Alliance Covers Need to be Adjusted Again

TimGunn

Mohio, we had a regular alliance member jump ship when it was looking iffy for our alliance. That was the last time he was in our alliance!

Making SCL 9 with top 250 alliance reward of 4 star cover in release event would be a good way to push people to join the SCL 9 instead of going in a lower bracket. Like now, the vets basically are indifferent to SCL 7 and 8.

pheregas

Just throwing this out there. If in order to get t100 you must score 50% above progression, then there needs to be more progression prizes. That much work for the entry level 4* cover is almost comical. All for another new character that is going to sit around at 0/2/3 for a long time because of the rewards structures.

TeamStewie

Maybe they just need to do away with mercs period. Have all PVE events treated like a boss event and just have the 1st alliance you play with be the one you're stuck with.

Heartburn

this might be too much of a boost, but whatever. what if you gain a passive boost, or unlock additional rewards, for each week or event with out switching members.

1) could be a straight points boost ramping up to +20% in 1 or 0.5% increments.

2) increases the alliance rewards +1000 iso per event up to 20K with maybe a +10 hp per event max 200 hp

3) an iso multiplier that works for all events max like a ramp up to 3x iso per event by 10%

or a smaller combination of the 3 options.

these rewards break when the alliance switches member

they could add more character vaults burn up extra HP, one where you pick the cover color with a confirmation so mis-clicks with fat finger don't get you every time

GrumpySmurf1002

SnowcaTT wrote:

The thing is just putting rewards "down" to T250 in the next SCL (remember that folks would have to get to that experience, it is not just "participation" trophy) would be great...but pretty pointless unless you put two alliance covers down to T100. Because the whole point of the SCL's is so you can transition faster at the top, right?

I disagree a lot with this. It's not like they currently give two for top 50, or two LTs for top PvP.

Alliance rewards have always been tangential rewards, and basically flat except for the cover/token distinction. No reason to suddenly make them top heavy.

BlackWidow70

TeamStewie wrote:

Maybe they just need to do away with mercs period. Have all PVE events treated like a boss event and just have the 1st alliance you play with be the one you're stuck with.

This is probably hypocritical on my part since I've merc'd the last several new releases; but I'd be fine with this. I'd lose out on the extra new release covers since as much as I love the alliance I've been merc'ing with; even though we always finish in the bottom alliance grouping (with or without my score) I couldn't up and abandon my regular alliance since there's several family members in there.

That being said, I don't think it would hurt them to extend the alliance rewards out some.

acescracked

T250? Meh. I landed in an alliance that finished 182nd.

Six didn't even play. Three of us were just under max progression.

The participation level drops a ton further you get from the t100 line.

Vhailorx

acescracked wrote:

T250? Meh. I landed in an alliance that finished 182nd.

Six didn't even play. Three of us were just under max progression.

The participation level drops a ton further you get from the t100 line.

And. . .so what?

I don't understand why players are offended by the idea that somebody might get a 4* cover that they didn't "earn." A single 4* cover in this game is nothing (for maybe half the population, it will just be extra roster pressure on an already short HP supply. For a large portion of the remainder, it will just be a roster deadspot taking up space and used only in essential nodes for more than 6 months). And plenty of people get easy 4* covers all the time by jumping into a late bracket or otherwise gaming the system (e.g. when vets used to tank for a few PVE's to get themselves a nice easy baby bracket for some important new release).

GreenMachine

To preface: I am an alliance commander who definitely feels the strain and burn out of the current system.

I've found it considerably more difficult to place T100 lately. I definitely make use of 2-3 merc s on a PVE and see the group drop from 37 to 96 from midnight EST to the end.

That being said:
When did we as a group become ok with the idea T100 requires an entire network of communication the exists completely outside of the game?!? This shouldn't be normal!!

It it's really time that the reward structure be restructured.

acescracked

Vhailorx,

Then why stop at t250? Someone's gonna finish 251st and just miss out. Then open a forum thread saying expand the rewards.

I like that you personally were affected by the cutoff and came to the forum to protest. Have you been championing this point each PvE when your alliance finished t100?

Anyway, I do agree as the game's matured with more players things are more competitive. Alliances really have to battle out for the t100 cutoff.

OK, expand to t110!

SnowcaTT

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

SnowcaTT wrote:

The thing is just putting rewards "down" to T250 in the next SCL (remember that folks would have to get to that experience, it is not just "participation" trophy) would be great...but pretty pointless unless you put two alliance covers down to T100. Because the whole point of the SCL's is so you can transition faster at the top, right?

I disagree a lot with this. It's not like they currently give two for top 50, or two LTs for top PvP.

Alliance rewards have always been tangential rewards, and basically flat except for the cover/token distinction. No reason to suddenly make them top heavy.

The reason would be that we are well past 40 characters now. With RNG, getting pretty tough to cover the newer ones. Giving out more covers of newest characters would help alleviate the "high number of characters" problem.

GrumpySmurf1002

SnowcaTT wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

SnowcaTT wrote:

The thing is just putting rewards "down" to T250 in the next SCL (remember that folks would have to get to that experience, it is not just "participation" trophy) would be great...but pretty pointless unless you put two alliance covers down to T100. Because the whole point of the SCL's is so you can transition faster at the top, right?

I disagree a lot with this. It's not like they currently give two for top 50, or two LTs for top PvP.

Alliance rewards have always been tangential rewards, and basically flat except for the cover/token distinction. No reason to suddenly make them top heavy.

The reason would be that we are well past 40 characters now. With RNG, getting pretty tough to cover the newer ones. Giving out more covers of newest characters would help alleviate the "high number of characters" problem.

More covers is fine, but should be at the individual level, not the alliance one.

Vhailorx

acescracked wrote:

Vhailorx,

Then why stop at t250? Someone's gonna finish 251st and just miss out. Then open a forum thread saying expand the rewards.

I like that you personally were affected by the cutoff and came to the forum to protest. Have you been championing this point each PvE when your alliance finished t100?

Anyway, I do agree as the game's matured with more players things are more competitive. Alliances really have to battle out for the t100 cutoff.

OK, expand to t110!

Aces:

(1) Didn't really think it was necessary, but fine Disclaimer: This issue doesn't really have a big effect on me personally, I got coulson covers from personal placement. And as I said, a single extra 4* cover is nice (I would not say "No"!), but hardly a big deal. The only effect for me is that Coulson might not be cover maxed until September 2017 instead of August 2017. I will not personally suffer as a result of my alliance missing the cutoff.

(2) I have upvoted in the past when other players (grumpy most notably) have advocated the same position (even when my alliance finished top 100). This is not a new opinion; I just had a new example.

(3) IMO, the current meta for top 100 alliance covers in NON-release events is about right. It requires fairly serious play from the majority of an alliance, but no one has to ruin their sleep schedule or skip out on work to grind furiously. My goal would be this: if basically everyone throws up a nice consistent 4/6, even in a new release event, then the alliance should be fine for an alliance cover. Yes, some level of merc'ing is an inevitable consequence of the current scoring system, and someone will always miss out on any threshold. But pushing the envelope down to 250 (a number selected because it is already the existing next reward bracket) would relieve a lot of that pressure because, as you note, the participation level falls off sharply. So if basically everyone who participates heavily can get a cover, then the merc'ing zone will be populated with less engaged players (who aren't on Line and working the merc options).

GrumpySmurf1002

acescracked wrote:

Then why stop at t250? Someone's gonna finish 251st and just miss out.

I'd be fairly surprised if competition was that fierce at T250 w/ expanded covers. The problem (as I see it) is that those in the 101-150(?) consist of 1000 players scrambling/reorganizing/whatever for a single cover, most of whom are in alliances that would be easily clear if the bar was moved to T250.

You can see this fairly clearly in the PvP season alliance rewards, which are fine to remain at T100. While there's certainly merc movement and reshuffling, it's not nearly to the scale of PvE, and doesn't expand much past even 105 before there's a big drop.

PvE alliance rewards at this point are just a global reorganization of alliances for a day, and is nonsense for the sake of nonsense. Expansion of the reward tiers would eliminate 99% of it, and everyone's PvE experience would be better for it.

beyonderbub

Vhailorx wrote:

I don't understand why players are offended by the idea that somebody might get a 4* cover that they didn't "earn."

V, I may not go so far as being offended, and if you guys can coordinate the necessary machinations to recruit the mercs for a cover then, kudos to you all. But just consider:

If I join at the start of the event (choice I made bc I value the opportunities at ISO over trying to "game" the placement system with no certainty that I'll end up sniping a baby bracket by joining late), and it's a 4-day event with 24 hr subevents, that's 5 hours daily grinding on PVE to complete each node/pin 6-7 times to place top 100 to earn my 1 new release cover.

I wouldn't say that a single new release cover is "nothing in this game" because of the considerable time spent to "earn" it. I also wouldn't use the ways people get the cover easily (late bracket joins, lucky event token pulls) to justify why covers should be made available bc those ways are not guaranteed methods of acquiring new covers. Other than anecdotal recollections of forumites, these methods' results are not consistently reproducible.

alaeth

Interesting no-one addressed the elephant in the room (I skimmed the posts, sorry if I missed you).

Merc'ing is flawed.

The concept of an Alliance is a group of people that work together to complete a goal (or goals). I'm pretty sure the idea of mercing goes against what the developers intended.


THAT is the problem we should be addressing... not how many points are required, but the idea that I can play all the way through an event, only to leave that last hour to benefit someone else.


In my opinion, events should lock in when you join (like Galactus, Ultron, and others)...

Fightmastermpq

alaeth wrote:

Interesting no-one addressed the elephant in the room (I skimmed the posts, sorry if I missed you).

Merc'ing is flawed.

The concept of an Alliance is a group of people that work together to complete a goal (or goals). I'm pretty sure the idea of mercing goes against what the developers intended.


THAT is the problem we should be addressing... not how many points are required, but the idea that I can play all the way through an event, only to leave that last hour to benefit someone else.


In my opinion, events should lock in when you join (like Galactus, Ultron, and others)...

This just adds a lot of unnecessary strain on relationships. People who are competitive want to place well every event, but most of us have real lives outside of MPQ. So when real life gets in the way of you playing a sub your alliance doesn't get stuck with your lower score.

We band together for the boss events, but if every event were like that we would all burn out very quickly.

Omega Red

alaeth wrote:

Interesting no-one addressed the elephant in the room (I skimmed the posts, sorry if I missed you).

Merc'ing is flawed.

The concept of an Alliance is a group of people that work together to complete a goal (or goals). I'm pretty sure the idea of mercing goes against what the developers intended.


THAT is the problem we should be addressing... not how many points are required, but the idea that I can play all the way through an event, only to leave that last hour to benefit someone else.


In my opinion, events should lock in when you join (like Galactus, Ultron, and others)...

The only elephant in the room is that there are too few brackets which makes character releases a little too much competitive. That, and the less grindy PVE events they've been using lately which produces less separation among players and promotes more reshuffling at the end. Do next release with Enemy of the state and you won't see this amount of reshuffling.

Vhailorx

aesthetocyst wrote:

If no one at all played during the final 3hrs (the s5 grind), that might be true. But I happen to know that those players were indeed playing.

All slices have the same nodes, subs, and durations, and all at the same values. They all have the same chanace to rack up the same score. If all 20 play the event to the hilt and suck out every point, you'd place first, every time.

The best scores were just over 48K. A full alliance of such scores would have totaled 960K. Last I looked, 1st place alliance was no where near that, nearly 50K short of it, or the equivalent of an entire player!

Not really sure what point you are trying to make Aesth. Yes most alliances have some players in slice 5. And yes, if absolutely everyone in an an alliance achieved the perfect score, that alliance would place well regardless of slice (actually, S1 might be advantaged as they would put up the perfect score earlier). But that's like doing physics equations without considering air-resistence. It's a useful excercise as you learn the basics of f=ma etc, but it's not all that helpful when trying to consider real-world applications in an atmosphere. As you point out, even the very best alliances couldn't put up 20 perfect scores.

And the very top alliances aren't really in the scope of my discussion anyway. I was trying to suggest that bottom of the top 100 leaderboard is very unsettled even in the last few hours of an event. So while most serious PVE alliances have seen scores go up, and have increased their minimum reqs to compensate, it is still necessary for the 50-125 range alliances to have some awake and watching the scores right up until the end, just in case an event turns out to be slightly more competitive than expected. That seems like a pointless hassle for MPQ to force upon several hundred of its most dedicated players (and I think we at least agree on that).

aa25

alaeth wrote:

Interesting no-one addressed the elephant in the room (I skimmed the posts, sorry if I missed you).

Merc'ing is flawed.

The concept of an Alliance is a group of people that work together to complete a goal (or goals). I'm pretty sure the idea of mercing goes against what the developers intended.


THAT is the problem we should be addressing... not how many points are required, but the idea that I can play all the way through an event, only to leave that last hour to benefit someone else.


In my opinion, events should lock in when you join (like Galactus, Ultron, and others)...

Mercing is just a symptom. People merc because they want rewards. Getting rid of mercing only cures the symptom of having a terrible rewards vs effort model.