one event?) before you can join a new one. Lastly, I don't think they should count all the scores from your alliance. Life happens and it's hard to get 20 guys that can reliably score well in all events from start to finish in a season. So perhaps each event the leader select 10 or 15 of the 20 guys that will compete, and then the score from those 10-15 guys will be added to the alliance total for the season. Everyone in the alliance still gets rewards - or maybe the ISO/HP can be paid to the commander who can give it out as he sees fit.

This is my first season in a top 100 alliance. I have the only roster without a single lvl 166 character, so my scores are toward the bottom of the alliance for the season (currently 14/20 with just under 5k) and I am terrified that if we drop out of the top 100 near the end of the season that I will be one of the first to go in favor of someone else with a higher point total. It's a **** thing to do to someone, but there is no repercussions to just going and finding all the top scorers to get rewards.

MarvelMan

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

The way alliances work in this game is kind of stupid. There is hardly any sense of teamwork or loyalty to an alliance

This depends on whether youre in a good alliance or not. In the X PVP, I hit 999 twice....and 998 (after a 19pt battle at 990....for which I got 8 points) and one of my alliance mates had queued me up so he retreated just so I could get the cover. In AoB this kind of thing happens a lot more than you would think. And not in the way where its to boost a specific player to #1, its to help each other out if possible. A bunch of great guys (and gals: looking at you AB & tinykitty). Just about everyone has several slots they opened just for TU sharing as well, and its actually hard to send TUs since requests get filled so fast.


But your points are all good reasons for them to re-evaluate the Alliance structure. Something definitely needs to be done. Of your thoughts, I like the 24 cool down on joining an alliance but maybe tweak it to locking 8 hours prior to the end of the second to last sub?

Dauthi

Thank you D3 for changing 4* rewards to top 100 for alliances! As I said earlier in this thread, the main villain was the top 50 4* rewards that were cannibalizing single alliances into multi-alliances.

This isn't the first time they have listened to us, and it won't be the last, continue to complain folks and you will be heard

I hope they continue to look at the reward structure, because scores fluctuates greatly depending on the on the reward given. I imagine this season is going to be a beast to deal with because they are giving out the Professor. I am not looking forward to it

san

I just want to add a couple of things in here. As a member of a "ma and pa" alliance (Team Ka-Zar) I do understand the plight that such alliances go through. We don't have the members to swap out if we are hitting near the bottom, meaning that if we lose, we lose. That said, we haven't lost a member to this yet - not even our 1K+ scorers. Why? I'm not sure. I hypothesize that it's the culture we have in our alliance, the attitude of going down with the ship, and teamwork being first. We are in this for fun - we like to win, but fun comes first.

I don't know how alliances are formed nowadays, or how the alliance you formed was initially made. I also can't speculate on what sort of players took part in that alliance. However, what I do know from experience is that team morale is one of the most important things you have, and the best tool to keep folks sticking around. Have a good team attitude and high morale, and even when you lose those two Thors (we did by ~150 points on one of them, I believe!), you can weather the storm and move on.

In terms of how our guys formed - the leaders (all more or less 1K scorers) groomed basically every single one of us from a beginning transition player (I had 1 3* at level 110!) to a 3* roster. As a result, basically every one of us has stuck around and stayed loyal to the alliance. I'm with Ka-Zar to the end of MPQ.

Kelbris

Rewards should be percentage based. Top 5% makes a lot more sense than top 100.

They won't be.

wirius

Mad respect for Dauthi here. I was in his guild over a year ago, but I still remember it. Good people, not too demanding on the requirements, and we hit top 100 often. These are the things you want in the game.