Ultron Destroyed my Alliance, a Lifetime Original by D3

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

My alliance hits somewhere between top 60-100 consistently, so it is fairly casual. It consists of two types of players which I value equally. There is the hardcore players who carry us, and the casual/competitive who earn the minimum we ask for and occasionally perform extraordinarily.

Everyone defines 'casual' by what they do. But top 60-100 with minimums isn't casual by any reasonable definition. Having to play every 36 hours isn't casual. It may not be as strenuous as is required for top 10, but it's more strenuous than 95%+ of the playerbase.

If there are 100K players then top 100 alliance is equivalent of top 2% (2000 out of 100K). That's equivalent of finishing top 10 in every PvP or top 20 in every PvE event. If you're really casual in terms of playing time then you're not going to be anywhere near top 100 unless you're just a freeloader, a super whale, or somehow way ahead of the curve in usage of broken characters. The problem isn't that whether top 100 is casual or not (it is not) but since doing well as an alliance is perceived as necessary that people end up burning out. I'm sure you can find people who expects to be in a top 100 alliance while never coming close to averaging a top 10/20 PvP and PvE finish and that cannot possibly work out in the long run (you're not pulling your weight here). That said it is still D3's problem that they've made a game that led to unrealistic alliance expectations, especially given they really have no in game support for alliance and said that this is supposed to be something extra.

SnowcaTT

Sorry to hear this.

Wrecking Crew went to "PVE for new characters only"....then D3 tried to get around rules like that, by introducing back-to-back-to-back new character PVE releases. Now we're just merc'ing people out for any PVE's they want to run, we had to change it to "no PVE at all" due to how many new characters were being released so quickly. [Speaking of which, I happen to know an alliance that would be willing to merc out about half of their members for EotS....]. I imagine reading this, the devs will think to themselves: "We need to make sure PVE and PVP end at the same time, so alliances can't be one or the other only!"

We played the Ultron events, and they were great! I didn't play EotS, it was just to much with Ultron going on at the same time, or the health packs to run both successfully. I ended Ultron 2 on top of WC, I don't know how I could have done that and run EotS with any success. Some had the energy/time to do both, so they are going to look for another alliance to get out with in EotS. Good luck to them, and I sincerely hope (like has happened several times recently) they come back and have fun with PVP! But I could see the day/scenario when players don't come back for the time merc'ing takes, or decide they want to run both events again: then back to the recruiting time on the commanders end. It is really hard on the alliances to find 20 people that will/can consistently run EVERY event, and the players needs/desires change over time, so it's really hard for them to find an alliance that can consistently fill those needs as well.

I don't know if the "ha-ha, can't merc!" style of Ultron helps or hurts. It puts a lot of pressure on alliance, you start and you MUST run it or let everyone down! Commanders can't switch anyone in and out for it; hope no one get appendicitis day two and can't help you out....

Nothing burns out players faster than constant PVE grind, and OP is completely correct: requiring simultaneous event runs will crush players will to continue to play. Lots of events are fun! But when you scale PVE up crazily, along with making a very difficult Ultron, along with crazy MMR (and new health amounts along with boosted characters) - only those who pay quite a bit for health packs can keep up with all of that.

Unknown

forch wrote:

shade_tree wrote:

I'm truly sorry to hear that you're apparently in a terrible alliance. There are plenty of alliances with realistic expectations of their members, commanders that are supportive without slave drivers, and absolutely no drivers for spending money. You can find many such alliances listed in the forum ads.

Your statement is untrue and shows your ignorance. My last two alliances were both wonderful groups of people. I was in Dauthi's Shake n Bake, but left when I decided that I didn't want to put in the time for PvE (they are competitive in both PvP and PvE, so I would have been dead weight on half of their activities). I would have retired at that point but I found Nirvana, a great competitive PvP alliance with no focus on PvE. With the recent changes to the game, I don't want to put in the time for competitive PvP, so again chose to leave (once they had a replacement). Perhaps you are comfortable mooching off others, but most of us are not.

Assuming you're responding to the "terrible alliance" part (because the rest of the statement is fact), I based that on this, from you:

"Instead of a group of like minded folks that enjoy banter and trading ideas, it is a tool for social pressure to get players to spend more time and money on the game. Making Alliances a nice perk (e.g., a few ISO and HP) would completely change the dynamics of the game for the better. As it doesn't take a genius to figure this out, we can only assume that this is done intentionally."

You appear to be complaining about your alliance experience and the pressure to force you to spend time and money to participate. If that's not the case, my apologies.
I'm a commander of a casual, Top 250 alliance that is the exact opposite of what you are describing above. Everyone pitches in, no one "mooches", and we're all happy with the arrangement.

Hope your new alliance is a better fit for you.

firethorne

We didn't do much lose people to burnout. In ours, it was more of a case of put up points or get kicked. Of the 20 people that we had at the start of Ultron, 10 remain. I liked being an alliance that would welcome new players, but with big events like this, it was decided we can't afford to have dead weight. So, alliance destruction, just in a different form by being jerks to low level and transitioning players.

Megdar

Phantron wrote:

If there are 100K players then top 100 alliance is equivalent of top 2% (2000 out of 100K). That's equivalent of finishing top 10 in every PvP or top 20 in every PvE event. If you're really casual in terms of playing time then you're not going to be anywhere near top 100 unless you're just a freeloader, a super whale, or somehow way ahead of the curve in usage of broken characters.

Except if you made up the number... If there is 100 alliance, then top 100 is 100% of the player base, or if there is 1 million then this is 0.2%

Top 100 mean nothing except if you know for sure what are the % of player...

Megdar

firethorne wrote:

We didn't do much lose people to burnout. In ours, it was more of a case of put up points or get kicked. Of the 20 people that we had at the start of Ultron, 10 remain. I liked being an alliance that would welcome new players, but with big events like this, it was decided we can't afford to have dead weight. So, alliance destruction, just in a different form by being jerks to low level and transitioning players.

Very usefull to kick people without replacement... because you could not replace them anyway after the start of the event. And the people you kicked will have to stuff anyway.

Dauthi

Eddiemon wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

My alliance hits somewhere between top 60-100 consistently, so it is fairly casual. It consists of two types of players which I value equally. There is the hardcore players who carry us, and the casual/competitive who earn the minimum we ask for and occasionally perform extraordinarily.

Everyone defines 'casual' by what they do. But top 60-100 with minimums isn't casual by any reasonable definition. Having to play every 36 hours isn't casual. It may not be as strenuous as is required for top 10, but it's more strenuous than 95%+ of the playerbase.

As I stated from the start, we are casual/competative. Yes, top 100 hardly counts as casual these days, but top 250 is definitely not competative. We try to do the bare minmum to pull top 100 and skip PVE's with old characters at the reward, so fairly casual but mostly competative.

shade_tree wrote:

forch wrote:

shade_tree wrote:

I'm truly sorry to hear that you're apparently in a terrible alliance. There are plenty of alliances with realistic expectations of their members, commanders that are supportive without slave drivers, and absolutely no drivers for spending money. You can find many such alliances listed in the forum ads.

Your statement is untrue and shows your ignorance. My last two alliances were both wonderful groups of people. I was in Dauthi's Shake n Bake, but left when I decided that I didn't want to put in the time for PvE (they are competitive in both PvP and PvE, so I would have been dead weight on half of their activities). I would have retired at that point but I found Nirvana, a great competitive PvP alliance with no focus on PvE. With the recent changes to the game, I don't want to put in the time for competitive PvP, so again chose to leave (once they had a replacement). Perhaps you are comfortable mooching off others, but most of us are not.

Assuming you're responding to the "terrible alliance" part (because the rest of the statement is fact), I based that on this, from you:

"Instead of a group of like minded folks that enjoy banter and trading ideas, it is a tool for social pressure to get players to spend more time and money on the game. Making Alliances a nice perk (e.g., a few ISO and HP) would completely change the dynamics of the game for the better. As it doesn't take a genius to figure this out, we can only assume that this is done intentionally."

You appear to be complaining about your alliance experience and the pressure to force you to spend time and money to participate. If that's not the case, my apologies.
I'm a commander of a casual, Top 250 alliance that is the exact opposite of what you are describing above. Everyone pitches in, no one "mooches", and we're all happy with the arrangement.

Hope your new alliance is a better fit for you.

A top 100 alliance is a completely different experience than a top 250. The gap is seriously staggering. I run a top 250 group too, so I see the differences daily. 250 is very causal and has a lot less pressure, so it isn't how you are running the alliance, it's just the nature of top 250. Chicken Tonight has been down 2 players and still successfully made top 250 on numerous occasions. The only thing you really have to to is weed out inactive players.

Similarly, and like others have been saying, top 100 is naturally competative and in any competition there is pressure to perform well for your team mates. In this case the work load is much higher. Being a top 250 vs a top 100 alliance doesn't make it better, just different.

Meto5000

I don't think we lost anyone in our alliance but we were one of those alliances that split up our top performers in hopes that more people could reach the progression rewards. Due to this, I missed out on the HB red cover and it made me extremely resentful of our bottom 25% even though they are very casual and were only doing what they do every event. Usually, I like having our secondary alliance being the "vacation/relax zone" but, due to our expectations for the event, it put a lot of unneeded pressure on our normal grinders and our normal casuals. If there had been better communication about what differences we could expect from the second run of the Ultron event there would have been a lot less grumbling in our alliance, and I wouldn't be religiously glued to my game every 8 hours in the current PvE trying to grab the red HB cover that I would have already gotten .

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

A top 100 alliance is a completely different experience than a top 250. The gap is seriously staggering. I run a top 250 group too, so I see the differences daily. 250 is very causal and has a lot less pressure, so it isn't how you are running the alliance, it's just the nature of top 250. Chicken Tonight has been down 2 players and still successfully made top 250 on numerous occasions. The only thing you really have to to is weed out inactive players.

After a year of running a Top 100 alliance, the switch to casual scoring about six weeks ago has made the game fun again - no more kicking and recruiting at the 11th hour or having to be a top 5 scorer on every event are probably the two biggest changes. When people complain about the daily grind and burnout, I think that moving from a Top 100 alliance to a Top 250 can give them a chance to see if they still like the game minus all the pressure - the only downside is losing that one alliance cover and a little ISO.

forch

shade_tree wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

A top 100 alliance is a completely different experience than a top 250. The gap is seriously staggering. I run a top 250 group too, so I see the differences daily. 250 is very causal and has a lot less pressure, so it isn't how you are running the alliance, it's just the nature of top 250. Chicken Tonight has been down 2 players and still successfully made top 250 on numerous occasions. The only thing you really have to to is weed out inactive players.

After a year of running a Top 100 alliance, the switch to casual scoring about six weeks ago has made the game fun again - no more kicking and recruiting at the 11th hour or having to be a top 5 scorer on every event are probably the two biggest changes. When people complain about the daily grind and burnout, I think that moving from a Top 100 alliance to a Top 250 can give them a chance to see if they still like the game minus all the pressure - the only downside is losing that one alliance cover and a little ISO.

So you agree that the reward structure for Top 100 alliance is stressful, but when you remove them (e.g., become a Top 250 alliance) the game is more fun. Let's assume that the Dev team is also smart enough to figure this out, so they are intentionally making an alliance reward structure that makes the game less fun for many (most?) of the players. I am guessing that there is a reason, and I am guessing that it is to use the social pressure of that system to extract more effort and money from the player base. This is why I think that the Top 100 alliance structure is a negative in the game (and one of the more significant negatives).