Bring back the lost cover rewards for solo players

wirius

I get that you want people to join alliances, which is fine. Stop punishing the solo players, and make alliances a bonus.

I DON'T want to join an alliance. Do alliances have an advantage over me by winning more rewards? Of course. That's fine, let em. But DON'T take away my ability to win all three colors of a cover in a tournament. DON'T take away my rewards because I don't feel like joining an alliance.

This is seriously ruining my desire to keep playing. And I know I'm not the only one.

Unknown

It's very cool to be able to earn rewards for your alliance members; the sense of sharing the wealth is very satisfying. That being said, if your alliance isn't competitive (or competitive in a specific tournament, or existent), you're basically just incapable of earning the real top tier of rewards. As far as I remember, this was one of the specific requests from forumites when discussing alliances: that rewards be an addition to the game and not detract from solo play.

The market is currently super-saturated with 3 star characters, and the prices attendant to the game keep increasing (the price of alliance management, for instance, is quite steep). Giving a 3 star cover to alliance winners as well as solo top finishers isn't going to break your bank.

Unknown

It's not just that you have to join an alliance, but that you better join an alliance that spends a whole lot of HP growing the roster. You aren't going to get into 3* cover range in the alliance rewards if all you have is a 5 slots alliance. In the alliance I am in right now, 3 of the 5 players are in the top 20 of their brackets. Each one of us has a higher score than the average member in a top level alliance(my score x20 would win the alliance leaderboard hands down) . Our small 5 man crew though, with 2 people with lower scores, gets us in the 600-700 range.

The minute you have 20 guys in your alliance, you get the 3* covers even if members are scoring relatively poorly. So how do you win the alliance game? Just be in a big one, which means spending a bunch on spaces.

Unknown

My prediction: alliance rewards will contain covers until a significant portion of the playerbase has bought their alliance space up to 20. Then they'll go back to single player and alliance rewards will take a giant hit.

This will look for all the world as if the Developers are just abandoning a revenue stream after it has dried up. It may also be the case, or it may be coincidence.

Hopefully I'm wrong, and what they'll do instead is get a little bit generous and put some alliance rewards in that are in addition to solo player rewards.

Unknown

Moon 17 wrote:

if your alliance isn't competitive (or competitive in a specific tournament, or existent)

translation: if your alliance did not shell out 20k HP for 20 slots and went the trouble to get that many active players...

Having some HP/ISO prizes for alliances is fine. Reallocating a cover there is just plain awful.

Unknown

They really should change the alliance rewards to just tokens so that it's a bonus and not a mandatory. You can even give out a lot of tokens, and there's certainly value in that, but because it's RNG it won't feel as P2W.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

They really should change the alliance rewards to just tokens so that it's a bonus and not a mandatory. You can even give out a lot of tokens, and there's certainly value in that, but because it's RNG it won't feel as P2W.

I think I am going to make a poll over in general discussion and see what people think, because I think this idea is fantastic

Zifna

I agree with this thread very much.

Although I am part of the alliance, only two other players in the alliance are competitive. The other players include my brother, a friend who recently picked up the game, and the husband of one of my serious players.

It is a frustrating situation for the three of us who are serious, because we would be best off kicking our friends and relatives to pick up some "serious" randoms. But we like being able to view our more casual friends' rosters. And, well, we don't want to be jerks to real people for virtual rewards.

When this started, we were excited - we didn't think we'd be a very competitive alliance, but that didn't matter - we'd just keep playing as we had, and whatever extra rewards we'd earn would be great. But in every event we have placed in the bracket below the third 3* cover, and it's just feeling really depressing. All three us used to be able to get 3 covers MOST of the time when we really wanted to.

Unknown

I'm in a similar situation and I really think it needs to be changed such that I'm not indirectly punished and missing out on a new cover.

Unknown

See people forming an alliance from people they know in real life ought to be what alliances are all about. Even gathering together friends you know from the forums into an alliance, wonderful.

But the story I hear over and over are the handful of large alliances which, credit due, have thriving communities here on the forum and love how alliances work. And then all the small ones that were formed initially out of excitement, but because of reward structuring are all feeling frustrated and upset.

What is lost by keeping solo rewards the way they were. Want to give the elite alliances serious rewards? Competition among alliances would not be any lessened if all three covers were still solo rewards and the top 25 alliances could get a 4th cover in addition to the large sums of HP being given out already.

Unknown

In lord of thunder they returned the 50hp reward at 500 and have removed it again in the new unholy outlaw. This on top of the transfer of the 3rd cover to alliance rewards really sets the single player experience back. Let's be honest, the significant ISO rewards with some HP and possibly tokens would be sufficient incentive for alliance play. Small or non alliance players will level more slowly as is. No need to stunt their cover progression as well.

Unknown

And the next Fearless Defenders tournament is one that finally has Hulk as a reward. His black power, of course, is the alliance prize. Come on, D3. I appreciate that the top 100 alliances paid a whole lot of HP into the game, but this is a real middle finger to all of your players who want to play with actual acquaintances/without paying $200 for a competitive stable.

Unknown

Moon 17 wrote:

And the next Fearless Defenders tournament is one that finally has Hulk as a reward. His black power, of course, is the alliance prize. Come on, D3. I appreciate that the top 100 alliances paid a whole lot of HP into the game, but this is a real middle finger to all of your players who want to play with actual acquaintances/without paying $200 for a competitive stable.

Just made the same remark on other thread, real kick in the groins. Though not unexpected, fits with many other happenings fine.

Unknown

They've done what we were all afraid they'd do and made Alliances essentially mandatory. Actually, they've one-upped it and made joining a large alliance essentially mandatory. I'm doing the only thing I can at this point and simply refusing to give the game any more of my money unless and until they make it more single-player friendly.

Unknown

One of the ways F2P games survive is through community building. People stay in a game where they are not only invested in the game itself, but also invested in the people they play with. In most F2P games (of the RPG or collectible nature) that I've played, the group play mechanic is there and is just as required as it is here. Perhaps the introduction of alliances after solo rewards were already established feels a bit ham-handed, but it is by no means out of the ordinary.

And just as in every other community-driven game, players will eventually migrate to the type of alliance that fits their playstyle. Casual players will get a boost just from being in an alliance, and the semi-hardcore player and higher will eventually find an alliance that allows them to get all 3 covers (often with less work than before, given that it seems there is now a higher number of covers being given out for a given number of players).

Unknown

Riggy wrote:

One of the ways F2P games survive is through community building. People stay in a game where they are not only invested in the game itself, but also invested in the people they play with. In most F2P games (of the RPG or collectible nature) that I've played, the group play mechanic is there and is just as required as it is here. Perhaps the introduction of alliances after solo rewards were already established feels a bit ham-handed, but it is by no means out of the ordinary.

And just as in every other community-driven game, players will eventually migrate to the type of alliance that fits their playstyle. Casual players will get a boost just from being in an alliance, and the semi-hardcore player and higher will eventually find an alliance that allows them to get all 3 covers (often with less work than before, given that it seems there is now a higher number of covers being given out for a given number of players).

And the people who just want to play the game solo get driven out entirely.

Unknown

I am sure these changes will do well for d3 in the long run.

I am also sure that these changes have made my stress level about a match 3 game become uncomfortably high.
No I am not rage quitting or posting one of those self righteous 'I spend money and am unhappy therefore you are losing my money' tirades I see from time to time.

Just saying the forums have been going back and forth for weeks, some people are thrilled with the new rewards some are less happy about them. Me I am choosing the word stressed to describe how I feel about the alliance rewards.

What I really want is communication.
I want the devs come to one of these threads and give us some communication on why the changes were made as they are, what they hope to achieve by them being the way they are, if the data supports the goals they are working towards etc.

Obviously it does depend on their answers but would give some clarity that is impossible if it is just the forumites going around in circles over and over and over again.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

Riggy wrote:

One of the ways F2P games survive is through community building. People stay in a game where they are not only invested in the game itself, but also invested in the people they play with. In most F2P games (of the RPG or collectible nature) that I've played, the group play mechanic is there and is just as required as it is here. Perhaps the introduction of alliances after solo rewards were already established feels a bit ham-handed, but it is by no means out of the ordinary.

And just as in every other community-driven game, players will eventually migrate to the type of alliance that fits their playstyle. Casual players will get a boost just from being in an alliance, and the semi-hardcore player and higher will eventually find an alliance that allows them to get all 3 covers (often with less work than before, given that it seems there is now a higher number of covers being given out for a given number of players).

And the people who just want to play the game solo get driven out entirely.

By the loss of one cover? Not likely. Most of those who want to play solo are entirely unaffected - this whole conversation affects less than 4% of the population (probably less since most of those who are competitive enough to play for a top position immediately joined an alliance). If you want to be a wall flower in your alliance, most of the semi-competitive alliances (15+ people) will still let you since you'll probably generate enough points that they'll be happy to have you.

Unknown

The change is rewards distrubution is just adding to the absurd about of grinding needed to stay competitive in this game. I'm part of a 5 man alliance that hasn't scored a single reward. Finishing in the top 25 of a single event only yields 1 cover!? Hell, you finish 11th; too bad for you... all that grinding to get 1 cover.

Between this change, the absurd MMR and scoring/scaling, and the god awful, "gold" garbage being forced down our throats, I'm done grinding for hours on this game.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

And the people who just want to play the game solo get driven out entirely.

There will be those who embrace the new system entirely, those who are too new to see this as anything but a minor shift and will come to see it as the new status quo.
And then there are those who will see this as the game trying to change the way they have to play, and those players will not be able to let it go so easy.

Funbalancing? I get it changes were needed and they were not going to be received well but the game remained basically the same.
Boost changes and price hikes? The devs wanted us to stop relying so heavily on boosts still hurt when the changes came through, but even so the core of the game remained the same.
Skip tax? Again I see the thought process behind it and can see how it is good for the health of the game overall.

I don't like this culture of 'be in a competitive alliance or you are going to miss out no matter how well you as an individual player used to do'.
It separates the playerbase into the in crowd and the out crowd. It makes people feel like they have to alter their play styles for the good of their alliance when before they were beholden to no one.
Before if you were not competitive it was due to your roster or effort contributed or dumb luck sometimes. Now far too much of that relies on others, which is entirely out of an individual's control.
This feels like a very different game now.

JamieMadrox

I don't see them basing Alliance rank as an average of the whole Alliance's score. The reason why is because it'll completely make the Alliance system worthless. The top players will all make their own alliances of just themselves and battle it out. So instead of having SHIELD at the top of the ranks, You'll have the top 10 being former SHIELD members in their own new alliances. What they could do though is make it so that there are 4-5 tiers.

1 person unaffiliated tier
5 person Alliance tier
6-10 person Alliance tier
11-15 person alliance tier
16-20 person alliance tier

Personally I think that 20 people is too many for alliances. They should have made the minimum 2 or 3 and capped it at 10.

All of that said, I do agree that single players without affiliation shouldn't be penalized for not wanting to join an alliance.