Trouble filling alliances?

Unknown

Is it me, or are there are a lot of quality alliances that are trying to fill spots right now? Way more than I used to see. Seems like a lot of players - good ones - are quiting the game. Plus with the new seasons and less/harder to get rewards, things are getting super competitive. Last time my alliance had a couple openings I posted in the forums and they were filled with good players within an hour, now it's been a day and not a single nibble. Maybe it's just the holiday weekend...

BTW, it cracks me up in all the posts looking for new members how people claim how super casual their alliance is, but then demand players who get 800-1100 pts in PvP events.

Anyway, just curious for others thoughts and see if anyone else noticed or was experiencing similar.

danikalil

clagsmd wrote:

Is it me, or are there are a lot of quality alliances that are trying to fill spots right now? Way more than I used to see. Seems like a lot of players - good ones - are quiting the game. Plus with the new seasons and less/harder to get rewards, things are getting super competitive. Last time my alliance had a couple openings I posted in the forums and they were filled with good players within an hour, now it's been a day and not a single nibble. Maybe it's just the holiday weekend...

BTW, it cracks me up in all the posts looking for new members how people claim how super casual their alliance is, but then demand players who get 800-1100 pts in PvP events.

Anyway, just curious for others thoughts and see if anyone else noticed or was experiencing similar.

You're right. Many good players - some from our own alliance - are quitting the game. Burnout from Season 1, new bracketing system, high MMR...it's all contributing to force the older players out. Besides, the game now demands a huge time investment, and many people can't / don't want to spend such long hours playing a match-3.

As a result, most alliances are now recruiting, and good players are really scarce. We'll have to fill a new spot this week, and we're having a hard time finding someone.

Unknown

Agree as well. The game is fun when you are casual but a pain when you aim for a real reward
And that's the whole truth, the game is not rewarding at all, progression rewards you can't reach, MMR that punishes to play too often, events shoved each day giving you the feeling you got to take this like a job
The game stopping being fun a while ago, with new 3* every week before you managed to make the last one usable
We made #40 on Season One and the reward was some members leaving for the burnout, and this just seems the beggining if they don't change their ways

Unknown

Summer time + time investment is going to drive a lot of ppl from this game. To pull your equal weight in a top alliance, you need to play about 2 hrs almost every day.

At least, it will drive them from being in top 100 alliances. They don't want to let their buds down, so they step aside and let someone else take their place.

HailMary

Agent Alex wrote:

Agree as well. The game is fun when you are casual but a pain when you aim for a real reward
And that's the whole truth, the game is not rewarding at all, progression rewards you can't reach, MMR that punishes to play too often, events shoved each day giving you the feeling you got to take this like a job
The game stopping being fun a while ago, with new 3* every week before you managed to make the last one usable
We made #40 on Season One and the reward was some members leaving for the burnout, and this just seems the beggining if they don't change their ways

Well, opinions are opinions.

Most of my alliance still very much enjoys the game. Several of us are being hit fairly hard with the new PVP matchmaking system -- seeing 2x141 teams right off the bat and being hit for 45+points by people 600 points below us -- and are rather peeved about that. All in all, there's some frustration, but unless you're in an unenviable position of being stuck firmly in 2* land right now, it's more about personal attitude than the game somehow suddenly refusing to reward people. We were Top 5 in Season 1, but we're scaling back and, when it comes to concrete Season goals, just aiming to get another Fury cover and alliance covers in each event.

For all the **** that we're experiencing due to recent changes, we're also seeing some improvements in the game:
- PVE progression rewards: the current PVE's UDaken cover is absolutely attainable. I don't grind too much, and I'm just about one partial sub sweep away from it right now. Quite a few people have already gotten it.
- PVE scaling: it's not great for everyone, but it's generally better now. There was a scaling reset of sorts a couple PVEs back.
- 3* release schedule: I do think they can slow their PVE schedule down a bit, but it's not actually rushed to the point where you can't get a usable character before building the next one. For UDaken, you could've already gotten a 5/3/3 just from event rewards by now, and we're still two days away from the first Sentry covers. I got a 3/5/5 Shieldbro right after the PVE that double-rewarded him, solely from event rewards -- I think that was before Falcon was introduced. I've got a 4/3/2 Falcon sitting in my roster, solely from event rewards that I got before UDaken dropped (I might've gotten a single 1/1/0 or 1/1/1 set after UDaken was introduced).

Unknown

HM, all is fine and well when, as you said, you're not stuck in 2* territory AND you have the time to grind. Otherwise it's really hard to place well and get all those Daken covers - our alliance is doing well, ending top 50 in most pvp events, but the recent bracketing changes + not having any 3 star hero prevented me from being top 50 in all but one of the events. Hence, I only have 4 Daken covers, nowhere near the 11 you're giving as example.

HailMary

sorcered wrote:

HM, all is fine and well when, as you said, you're not stuck in 2* territory AND you have the time to grind. Otherwise it's really hard to place well and get all those Daken covers - our alliance is doing well, ending top 50 in most pvp events, but the recent bracketing changes + not having any 3 star hero prevented me from being top 50 in all but one of the events. Hence, I only have 4 Daken covers, nowhere near the 11 you're giving as example.

Fair enough. Being in 2* territory right now is quite ****, especially since most of the max-2* forumites I've observed aren't getting bracketed into the easy low/mid-tier brackets, but rather ones that always require 950 for Top 10. I believe that D3 should (and I optimistically predict, will) further tweak PVP mechanisms to find a middle ground between the old system and the new system.

With the 5/3/3 number, I was addressing the point about 3*s being released too fast, too furious -- before it's even possible to make them usable without buying covers outright. Taken by itself, the release schedule does generally allow people (some people) to cover a new character to a usable state before the next one is released. How feasible that is for players with varying roster strengths is a related issue, but not quite the same issue. Shieldbro was a pleasant outlier, at least for mid-tier players, in that several sets of his covers were given out in quick succession as PVE rewards, not PVP rewards. Come to think of it, LThor and Falcon also had multiple sets of covers (3/3/3 and 2/2/2, respectively, IIRC) given out as PVE rewards.

Congrats on your alliance performance, by the way. Getting a consistent T50 during the tail end of Season 1 is no easy feat.

Unknown

Its not an opinion, its more like a fact
If you are on top of the chain is one thing (i mean in general), but where did you see a game that punishes participation?
Why someone that completed 2* and is moving on 3* has to face 141 off the bat? I still enjoy the game but its not the same as before
The more you play the harder the game, and thats ok, except that the difficulty scales higher than you can anticipate

HailMary

Agent Alex wrote:

Its not an opinion, its more like a fact

Since you chose to generalize your "facts," this is emphatically false.

Agent Alex wrote:

If you are on top of the chain is one thing (i mean in general), but where did you see a game that punishes participation?

How does MPQ punish participation? The only current way I can think of is in PVE node refreshing, which was designed so that you can place highly without needing to grind 24/7 for 10 days. I'd rather have some refresh timing than essentially be required to do nothing but this game for over a week just to get two Sentry covers. Moreover, PVE has generally been much more friendly toward low-tier players than high-tier players. Witness the number of complaints about 1* and 2* players dominating PVE leaderboards during every PVE but the current one.

Agent Alex wrote:

Why someone that completed 2* and is moving on 3* has to face 141 off the bat? I still enjoy the game but its not the same as before

Some do, some don't. Source: my alliance has several players who have max 2*s and one L100+ 3*. They don't generally face 141s right off the bat. Even when they do on occasion, they can correct for it. I think the death brackets are an actual problem for those players, but it seems that death brackets have become less painful after the conclusion of Season 1. I hope they'll become even easier (for 2* players' sake, not mine), but we'll see if that happens.

Agent Alex wrote:

The more you play the harder the game, and thats ok, except that the difficulty scales higher than you can anticipate

The only place I've seen where this is generally true is for 2*-only players who don't join a good alliance. In all other situations, there isn't a wall. The massive number of 800-point OBW + Thor/Ares teams and 900-to-1000-point Punisher + OBW teams I've fought in every single recent PVP anecdotally demonstrates the strength of the active 2*-3* transition.

Unknown

By fact i dont mean to hold the only truth, i just mean that its what happens to me

Rubberbanding is a way to punish participation for me, you can grind all but someone that plays every 8~12 hours and is there in the last minutes would catch up in a few fights,
Last story event was boring due to low score points but at least you knew that the more you played the more chances to win, still it didnt lasted much and this last event is back to usual
I wouldn't like to play 24/7 anyway, but a middle on that would help

I'm an decent alliance, 50-100 alliance rewards, top 40 overall in Season 1 and I used to be top 25 without issues, top 10 in a good day

Since last changes i'm barely top 50, and while and i thought getting my 2* to 85 would improve things and i'm faced to 141 teams no matter the event, even when i barely use 3* nor put enough iso on them to be more than 60

I dont know, sometimes the logic of the game escapes me and i dont think its just my case