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

Stax the Foyer

To unpack this a little, the reason that this needs to be done on the PvE side is that due to the design of PvE scaling, every single member of the playerbase that's willing to dedicate at least rotating slots to the essentials (that they'll earn in the previous event) will be able to achieve near optimal scoring, if they choose to. Roster quality is essentially not a limiting factor in PvE.

PvP is different. With the removal of cakes, its much easier for a limited group of players to remain T100. The vast majority of the playerbase is out of contention for T100 rewards from the get-go.

And yet, both PvP and PvE alliance rewards are tied to the same T100 threshold. The pool of competition for PvE alliance rewards is at least order of magnitude larger, if not more. The score compression exacerbates this problem, because there are so many people scoring pretty close to optimal, and well above the maximum progression.

The only reason that the problem isn't even worse than it is is that the single end time keeps some commanders from coordinating mercing, and the lack of effective communication with most of the playerbase limits the pool of willing mercs.

TL, DR: PvE alliance rewards should be significantly wider than PvP alliance rewards. Nobody likes mercing. Don't make the players do it as much as we have to right now.

wymtime

I am not sure bout what should be done with this issue. The 1st simple solution would be to give the 4* cover to the top 150 alliances this would increase the pie and slow down ther mercing but not eliminate it. More alliances would say they don't need a merc.

Number 2 would be to lock alliances from the start of the event like boss battles. When you enter the event that is who you roll with till the end so all mercing will be done in the beginning before the event starts. This will at least let alliances know where they really stand at during the event.

I personally don't mind people who merc. Players have lives and cannot always make events and the fact that they get replaced temporarily instead of permenant is the best thing mercing did.

Last thought is this. Instead of placing a 4th cover as an alliance reward extend progression rewards to give out the 4* cover. This can be an extra 25%-50% of progression then you eliminate the need for mercing altogether. You can give out more event tokens for a chance at the 4* instead. Now Mercing would be not needed as all you would be playing for is an extra 2% chance at a cover that is new.

slidecage

Punisher5784 wrote:

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.

wonder how many will keep playing 6 clears each node instead of jumping in with a day or so left and getting top 100 by themself without having to grind....

i used to do 6 clears and hate it... i now wait and hope for a new bracket with a 1 or 2 left...

jumped into deadpool slice 4 with 30 hours left and was able to get top 25 doing just 6 clears one one event (instead of 8 clears on both)

maybe a year ago i would worry about missing a 4 star, BUT with that NEW 4 star not being used for 3+ months there is no reason to go for it.. *besides the event after it)

simple pt to stop is is to lock people in at the start

MaxxPowerz

Like the Civil War event, your score should be locked with the alliance you are currently in when you join the event. Every PVE should be like this.

Alsmir

Perhaps alliance progression rewards? Similar like in boss events.

Punisher5784

aesthetocyst wrote:

Finally added my thoughts here.

Again, thanks to Grumpy for starting this thread.

Nice aesthetocyst! Thanks for taking the time to go through the MPQ history of 4* releases. Very interesting.

I'm sure the devs will take note and simply release SCL9 with Alliance rewards extended to T250.

In other news, Grumpy you have reached the Godly 4000 rep points.. time for a party!

slidecage

MaxxPowerz wrote:

Like the Civil War event, your score should be locked with the alliance you are currently in when you join the event. Every PVE should be like this.

said this a year + ago and people complain saying they didnt want it... they should do it though

i think if they did do it you would see better teams. i know a few good people who want to make strong groups BUt will not get up at 1 to 2am est just to try to find people to make sure they stay in the top 100

babinro

aesthetocyst wrote:

Conclusion ... it's far past time for new character covers to be awarded to the top 250 alliances. The rewards have not been expanded in 18 months. In a game with 5*s, the new 3* and 4* characters released via PvE are no longer the cutting edge weapons they once were.

Release those character to more rosters. Sell more slots.

In a game where completing a 4* roster means collecting more than 500 covers (and more all the time...), awarding more covers isn't going to break the bank, or the meta. Way back in 2014/early 2015, when the 4* bench was still in the single digits, more covers might have unbalanced the game, yet it was over this exact time period that the rewards were expanded. Multiple times.

Allow more alliances to keep themselves together. Allow strong players to win them for their weaker friends and those who can't go all in on an event due to RL.

And fuhgawdssakes, award them to the top 250 alliances to SCL 6-8 and up. Let alliances win TOGETHER.

Again—and I say this as a very, very, very longtime merc—
Let alliances win TOGETHER.

Couldn't agree more with this.

I think the current system is largely 'fine' and reasonably generous but as the game changes the top 100 limit feels more and more stingy with time. Aes does a great job explaining why this change would be good for the health of the game and might event help with profits along the way.

Mercs have always been an unsatisfying aspect of this game and while you could play things strict like boss events, this is a player friendly way of addressing that concern. Obviously mercs will still fight over top placement rewards but the main one that truly matters won't be lost to teams that are really trying.

Fightmastermpq

D3 seems to want to maintain a consistent rate of cover acquisition over time, but with each new release the value of those covers drops as there are more characters to roster/level/champ. I don't think expanding alliance rewards is really going to tip the scales at this point.

JVReal

Such a wide range of thoughts in this thread, I enjoy it, but people seem to be veering off into various directions in their responses.

I see 3 main points in this thread.

1) Expand Alliance rewards beyond T100. I agree wholeheartedly. To see an alliance drop 50+ spots in 20 minutes in the wee hours of the morning (for me), and miss out on T100 by 2 places (less than 2K points total)... is disheartening, and I'm sure wasn't the intent of the developers. 1/13 of a character is not worth the disappointment that comes up from going to sleep feeling "secure" in your T100, and waking up without it. You can blame it on merc'ing, but don't hate the player, hate the game (do they still say that?). In this game, with the saturation of covers, 1 cover at the start of the life of the new character has very little impact on the game itself as has been stated before. The easiest solution is of course to expand the reward structure to the next tier which is 250 without changing much code at all. It's been done before.

2) Every time a new release comes out that people are eager to get, the T100 race becomes very very heated and tight. This inevitably (and understandably) brings out the desire to assign blame to someone for why some alliances didn't get T100. The Merc's take the heat every time, and it seems to frequently devolve into a topic about how to eliminate merc'ing, etc. I used to believe merc'ing was the problem when I first started and felt the sting a few times. Now I know it isn't the problem, it's a symptom... sometimes. People merc for various reasons. Some merc specifically to get the best rewards for their constant hard work in playing the game. If you press to get T10 individual, you would want to get T10 for alliance as well right? Effort = Reward. For others, they don't know what life will throw at them so they cannot commit before the event and are sometimes surprised with their score near the end and want to use it to help someone else out and maybe get an extra reward out of it. Some find their score dwindling because of life, and instead of bringing their alliance down out of T100, they merc out to T250 to still get some rewards, but not cost the other 19 members the cover. If the devs felt merc'ing were bad, they have the mechanism in place to lock in alliances, they use it in Alliance based Boss Events. This would definitely have its ups and downs, and worth a small discussion should they consider it.

3) The Value of the 4* new character release cover rewarded as T100 alliance reward. 1/13 of a character is not that great, but it goes beyond that. Someone touched on it earlier, the T100 alliance cover is a status symbol, it is a reward incentive, it is a mark of finally making it. Personally, I typically get the T100 personal cover no problem. In my alliance, I am a fan of rewarding good people in the alliance. You sometimes get a great player who is a great person (we have an alliance or two full of such people) who you would like to give a token of appreciation for. You can't really 'give' them anything with the current setup, but you can give them a spot for a nice reward, and for me, the alliance reward is just that. A new player who is just starting to champ their 2*'s while slowly accruing some 3*, but is so enthusiastic, up-building and encouraging... being able to give them a spot in T100 to get that 4* cover means more than whether that 4* is useable to him/her or not. It's recognition... appreciation. And to want to do that, but then suddenly you can't because it means going from rank 56 to rank 102, it's disheartening. But when you can PM them and say "Hey, jump into alliance X for a T100 reward" ... and they appreciate it so much... it's a great feeling. In all reality, getting or not getting T100 rewards from a game playing perspective is nothing really problematic or game-changing. You have personal placement as chance #1 to get it, you have Alliance placement as chance #2 to get it, and you have Progression for the very next PVE to get it in CL7 & 8 as chance #3 to get it (and you can hit that without having that character as the essential). So technically D3 is giving you lots of shots at getting 1 if not 3 covers for the new release character, and that's a really good thing.

My overall thoughts, D3 should expand alliance rewards to T250, leave merc'ing alone, and thank you D3 for putting the new release into progression in the next PVE to ease the emotional trauma some experience from not getting it from placement.

user311

I did the merc thing for the DP event, luckily I had someone else helping me find a place, but without that assistance I would have been left out. For a person in a casual or PVP alliance it seems like a lot of work and nail biting to find a group to merc with. I guess there's the forum here and "line" rooms too but are there other options?

Welcoming in a merc seems to carry the risk of that person or others bailing at the last minute. I would like to see an option for Commanders to lock in people to an alliance for x number of hours. This would enable others to create event specific alliances and have them up on this forum and set to public. Once the commander verifies 1.25 progression or whatever then they can lock those people in.

Arphaxad

I've been the commander of Oceans 20 for about 18 months. We hit top100 every new cover release, and just about every other PvE event. We are a PvE focused alliance, so PvP events do not effect our roster.

With that said, I've spoken out against mercs on several occasions. Yes, we accept mercs for empty spots, when alliance members can not contribute or are away for personal reasons, but that does not mean I like it.

With all the possible ways to deter merc'ing, I think the only reasonable thing is to expand rewards. Everything else would just make life more difficult for players, and alliance commanders. Reward the cover to top 200 in CL7 and higher and the merc rush will slow down.

Also, any chance in making the alliance cover a different color than the player rank reward? Then you can make the progression cover in the next event the third color and give players a chance to earn 1 of each color without finishing in the top5 of events.

Omega Red

Everybody hates mercs, until a couple of them join your alliance and help you lock that stupid top 100 you've been promising your buddies for months...

SnowcaTT

aesthetocyst wrote:

Reward scheme remains unchanged.

Not just "unchanged" - getting worse with each new release.
Getting really hard to cover these in any sort of timely manner now (with the dilution expanding each release).
And getting more and more pointless for those that have 10+ 4*'s covered to get the rest covered anymore.

I would guess a good solution would be more SCL's opening up. Why that hasn't happened months ago....