Alliance Rewards are the biggest step towards P2W so far...

Unknown

Before, a non-paying player stood a chance at top prizes. Even if it's obviously a tougher road compared to paying players, a slow steady grind could still get a non-paying player a decent placement and 3 covers, giving them a better shot at the next round. Cash buys you an advantage, but the game never had a firm Pay to Win structure.

The Alliance reward structure changes all that.
As a solo player, the best you can get is two 3*, the third being reserved for alliance rewards....
With that in mind, the ONLY way to get top placement is with a massive (i.e. 15+ member) alliance. Given the in-game costs of adding members, there is ZERO hope for a non-paying player with a 5ish member alliance to crack the alliance leaderboard and win upper tier prizes. Alliances rewards are a pure cash grab from the developers.

If you think about the monetization cycle going forward, D3 can easily raise the member cap for alliances.... then all those 20 member alliances will need to pay $ to expand, or else they become non-competitive compared to the new 40 member or 50 member alliances. This issue will be magnified as more solo prizes get shifted to alliance rewards. From a business perspective its a great idea. Not so great for the players.

Also, we should probably expect to see more lazy 3* gold characters in the future. It's important for the developer to make money, and they probably license characters individually. Much cheaper to pay one licensing fee for Wolverine and release 4 versions compared to paying a license fee for a new character.

Discuss.

Clintman

http://fullyarticulated.typepad.com/.a/ ... b998834-pi

They must spend half the development time waxing their mustaches to pointy sharp ends huh?

Unknown

Clint wrote:

http://fullyarticulated.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341d0baf53ef00e554fdcb998834-pi

They must spend half the development time waxing their mustaches to pointy sharp ends huh?

I'm not judging them. It's a business and they need to monetize their player base. Just wanted to open up some discussion on how the subtle change in reward structure crushes non-paying players, especially those in the 2*-3* transition.

NorthernPolarity

k2yip wrote:

Clint wrote:

http://fullyarticulated.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341d0baf53ef00e554fdcb998834-pi

They must spend half the development time waxing their mustaches to pointy sharp ends huh?

I'm not judging them. It's a business and they need to monetize their player base. Just wanted to open up some discussion on how the subtle change in reward structure crushes non-paying players, especially those in the 2*-3* transition.

Although it isn't apparent, more blue BP covers are actually being given out under this scheme than the old one, so it's far from crushing for the non-paying players.

Some hard math to prove this:
Hulk event showed that there's ~90k active players in the game.

The blue cover was taken out of the top 5 rewards for people since the other rewards have stayed consistent with the last PvP tournament. 5/500 people per tournament = 1% of the playerbase who would have gotten the blue cover under the old scheme. .01*90000= 900 players who would have gotten a blue BP cover under the old scheme.

This award is now given out to the top 100 alliances. This means that as long as theres at least 9 players in each of the top 100 alliances, then as many BP covers are being given out as before. Realistically, there might be say 15+ people per alliance on average in the top 100 alliances, which means that there are 50% more blue BP covers given out now than before.

The devs aren't screwing over players with alliances, they're actually giving more net hp/covers overall. People are just mad because this forces them to join an alliance and change their playstyle. Obviously they're making a lot of money through people buying more alliance slots, but they aren't lowering the reward structure in any way or form.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

k2yip wrote:

Clint wrote:

http://fullyarticulated.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341d0baf53ef00e554fdcb998834-pi

They must spend half the development time waxing their mustaches to pointy sharp ends huh?

I'm not judging them. It's a business and they need to monetize their player base. Just wanted to open up some discussion on how the subtle change in reward structure crushes non-paying players, especially those in the 2*-3* transition.

Although it isn't apparent, more blue BP covers are actually being given out under this scheme than the old one, so it's far from crushing for the non-paying players.

Some hard math to prove this:
Hulk event showed that there's ~90k active players in the game.

The blue cover was taken out of the top 5 rewards for people since the other rewards have stayed consistent with the last PvP tournament. 5/500 people per tournament = 1% of the playerbase who would have gotten the blue cover under the old scheme. .01*90000= 900 players who would have gotten a blue BP cover under the old scheme.

This award is now given out to the top 100 alliances. This means that as long as theres at least 9 players in each of the top 100 alliances, then as many BP covers are being given out as before. Realistically, there might be say 15+ people per alliance on average in the top 100 alliances, which means that there are 50% more blue BP covers given out now than before.

The devs aren't screwing over players with alliances, they're actually giving more net hp/covers overall. People are just mad because this forces them to join an alliance and change their playstyle. Obviously they're making a lot of money through people buying more alliance slots, but they aren't lowering the reward structure in any way or form.

I'm not raising an issue about the quantity of covers given, just the distribution of those covers.
Like you said yourself, the top 100 alliances, realistically, have 15+ players. However, to get a 15+ alliance in the first place require someone to pay $, because there's no realistic way of having that amount of disposable HP without paying cash. Hence, pay to win.

NorthernPolarity

k2yip wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

k2yip wrote:

Clint wrote:

http://fullyarticulated.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341d0baf53ef00e554fdcb998834-pi

They must spend half the development time waxing their mustaches to pointy sharp ends huh?

I'm not judging them. It's a business and they need to monetize their player base. Just wanted to open up some discussion on how the subtle change in reward structure crushes non-paying players, especially those in the 2*-3* transition.

Although it isn't apparent, more blue BP covers are actually being given out under this scheme than the old one, so it's far from crushing for the non-paying players.

Some hard math to prove this:
Hulk event showed that there's ~90k active players in the game.

The blue cover was taken out of the top 5 rewards for people since the other rewards have stayed consistent with the last PvP tournament. 5/500 people per tournament = 1% of the playerbase who would have gotten the blue cover under the old scheme. .01*90000= 900 players who would have gotten a blue BP cover under the old scheme.

This award is now given out to the top 100 alliances. This means that as long as theres at least 9 players in each of the top 100 alliances, then as many BP covers are being given out as before. Realistically, there might be say 15+ people per alliance on average in the top 100 alliances, which means that there are 50% more blue BP covers given out now than before.

The devs aren't screwing over players with alliances, they're actually giving more net hp/covers overall. People are just mad because this forces them to join an alliance and change their playstyle. Obviously they're making a lot of money through people buying more alliance slots, but they aren't lowering the reward structure in any way or form.

I'm not raising an issue about the quantity of covers given, just the distribution of those covers.
Like you said yourself, the top 100 alliances, realistically, have 15+ players. However, to get a 15+ alliance in the first place require someone to pay $, because there's no realistic way of having that amount of disposable HP without paying cash. Hence, pay to win.

A lot of alliances have a system where each member joining pays for their own roster slot. While 1k+ hp is a good amount for your slot, it is by no means only achievable through only paying up the cash for it. I have ~6k hp just from consistently placing in tournaments and being very conservative with my shielding.

Unknown

k2yip wrote:

Given the in-game costs of adding members, there is ZERO hope for a non-paying player with a 5ish member alliance to crack the alliance leaderboard and win upper tier prizes.

I'm running a F2P alliance and I hope to prove you wrong! (I agree with everything else you said though)

Unknown

Unfortunately, it looks like the alliances are locked in now. After all the HP spent opening rosters, there'd be a huge outcry if alliances don't give fabulous prizes. They might as well stick with the huge HP sink

Unknown

Ditto, I have about 3.5k just from placing in tournaments, and saving my cover purchases.

Also, selling my Thor and 2** Wolvie when they made the sellback offer also helped bump it up significantly

Unknown

Just because more HP is being handed out doesn't mean it's not P2W.

The devs even stated they put the roster slots as prohibitive so that people can't max them out. This tells you that it's not intended for there to be too many alliances. It takes 19500 HP to max out a roster. Due to the way it's difficult to pool resources together it's hard to imagine all this come from just playing, and in general any large expenditure of HP must invariably lead to more HP being purchased somewhere along the line.

What I think here is that we have an unintended P2W, like devs probably thought people wouldn't care that much about the alliance covers (not sure why they'd think that given the blue BP covers are the prizes), so sure maybe a few rich guys buy an extra 3 slots for an upper hand, but overall it's still pretty fair and the small alliances still have a chance by being better players. Of course, just looking at the top 10 alliance list will tell you it's anything but that.

I don't think there's any ulterior motive. If you want to talk about things that look like P2W, lazy Thor sure looks a lot more like P2W than alliances.

Puritas

k2yip wrote:

I'm not raising an issue about the quantity of covers given, just the distribution of those covers.
Like you said yourself, the top 100 alliances, realistically, have 15+ players. However, to get a 15+ alliance in the first place require someone to pay $, because there's no realistic way of having that amount of disposable HP without paying cash. Hence, pay to win.

Actually, less than 20 of the top alliances have 15+ players at the moment.
Rest of top 50 are 5-11 players.
If you're somehow not able to place top 100 with a 5-man (free) alliance, you're honestly not the type of player who'd have been getting any decent rewards before alliances anyways

windfallstar

Phantron wrote:

Just because more HP is being handed out doesn't mean it's not P2W.

The devs even stated they put the roster slots as prohibitive so that people can't max them out. This tells you that it's not intended for there to be too many alliances. It takes 19500 HP to max out a roster. Due to the way it's difficult to pool resources together it's hard to imagine all this come from just playing, and in general any large expenditure of HP must invariably lead to more HP being purchased somewhere along the line.

What I think here is that we have an unintended P2W, like devs probably thought people wouldn't care that much about the alliance covers (not sure why they'd think that given the blue BP covers are the prizes), so sure maybe a few rich guys buy an extra 3 slots for an upper hand, but overall it's still pretty fair and the small alliances still have a chance by being better players. Of course, just looking at the top 10 alliance list will tell you it's anything but that.

I don't think there's any ulterior motive. If you want to talk about things that look like P2W, lazy Thor sure looks a lot more like P2W than alliances.

The cost doesn't feel to be particularly prohibitive with the way that alliances are expanding by having new members buy their slots. Since it would cost 1250 to level up a BP cover, buying into an alliance that's going to end up top 100 makes a lot of sense. Even at the cost of the last slot, winning two covers would be coming out ahead in terms of HP costs.

Unknown

windfallstar wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Just because more HP is being handed out doesn't mean it's not P2W.

The devs even stated they put the roster slots as prohibitive so that people can't max them out. This tells you that it's not intended for there to be too many alliances. It takes 19500 HP to max out a roster. Due to the way it's difficult to pool resources together it's hard to imagine all this come from just playing, and in general any large expenditure of HP must invariably lead to more HP being purchased somewhere along the line.

What I think here is that we have an unintended P2W, like devs probably thought people wouldn't care that much about the alliance covers (not sure why they'd think that given the blue BP covers are the prizes), so sure maybe a few rich guys buy an extra 3 slots for an upper hand, but overall it's still pretty fair and the small alliances still have a chance by being better players. Of course, just looking at the top 10 alliance list will tell you it's anything but that.

I don't think there's any ulterior motive. If you want to talk about things that look like P2W, lazy Thor sure looks a lot more like P2W than alliances.

The cost doesn't feel to be particularly prohibitive with the way that alliances are expanding by having new members buy their slots. Since it would cost 1250 to level up a BP cover, buying into an alliance that's going to end up top 100 makes a lot of sense. Even at the cost of the last slot, winning two covers would be coming out ahead in terms of HP costs.

I'm sure devs just underestimated what people will do for a blue Black Panther cover. I'm pretty sure there was a quote about how the prohibitive cost of the alliance roster should keep big alliances from forming too quickly.

MaxCavalera

windfallstar wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Just because more HP is being handed out doesn't mean it's not P2W.

The devs even stated they put the roster slots as prohibitive so that people can't max them out. This tells you that it's not intended for there to be too many alliances. It takes 19500 HP to max out a roster. Due to the way it's difficult to pool resources together it's hard to imagine all this come from just playing, and in general any large expenditure of HP must invariably lead to more HP being purchased somewhere along the line.

What I think here is that we have an unintended P2W, like devs probably thought people wouldn't care that much about the alliance covers (not sure why they'd think that given the blue BP covers are the prizes), so sure maybe a few rich guys buy an extra 3 slots for an upper hand, but overall it's still pretty fair and the small alliances still have a chance by being better players. Of course, just looking at the top 10 alliance list will tell you it's anything but that.

I don't think there's any ulterior motive. If you want to talk about things that look like P2W, lazy Thor sure looks a lot more like P2W than alliances.

The cost doesn't feel to be particularly prohibitive with the way that alliances are expanding by having new members buy their slots. Since it would cost 1250 to level up a BP cover, buying into an alliance that's going to end up top 100 makes a lot of sense. Even at the cost of the last slot, winning two covers would be coming out ahead in terms of HP costs.

Yes this is exactly how I looked at it. Slots seemed like a better use of HP than just buying one cover.

windfallstar

Phantron wrote:

I'm sure devs just underestimated what people will do for a blue Black Panther cover. I'm pretty sure there was a quote about how the prohibitive cost of the alliance roster should keep big alliances from forming too quickly.

That's probably true and for one person to max out on slots by themselves is certainly prohibitive. The players using the "buy a slot" for alliance membership is a pretty inventive solution. Granted, being based on the honor system is rather risky.

Unknown

windfallstar wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I'm sure devs just underestimated what people will do for a blue Black Panther cover. I'm pretty sure there was a quote about how the prohibitive cost of the alliance roster should keep big alliances from forming too quickly.

That's probably true and for one person to max out on slots by themselves is certainly prohibitive. The players using the "buy a slot" for alliance membership is a pretty inventive solution. Granted, being based on the honor system is rather risky.

Yeah, so they just underestimated how people figured out how to spread the cost around.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

windfallstar wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I'm sure devs just underestimated what people will do for a blue Black Panther cover. I'm pretty sure there was a quote about how the prohibitive cost of the alliance roster should keep big alliances from forming too quickly.

That's probably true and for one person to max out on slots by themselves is certainly prohibitive. The players using the "buy a slot" for alliance membership is a pretty inventive solution. Granted, being based on the honor system is rather risky.

Yeah, so they just underestimated how people figured out how to spread the cost around.

Best business plan for D3. Whatever price was for Slot #20, wait 2 months, extend clan size to 30, makes slots 21-30 equivalent to slot #20. Though this slightly decreases hp I take it leans away from looking like a cash grab and encourages more spending.

Bowgentle

Puritas wrote:

Actually, less than 20 of the top alliances have 15+ players at the moment.
Rest of top 50 are 5-11 players.
If you're somehow not able to place top 100 with a 5-man (free) alliance, you're honestly not the type of player who'd have been getting any decent rewards before alliances anyways

Well, consider this:
I've gotten 1110 points in this tournament - yet I ended up in the top 250 alliances, way off the mark for top 100.
That despite combining with my significant other for about 1850 points.

The completely random nature of the 5 man alliance with complete strangers and the lack of means of communication in-game between alliance members means that our alliance got filled with three freeloaders, which also kept on fluctuating.

So even if you are someone who routinely wins PVP or at least finishes top 5, with a free alliance you definitely miss out if you're grouped with randoms.

Yes, of course I'd probably be able to get into any of the big alliances, but that's not the point.

Unknown

Puritas wrote:

k2yip wrote:

I'm not raising an issue about the quantity of covers given, just the distribution of those covers.
Like you said yourself, the top 100 alliances, realistically, have 15+ players. However, to get a 15+ alliance in the first place require someone to pay $, because there's no realistic way of having that amount of disposable HP without paying cash. Hence, pay to win.

Actually, less than 20 of the top alliances have 15+ players at the moment.
Rest of top 50 are 5-11 players.
If you're somehow not able to place top 100 with a 5-man (free) alliance, you're honestly not the type of player who'd have been getting any decent rewards before alliances anyways

Like most things, It's not an instantaneous change. This is the FIRST event focusing on alliances, so there are fewer 15+ member teams... the early adopters. Take a look at the alliance forum - a lot of groups are still recruiting.
So 20 of the top 50 are 15+ player alliances? In the very first alliance event? Great pace.
And it'll be 40 at the next one, and 50 at the one after, and so on.
To emphasize, a lot of these alliances are still in the process of growing.

Second, let's put you and several other long-time players with massive rosters in a 5 man team. How many points are all five of you likely to make? Around 1k each? Let's call it 5k points (to use round numbers) total across your 5 man team. Realistically, people aren't going to individually get much higher than that on a consistent basis.
A team of 20 terrible players easily smokes your group with a paltry 250 points each. A 15 member group only needs 333 points each.
There is NO team of 5 that can compete with 15+ member groups, including a 5 member team inclusive of yourself.

I hope that's an adequate response to your condescending comment.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Although it isn't apparent, more blue BP covers are actually being given out under this scheme than the old one, so it's far from crushing for the non-paying players.

Weird logic. They might be giving out more in numbers but all definitely went to alliances well over the free 5 members, along with the HP stripped form the progression ladder. This structure is clearly and blatantly P2W, those refusing to shell out the substantial amount of HP on alliance slots stand no cjhance at all for the hp and cover range.

If only 5 people score counted or the average hings would be different. Now the choice is clear: pay or not win.

Not sure if it stands that way -- might be changed outright. Or with some delay, as the alliance slot buys go down after the first rush.

The really sad thing is that IMO the money in this move is not something interesting: full alliance is like 20k HP (IIRC), is that what, $100? I don't estimate that big a number really.

Certainly there is room for more ripoff: eventially you can rise the member ceiling form the 20.

Unknown

Fluffyudders wrote:

k2yip wrote:

Given the in-game costs of adding members, there is ZERO hope for a non-paying player with a 5ish member alliance to crack the alliance leaderboard and win upper tier prizes.

I'm running a F2P alliance and I hope to prove you wrong! (I agree with everything else you said though)

I think for practical purposes we can count whatever costing a ton of HP as p2w even if some rare people manage to gather that much without actual $ spent. It still reduces your HP pool.