All Events Should Be Alliance Locked

MaxxPowerz

My alliance just dropped 50 spots in the The Hunt to barely miss out on our Nova covers. This all took place within the last few hours of the event. Thx Mercs! (To be fair we attempted to recruit our own mercs but even that wasn't enough to offset the siesmic shift that occured in the rankings).

To think that in a matter of a few hours all of our hard work and grinding could be wiped clean is incredibly discouraging.

Hopefully this is one changes the developers will be addressing with their incoming improvements. I will say that I have been impressed as of late with their recent changes and their willingness to listen to the community.

fmftint

It's not mercs that dropped you 50 positions, it's alliances with high concentrations of slice 4/5 players

lukewin

OP's position is on par with me saying I got to 1st place on day 1 in PVE by overclearing nodes, so I should get the 1st place prize no matter what happens on the subsequent days.

MaxxPowerz

Then I apologize for my confusion, but it is worth noting that our alliance averaged a rank of 60-70 in the prior 2 days. Had I know we were going to fall 20 spots out of the top 100 I would have focused my efforts elsewhere. (This could also be do to the fact that the last days of an event tend to yield the most points, another potential argument). Thankfully I didn't waste any HP on med packs.

rastafari7

fmftint wrote:

It's not mercs that dropped you 50 positions, it's alliances with high concentrations of slice 4/5 players

As a commander of an alliance with 60% of members in those last 2 time slices I say you´re wrong.
They all grinded like a mad man, but the increase in points of a lot of alliances was so big , no way they did that with just the grind.
We went from 71 to 103 in the last 2 hrs.
So I think there is truth in his post.
Even if it´s not an alliance lock would be great.

Also 4 out 5 alliances I can see in the scoring suddenly only have 17 or 18 members in comparison with the number of members in the scoring (20).

Dauthi

fmftint wrote:

It's not mercs that dropped you 50 positions, it's alliances with high concentrations of slice 4/5 players

Have you bounced around in top 90-100 before? We used to do it all the time, and it is not because of the last time slice. You constantly see alliances in front or behind you suddenly disappear or appear, where did they go, where did they come from? They dropped a player and got a merc. There were several times our alliance simply left a spot open in the last 10 minutes hoping for someone with points to show up, and they did pushing us into top 100. Mercs will hop from alliance to alliance constantly looking for a better position, shifting points at this level.

The sad part is it rips alliances apart. You are lucky to get any of your players back after the mercs all leave, but at least you hit that top 100! It is a really stressful position to be in.

avs962

fmftint wrote:

It's not mercs that dropped you 50 positions, it's alliances with high concentrations of slice 4/5 players

It's absolutely mercs, as well as alliance restructuring. When alliances go from 250 to 70 in the final few hours, it definitely isn't just a few intense grinding sessions.

stochasticism

Mercs have a lot to do with this. I think I saw at least 10 or 15 different alliances say something like "Currently 120 with 17/20, looking for 50k+ mercs for t100". These t100 spots have to come from somewhere. This is just the one room I am in and ibknow there are at least two others out there, probably more.

rastafari7

OJSP wrote:

rastafari7 wrote:

fmftint wrote:

It's not mercs that dropped you 50 positions, it's alliances with high concentrations of slice 4/5 players

As a commander of an alliance with 60% of members in those last 2 time slices I say you´re wrong.
They all grinded like a mad man, but the increase in points of a lot of alliances was so big , no way they did that with just the grind.
We went from 71 to 103 in the last 2 hrs.
So I think there is truth in his post.
Even if it´s not an alliance lock would be great.

Not being in a top100 alliance, I wouldn't know how much points are required in general.. but I would assume they're roughly a constant percentage of the max points of the event. We managed to get 98th in Enemy of the States back in August 2015, though.. with 2 or 3 of our players playing in slice 5 and no mercs required. 2140000 was the score for the 100th place. The max score for the event for one player is around 270000.. So, as long as the average score for each player is around 110000 (less than half of the max points), the alliance would get top100. It usually means everyone clearing 3 times a day, but in most cases, some of the grinders will get the extra points required to cover those who can't do optimal clears 3 times a day (due to lacking essential characters, real life issues, etc.). I think that number of points should also be sufficient to win us the Legendary Token too.

For The Hunt, it appears that the max points for the event for one player is around 86500.

As the 103th alliance, you'd have the benefit of knowing how much was required to get 100th place for a new character release event. Could you share the number? The same calculation as my example above could be useful to figure out what sort of performance would be required by one alliance for a definite top 100 place, so you won't be disappointed when other alliances are recruiting mercs.

I suspect the numbers would also reflect the minimum number of clears and grinding we need to do to get the Legendary Token. My estimated total points for an alliance to get top100 in The Hunt is 1100000. Am I close?

Sadly there is a big difference between new character events and normal PvE events(most times rank 60-80). So it´s difficult to predict what the needed score will be.
This time the nr.100 had 1.137.948 (your close lol), but next new character event I bet it will be higher.

Phumade

Just a tip from an ex commander:

1. Ignore the leaderboard rankings. (alliances always move their low end scorers)
2. Set your target scores as a percentage of LT progression instead of a hard rank or numerical score.
--- Generally speaking, and avg score of 1.25X LT will get you between 10th-20th place. 1X LT should get your alliance in the top 50, and .75X LT is right on the borderline.

Pongie

I'm the score keeper for my previous & current alliance and let me say that before legendary tokens were released, top 100 required an average score of roughly 1x max progression. After the legendary token, this has increased to 1.2x max progression. Mind you that 1.2x now is more like 1.5x before (legendary token extended the max progression. Most casual players weren't even hitting max progression because there were no incentives for them to do so. A lot stopped at the cover reward. However, now everyone at least wants the legendary token and have pushed the scores up overall).

I also saw the spread of the top 100 become tighter. Before, the spread is more like average scores of 1x-2.5x max progression. Now you have 1.2x-2x max progression. So while it is harder to get into top 100 now, a couple of decent scores can jump up/drop down the rankings within top 100.

Edit: You also don't want to be aiming for that top 100 cutoff. It's too risky. Give yourself a safe and comfortable buffer by getting your average scores into the 1.5x mark.

Edit#2:

Phumade wrote:

Generally speaking, and avg score of 1.25X LT will get you between 10th-20th place. 1X LT should get your alliance in the top 50, and .75X LT is right on the borderline.

Those figures are too low for new release events. Might be true for regular events.

Stony

Who cares if it's mercs? It's 20 people who come together and put up a higher score than your 20. If you don't like it, find a new 20, get mercs, or become one.

I try to carry as many low scorers from my normal 20 as possible, but like I tell them, if you don't hit final prog, you don't deserve a free cover of the newest character.

monstermike

fmftint wrote:

For The Hunt, it appears that the max points for the event for one player is around 86500.

As the 103th alliance, you'd have the benefit of knowing how much was required to get 100th place for a new character release event. Could you share the number? The same calculation as my example above could be useful to figure out what sort of performance would be required by one alliance for a definite top 100 place, so you won't be disappointed when other alliances are recruiting mercs.

I suspect the numbers would also reflect the minimum number of clears and grinding we need to do to get the Legendary Token. My estimated total points for an alliance to get top100 in The Hunt is 1100000. Am I close?

Our alliance finished 97th in The Hunt, with a total score of 1142647. Which comes out to just over 57k a person. Our top player had 82k+, while out bottom had 33k+.

Hope that gives you an idea of scores.

seekie

This is a lot more on mercs rather than alliance with high % of players in slice 5. This is the fact.

On new char release events, our alliance usually goes
Sub1 reward top 50 (that's when the slice5 players also finished)
Sub2 reward top 50
.
.
.
Last sub reward top 100
Total event out of top 100
The maths doesn't add up.

But like others said, those are events meant for big alliances and those who spend time and effort to find merc and rearrange members. Is it fair, I don't know. Will it change? It will not change as it will upset the community more and it doesn't bring any revenue to the dev. So just be clear on what your alliance stance is (result driven, compassionate, or in between) and know the expected outcome beforehand.

Huatimus

This is a new 4* character release AFTER it's no longer possible to use hero points to buy covers.
This is an essential character for Galactus.
Looks to me like the competition will be a heck of a lot higher than usual. Better get your alliance to work harder, or hire better mercs. It's a vicious cycle too, mercs wont really want to join an alliance that is not going to be placed firmly in the top 100.

To avoid the disappointment of everybody in the alliance who put in hours of hard work, better to disappoint a few by dropping the few alliance mates who aren't pulling their worth.

evildead666

This my friends is why I am in a pvp group so anyone can come and go as they please to help out other friendly groups as a merc . I understand your pain but if all the people you have in your group did the optimal grind you would place top 100 , don't blame it on the mercs ,blame it on your team. Take it from me I've been there thats why I'm where I am now and perfectly happy not grinding every 8 hours.