S.H.I.E.L.D. Rank Display

A6sinthe

I'm a commander in Devil's Brigade, a swiftly growing and very active alliance. As such, we are delegating some "growing pains" within the alliance and I had an idea for a feature that I wanted to throw at the wall to see if it sticks: a display of S.H.I.E.L.D. rank within our alliance roster.

It started with a well intentioned complaint from one of our members, who asked why we didn't play PvE more (though we always switch focus for special events like Civil War). Commanders responded that PvP gave better rewards for the group, was less demanding of players, etc., etc. The real answer (in my opinion) is that it is the easiest metric to tell if players are pulling their weight within the alliance. Everyone is on the same page, everyone knows what is expected of them, and knows what will boot them if they don't do enough or disappear for awhile without notice.

But players don't care about that (and shouldn't. It is the commander's problem, not theirs) so the member explained that he was just thinking in the best interest of the group. Pretty awesome, we have good players. So I told them I would crunch some numbers and get back with what I find. This was met with approval from the group.

So I started looking at leaderboards. The usual standouts in our group had the highest numbers. Some were doing poorly for the season (by our requirement standards) and usually those would risk being booted. But here is the thing: everyone was playing every day. So what are they doing? Just the dailies? I looked at leaders for PvE then. You guessed it. The ones doing poorly at PvP were rocking PvE.

So I asked for a roll call.
What was your S.H.I.E.L.D. rank and days played (Resupply)? Their answers helped a lot. I discovered there was a negligible correlation to resupply with rank and interaction but a very strong direct correlation between S.H.I.E.L.D. rank and PvP/PvE. I had my answer and a new set of problems to solve.

Us commanders could create a hybrid system. Those under a certain rank could concentrate on PvE with point goals to boost alliance rank. Those over a certain rank could concentrate on PvP with slightly higher goals (since we were accomplishing that anyway), and we all benefit from higher rewards across the board. But under the current circumstances it simply would not work.

Because rank is not displayed in our alliance roster I would have to constantly ask or guess who is doing what and that is a logistical nightmare. But if the developers displayed our ranks within our alliance roster the commanders could delegate roles within the alliance. I understand the need to hide S.H.I.E.L.D. rank from everybody because that could lead to some nasty cherry picking of players. But within the alliance should be safe. I don't know if it would even work but it would be worth trying.

Please comment.

tl;dr : if we added S.H.I.E.L.D. rank to our alliance roster commanders could do a lot more with their alliance.