How to keep your alliance clean and well-oiled?

pforhan

I run a casual alliance, I really just want folks to play at least once every couple of weeks. But people drop off and stop playing. What's the best way to cycle them out to make space for new/active folks?

As far as I can tell the "Alliance Rewards" part of the daily resupply offers the best guide on what to do. It *seems* like it's a reverse-chronological list of the last time folks have played. So I've been kicking people off from the bottom of the list who look "inactive" -- small rosters and rosters with lots of one-cover slots.

The problem is that now I'm running into former active contributors/chatters, and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I don't recall the last time they've played. I need dates or something, the relative list isn't quite enough.

Must I manually record this outside the app? Does anyone have a better plan?

On the plus side, I notice the team fills back up in a couple of hours, I wonder if PQ is slotting people into existing teams automatically.

Square

To be honest, I don't think you can run a well-oiled casual alliance. Once you get to the top 50, all the players are quite invested and play 'seriously' as one might a sport.

But for a top 200 or something, you can't make people play, and the people who always play will eventually move on to a better alliance. So, you're stuck with lazy/casual players.

Personally, I wouldn't start an alliance. I would just join one at my own level, and invite my friends if they were interested.

Unknown

The Alliance Rewards popup only shows whether a player was active at any time during the previous day. All active players will be listed first in the ASCII order of their name, followed by all inactive players. There is no chronological information in the list other than who was active or inactive during the previous day. The only way to keep track of activity over time is to do so manually with a spreadsheet or piece of paper.

If you want an alliance of active players who will all contribute to earning alliance placement rewards, then there are generally two approaches:

1. Keep your alliance public but aggressively remove the weakest performers. Alliance leaders will have to actively track performance in order to correctly identify and remove the weakest players.
2. Turn your alliance private, and recruit people through the forum or other channels. You can reduce the need for constant performance checks by careful filtering early on. Once you have a core group of strong players, it will be much easier to attract other strong players that are also seeking better alliance placement rewards.

Both approaches can lead to successful alliances, although the very top alliances have always been private ones.

pforhan

That list is definitely not sorted in alpha order like the roster list, either the actives or the inactives for the day. I guess I'll take to a spreadsheet to track for now, see if I can suss out the order. I notice when I play my first game late in the day, my name shows up lower in the active list.

I don't need a top-performing alliance, just one where people show up semi-regularly. Right now I have 8-9 actives a day.

hex706f726368

The only tools the app provides for commanders is the ability to create an alliance, make it public or private, and accept/kick players from it.

Any management you want to do other than that needs to be done in an external tool. I personally use google sheets and I think many others do as well.

Unknown

pforhan wrote:

That list is definitely not sorted in alpha order like the roster list

My mistake. It is the roster that is in ASCII order. The alliance reward window may indeed have some chronological information in it, though someone will have to test it to see if it's just the play order.

pforhan

Is there a good place for a feature request like this for d3 to pick up? There's quite a bit of space in the roster list. Something like a "last seen" column or a "new covers this month/week" could do the trick.

hex706f726368

pforhan wrote:

Is there a good place for a feature request like this for d3 to pick up? There's quite a bit of space in the roster list. Something like a "last seen" column or a "new covers this month/week" could do the trick.

viewforum.php?style=1&f=8

don't sweat it if it feels like it falls on deaf ears though

wiz_biz

Vynyv wrote:

pforhan wrote:

That list is definitely not sorted in alpha order like the roster list

My mistake. It is the roster that is in ASCII order. The alliance reward window may indeed have some chronological information in it, though someone will have to test it to see if it's just the play order.

as a frustrated commander of a casual alliance myself, i track the active players through the daily rewards. most definitely, the players who have been inactive the longest are at the bottom of that display. it's a bit annoying to always track, but i usually just take a ton of screenshots for the daily rewards and at the end of all the events to see how people performed, and when i feel like avoiding my real job i'll just go through them all and pop it in my spreadsheet.

i definitely feel the OP's pain though - i inherited my alliance and only stayed because i have a couple of friends in it, and was under the delusion i could whip everyone in to shape for a while...i quit hoping for a high-performing alliance and would just be happy to have daily players, but it seems like i'm perpetually shuffling those bottom 4-5 spots...

Unknown

As long as you're not too picky about roster strength, you can usually get some very active new players in the 2-star range who can help your alliance stay within top 500. Keep them around for a month or two and they'll make a great core to build a stronger alliance around. Even right now there are several prospects like this in the single player recruitment thread.

pforhan

I did put in this suggestion: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31339

It sounds like alliance tools are something folks have been working around for a while. I'm an android developer, you think they'd let me work on it?

TxMoose

one suggestion - if a few of your ** guys develop into good *** players (i.e. regularly hitting 800-1000 in pvp), you need to decide if you want to up the requirements and boot some of the lower rosters or just understand that you'll eventually lose the top guys. that is why I made a change between seasons - there were 5 of us that hit 700-1000 regularly but the commander kept adding ** rosters scoring 300. he ended up losing at least 4 of the top 5 in the alliance between seasons. I've never been a commander or run an alliance and I'm sure its quite a commitment, but I was a member of my former alliance for 6 seasons (through my *** transition). it felt quite weird leaving and joining a new group but I don't have to worry about pve any more, so definite progress.

Malcrof

TxMoose wrote:

one suggestion - if a few of your ** guys develop into good *** players (i.e. regularly hitting 800-1000 in pvp), you need to decide if you want to up the requirements and boot some of the lower rosters or just understand that you'll eventually lose the top guys. that is why I made a change between seasons - there were 5 of us that hit 700-1000 regularly but the commander kept adding ** rosters scoring 300. he ended up losing at least 4 of the top 5 in the alliance between seasons. I've never been a commander or run an alliance and I'm sure its quite a commitment, but I was a member of my former alliance for 6 seasons (through my *** transition). it felt quite weird leaving and joining a new group but I don't have to worry about pve any more, so definite progress.

Which is the #1 reason why we allow Merc'ing in our casual alliance. Yes we lose people every now and then who merc out so much that the host alliance asks them to stay, but that is fine. As a casual alliance, it feels good to see people move on to better things if they become hardcore players.

Unfortunately since my wife and a mess of RL friends are in my alliance, the occasional merc is the only thing i can do for myself, but it is still worth it.

pforhan

I have no problem if people leave the alliance, I just want to boot out people who have left the game entirely, they're not doing anyone any favors taking up a slot.

Malcrof

pforhan wrote:

I have no problem if people leave the alliance, I just want to boot out people who have left the game entirely, they're not doing anyone any favors taking up a slot.

As long as they are a commander, boot away! If they are commanders you will need to submit a ticket.

Once you have spots, make the alliance private and post in the alliance seeking members section. I like getting members from the forum, more of a chance of them getting info and being able to communicate.

Unknown

This is quite the interesting process. I myself play daily...& to-date have 58 characters on my roster. Earlier this month I finished off a 3-week vacation; it was overseas and so game playing had to go on pause. I then discovered I was no longer part of an alliance & was thoroughly confused. Now I see that in all likeliness, I had moved to the bottom of the list due to inactivity & was kicked out. I get it that it's hard to be fair to everyone, but geez if matters were truly out of my hands & I hadn't a clue that this was a possibility! It is what it is I guess. I quickly found a new team to call home...

Thankfully it's just a game!