WTB alliance ... $100?

Unknown

I just realized, if I want to create my own 20-member alliance I need to put down $100.

Can you honestly tell me that's a reasonable expectation? Other video games don't demand cash to create alliances, let alone above the $60 retail price point.

I can think of games that might ask you for $25 to get into the high-level PVP stuff. But $100 for an alliance?

If you want to argue people can just buy their slots, that's ridiculous.
When someone buys their slot, they really BUY the slot. You can't kick them after that.
And besides, even if you split the cost among 20 people, you still charged the group $100 worth of currency to make the alliance.

So, you either put down $100 or you have an alliance full of un-kickable members who may or may not be active.

When I first started playing this game I was a bit impressed by the economics of it. The roster is a soft pay-wall, but $20 gets you over it pretty well.
I consider that a reasonable amount for a free-to-play to extract from players. When you start asking for over 150% of the $60 retail price point just to form a team ... That's over the top. Especially considering other games don't charge any money at all for that.

The crux of my argument isn't that having alliances costs D3P basically no money--it doesn't, besides the up-front development cost. The problem is that $100 is a ridiculous price-point in a so-called free-to-play game. It's even more absurd considering they have implemented no alliance communication of any kind, and only two ranks for members.

I'm thinking I should save my $100 for a game run by people who genuinely try to give players a good experience with their game, and make some money while they're at it.

Better yet, as tired as I am of the weekly cycle of grinding out events for the "Essential" covers for next week, I will instead save my money AND time for a game with reasonable economics.

Unknown

A 20 member alliance isn't a necessity. You can make the same argument with almost all of the other f2p games as well. I believe they're there for players who take the game a little more seriously and are more on the competitive side rather than casual side. It's an investment on the players end that they will recoup in the long run. I also believe it is a way for people to support their hobby.

Unknown

The alliance structure is very problematic but I don't think it's so bad as to require a guy to front the whole $100. Splitting $5 each from 20 guys is fine, and people might have HP saved up anyway. If you could field an alliance that can get the cover rewards, it's likely to save you HP for the entire alliance in the long run so it's not a bad investment. Mind you, I don't like the way it is setup either, but it's actually a pretty decent deal for a mid tier player who will have a hard time placing in the 3* cover on his own. I don't know how competitive the lower end of the alliance rewards are, but I'm guessing a 20 man alliance right now can still manage a 3* cover pretty easily if all the players are at least active?

Unknown

In order to have 20ppl Alliance, You need to spend 19.500 HP.

Now, let's look at the Alliance rewards. 20ppl strong Alliance will likely place in top50 in PVP, so that's 100 HP reward tier. 20people x 100 HP = 2000 HP earned for being in an Alliance.

Taking into consideration that probably all the tourneys and events will have Alliance rewards, that means that full Alliance needs 10 tourneys in order to get the HP back. And we have new tourney almost each 2.5 days. So in 1 month from the moment You created an Alliance, it will start to make profit.

In fact it's much faster, as I don't count 2000 ISO and 1 *** cover per tourney.

So, Your Alliance spend 19500 HP (+2500 ISO!) to form a strong Alliance of casual daily players who know how the game works, but aren't considered hardcore.

After around a month, each and every player, thanks to being in an Alliance, earned at least:

1000 HP
20000 ISO
10x *** covers, which is an equivalent of 12500 HP alone

It's for 1 person only. Now let's see how much is this for 20ppl:

20,000 HP
400,000 ISO
200x *** covers, which is an equivalent of 250,000 HP alone.

And now tell me - do You still think it's not worth the investment?

Unknown

But it's claimed NOT p2w at all still... Isn't there some contradiction?

Unknown

Emeryt wrote:

And now tell me - do You still think it's not worth the investment?

You're assuming you split the cost evenly between 20 people (impossible), and you're adding everyone else's rewards into the gains.

I'm talking about me spending $100.

But honestly I don't care what covers, HP, etcetera I get. It's simple economics.

Opportunity Cost:

1 Roster Slot = 1 Cheeseburger.
Some people would argue for the cheeseburger, but I'd go with the roster slot.

1 Alliance = 2 new tires for my car.
Let me think about this one. Alliance = $0 in other games. I'll go with 2 new tires for my car.

Unknown

After I wrote this up, it made me consider how much time this game is demanding of me.
I'm a college student, and I can't justify it anymore.

If I miss a week because of some big deadlines, I'll be screwed.

Goodbye Human Torch, Hello Human Life.*


* Or Might & Magic Duel of Champions, whichever.

DrNitroman

To be complete, we must add that spending real money is not the only way to earn hp, a small, but regular, amount of hp can be won in the game. Not really plausible to say one can buy an entire 20-slots alliance with just 'free' hp. But time investment in game bring some hp for sure (and alliances increase these gains...)

But I however agree that the game is a bit 'greedy'. Even to gain hp (ie top placement in tournament), one have to spend hp (shields to counter bad end times)!

NorthernPolarity

DrNitroman wrote:

To be complete, we must add that spending real money is not the only way to earn hp, a small, but regular, amount of hp can be won in the game. Not really plausible to say one can buy an entire 20-slots alliance with just 'free' hp. But time investment in game bring some hp for sure (and alliances increase these gains...)

But I however agree that the game is a bit 'greedy'. Even to gain hp (ie top placement in tournament), one have to spend hp (shields to counter bad end times)!

Not true: you can easily coast into top 25 without having to spend any money on shields, which would net you a good 150-200HP from the tournament depending on how your alliance does. The profit goes down by 75hp if you use a baby shield, but its still there.

DrNitroman

oops, OK I must admit it was an exaggeration

The fact is before the alliances I never shielded myself. So I know that it's possible to enter top 10 (if you're not too unlucky with retal') and when you go to bed 8-6 hours before the end of an event, chances are high for a top 50 with 500-600 points.
But now, with the alliances running I'm more tempted to secure the points before going to bed (most tournament end 6am for me). Either to stay in top 10 if I have enough points or simply to secure the points for the alliance. And I always spend less than the expected rewards.

Conclusion, shields are just an insurance but absolutely not mandatory.
But funny to see that being part of an alliance completely changed my behaviour...

Back to the original topic: there is opportunities to avoid spending money if you spend some time (if you are patient)

Wil88

Here's an F2P perspective.

Being an F2P player in an F2P alliance, I can say that the only place that I am not able to compete in this game is in Alliance rewards.

Our alliance currently has 6 members who compete well in each event (our average score for each PvE Alliance event would have put us Top10 if we had 20 members). However, in the past 3 events we have had no chance for a 3* cover as we're simply outnumbered by larger alliances.

Expanding the alliance is difficult - HP cost may be part of it, but personally, I think it is more how the expansion is set up. You either fork out a ton to open all 20 spots (which is impossible for an F2P player), or you promote everyone to Commander which has a significant number of issues. Even then, it's pretty difficult for an F2P player to pay for that final alliance slot (what is it 2000 HP?) I'm on Day 164 and have only just over 2000HP myself.

Allowing Alliance members to pool their HP to open new spots would be a win-win for both players and devs.