Why alliances are (sadly) the beginning of the end.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

Skyedyne wrote:

In the true essence of it, this does become pay to win now. From what I have read of the larger alliances, securing a spot on the roster means spending the 500 to open the next slot. So, that now becomes a 500 hp purchase of a guaranteed cover, typically a 3* cover (worth 1250 hp), every time.

For the record the 6th slot costs 600. And the 20th costs 2000. It takes almost 20k to open all the slots.

(And it's safe bet the 20 member cap will go to 25 or 30 within a few months.)

I stand corrected on that. Then that either means that those that require slot purchases are starting to get into the proper price, but for those that get into those for no requirement are getting a free ride, which in of itself becomes a problem. From a certain perspective, it can be said that charging for alliance slots would be a bad idea, as it hinders those wishing to expand, and creates similar problems as I have stated above.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

P.S. - For some reason, the forums persistently prevent me from thumbing you up, dlaw, and have been doing so for at least a week. It's weird.

it's part of the anti rep spam feature that got implemented because someone got childish with the ratings

HailMary

MTGOFerret wrote:

HailMary wrote:

P.S. - For some reason, the forums persistently prevent me from thumbing you up, dlaw, and have been doing so for at least a week. It's weird.

it's part of the anti rep spam feature that got implemented because someone got childish with the ratings

I realize that that feature got implemented. But, it seems to very consistently stop me from thumbing dlaw specifically. I get "you can't thumb again yet" messages sometimes for other attempted thumbings, but I don't think it's let me thumbs-up dlaw at all in about a week.

MaxCavalera

HailMary wrote:

MTGOFerret wrote:

HailMary wrote:

P.S. - For some reason, the forums persistently prevent me from thumbing you up, dlaw, and have been doing so for at least a week. It's weird.

it's part of the anti rep spam feature that got implemented because someone got childish with the ratings

I realize that that feature got implemented. But, it seems to very consistently stop me from thumbing dlaw specifically. I get "you can't thumb again yet" messages sometimes for other attempted thumbings, but I don't think it's let me thumbs-up dlaw at all in about a week.

Maybe they just want you to keep your thumbs to yourself lol.

Unknown

Its because it has something like x amount of reps for a specific user per week

HailMary

MTGOFerret wrote:

Its because it has something like x amount of reps for a specific user per week

Oh, I see how it is. dlaw is just TOO GOOD FOR MY THUMBS, HUH?!

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

P.S. - For some reason, the forums persistently prevent me from thumbing you up, dlaw, and have been doing so for at least a week. It's weird.

That's "thanx" to IceIX, a change few days ago: if you have some percent in the target person's upvoting you can't do that anymore until the ratio reduces. And it gives some bogus misleading message. He kinda refused the idea to keep the upvote on the entry as it is the important thing -- just adjust the count of total person reputation.

Too bad, as upvotes on entries is a really great feature, now pretty much killed because of a few people abusing the system and instead of them everyone else gets the nerf bat.

Dauthi

I had to pony up 20$ to get an alliance going just so I didn't consistently miss out on all those rewards. I use most of my hero points to expand my roster because I wanna "catch em all" so I really didn't have much choice. I feel like this system is definitely pay to win bonus items.

I think a great way to resolve this would be to make "alliance points." These points would be generated or won when alliance members participate in tournaments. The points would be given evenly to commanders who could use them exclusively for expansion of the alliance. These points could be generated along side current rewards or bought, so it would put play to win into alliances while preserving those who will pay.

HailMary

Dauthi wrote:

I think a great way to resolve this would be to make "alliance points." These points would be generated or won when alliance members participate in tournaments. The points would be given evenly to commanders who could use them exclusively for expansion of the alliance. These points could be generated along side current rewards or bought, so it would put play to win into alliances while preserving those who will pay.

So, basically an alliance HP pool?

Dauthi

HailMary wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

I think a great way to resolve this would be to make "alliance points." These points would be generated or won when alliance members participate in tournaments. The points would be given evenly to commanders who could use them exclusively for expansion of the alliance. These points could be generated along side current rewards or bought, so it would put play to win into alliances while preserving those who will pay.

So, basically an alliance HP pool?

Yeah. As long as it doesn't affect current rewards it would promote the use of alliances and give even the smallest alliance the ability to compete with the best alliances with effort. They would just need to be active and grind their alliance up. The amount of points given could be small so that it would also promote purchasing these points. Kind of like the non-alliance gameplay that makes the game fun

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

I think a great way to resolve this would be to make "alliance points." These points would be generated or won when alliance members participate in tournaments. The points would be given evenly to commanders who could use them exclusively for expansion of the alliance. These points could be generated along side current rewards or bought, so it would put play to win into alliances while preserving those who will pay.

So, basically an alliance HP pool?

I'm sure someone has already said this but I thought it would be cool if each commander could kick in small amounts of HP to an alliance pool so that way the cost of slots could be spread out among the members. You could even have everyone just contribute their alliance hp rewards every tourney until there was enough to open another slot.

Puritas

most alliances pretty much did share costs by promoting people to buy their slot with HP they earned from earlier events

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

First of all, those alliances that made roster requirements a big part of their initial recruitment made a miscalculation, plain and simple. When we started DjangoUnbuffed, we assumed that MMR and Scaling would even the playing field for our members no matter what stage their roster was in. We really looked for two things. How much fun is this person to hang out with, and how dedicated to the game are they. I presume that more and more alliances are going to switch to this method, because roster strength is almost irrelevant. The only reason we looked at someone's roster and the only reason anyone should is to make sure that a person has intelligently spent their ISO (i.e. is Moonstone their highest level character? Or do they recognize what a synergistic one star team looks like?). I think alliances are going to continue to grow stronger across the board and ones that we don't recognize now will continue to push to the top of the leaderboards, because they will be put together more intelligently and fledgling alliances will learn lessons from every event.

Secondly, alliances are a community endeavor. Searching for open alliances is certainly not yet easy, but I'm sure that will be improved, but even then more invested and more clever players will have the advantage. If a person loves this game, they should find their way here eventually. Online communities for specific games are commonplace, and most gamers learn how to find the Minecraft wiki or planetHalflife, or what have you. If someone can't find a community from which to draw an alliance they will always be at a disadvantage in any game. When someone clicks on the alliance leaderboards and wonders how it is possible for these top-tier alliances to have accumulated membership and they have no natural inclination to seek out the answer, well, I have little sympathy.

And lastly, this is a long term deal. Alliance functionality is not even nearly complete. Even if the game is now in "Launch" edition, the alliance portion still has yet to be fully developed. And more alliances are being created and expanding every day. I think it's too early to say alliances will kill the game. Shield and the rest of us will have to stay on top of our games to continue to compete as more and better alliances start coming online in the upcoming weeks and months.

When theScavengers started recruiting (right around when allliance rewards started), my highest lvl character was a 49 lvl Daken and I only had scattered 3* covers. I thought their advertisement looked fun and cool, but I didn't think I had much of a chance of making it in. I applied and they took me in as one of the early alliance members.

We just finished high in the last event also, so It is just further proof that communication and having fun as a priority are at least as effective (if not more) a way to start an alliance than just going around trying to Ahab all the whales.

Unknown

Sugarman wrote:

When theScavengers started recruiting (right around when allliance rewards started), my highest lvl character was a 49 lvl Daken and I only had scattered 3* covers. I thought their advertisement looked fun and cool, but I didn't think I had much of a chance of making it in. I applied and they took me in as one of the early alliance members.

We just finished high in the last event also, so It is just further proof that communication and having fun as a priority are at least as effective (if not more) a way to start an alliance than just going around trying to Ahab all the whales.

Also when filling up the last few slots we picked two guys with a ton of 141 characters from the zillion applicants. But as there was no communication path, they were replaced with people from this forum.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

Also when filling up the last few slots we picked two guys with a ton of 141 characters from the zillion applicants. But as there was no communication path, they were replaced with people from this forum.

I think what would really help alliance balancing is an in game link to these forums. It good only be good for the quality and longevity of MPQ and its community.

(I had seen an in game link suggested somewhere in the forums here before so I don't want someone to think I am trying to take credit for it as an original idea, none the less, it merits a high priority of consideration in my opinion.)