Fearless Defenders Discussion Thread

I just prefer my human interactions to be meaningful, not faceless.

I kinda like the idea of alliances, but it has flaws currently. Basically a scrub low level roster alliance could do okay as long as they pony up the dough to buy as much roster space as possible. I'm currently #1 in my bracket, but my 5 man alliance is struggling to stay in the top #100. I think giving out a bonus cover to alliances is a much better idea than penalizing players who's alliance isn't up to par. Granted, I don't even know anyone in my alliance lol, I just joined one that looked like they had a decent roster of covers like mine. I may look for another after the event though, as it seems the more players = top prizes.

Alliances definitely mean there is no more jumping in at the end to snag a top prize.... Which I had become increasingly guilty of. However if you are not in an alliance you will be able to jump in and get good rewards at the end with less competition since alliance-bound players are likely to have joined early.

Well this event for me, and most of people here, it is super demotivating. What alliances with few players are supposed to do against super teams (14+ players)?

No doubt this actual system needs to be remodeled. Why not split brackets according to number of players into each Alliance team?

Example given
Bracket A - Teams up to 8 players
Bracket B - Teams up to 14 players
Bracket C - Teams up to 20 players

It might not be the best idea, but just a food for thought.

I just wanted to add my feedback regarding the current alliance reward structure. Obviously negative.

It has already been brought up that there really isn't any good way to implement the alliance score that is truly fair. Using the sum of scores greatly favors huge alliances, while using the average score benefits 1-man alliances, etc etc. So the obvious solution is that alliance rewards should never be as significant as covers. Alliance rewards should be as originally communicated, small incidental benefits that are nice to get but do not make alliances mandatory. By removing rewards from normal progression and adding the blue BP cover to alliances, you have effectively made alliances mandatory.

Having such alliance rewards will introduce levels of alliance drama and alliance hopping that will make WoW progression guild hopping look tame. It creates a lot of ill will amongst the playerbase towards players who are seen to be underperforming, or not putting enough time, dragging down the alliance etc etc. There are going to be a lot of freeloaders getting significant rewards for doing absolutely nothing as long as they are in a big enough alliance. Players will be encouraged to keep jumping to bigger and bigger alliances in order to get free loot, completely destroying any social aspect of alliances.

Also, from an economic standpoint such alliance rewards do not scale well. If a huge 50-man alliance comes along, it will undoubtedly get 1st place. With the current 100 HP reward, that means an injection of 5000 HP and 50 BP covers into the economy. As previously mentioned, this will obviously have a huge impact on overall HP flow and will prompt HP income nerfing in other areas under the guise of "balancing the economy".

Last but not least is a topic that I am hesitant to bring up, but knowing human nature it is something that I expect to already be happening. Having tangible alliance rewards has now destroyed D3's anti-cheater strategy. There is nothing stopping someone from creating a new account, using a cheat to get 2147483648 HP, then creating an alliance with 100 slots and inviting random people to fill it up. This alliance is now unstoppable and will easily dominate every single alliance event. You cannot sandbox the entire alliance, and kicking the original cheater does nothing. It is a nightmare for customer support as they will have to go through audit logs to reverse all transactions, and at the end of the day the cheater can just do it again and again because the system is not set up to prevent such abuse, only detect it, and it is also obvious that detection does not occur automatically therefore there is always a window of opportunity for cheaters to affect others.

The solution is to make alliance rewards relatively small, such as 500-1000 ISO or maybe 50-100 HP (not such a great idea due to economic scaling as mentioned above but...). Others have also suggested cosmetic rewards like alliance logos etc. COVERS SHOULD NEVER BE PART OF THE REWARD, especially not at the cost of removing them from normal rewards.

Got to 600. Got my reward for 600, and as I was #1, I shielded. a couple of seconds later I'm hit for 26pts. so now I'm shielded at #2 with 574pts... I'm really happy that everything in this game is working as intended.

Bacon Pants wrote:

Emeryt wrote:

Got to 600. Got my reward for 600, and as I was #1, I shielded. a couple of seconds later I'm hit for 26pts. so now I'm shielded at #2 with 574pts... I'm really happy that everything in this game is working as intended.

I've been seeing a couple of the same people today in matches, if I attacked you multiple times I apologize. I try to skip duplicates after the first match if possible.

Yeah, You hit me for 20sth. I don't mind really, as I retaliated immediately for 39pts

btw. I'm running Punisher 120 + OBW + MStorm. On the jungle map. Pretty easy battles, though a bit timely - I spend a lot of time to find good matches or thinking about tactic (like - I have 10green. should I get more ISO with Storm or start hitting hard with Frank?).
Really nice team and pretty easy to obtain. I suppose switching Punisher for Patch might also be a good idea.

On the other hand, I assume I pose no thread when someone sees me in their queue.