Upcoming Change: Tournament Alliance Ranking

IceIX

Currently planned as of the 4/21 Army of One Tournament (not final, timing could change):

Alliance rewards for top placement will change from

1st - 500 Hero Points / 2000 Iso-8 2-50 - 100 Hero Points / 2000 Iso-8

to

1-2 - 250 Hero Points / 2000 Iso-8 3-50 - 100 Hero Points / 2000 Iso-8

Naturally, this is a bit of a blow to S.H.I.E.L.D (and 5DV) who regularly win the Tournaments by a fairly decent margin. However, it also gives other Alliances a good chance to compete for top prizes and means that just because you can't reach 1st that you're not out of the running and may as well stay in a relatively large pool of 49 other Alliances.

We'll keep monitoring Alliance prizes and make changes accordingly. 3-50 seems like a pretty large pool as well, but breaking things up there is more difficult since the Iso-8 and Hero Point rewards can't be changed too much without making ripples that echo down to the rest of the placements.

Unknown

Communism at its finest!

/sarcasm

Unknown

I think we should have just opened the top bracket to 1-3 for 500 hp. without a big jump in rewards. there is not a huge incentive for playing hard.

although the 1100 point cover is still a good incentive provided you don't own it, you are much more likely grind that extra match if it means an extra 400 hp.

edit: although I feel like anything we say (from S.H.I.E.L.D) is not that credible considering we are the only ones that are losing out to this change.

Unknown

actually, here's an idea. what about a ransom or king of the hill mechanic.

As an alliance wins back to back 1st places. a ransom starts to accrue and the team that finally beats them can cash in.

NorthernPolarity

Something that really bothers me about the changed prize structure is that you're taking hp away from the overall pool: 1st and second would have gotten 500+100=600 hp total, but under this new structure we're getting 250+250=500hp. If this really was purely an alliance ranking change, the values should be bumped up to 300hp per alliance. I think the general playerbase is already getting a feeling of demiurge starting to nickle and dime us with changes to lr tokens and such, and implementing this change would further reinforce that notion, especially given how that extra hp given to the top alliances can't possibly affect the company's bottom line substantially.

Also, I think all this change would do is that instead of people complaining about shield winning everything, people are going to shift to complaining about shield and 5dv winning everything. I don't see why it couldn't be something like 1st and 2nd get 300hp, 3rd to 5th get 200hp, 5th to 40th get 100hp, and 41-100 get 50hp or something like that. This encourages more competition without affecting lower ranks.

Unknown

This doesn't increase the winnings for the vast majority of alliances, it simply reduces it for the first and gives the second a boost (which is good, but at the expense of first which is bad).

In fact, first has been docked by 50%, second has been buffed by 125% and 3-50 are at 0% change.

Nemek

Just to make sure this thread becomes SHIELD-dominated (just like PvP! ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh), I'll post too.

I think it's fine, yeah it's a little less overall HP, by like...0.0001% in the grand scheme of things, and it only really negatively affects 20 people out of 100,000, which is nothing. Could definitely use more breaking out from 3-50...curious to see how things play out.

morgh

Still like the change even though it does not bring too much to the table for many many alliances

Unknown

The game needs a larger incentive for teams to do well, or at least beat the current king of the hill.

decentives will only make the community more apathetic to playing.

maybe the ransom thing could be part of the season mechanic. based on your position in the last season, you get a ransom. any alliance that can beat those teams in any event will then collect the ransom.

Clintman

It's a bit disappointing to see that THIS was the change, you only effect the top two alliances with this change, why not increase the rewards to make them better for 3-50, that incentive would make the PVP much more competitive. By doing this lame change all you do is split the reward for first between two alliances, whoop de do. You missed the point.

How about rotating the alliance reward cover so that it's not only alliances that can get a black hulk cover. how about making it so there are good rewards to people outside of the top 2? There is a hell of a lot of diversity in the other alliances, 3-50 deserves more distinction. Scavengers, django, fitted kitchens to name a few should be seeing some reward value to their gameplay, they certainly should be rewards/recognized as they are clearly top 10.

Jathro

1
2-5
6-10
11-25
26-50
and so on, seems more reasonable. Or...

1
2-10
11-50
might be better. As it stands, is the 50th place team really on par with the 3rd place team?

Unknown

Obligatory post.

I think taking away the perception of a huge advantage is necessary. I think a good chunk of our wins didnt take much effort and we might feel bad for that. I do want to be rewarded for effort, and I want first to be meaningful, for times when we actually have to make an effort.

Unknown

davecazz wrote:

The game needs a larger incentive for teams to do well, or at least beat the current king of the hill.

decentives will only make the community more apathetic to playing.

Since this is only a disincentive for the top alliance, we'll be able to see if this is actually true.

Something tells me that SHIELD will still be in the top 2 spots. It'd take a lot more than this to make them apathetic towards playing.

Unknown

ZenBrillig wrote:

davecazz wrote:

The game needs a larger incentive for teams to do well, or at least beat the current king of the hill.

decentives will only make the community more apathetic to playing.

Since this is only a disincentive for the top alliance, we'll be able to see if this is actually true.

Something tells me that SHIELD will still be in the top 2 spots. It'd take a lot more than this to make them apathetic towards playing.

what I'm really saying though is that if there is a huge incentive to knock us off our pedestal (or whoever the current top alliances are). I think it's more likely that someone will come along and do it.

this change really doesnt do anything outside of the top 10 alliances and +150 hp is just not a huge incentive to burn an extra shield to maintain 2nd.

NorthernPolarity

ZenBrillig wrote:

davecazz wrote:

The game needs a larger incentive for teams to do well, or at least beat the current king of the hill.

decentives will only make the community more apathetic to playing.

Since this is only a disincentive for the top alliance, we'll be able to see if this is actually true.

Something tells me that SHIELD will still be in the top 2 spots. It'd take a lot more than this to make them apathetic towards playing.

He didnt mean shield who was apathetic about playing, he was talking about the people in alliances ranked 2-50 that were complaining about how it wss pointless to try for a higher ranking. This new change doesnt change that because 5dv has always been second by a considerable margin. Changing the reward structure to 1-2, 3-5, etc would be different because then a top 10 alliance can be like, "oh snaps were almost 5th, lets push", etc.

Unknown

They've only impacted SHIELD negatively, which no one else is going to cry over, and personally I can totally live with it. (Don't get me wrong, it sucks and I will be fighting the shakes from HP withdrawals.)

The real problem here is that the only people they've helped is 5DV. Even a bump to 150 for 3-10 would be an appreciable difference for the larger player base, and make landing on the leaderboard a more worthwhile goal for the masses.

Unknown

We finally have an alliance thread. On a serious note I'll still be aiming for first only now I won't use as many shields and if you only need to place top 2 makes my life easier. Still need to sort out the 3-50 bracket. The PVE is a joke however a 9 and a half day event you get 250hp for placing top 2

Nemek

walkyourpath wrote:

They've only impacted SHIELD negatively, which no one else is going to cry over, and personally I can totally live with it. (Don't get me wrong, it sucks and I will be .)

The real problem here is that the only people they've helped is 5DV. Even a bump to 150 for 3-10 would be an appreciable difference for the larger player base, and make landing on the leaderboard a more worthwhile goal for the masses.

I'd be curious to see how it will really affect the standings. How will this change the motivation of the other top 10 alliances (Django, OLYMPUS, scAvengers, FittedKitchens, DeadpoolsTaco, WE SORRY, etc)? Will it push them to compete with SHIELD/5DV? Will it cause SHIELD to slack off?

The thing I'm most surprised about is that it's a change that affects...what...a hundred people? If it's a change to increase alliance motivation for a large percent of the playerbase, I would have expected a change to the 3-50 rewards, as well.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

Will it cause SHIELD to slack off?

Unknown

I see no relevant changes here. Moving on.

LordWill

I have to say I am super impressed with S.H.I.E.L.D'S attitude on this. Instead of crying about it, you guys are actually speaking up for all the other alliances which I think is super cool.

I usually tell our members, there is no real difference (50 hero points woohoo) between 2-99th place so don't burn yourself out. No reason to burn through shields and all that when we are going to get the same as everyone else in that bracket. We haven't really tried for first. We do try for top 10 as long as we don't need to push very hard because again, we are rewarded just about the same as 99th in the top 10.

Now if they had tiered rewards like some have mentioned, we might be a little more aggressive in ranking. But until they do, we have no reason to.