This game and it's elitist players are toxic.

Ohboy

Coppertouret wrote:

Ohboy wrote:

Coppertouret wrote:

As far as casual coalitions go, there are an abundance that can potentially feed you into the top groups as a sub or permanent spot if desired at a time where you want to experience the true competitive end game.

I was told that anyone could easily get a spot on the top coalitions because members weave in and out to take breaks. Your statement seems to affirm it.

That doesn't sound like the true competitive end game you're describing.

If there's a pool of 300 players that the top 10 coalitions draw from, then that kind of defeats the point of competition doesn't it?

Ideally you want to have 15 teams from those 300 fighting to be in top 10. What you're having is people colluding with each other, while talking about competing.

I'm aware that the top 10 spots are heavily contested. I'm just raising a simple example to illustrate that the system you've set up actively seeks to reduce competition when there could be more.

This could be the status quo on how things used to be done on mpq, but it's kind of alien to me and I'm really surprised it's been condoned for so long. It's a subversion of the advertised system. For anyone who doesn't come across you guys, it becomes an instant shut out.

No one experiences the true competitive end game. The ones playing it are playing it on easy mode. It's less competitive than it could be, while making barrier of entry from standard coalitions into top 10 much higher than it would be.

If you think that the top coalitions actively work together to maintain everyone's status, you are mistaken. The individual coalitions are very much attempting to dethrone everyone above them. The coalition Alliance is ultimately a place for us to discuss as a whole gameplay and issues. There is no coordinated attempt to block any other coalition's rise to glory. The loyalty remains with the individual coalition.

Also, if one member decides not to play, the top 10 placement is easily lost. As the game progresses, the number of people with event wining decks increases, as do the number of coalitions with an active roster in possession of these decks. Nearly every event for the last few weeks, there have been several coalitions that I do not normally recognize in the top spots that are pushing just as hard as the regular top groups. Whether they aren't successful in their attempt due to players giving up toward the end or individual players scheduling conflicts, the pressure is always real in the top 10. Our group had an 80% minimum score requirement every event to maintain ranking and that threshold is barely enough to hold us in place. The minimum will have to rise soon, I'm sure. Eventually the minimum threshold will not be achievable with any losses including the random freeze losses. If winning every match by playing every single refresh at the top of the refresh time to break ties at the end while obtaining every subobjective point possible isn't end game, I'm not sure I understand what you feel like the level of competition is supposed to be like.

Pretty much all competitive players play every node and do every objective anyway. As far as I can tell, ties aren't a problem in coalition matches, so I don't know how that's relevant.

My point is that by making your coalition more than 20 members using replacements, it whittles the pool of competing coalitions down.

I feel the level of competition at a coalition level should be on the strength of a coalition pit against each other. No swapping in members every other event. I hope that's clear enough.

If members in your coalition can't play, you're supposed to lose points. The coalition that can put in a concentrated push together should do better. The term coalition loses all meaning when you're kicking people when they can't perform and putting them back when they can. That's not how teams work. The system was not designed for a reserve bench. It would have one if it were.

Basically my beef is that most coalitions of 20 members are having to compete with coalitions of an effectively bigger size. That's not competition. You guys may fight each other for top dog, but you've carved out a nice little kingdom to fight over and built a moat around it to keep casuals out. That's not being competitive.

Your competitive coalition should be strong on its own to dominate, not with a panel of behind the scenes support staff. When the response to "how do you compete" is "it's easy to join our circle!", you know you're killing competition.

LeafHyren

Pretty much all competitive players play every node and do every objective anyway. As far as I can tell, ties aren't a problem in coalition matches, so I don't know how that's relevant.

My point is that by making your coalition more than 20 members using replacements, it whittles the pool of competing coalitions down.

I feel the level of competition at a coalition level should be on the strength of a coalition pit against each other. No swapping in members every other event. I hope that's clear enough.

If members in your coalition can't play, you're supposed to lose points. The coalition that can put in a concentrated push together should do better. The term coalition loses all meaning when you're kicking people when they can't perform and putting them back when they can. That's not how teams work. The system was not designed for a reserve bench. It would have one if it were.

Basically my beef is that most coalitions of 20 members are having to compete with coalitions of an effectively bigger size. That's not competition. You guys may fight each other for top dog, but you've carved out a nice little kingdom to fight over and built a moat around it to keep casuals out. That's not being competitive.

Your competitive coalition should be strong on its own to dominate, not with a panel of behind the scenes support staff. When the response to "how do you compete" is "it's easy to join our circle!", you know you're killing competition.

If I were a formula one race car driver, I would make sure I had enough replacement tires. That is kind of how I think about this. It would be a different (and interesting) competition if the formula team had to rely on a singe set of 4 tires to win the race. Locking the roster at the start of events would be a good idea though. If something happens given you though you were set than you are out of luck. But changing tires before the start seems fair enough to me.

Coppertouret

LeafHyren wrote:

Pretty much all competitive players play every node and do every objective anyway. As far as I can tell, ties aren't a problem in coalition matches, so I don't know how that's relevant.

My point is that by making your coalition more than 20 members using replacements, it whittles the pool of competing coalitions down.

I feel the level of competition at a coalition level should be on the strength of a coalition pit against each other. No swapping in members every other event. I hope that's clear enough.

If members in your coalition can't play, you're supposed to lose points. The coalition that can put in a concentrated push together should do better. The term coalition loses all meaning when you're kicking people when they can't perform and putting them back when they can. That's not how teams work. The system was not designed for a reserve bench. It would have one if it were.

Basically my beef is that most coalitions of 20 members are having to compete with coalitions of an effectively bigger size. That's not competition. You guys may fight each other for top dog, but you've carved out a nice little kingdom to fight over and built a moat around it to keep casuals out. That's not being competitive.

Your competitive coalition should be strong on its own to dominate, not with a panel of behind the scenes support staff. When the response to "how do you compete" is "it's easy to join our circle!", you know you're killing competition.

If I were a formula one race car driver, I would make sure I had enough replacement tires. That is kind of how I think about this. It would be a different (and interesting) competition if the formula team had to rely on a singe set of 4 tires to win the race. Locking the roster at the start of events would be a good idea though. If something happens given you though you were set than you are out of luck. But changing tires before the start seems fair enough to me.

I agree with locking rosters per event. In BlackVise we rarely swap mid event unless someone we had lined up to join takes longer than expected to actually join.

We play with who we have each event and recruit between when players need time off for real life. Is that not acceptable? And, it's not like all the coalitions in the alliance give us players to substitute, we have to do individual recruiting any time we need a sub or new member. Being part of the alliance just means you are in an accessible place for us to communicate if the need arises. My coalition does have a handful of players that prefer casual play, but they are willing to help when necessary because they played with us when the game started the coalition feature. Overall, the alliance finds their own replacements and there have even been a few recruiting "wars" when looking for multiple replacements. The goal of the alliance is to have everyone within close range for communicating. We would love it if the entirety of the player base was in our chat rooms as well. Then everyone would have access to the pot. You're worked up over an organizational system that a few early members decided would benefit a majority early on. We're not exclusive, we're just still utilizing tools available. You're more than welcome to do the same. It's been mentioned before that there are several groups in the top 10 not part of the original Alliance.

And you don't feel like having minimum requirements is acceptable at the top level? Well that in itself should also emphasize the end game. We ensure our members are up to snuff per event, or they aren't worth the top spots for reward. We do everything we can to win, because isn't that the point? Jump on board, or outplay us. We won't make it easy to beat us just because you have some weird conspiracy theory about the group on Slack. We're at the end game, but it's not difficult to obtain if you're willing to do everything that has been done by the groups that maintain those spots. Like I said before, there are constantly new coalitions popping up in top placements.

Mainloop25

Top coalitions sub players in and out all the time, and have sub-coalitioms that can move up and down ranks within the uber-coalition. This is news to me that it is frowned-upon or even a secret. I guess you may not know this if you aren't on Slack. If you go on #recruitment it's right out in the open.

Alve

Ohboy, do you feel that you have an unfair advantage because you use this forum? Since it's impossible to communicate with people outside of your coalition in-game, being here or joining the facebook group means you get an advantage over people who don't know either of those exist. That's what Slack is. It's a chat room that people use to discuss the game (and everything else), recruit players and manage their coalitions. A tool. A group anyone can join, even if they're not planning to change coalitions anytime soon.

Inviting people to join Slack is not an equivalent of encouraging them to join an Alliance coalition, it's more like telling someone 'hey, you should check out the forums, you'll find all the news there, some useful gameplay tips and a bunch of cool people who also like playing children's games'.

Btw, not all of the Alliance is in the top 10 (or even top 25) and not all of the top 10 is in the Alliance. It's just a loose term people coined when the coalition system was introduced, to describe several coalitions guided by common principles, working together to help people find a group that suited them best. Nothing shady, definitely not a conspiracy to lock everyone else out of the top 10.

Regarding coalitions that consist of more than one in-game group, am I to understand that you'd rather have us stick to one group forever? Like choosing a team in Pokemon? And if you choose Yellow in a Red neighborhood, you're just out of luck? I'm all for locking rosters when the event starts (provided that the game lets us appoint a leader or have more people boot - right now it's difficult enough to coordinate everyone's schedules), but you can't keep people from swapping between events. Your main problem is that you don't want to work like we all do, you just want the same rewards. Maybe you should play Minesweeper instead?

LeafHyren

Alve wrote:

Your main problem is that you don't want to work like we all do, you just want the same rewards. Maybe you should play Minesweeper instead?

Ouch Alve lol such good things until the end haha I think ohboy has a good set of perspectives worth investigating, we may disagree here and there, but ultimately we're talking about what's best for the game. And I wouldn't doubt his effort. It even seems like he would like for everyone to struggle as much as he might be. Although we know we all struggle with maintaining a winning team.

LeafHyren

But Minesweeper is an awesome game just for the record hehe

MrStem0

Ohboy wrote:

Pretty much all competitive players play every node and do every objective anyway. As far as I can tell, ties aren't a problem in coalition matches, so I don't know how that's relevant.


My point is that by making your coalition more than 20 members using replacements, it whittles the pool of competing coalitions down.

I feel the level of competition at a coalition level should be on the strength of a coalition pit against each other. No swapping in members every other event. I hope that's clear enough.

If members in your coalition can't play, you're supposed to lose points. The coalition that can put in a concentrated push together should do better. The term coalition loses all meaning when you're kicking people when they can't perform and putting them back when they can. That's not how teams work. The system was not designed for a reserve bench. It would have one if it were.

Basically my beef is that most coalitions of 20 members are having to compete with coalitions of an effectively bigger size. That's not competition. You guys may fight each other for top dog, but you've carved out a nice little kingdom to fight over and built a moat around it to keep casuals out. That's not being competitive.

Your competitive coalition should be strong on its own to dominate, not with a panel of behind the scenes support staff. When the response to "how do you compete" is "it's easy to join our circle!", you know you're killing competition.

Just to point out, not true, we just finished on exact same points as GoblinPile for 2nd Place in Emrakul.... that's just me being picky though.

Second point, what competitive team in the range of everything competitive in the world doesn't have subs?

Alve

Come on! In sports, if one of your players breaks a leg, you just drop out of the tournament. Isn't that how sports work irl? I've never been too... sporty.

sunprincess

Not to single anyone out, but...

Having people who are able to switch in and out if someone wants to take a break is not breaking the spirit of competition any more than say, allowing an injured athlete to rest out a game (EDIT: like Alve said, tho I didn't see their comment til I had posted this long message). Nor is this what the Alliance on Slack even does - you can think of the Alliance like a whole sports league or two itself, while MTG:PQ is the sport, and Coalitions on the Alliance are individual teams. We compete against each other there.

Simply put, if you are willing to build a positive relationship with your coalition and the people around you (yes, even across coalitions), you can discuss and make strategies regarding how to best win. It may come as a surprise to some people in this thread (ahem...) that the goal of winning is actually what motivates people to put their short term self interest aside for a moment, and to come to the the conclusion that they should work with the people around them.

If you build up positive rapport with the people around you, so that even if you take a break from a coalition, you can start right back up, or if a stronger coalition's member dropped out, you can step in, means that you, and other players who do this sort of interpersonal team building, will have a reliable means to assure 20/20 participation at whatever level they are playing at.

Sure, that does mean that there might be fewer coalitions vying for the top spots, but that doesn't mean that things are any less competitive - it will hardly matters how many ppl are eligible for top placement; at the end of an event, a disorganized band of players is not going to have the degree of coordination required to compete with any coalitions who can actually manage themselves, or with players who can act at least somewhat professionally.

And to be clear once again, the Alliance does not build this sort of connections between all of its coalitions - in fact, most, if not all of our competition is from other Alliance coalitions. Regardless, when it comes to the Alliance's more competitive coalitions, the fact remains: coalitions that do not organize, and do not to build networks, are not even playing MTG:PQ in the same league.

Ohboy

LeafHyren wrote:

But Minesweeper is an awesome game just for the record hehe

Yup it's awesome and I still play it between meetings.

Yes I do get an unfair advantage from being here on the forums. If I got all the news from the devs ingame, I probably wouldn't be here.

I think I might have chosen the wrong thread to bring this up. My points are all over the place because I'm trying to fend off questions that are only tangentially relevant.

Competition for coalitions are not as competitive as they could be, because top coalitions have concentrated the hard core players at the top and even artificially inflated coalition numbers off game.

No, this is not news to me. I don't even mind it too much to be honest. So many things wrong in this game that this is not an exploit I'm even concerned about. I've already made my case about mythic rewards which I feel are more dangerous to the future of the game.

I only chimed in because the claim of the "end game competition" phrase. The end game completion has been hijacked by this process, so there's no end game competition in this game. That door is closed to any coalition that plays strictly by what the game offers. What we have is the inter mega-coalition battles mini-game organised off game. When your available roster in a 20 max coalition is greater than 20, you're no longer in competition with the rest of the league. You've created your own, and shut the rest out.

Like I said, I'm not too concerned. Because either the game dies because new players realise they will never get in and can't even figure out why(you've artificially lowered the end game ceiling by marking it off and making your own version) , or population will burst the seams. Eventually enough will get there, and competition will restart.

Ohboy

Alve wrote:

Come on! In sports, if one of your players breaks a leg, you just drop out of the tournament. Isn't that how sports work irl? I've never been too... sporty.

And that's why sports specifically have a reserves bench. Sports without a reserve bench don't let you sub out injured players.

There's no reserve bench in coalitions. There are just no officials checking the rosters, so you sub in players when you need to and never get caught. No whistle no foul.

Alve

Isn't the reserve bench more for swapping people mid-game (something most of us agree shouldn't be possible)? Most coalitions swap people between games. It probably varies between tournaments and disciplines, but I wouldn't consider it skirting the rules - you're allowed to swap out players who can't/won't play in the next event. Some of us just manage this better.

Then again, if this 'problem' is not serious for you, I don't see a point in discussing it.

And yes, Minesweeper is a great game ^^

Abbot_Nalaar

You guys make me laugh. The original poster seems like a person who could not put up the numbers to stick around with the ballers and the ballers are defending their right to be ballers. If you live in the teal world the people on top get there by having the best team. How do you get there...get the best players. Instead of wining about it get better players. I am the coalition leader for MTGGOLDFISH and we are usually top 25. If i wanted to have the best coalition I would also be out there head hunting. We are all about deck building and having fun, we are all over the world, and as long as you are active you stay in. If you take the game that seriously bro you should either join a top coalition or rage quit because it seems like you live by the ricky bobby moto "if you ain't first you are last".

jackvett

Everyone in this thread is acting like this game is terribly deep, and you need tons of heads together to figure out the best strategy.

Now maybe I'm just dumb and couldn't figure out that Behold the Beyond works really well with just one vampire, but I really don't find this game that hard.

You guys saw Olivia and thought she was broken. So did I. Same story for Deploy.

I've made all my event decks on my own....it's not hard.

In this stupidly P2W game, anyone should be able to drop thirty bucks and have some free wins handed to them that they didn't deserve; they paid for it, didn't they? All in the spirit of fair competition!

OFC this is all assuming that your account doesn't get nuked because of a bug that locks you out of the game for up to a week! wooooooooo


tl;dr *snip* seriously made my morning brighter

mmraie

jackvett wrote:

Everyone in this thread is acting like this game is terribly deep, and you need tons of heads together to figure out the best strategy.

Now maybe I'm just dumb and couldn't figure out that Behold the Beyond works really well with just one vampire, but I really don't find this game that hard.

You guys saw Olivia and thought she was broken. So did I. Same story for Deploy.

I've made all my event decks on my own....it's not hard.

In this stupidly P2W game, anyone should be able to drop thirty bucks and have some free wins handed to them that they didn't deserve; they paid for it, didn't they? All in the spirit of fair competition!

OFC this is all assuming that your account doesn't get nuked because of a bug that locks you out of the game for up to a week! wooooooooo


tl;dr you are all children and reading you take coalitions seriously made my morning brighter

I agree with everything except the P2W aspect. this game is not even close to P2W at the moment.

aesith

There is no headhunting. Slack is an easy and quick instant forum to chat about the game. It is called the Alliance but it is for any and all. People are free to talk of whatever and we have a recruitment channel where coalitions and players can match up.

If people are unhappy in thier current coalition, they will look for another and Slack is great as you can talk to other people as opposed to just joining a random coalition ingame.

Deadapult is happy to have Justyce and Amalthea for being active but also nice and chatty on our slack channel.

We have also lost a few members who wanted to move up to a top 2 coalition. No hard feelings, wished best of luck, sad to lose them but it happens.

You (me as well) have to keep members happy and make sure everyone is on the same page with regards to scores and participation.

Love, Carl (Deadapult CEO)

Mainloop25

I've seen a lot less headhunting than you might think. A lot of Necropotence best members have been there from the beginning or have rose up the internal coalition ranks by scoring more than other members.

ZW2007-

My coalition was once top 10 but from the beginning we were only a semi-competitive coalition. This meant that our goal was to do good but not have hardcore requirements or to actively push for top 10. We managed to get to the top 10 quite consistently for a while but struggled to stay there and each time we finished in 11th place, we'd lose one of our better players to a better coalition. Those coalitions didn't seek out our players, they simply posted that they were looking for a player to join their coalition and some of our players decided that the other coalition was a better fit for them. The players that left my coalition deserved to go to a coalition that would better serve them in achieving their goals. The goals are quite simple, get a good reward. The better your score, the better the reward. The top scoring players in a coalition are not obligated to carry the weight of low scoring players. If they want to join up with 19 other top scoring players, that is their choice. I have no ill will towards any of our former players or any of the top coalitions. Someone made the comparison to sports. Plenty of top athletes have left teams to go to better teams. Sometimes they can't because they are under contracts. There are no contracts in this game. What's the old saying? If you can't beat them, join them.

orgazmo

Man some of you guys take this game so seriously. It doesn't really even require skill and you are playing AI all the time. I don't get it.

Is it fun? Yeah, but it's little more than a grinder that anyone with a deck of mythics and time can win.