Upcoming Alliance Features Discussion

IceIX

Reposted from here for discussion

We've had a ton of questions about our plans for Alliances now that it's out in basic form as a feature, so I went ahead and put together a few things that we'll be rolling out for this feature. Note that there are no timelines for these, so they may be R49, R50, etc. but these are some of our near-term plans for Alliances. As a feature it'll likely be growing beyond this, so this is not the be all end all of the system.

Alliance Leaderboards - Players will be able to see the rankings of the different Alliances within tournaments. Certain events will have Alliances-based leaderboards where your rank and rewards are based on the performance of your team in the event.

Expand Alliances – Players will be able to spend Hero Points to expand their Alliance, adding more friends to their existing Alliance.

Private Alliances – Allowing players to create an exclusive Alliance that can only be joined with the Commander’s approval.

Chat – The ability to chat with other players in your Alliance to share tactics and discuss strategy.

Unknown

Any plans to let us share rewards with Alliance members instead of/in addition to Facebook friends?

Unknown

Ghast wrote:

Any plans to let us share rewards with Alliance members instead of/in addition to Facebook friends?

+1

IceIX

Ghast wrote:

Any plans to let us share rewards with Alliance members instead of/in addition to Facebook friends?

Nothing planned for near term, no. That's one of my personal crusades as well. Not everyone has or wants to use Facebook after all.

Nonce Equitaur 2

IceIX ... How about other issues?

1. What was the intended finishing dialog for the Russia mission?
2. What are the stats for Black Panther?
3. When will we see buffs/nerfs for the characters mentioned as in line for buffs/nerfs 2 months ago?

Unknown

Sounds good, but I think the HP-grab is a bit off the mark. Not the HP itself, rather the offloading of the responsibility to the commanders.

HP should be able to be donated or earned somehow as an alliance as a whole, promoting working together. Perhaps offer donation bonuses to alliance members. That way it doesn't feel like it's the commander who has to feel solely resposible for the growth of the alliance.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

Sounds good, but I think the HP-grab is a bit off the mark. Not the HP itself, rather the offloading of the responsibility to the commanders.

HP should be able to be donated or earned somehow as an alliance as a whole, promoting working together. Perhaps offer donation bonuses to alliance members. That way it doesn't feel like it's the commander who has to feel solely resposible for the growth of the alliance.

I think the commander can appoint someone else in the alliance to be the commander, so they could swap roles, the new cmdr could pay, then swap back. Not elegant, but it would allow for people to take turns contributing to the cause.

Unknown

I like the idea of gaining extra benefits through alliance participation, but I don't like the idea of a leaderboard. EVERYTHING in this game is competitive...another leaderboard would just be one more way for the gap between old gamers and new gamers to widen. Why not just make a separate checklist of Alliance progressive rewards? When your group amasses a certain number of top 5 finishes in PVE, everyone gets a prize. When your group earns a certain number of wins overall, everyone gets a prize. And so on. It would make alliances feel a lot more casual and not simply turn them into one more fierce area of direct competition.

I love the idea of expanding the size of my alliance. My wife is already sure she's going to be a member of mine, even though she doesn't really play enough to make the cut. Shouldn't be too expensive, though, or it will just feel like gouging--especially if there still isn't any benefit to being a member of one. Chat would be handy, of course, and private alliances are fine (although you have the option of kicking anyone whom you don't want now, so they kind of already exist). All of those extra features are meaningless, however, if there isn't a mechanism in place to reward players for alliance participation. Until a good leaderboard or progressive track to reward alliance members exists (hopefully it's the second of those things), there's no incentive to spend time with the other features (especially if they cost heropoints).

Nonce Equitaur 2

Alliances should be their own branch of the forum. Could you add a new Alliances branch?

IceIX

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

IceIX ... How about other issues?

1. What was the intended finishing dialog for the Russia mission?
2. What are the stats for Black Panther?
3. When will we see buffs/nerfs for the characters mentioned as in line for buffs/nerfs 2 months ago?

1. Wolverine says Nick's intended line, the text was just offset accidentally.

• Wolverine - "Got him! What's your call, Fury? Back to the Helicarrier?" • Wolverine - "I'd just as soon clear this place out." • Nick Fury - "Not yet. Pull the team back together." • Nick Fury - "We’ve got a job to finish here."

2. I can debug them, but they'll be coming off R50 QA servers so they may be off. I'll post something in the Character Discussion thread in a bit.
3. They're on hold while we rethink how we want to roll these out. I've been heavily pushing for buffs to balance the nerfs whenever possible and the resulting internal conversations on overall character design philosophy has set timelines back a bit.

Unknown

Oh, yeah, and sharing prizes with Alliance buddies would be sweet. Allow us to double dip (FB and alliance sharing) and that would justify HP to expand roster size by itself.

IceIX

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Alliances should be their own branch of the forum. Could you add a new Alliances branch?

viewforum.php?f=16

IceIX

ihearthawthats wrote:

Sounds good, but I think the HP-grab is a bit off the mark. Not the HP itself, rather the offloading of the responsibility to the commanders.

HP should be able to be donated or earned somehow as an alliance as a whole, promoting working together. Perhaps offer donation bonuses to alliance members. That way it doesn't feel like it's the commander who has to feel solely resposible for the growth of the alliance.

That's one of the things on the board but it's not nailed down yet. So don't depend on it appearing, but it's definitely something we''re looking at. I love the idea of the Alliance working together for bigger goals personally.

NorthernPolarity

IceIX wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

IceIX ... How about other issues?

3. They're on hold while we rethink how we want to roll these out. I've been heavily pushing for buffs to balance the nerfs whenever possible and the resulting internal conversations on overall character design philosophy has set timelines back a bit.

So would this be more along the lines of a couple of weeks or a couple of months?

Unknown

I knew you guys was going to try and throw an hp cost in there. So predictable.

IceIX

NorthernPolarity wrote:

So would this be more along the lines of a couple of weeks or a couple of months?

Probably closer to the former than the latter. I don't think we'd wait months before rolling out any more character changes. I just don't have a timeline to give unfortunately.

Unknown

Any chance of sharing unused covers in rewards with other alliance members?

It could be a way to progress some members of the alliance along, as I can send my extra Amazing X-Men Wolverine or Modern Cap covers to a newer member who could use them when I finish in the ** area of a tournament rather than just cashing them in for a miniscule amount of ISO.

Unknown

Ugh.... So now people that don't have mpq paying friends are going to be out of certain rewards. I hate this idea. Hate it. Why is every game so social. I am a closet nerd. CLOSET! Stop trying to out me.

That being said, I play a ton, and have a kickass team, so if someone with a dominant alliance wants to pick me up, I'm in.

Sigh.....

Unknown

Moon 17 wrote:

I like the idea of gaining extra benefits through alliance participation, but I don't like the idea of a leaderboard. EVERYTHING in this game is competitive...another leaderboard would just be one more way for the gap between old gamers and new gamers to widen. Why not just make a separate checklist of Alliance progressive rewards? When your group amasses a certain number of top 5 finishes in PVE, everyone gets a prize. When your group earns a certain number of wins overall, everyone gets a prize. And so on. It would make alliances feel a lot more casual and not simply turn them into one more fierce area of direct competition.

I love the idea of expanding the size of my alliance. My wife is already sure she's going to be a member of mine, even though she doesn't really play enough to make the cut. Shouldn't be too expensive, though, or it will just feel like gouging--especially if there still isn't any benefit to being a member of one. Chat would be handy, of course, and private alliances are fine (although you have the option of kicking anyone whom you don't want now, so they kind of already exist). All of those extra features are meaningless, however, if there isn't a mechanism in place to reward players for alliance participation. Until a good leaderboard or progressive track to reward alliance members exists (hopefully it's the second of those things), there's no incentive to spend time with the other features (especially if they cost heropoints).

What would this game be without competition? I don't just want those top placement rewards, I want the satisfaction of stepping over 200 to 1000 people to earn them. If you want participation ribbons go play Candy Crush.

Unknown

Teke184 wrote:

Any chance of sharing unused covers in rewards with other alliance members?

It could be a way to progress some members of the alliance along, as I can send my extra Amazing X-Men Wolverine or Modern Cap covers to a newer member who could use them when I finish in the ** area of a tournament rather than just cashing them in for a miniscule amount of ISO.

I've never been a fan of power-leveling, especially in a competitive environment where your powering of an alliance newbie directly impedes another newbie's ability to participate and progress. The alliance newbies will benefit just from being in an alliance that places on an alliance leaderboard.

Unknown

AsianInvasion wrote:

What would this game be without competition?

More fun for those who don't care about competition?