End the PvE Arms (Mercs) Race and Expand Alliance Rewards

GrumpySmurf1002

I mentioned it briefly here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=56985&start=20#p621880, but it deserves its own discussion topic.

Since alliance slot costs were abolished, new release PvEs have had hectic endings, as players shuffle to get the alliance cover. However, we're at a point now where it is completely out of hand. The requirement to get into/be a T100 PvE alliance has been growing to the point where now you have alliances at 1.25x or 1.3x progression missing out; alliances have to kick loyal members just to scratch and claw and even then maybe not even make it. Even some of the top alliances are dropping down a tier with all of the shuffling. All of this for 1 cover of the now 44th (?) character in a tier. It's complete insanity, and unnecessary 'work' for every commander out there responsible.

There are a multitude of potential solutions, but the low impact, easy solution is simply to expand the alliance cover rewards down to T250 (or further if that's your thing.) It requires little to no development time, and should solve the problem. Even though it seems like only moving the goalpost a little, it's an extra 3k people getting the cover, and given the non-competitiveness of most brackets, should drastically reduce how much shuffling 'needs' to happen at the end of a PvE.

Alliances are suppose to mean something. Having 4, 5, sometimes even more members clearing out every few days to get one cover is nonsense that IMO needs to be addressed, quickly.

mpqr7

I was thinking about this. In the past, hitting or getting close to top progression was enough to guarantee that you could join an alliance and win the new release.

Now, hitting top progression doesn't even get me into the 2nd tier pve new release alliance in my alliance family. As the OP stated, you need to get at least 1.3 x top progression for a look, which is a lot of grinding. Since I already have over 30 champed 4*s, winning a single cover of a new 4* just isn't worth the work. It will be many months before I have 13 covers of it, whether I win the first one now or not.

Daiches

What about large alliance families swapping internally? Is that merc'ing or not?

Not every alliance can be hybrid. Some people like PVE, some like PVP, some like both, some are casual. Should you be punished for playing in an alliance with your friends? Choose between rewards?

Besides.. you are forgetting about buy clubs depending on alliances. Nothing will change to the biggest money maker this game has.

Punisher5784

We've consistently hit T50-100 for a new release. Our requirement is always 4 clears until I believe Luke Cage, we finished 99. We increased the requirement to the full 6 clears. Most of us already hit the 6 clears anyway but since we increased the requirement we haven't had much scares. Any players that cannot reach this amount are merced and placed in our sister alliance until the event is over. However we also do not have PVP requirements so that is likely why it might be easier for us.

Regardless, I honestly would prefer if the T250 INDIVIDUAL placement was the 4* cover (at least for SCL8). That has been the difficult time.. I hate over clearing just to basically hang onto 90th place for individual placement while my alliance is sitting fine at 30. So while we have the opposite outlook, I think everyone will agree that new character releases should not be a bloodbath for 1 cover. Just give us the freaking cover so we can spend 1000 HP on a slot.. At least the 4* progression in the following PVE helps the burn.

GrumpySmurf1002

Daiches wrote:

What about large alliance families swapping internally? Is that merc'ing or not?

I would argue no. What those 40-80-200 player alliances do is their business. If rewards are expanded to T250 though, most of those alliances will have significantly less work to do re-shuffling.

Not every alliance can be hybrid. Some people like PVE, some like PVP, some like both, some are casual. Should you be punished for playing in an alliance with your friends? Choose between rewards?

Bizarre response, since I'm advocating more rewards for alliances, not less.

Besides.. you are forgetting about buy clubs depending on alliances. Nothing will change to the biggest money maker this game has.

I'm not forgetting about them because they have zero to do with the topic of PvE alliance rewards.

GrumpySmurf1002

aesthetocyst wrote:

Should be a thread about alliance rewards on new releases and how dated they are, not a mercing or reshuffling rehash.

I already had a thread typed out .... Thanks Grumpy. Will replace this stub in a bit.

Yes expanding the rewards is the answer.

Well, there's probably some chicken-egg here, but IMO mercing exists because the alliance rewards are way too restricted.

1 in 10 players can get them individually (more actually since some brackets go unfilled), but only 2000 out of 100k+ total players can get them by alliance?

Edit: Updated the title to reflect this more clearly.

Omega Red

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

aesthetocyst wrote:

Should be a thread about alliance rewards on new releases and how dated they are, not a mercing or reshuffling rehash.

I already had a thread typed out .... Thanks Grumpy. Will replace this stub in a bit.

Yes expanding the rewards is the answer.

Well, there's probably some chicken-egg here, but IMO mercing exists because the alliance rewards are way too restricted.

1 in 10 players can get them individually (more actually since some brackets go unfilled), but only 2000 out of 100k+ total players can get them by alliance?

Edit: Updated the title to reflect this more clearly.

I'm a merc because that way I can pick what events I play and how hardcore I play them. I like being able to play as little or as much as I want without having an alliance forcing me into playing events I have no time or interest for.

Scarcity of rewards has nothing to do with me being a merc.

Omega Red

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

There are a multitude of potential solutions, but the low impact, easy solution is simply to expand the alliance cover rewards down to T250

Doubling or tripling the amount of covers handed out is not "low impact" by any means. T250? It's a lovely idea, but it's also naive and by no means reasonable from the devs perspective. Their main concern is preserving the game economy and maximizing profit. Handing out 5x times the covers they give out today? Yeah, not gonna happen. Top-75 or top-100 would be more realistic and still quite a big impact to the game economy.

The main issue I see causing alliance reshuffling is a combination of factors. First you have a short event during a weekend (four days, more people can play). Second, less clears needed to grind a node to 1 means more people can complete them which translates to more people hanging out at the top and less points in the pool to separate yourself from the rest. So, you grinded the event 1.2? Big deal, so did a bunch of other players, your 1.2 is not special anymore. Easier PVE means more people competing for top reward.

Dormammu

Ever since I ditched the pressure of being in an alliance that was seeking t100 (but never achieved it) and joined a completely casual alliance (shout out to my S.H.E.E.P. peeps!) my MPQ experience has been vastly improved. I stopped caring about new releases, but if one pops up that I have to have I'll chase after the individual cover rewards. That's my choice, not one of my peers.

I get my 2k iso a day. We have a few spenders so I get a tidy sum of CP every so often. And when events end I get a handful of elite/heroic tokens and more iso. I'm happy with that. It beats killing ourselves for a single cover and being unhappy/burnt out.

That being said, t100 IS an antiquated notion dating back to the dawn of alliances.

Pongie

1.3x has always been borderline for pve during new releases. For regular pve events, 1.3x is normally enough (unless the prize is highly sort after, then expect the same level as new release). If your members choose to stop playing then tell them up front to avoid high expectations. If you're relying on mercs, then up the scores that you will accept into your alliance. My alliance does not merc, and we tell our players upfront that 1.3x is the absolute minimum, the majority score well beyond that (to get covers from personal ranking rewards). You should not be placing your target right on the cutoff at 100 anyway. Always better to give yourself a buffer, say 1.5x.

Also bare in mind that this event was 2x 48hrs format. The scores are more clustered together so a few thousand points between each members can make huge impacts in rankings. One of our alliance at 19/20 went from #106 to #65 when the last member moved in. Less effort (only need to grind twice) but more competitive.

edit: Final point, ever since max progress was set to 4x clears, a lot more players started playing till that point and stop. This unintentionally (may it was the purpose?), pushed scores up overall. Then it's only a short 2x to get green ticks. Not everyone plays optimally, but more people are going beyond max progress because of this.

GrumpySmurf1002

Omega Red wrote:

I'm a merc because that way I can pick what events I play and how hardcore I play them. I like being able to play as little or as much as I want without having an alliance forcing me into playing events I have no time or interest for.

Scarcity of rewards has nothing to do with me being a merc.

I'm not saying that mercs shouldn't exist. Obviously that's a viable way to get rewards when needed.

My point is more that a lot of alliances/commanders are spending a lot of energy trying to jam 2500 (3000?) players into a 2000 player pot, and that can't possibly be the intended design of alliances and their rewards.

Omega Red wrote:

Doubling or tripling the amount of covers handed out is not "low impact" by any means. T250? It's a lovely idea, but it's also naive and by no means reasonable from the devs perspective. Their main concern is preserving the game economy and maximizing profit. Handing out 5x times the covers they give out today? Yeah, not gonna happen. Top-75 or top-100 would be more realistic and still quite a big impact to the game economy.

First, it's already T100 for CL7 and CL8, which I'm assuming is where most of the T100 alliances are playing. So T75 isn't an expansion, and T100 is status quo. I'd suggest T150 or T200 possibly being enough, but neither is an existenting tier, which means either would require a code change.

Forgetting that though, you're not talking about 5x the amount of covers. Even if you're focusing on just alliances, it's the change from 2000 to 5000 covers, so it's 'only' 2.5x. But the true number is way less than that, because you have thousands of covers going out the door via individual rewards. So 3000 isn't going to suddenly break the bank. If anything, the extra covers could go to those who didn't otherwise get one, expanding the range of players needing to pay for the roster slots. I'd guess they profit from the expansion, but have no way to know for sure.

GrumpySmurf1002

Pongie wrote:

1.3x has always been borderline for pve during new releases. For regular pve events, 1.3x is normally enough (unless the prize is highly sort after, then expect the same level as new release). If your members choose to stop playing then tell them up front to avoid high expectations. If you're relying on mercs, then up the scores that you will accept into your alliance. My alliance does not merc, and we tell our players upfront that 1.3x is the absolute minimum, the majority score well beyond that (to get covers from personal ranking rewards). You should not be placing your target right on the cutoff at 100 anyway. Always better to give yourself a buffer, say 1.5x.

This was definitely not the case always. I spent a lot of time merging our old alliance group, and 1.0 or slightly more was good for T100 . It is n the last few months it's been going up, because.....

edit: Final point, ever since max progress was set to 4x clears, a lot more players started playing till that point and stop. This unintentionally (may it was the purpose?), pushed scores up overall. Then it's only a short 2x to get green ticks. Not everyone plays optimally, but more people are going beyond max progress because of this.

Yes, this is one of the reasons things are getting out of control. But just because there is a reason the problem exists, doesn't mean it's right to leave its existence alone.

fnedude

So I completed 6x clears, and ended up #125 personally in SCL8 (I can't play "optimally" because I play 1x a day on Steam, not on a mobile phone/tablet).

I, unfortunately, couldn't get any takers when I went to merc out of my current casual alliance, even with 39.5K points, so I got nothing in this event.

I don't know if it's a side effect of this event though, _everyone_ had enough time to do a full clear of 6x, whereas in single day subevents, not everyone does more than 4x clears and gets T100. With RHulk+TAHulk as boosted characters, everyone could do all full 6x clears.

fanghoul

fnedude wrote:

So I completed 6x clears, and ended up #125 personally in SCL8 (I can't play "optimally" because I play 1x a day on Steam, not on a mobile phone/tablet).

I, unfortunately, couldn't get any takers when I went to merc out of my current casual alliance, even with 39.5K points, so I got nothing in this event.

I don't know if it's a side effect of this event though, _everyone_ had enough time to do a full clear of 6x, whereas in single day subevents, not everyone does more than 4x clears and gets T100. With RHulk+TAHulk as boosted characters, everyone could do all full 6x clears.

You could try playing in SCL7 in the future. That's where I hang out, since I also play pretty sub-optimally. The differences in rewards are trivial if you don't make the top 10, and there's a lot less competition for the top 50/100.

On the subject of the tread, it might make sense to expand alliance rewards if the gameplay to get them is getting too nutty. I can't say personally. If the number of players in the game is increasing over time it would make sense to do that, just to reach a similar % of the player base. Unlike individual brackets, the total number of rewards does not expand as the number of players increases.

I don't know if there's more players though.

KGB

fnedude wrote:

So I completed 6x clears, and ended up #125 personally in SCL8 (I can't play "optimally" because I play 1x a day on Steam, not on a mobile phone/tablet).

I, unfortunately, couldn't get any takers when I went to merc out of my current casual alliance, even with 39.5K points, so I got nothing in this event.

I don't know if it's a side effect of this event though, _everyone_ had enough time to do a full clear of 6x, whereas in single day subevents, not everyone does more than 4x clears and gets T100. With RHulk+TAHulk as boosted characters, everyone could do all full 6x clears.

If you want the individual rewards then I've found the following works:

Join 3-4 day events late on day 2 (SCL7)
Join 7 day events late on day 3 (SCL7)

The hard core players in SCL7 join on day 1. On day 2 (or 3 in longer events) it's casual players especially if you join late for that slice (say last 8 hrs on day 2 and do 4 clears in a row). I just finished with 33.6K in Deadpool and I finished 16th and got 2 Carol covers. In the prior event (7 day ISO 8) I joined on day 3 and finished 2nd for 2 Kingpin covers ( I did not hit max progression so traded 15 CP for 2 Kingpin covers).

I've been doing this since SCL8 went live and it's allowed me to get into the T10 in any non-release event with just doing 4 clears and taking the 3 trivial nodes down to check marks.

The nice thing is that I now get a day off from PvE at the start of each event that I can use for PvP or just taking a day off minus DDQ.

KGB

GrumpySmurf1002

fnedude wrote:

So I completed 6x clears, and ended up #125 personally in SCL8 (I can't play "optimally" because I play 1x a day on Steam, not on a mobile phone/tablet).

I, unfortunately, couldn't get any takers when I went to merc out of my current casual alliance, even with 39.5K points, so I got nothing in this event.

I don't know if it's a side effect of this event though, _everyone_ had enough time to do a full clear of 6x, whereas in single day subevents, not everyone does more than 4x clears and gets T100. With RHulk+TAHulk as boosted characters, everyone could do all full 6x clears.

I'd be all for expanding individual rewards too, but that's where it gets hairy w/ over dilution. I mean one can argue they probably wouldn't lose much giving every player a cover, but that's not the way they see it and ultimately that's what has to be considered.

Pongie

fanghoul wrote:

On the subject of the tread, it might make sense to expand alliance rewards if the gameplay to get them is getting too nutty. I can't say personally. If the number of players in the game is increasing over time it would make sense to do that, just to reach a similar % of the player base. Unlike individual brackets, the total number of rewards does not expand as the number of players increases.

I don't know if there's more players though.

There are less players. Can't find the thread now, but there was one that tracked the number of alliances each season (along with the top 10, 20, 100 cut offs) and the total number of alliances were dropping. There may have been similar stats too on pve alliances but I'm not too sure.

fnedude

it seems like long ago now....

But I suggested that there should be a SCL # and SCL#A, where the "A" gave an alternative reward for the 15CP, the new 4* being introduced.

That way you could sacrifice the 15CP for a guaranteed 4* cover. I got so much "pushback" that "not everyone wants the new cover", hence making it optional when you join the event.

This would be for new releases only obviously.

Who knows if D3 even noticed the suggestion.

spectator

2 x 48 sub meant there was about 0.25xfinal progression more points than what you will find with a typical event with 24 hour nodes. However despite this, expanding the rewards on new release can only be a good thing. Letting more people have one cover of a newly released cover can only encourage more people to spend.

Schlagen13

T100 for Carol was almost 1.5 times progression.

Phumade

Its definitely time to revisit this issue. There is precedent for expanding the alliance cover and the devs should follow the same guidance. When the points competition gets too competitive it forces alliance commanders into making unhealthy decisions.

Should the the alliance cover tie to 1x the progression? That might be too low, but a 1.5x multiple is too high. It forces commanders into making cut decisions based on very small margins. I belive that this unhealthy behavior from the perspective of building a socially strong alliance.