A few questions. . .

Unknown

(1) How often are updates/patches released?

(2) With the hard push for everyone to join alliances, does anyone know if there are plans to increase the ways to increase the size of your alliance other than HP? (Maybe ISO, or placement rewards.) If HP is the only way to increase the size of your alliance, it gives an unfair advantage to those who have RTM to spend on the game (I understand that if you spend RTM on the game, it should come with a few advantages, I don't think alliance placement should be one of them.), while those who do not have such an advantage are stuck at 5 members. And an alliance that is at 20 members, will almost always beat out a alliance of 5 members unless a new system is put into place. (Such as an Average Score System. Something like: A 20 member alliance with a group total of 20,000 points would be a score of 1000. A 5 member alliance with a group total of 5000 points would be a score of 1000. In a system like this, every alliance has the opportunity to place highly in events if everyone is playing and working together.)

(3) I thought I read in one of the threads about some of the 1* characters getting boosted/new powers. But I haven't noticed any difference and haven't seen anything on the threads since. Did this get changed? Did the changes take place and I just didn't notice it?

(4) Is there a complete game guide published somewhere for this game? Because so far, it seems like a learn as you go kinda thing. It wasn't until I found the forum that a lot of my questions got answered by reading through the threads.

mohio

1) updates seem to be every 3-4 weeks give or take, but they sometimes sneak in data updates (i.e. not a full patch) to fix things as needed. You can check out the news/announcements section of the forums to see when all the patches went live I think.

2) Not that I'm aware of. This is a source of revenue for D3/Demiurge so I doubt they would want to tweak it. They are even talking about increasing the cap to 25 players in the future. An established F2P player could easily save enough HP to open a slot or two and after that you would have to recruit members that can open the next slot. That's pretty much the only recourse for a F2P who wants to start their own alliance and not rely on being drafted into an established large alliance.

3) Really not sure about this one. I don't remember 1* being changed recently, but I also wouldn't notice since I haven't used 1* outside of mStorm in quite a while.

4) No game guide anywhere but you're not going to find anything better than stuff like NorthernPolarity's 1* to 3* guide or eddiemon's PvE guide. Also people on this forum are generally very helpful, so if you have questions just ask (like you did here) and people will answer.

IceIX

aaronschmiz wrote:

(1) How often are updates/patches released?

(2) With the hard push for everyone to join alliances, does anyone know if there are plans to increase the ways to increase the size of your alliance other than HP? (Maybe ISO, or placement rewards.) If HP is the only way to increase the size of your alliance, it gives an unfair advantage to those who have RTM to spend on the game (I understand that if you spend RTM on the game, it should come with a few advantages, I don't think alliance placement should be one of them.), while those who do not have such an advantage are stuck at 5 members. And an alliance that is at 20 members, will almost always beat out a alliance of 5 members unless a new system is put into place. (Such as an Average Score System. Something like: A 20 member alliance with a group total of 20,000 points would be a score of 1000. A 5 member alliance with a group total of 5000 points would be a score of 1000. In a system like this, every alliance has the opportunity to place highly in events if everyone is playing and working together.)

(3) I thought I read in one of the threads about some of the 1* characters getting boosted/new powers. But I haven't noticed any difference and haven't seen anything on the threads since. Did this get changed? Did the changes take place and I just didn't notice it?

(4) Is there a complete game guide published somewhere for this game? Because so far, it seems like a learn as you go kinda thing. It wasn't until I found the forum that a lot of my questions got answered by reading through the threads.

1) Client side patches are released every 2-3 weeks. It's not a regular schedule as we often have to wait on first party approvals for any given build before it can be released. That process is a bit of a black box; You put a build in, it comes out the other end at an unknown time later. Data patches we release near daily, although the vast majority of the time these are just bits being flipped to enable support for upcoming Events.

2) We don't have plans for an increase in Alliance size, a change in Alliance slot buying, or Alliance scoring at this time. Alliances are definitely one of our hot button topics though, so we're always monitoring things there.

3) We do tweaks on all rarities of characters on irregular intervals. Eventually we'd love to have all the 2 ability characters with 3 abilities and for better balance to come to each character. It's a slow (as other people on the forums can tell you) process.

4) As stated by others, the forums and direct questions are a treasure trove of information. We've still got work to do with in-game messaging, but much of the time players that are interested in learning more end up here in any case.

Unknown

aaronschmiz wrote:

(2) With the hard push for everyone to join alliances, does anyone know if there are plans to increase the ways to increase the size of your alliance other than HP? (Maybe ISO, or placement rewards.) If HP is the only way to increase the size of your alliance, it gives an unfair advantage to those who have RTM to spend on the game (I understand that if you spend RTM on the game, it should come with a few advantages, I don't think alliance placement should be one of them.), while those who do not have such an advantage are stuck at 5 members. And an alliance that is at 20 members, will almost always beat out a alliance of 5 members unless a new system is put into place. (Such as an Average Score System. Something like: A 20 member alliance with a group total of 20,000 points would be a score of 1000. A 5 member alliance with a group total of 5000 points would be a score of 1000. In a system like this, every alliance has the opportunity to place highly in events if everyone is playing and working together.)

Just wanted to comment on this one - using the average wouldn't work, because it'd make small alliances *better* than large alliances (it's easier to coordinate and manage a small group than a large one). And Demiurge would prefer that we all gravitate towards large alliances.

What you could do is use a modified average - for example, divide the total score by the (number of players + 5).

So, if an average player score is 1000, and a great player score is 2000.

Right now, an alliance of 5 great players (score 10,000) would get crushed by 20 average players (score 20,000)

But dividing by number+5, 5 great players (score 1,000) would beat 20 average players (score 800).

If the average players upped their game to 1250, then the two groups would be tied.

So, there'd still be a substantial advantage to large alliances, but small alliances could still compete for top 100.

This can obviously be scaled by adjusting the constant '5'. 1 is probably too weak, 5 is probably too strong, but somewhere in the middle could end up working well.

HailMary

2. While people often spend real money to expand alliances, it's not actually necessary. There's even a large alliance called F2P Veterans whose members are all, you guessed it, free-to-play.

4. A couple of guides:
- Polarity's progression guide: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3939
- Eddiemon's PVE guide, which is a bit outdated: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5304

Unknown

ZenBrillig wrote:

aaronschmiz wrote:

(2) With the hard push for everyone to join alliances, does anyone know if there are plans to increase the ways to increase the size of your alliance other than HP? (Maybe ISO, or placement rewards.) If HP is the only way to increase the size of your alliance, it gives an unfair advantage to those who have RTM to spend on the game (I understand that if you spend RTM on the game, it should come with a few advantages, I don't think alliance placement should be one of them.), while those who do not have such an advantage are stuck at 5 members. And an alliance that is at 20 members, will almost always beat out a alliance of 5 members unless a new system is put into place. (Such as an Average Score System. Something like: A 20 member alliance with a group total of 20,000 points would be a score of 1000. A 5 member alliance with a group total of 5000 points would be a score of 1000. In a system like this, every alliance has the opportunity to place highly in events if everyone is playing and working together.)

Just wanted to comment on this one - using the average wouldn't work, because it'd make small alliances *better* than large alliances (it's easier to coordinate and manage a small group than a large one). And Demiurge would prefer that we all gravitate towards large alliances.

What you could do is use a modified average - for example, divide the total score by the (number of players + 5).

So, if an average player score is 1000, and a great player score is 2000.

Right now, an alliance of 5 great players (score 10,000) would get crushed by 20 average players (score 20,000)

But dividing by number+5, 5 great players (score 1,000) would beat 20 average players (score 800).

If the average players upped their game to 1250, then the two groups would be tied.

So, there'd still be a substantial advantage to large alliances, but small alliances could still compete for top 100.

This can obviously be scaled by adjusting the constant '5'. 1 is probably too weak, 5 is probably too strong, but somewhere in the middle could end up working well.

I don't think that a straight average would give smaller alliances a better advantage or make them better in any way. It just levels the playing field.

For example, my 5 person alliance on Season 1, which granted, none of us have been doing hard core at the moment, is at a total of 4881.
1-2559
2-1800
3-356
4-100
5-66
Total=4881 / Average= 976

Say a 10 person alliance has similar scores.
1-2600
2-2200
3-1900
4-1800
5-1000
6-800
7-300
8-300
9-100
10-50
Total= 11050/ Average= 1105

So the 5 member alliance's 4881 points compared to the 10 player alliance's 11,050 points if compiled into a group average still puts the 5 group behind, but it doesn't slaughter them and put them out of the running.

I don't see this as giving an advantage to anyone, just putting everyone in the same race. Because right now, a 5 member alliance is jogging a marathon, while 20 member alliances are driving for the NASCAR cup. LOL.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

3) We do tweaks on all rarities of characters on irregular intervals. Eventually we'd love to have all the 2 ability characters with 3 abilities and for better balance to come to each character. It's a slow (as other people on the forums can tell you) process.

I guess I'll show my noobness, but I don't understand. If the 2* characters get upgraded to 3* abilities, what would be the purpose of transitioning to 3*? Or am I reading that wrong?

NorthernPolarity

aaronschmiz wrote:

IceIX wrote:

3) We do tweaks on all rarities of characters on irregular intervals. Eventually we'd love to have all the 2 ability characters with 3 abilities and for better balance to come to each character. It's a slow (as other people on the forums can tell you) process.

I guess I'll show my noobness, but I don't understand. If the 2* characters get upgraded to 3* abilities, what would be the purpose of transitioning to 3*? Or am I reading that wrong?

He meant characters with 2 abilities like Ragnarok, Daken, Bullseye, etc, not 2*/3* abilities.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

aaronschmiz wrote:

IceIX wrote:

3) We do tweaks on all rarities of characters on irregular intervals. Eventually we'd love to have all the 2 ability characters with 3 abilities and for better balance to come to each character. It's a slow (as other people on the forums can tell you) process.

I guess I'll show my noobness, but I don't understand. If the 2* characters get upgraded to 3* abilities, what would be the purpose of transitioning to 3*? Or am I reading that wrong?

He meant characters with 2 abilities like Ragnarok, Daken, Bullseye, etc, not 2*/3* abilities.

Ok, so I did read it wrong. That does make much more sense. Thanks!