Are solo alliances going the way of the dodo?

Honu141

This is a question I asked myself recently after some discussion among other alliance commanders.

As with any game, there is a certain amount of player turnover. As people lose interest, finish the game, get frustrated, etc. it inevitably happens. The changes introduced in recent months seem to have accelerated that process for MPQ. Our alliance, Earth 270, has been a top-100 alliance since alliances were first introduced. Every season, we've had to replace 1-2 departing members. Recently, that number has gone up to 2-5. The first few seasons, it was relatively easy to find new members. Now, however, it might be easier hitting the 1k progression in PVP that finding a good recruit!

Looking in the Alliances section, I've noticed several alliances recruiting for their 2nd, 3rd, and 30th team. Nowadays, it seems like every new player is immediately snapped up and sequestered away. (One commander likened it to sniping in PVP.) More teams mean more commanders that equate to more eyeballs looking for new posts in the Forum, Facebook, and Line. A single alliance would be hard-pressed to cover all those bases.

As a commander, I understand the allure of recruiting from your own farm system. As a player, do I want to be stuck in Wal-Mart XXV that only has 13 players while I wait my turn? Whatever the answer may be, it seems to me that multi-alliances are slowly becoming part of the equation if you want to be a top-100 team.

tl;dr
recruiting seems to be more difficult, multi-team alliances may have a leg up.

Malcrof

Honu141 wrote:

This is a question I asked myself recently after some discussion among other alliance commanders.

As with any game, there is a certain amount of player turnover. As people lose interest, finish the game, get frustrated, etc. it inevitably happens. The changes introduced in recent months seem to have accelerated that process for MPQ. Our alliance, Earth 270, has been a top-100 alliance since alliances were first introduced. Every season, we've had to replace 1-2 departing members. Recently, that number has gone up to 2-5. The first few seasons, it was relatively easy to find new members. Now, however, it might be easier hitting the 1k progression in PVP that finding a good recruit!

Looking in the Alliances section, I've noticed several alliances recruiting for their 2nd, 3rd, and 30th team. Nowadays, it seems like every new player is immediately snapped up and sequestered away. (One commander likened it to sniping in PVP.) More teams mean more commanders that equate to more eyeballs looking for new posts in the Forum, Facebook, and Line. A single alliance would be hard-pressed to cover all those bases.

As a commander, I understand the allure of recruiting from your own farm system. As a player, do I want to be stuck in Wal-Mart XXV that only has 13 players while I wait my turn? Whatever the answer may be, it seems to me that multi-alliances are slowly becoming part of the equation if you want to be a top-100 team.

tl;dr
recruiting seems to be more difficult, multi-team alliances may have a leg up.

We have a casual alliance, with 20 active memebers, if people go inactive (5 day rule, unless they tell us ahead of time), i kick them , but keep the alliance public.

making it public has been the best thing i ever did.. some of our casuals turned into hardcores, i myself am a bit of a hardcore player... My suggestion, make it public, let some random people join.. if they see rewards, they are more willing to fight to get even more... that is what is slowly happening in ours. We hit top 200 in a hulk sub, people asked how they got the token.. we told them, next thing you know they are all jumping in the PVE.. we may finish top 200 in the PVE with over 1/2 the alliance only starting on it yesterday....

Same with PVP, i got my 4k progression 10 pack, put my results in alliance chat (5/10 on gold's) now i see 4 more people have done some pvp that had 0 points total for the season prior.

Because of scaling, our highest scorer in the Hulk PVE (he will get final progression this afternoon) has 0 lvl 94's, and he just hit 1k+ for the season in PVP only having started a couple days ago.

Unknown

Speaking for the Commanders of the Deadpool Alliances, anything more than 3 groups is just too many to manage effectively.

The Tacos expanded to a 2 alliance family (Tacos & Rings) way back when you still had to pay for every alliance slot. It was a lot of work and took about 2 or 3 seasons to get the new group up and functioning well. In order to make it work, we had to have experienced commanders split off from Tacos and run with the new crew. We also had to keep our eyes out for members who were potentially "commander material", who would one day be brought into the fold and given a larger role. This all while trying to sell our established vets that the expansion was good for the overall health of the organization and keeping the new group of members motivated and excited.

RE the OP's idea that Mullti-Alliance crews may have a leg up...you are probably correct. But i want to point out that takes a TON of work to run 1 just successful alliance. IMO any organization that puts in the huge time and effort commitment to run a multi-alliance crew has well earned any perks that they may get in recruiting.

easy...marc

Wobby

We have been a consistent top 25-50 alliance for a long long time.
We did ally once or twice with Thunderkittens to keep up with all the other alliance hoppers in 4* releases but haven't had to do that since they expanded to top 100 awards.

But there's only so much room at the top. For every one like ours there's an XMen, Best, Deadpools or DMZ. If you want to be in contention for top alliance prizes, it seems to me your only way is to join the ranks and work your way up, because a Django or AoB or Crewsaders spot isn't opening very often.

Honu141

Malcrof wrote:

We have a casual alliance, with 20 active memebers

Recruiting for a casual alliance is completely different from recruiting for a top-100 alliance. There is a certain level of commitment needed from the get-go to be top-100. Look at last season's rankings for a quick comparison. The 100th ranked alliance was Agent Archer with 150,011 points. That's an average of 7501 points per member. A player who hasn't started their 3* transition, much less a newbie, would be hard-pressed to score that. As you pointed out, those are the random recruits you typically get with a public alliance.

A top-100 alliance typically seeks out a player that is firmly in 3* transition or better. Those are the recruits that you see less and less in the wild. Again, multi-team alliances benefit by having more spotters when a recruit like that appears. Or, as I surmise, they get plucked by the top team from their farm system.

I don't begrudge the multi-team alliances. As djsquillz pointed out, it takes a lot of time and effort to successfully run those things and they earn whatever perks they get from it. As the recruiting well slows to a trickle, I'm wondering whether it's time for us to stop flying solo and start adding a secondary alliance.

Unknown

Recruiting for a top 10 alliance has gotten a whole lot harder too. Lots of vets quitting or going casual. We've played with 19 or even 18 members for half of the season.

Unknown

I don't think single alliances are going are becoming extinct but it has been getting tougher to recruit, esp for pvp only. But I think that has more to do with pvp changes.

Wrecking Crew for example had a hell of a time finding someone that can keep up with at least 600 per event. Instead, we got someone in the middle of their 2-3 transition who may not be able to hit 600 every event, but at least we can help them get to that point.

lukewin

If you are dropping from a 5 team alliance group to a 2 team alliance group, you should probably also give the commanders of those other 3 alliances more than a few hours notice, right before the start of a season, that you've made a decision to go back to a 2 team group. Actually, you probably should give all the commanders of those 3 alliances notice, as opposed to just telling one of the commanders on one of those 3 teams. Especially, after they've gutted their teams to fulfill the 2 main teams, because they were thinking about the health of the group, and not just solely about the interest of their alliance.

The problem with trying to start a 2nd alliance to farm, is if you can't fill your primary one, even 2-3 members, it's a lot harder to fill a 2nd one with 20 members. If anything, I would recommend mergers. 2 teams that aren't completely full can easily make one team that is a lot better off, and the 2nd team can be built of the leftovers. If you can't field the 2nd team, there are more spots than players to fill them right now, so you could easily get the ones that don't make the cut, housed elsewhere. Just make sure that the team that you're merging with has the same type mindset that you do, so that everyone can get along.

We were in a 5 team alliance group (4 PVP, 1 PVE), that went to a 3 team alliance group (2 PVP, 1 PVE). Our first season as a 3 team alliance group went well. Our second season, we had one alliance where 8 people say they were retiring or going casual, so we ended up merging that alliance with an outside alliance. We had 12, but we were able to fit 2 into our other PVP group, and we did 10 and 10. We helped house their players that were random joiners, weren't part of the core, or were ok with it, in other alliances. It's definitely not easy work maintaining a group of alliances, but if you have the right commanders in place, it's really not that hard either.

slidecage

i would say this season is a fluke i mean look at the covers who even wanted any of the people that was in PVP this season, Beast, doct Oct blah..

i would rather be in a one team allanice then 2 or 3 or 4 parts, back in dec or jan was in one and was one of the top 5 or 6 scores on that set, i was then told i was being moved from a top 50 PVE 500 PVP to a top 250 PVE and top 1000 PVP (left right then, few other times when i was with mulit groups was kicked cause they wanted to bring new blood on. it seemed the mulit teams want newer blood then given the people who helped them out the spots.

who cares if you have 100 part of an alliance

NighteyesGrisu

Honu141 wrote:

Malcrof wrote:

We have a casual alliance, with 20 active memebers

Recruiting for a casual alliance is completely different from recruiting for a top-100 alliance. There is a certain level of commitment needed from the get-go to be top-100. Look at last season's rankings for a quick comparison. The 100th ranked alliance was Agent Archer with 150,011 points. That's an average of 7501 points per member. A player who hasn't started their 3* transition, much less a newbie, would be hard-pressed to score that. As you pointed out, those are the random recruits you typically get with a public alliance.

A top-100 alliance typically seeks out a player that is firmly in 3* transition or better. Those are the recruits that you see less and less in the wild. Again, multi-team alliances benefit by having more spotters when a recruit like that appears. Or, as I surmise, they get plucked by the top team from their farm system.

That depends a lot on the alliance I think. At AoB we have very few members who leave for other Alliances (obviously because we're so awesome, right?). Usually, the only members who leave are those who retire (and sometimes they even come back). As a result of that, we don't have to recruit new members constantly...I think our newest member has been here for over a season as well.

dr tinykittylove

NighteyesGrisu wrote:

That depends a lot on the alliance I think. At AoB we have very few members who leave for other Alliances (obviously because we're so awesome, right?). Usually, the only members who leave are those who retire (and sometimes they even come back). As a result of that, we don't have to recruit new members constantly...I think our newest member has been here for over a season as well.

I think it helps that we're all pretty low maintenance and don't mind if someone goes on vacation most of the season or wants to skip a pvp or two. Not many top100 alliances are willing or able to support that, especially when they have a higher proportion of transitioners struggling to keep up minimums, hence the higher turnover.

john1620b

dr tinykittylove wrote:

I think it helps that we're all pretty low maintenance and don't mind if someone goes on vacation most of the season or wants to skip a pvp or two. Not many top100 alliances are willing or able to support that, especially when they have a higher proportion of transitioners struggling to keep up minimums, hence the higher turnover.

Ace of Blades for the win!

Sorry people, we're full. No chance of joining. Unless vudu kicks me....though with my awesome perfomance in the Hulk PvE right now, I don't think that's going to happen. How else are you going to get all those extra standards from the alliance sub rewards?

nic13

Crews is a solo alliance. It works out fine.

Unknown

Yes the trend of high amounts of players leaving is picking up.

Probably due to burnout from the back-to-back releases and unpopular changes.

It might not be so much of an issue of "solo going dodo" rather than a bigger load of people are leaving the game altogether; and those who are not leaving might not be using the forum.

Really need to expand the breadth of recruitment to keep us from going under...

*edit: was repeating some stuff OP already mentioned.