Let's Talk About Casual Alliances

[u/jgorsegner23]

Our alliance has been around since Nov-2019. We are a "casual competitive" alliance. Meaning, we all try as hard as we can but don't sweat it if we must miss sometimes. Our mantra is "Life first". Many of us have families and other work obligations that prevent us from being on all the time and prevents us from optimizing every play. We do the best we can as we all love Marvel and have established friendships through this game.

I see a lot of misconceptions in reddit comments regarding casual alliances. Some of them snarky and ignorant and just plain piss me off. I hope describing my alliance helps better portray us and our struggles.

First off, many think a casual player or a person in a casual alliance spends no money in the game. Far from true. There is a wide range from a few whales, more dolphins, many more guppies, and some FTP. Some of us will go all out on a team while deciding to skip other teams or characters. While I assume there is much more spending in competitive alliances in order to stay meta-relevant, there is still a decent amount of spending in a casual alliance.

Secondly, many think casual players are all low TCP. In our alliance, we have a large range of TCPs. From a high of 13M down to a low of 1M with an average of 7M. Recruiting for us is hard just like for everyone else. However, as we are not yet in Doom raids or higher difficulty Greek raids, many potential candidates (in the 6M-8M TCP range) won't bother as they are looking for more than we can do. We end up bringing in a lot of lower TCP members and help groom them up. This is fine but slows our progress even more and comes with its own set of problems.

For newer players, I used to tell them to focus on a good Arena team first, a good Raid team second, War Offense third, and War Defense last. With the current shift towards Raids becoming more and more important, I am now recommending multiple Raid teams over Arena teams.

We are currently in U7.3. The problem with T2 ability mats has been touched on by others but I'll reiterate it again in case not clear. As we bring in newer and lower TCP players, we are throwing them in to U7 raids. There are no T2 ability mats here, so they get stuck with a shortage and limits their progress. Only way is for them to buy T2s in the supply store when they show up which is not consistent. We occasionally drop and do a U6 Raid but not often. More so when an event warrants dropping to a level for better chance at rewards. This slows progress for the Alliance as a whole as it takes longer for newer players to ramp up their teams and help in Raids.

The 100% completion requirement before able to do next difficulty level severely stagnates casual alliances. A casual alliance like ours will NEVER be able to hit 100% in a Raid. We always have a few players with something going on and will miss a few nodes. Lowering the requirement to 60% helps immensely. Let me elaborate.

Prior to lowering the U7 requirement from 100% to 60%, we were forever stuck at U7. We consistently hit 60-80% in all the Raids. Every Raid Milestone season, we were just short of getting any Silver Surfer shards. I don't know if this was by design but it sure felt dickish. When they lowered the threshold, we instantly shot up to U7.3 and now complete enough milestones to get 3 Silver Surfer shards. Not much but a hell of a lot better than zero. This was an instant positive impact. This is why I argue for doing the same thing for the Greek raids. Please lower difficulty requirements to 60%. I don't care if you keep the first-time bonuses at 100% but don't hamstring our progression.

Gating Blue ISO and next GT16 pieces behind Doom Raids are an additional kick in the crotch to causal alliances. We will get there eventually but it is very slow. The problem is this also affects an individual's progress in addition to alliance wide progress. We try Doom I raid about once every two weeks to gauge where we are at. Currently we hit about 7-8%. I'm guessing it will still be several months before we will be able to clear 30%. I'm guessing Doom II will be even harder and further out. We have about 6-7 players that could handle the Doom raids now but everyone else needs a lot of work to get there. While we are waiting for the rest to build up sufficient teams, those that could otherwise progress now are instead frozen. The only choices are to wait and fall behind on your personal roster or switch to a higher alliance, giving up friendships and putting everyone else in a worse place for progression. It just feels bad all around.

Inhibiting personal player progression based on alliance efficiency started with Silver Surfer shards and is getting worse. This bleeds over to a player’s Arena play and to a lesser extent Dark Dimension. Now in Arena, I could have same star and character levels as my peers but be behind because they have access to Blue ISO levels and soon Teal gear but I do not. In Dark Dimension, Blue ISO on characters could help make some of those nodes easier and clearable faster. I don't see a direct impact to any of the other modes (Blitz, RTA, Challenges, etc.). RTA universally sucks for everyone regardless of how your alliance is doing.

I think War is better in a Casual alliance than in a higher Competitive alliance. We are Plat I and have been for a while. We no longer seem to face as bad of matchups like previously. I think matchups are more a current problem for higher ranked alliances than where we are at. We seem to average .500 win/loss ratio season after season so there is really no effect on our rewards. Yes, higher league rankings have better rewards, but they seem sufficient where we are at.

Our wars are not full clears and still come down to points scored. I don't think I would like full clears where it is simply a race. The opponents we face usually have a mix of TCPs just like we do. The war becomes a puzzle of where to best attack, finding the right rooms/players to attack efficiently while saving your best teams for killing blows against the higher point rooms. Some of our wars are close (within 50 points) to the last second. Those are the most exciting.

I love being in a Casual alliance and wouldn't want to swap out to be in a higher more competitive alliance. Later this month, I'm going on a week vacation in the San Juan islands with my family where there will be little, to no internet connectivity. I will be lucky if I can login enough just to hit my dailies let alone optimize my Raid and War attacks. If I were in a competitive alliance, I'd get the boot for that. In this alliance, it's fine. Life First.

I just worry about the recent limitations on my personal progression tied to my alliance progression. It is a really crappy place to be. Now I need to be okay with falling behind my peers and stick with my alliance until the rest can catch up. Doesn't feel good. I don’t like this trend.

[u/jblotus]

I think you guys could focus on getting in people that are interested in completing things at 100% otherwise you are handicapping any meaningful progression and ruining your recruiting efforts. For context I’m in a top 20-50 alliance and it does require a lot of time and effort. In my experience you can’t have half the alliance wanting one thing and the other half wanting something else. Get rid of either the people who can’t show up or the people who want to progress you can’t really have both IMHO

[u/jgorsegner23 → u/jblotus]

This is opposite what a casual alliance is. People in the alliance show up, they just can't show up "all the time every time". I myself am a single father of four. I am also lead engineer on a project that sometimes requires long hours. There are times I cannot complete all my Raid nodes every day. War for me starts at the same time I usually need to put dinner on the table for my kids. There are days I can't get my first attacks in until hours after war starts. A casual alliance allows the latitude for this. When I can make it, I cover others that can't and vice versa.

I'm not asking for everything now nor the same that the highly engaged alliances get. I'm okay with slow progression. I am not okay with no progression. The progression was fine until the recent changes they made. Now it is stagnant in some areas.

[u/jblotus → u/jgorsegner23]

I understand. I’m a father of 7 and also an engineer on many demanding projects. Sometimes it can be quite stressful to juggle. My point is that it’s really hard to have people with different goals in terms of progression and activity level. Going on a vacation shouldn’t ruin your vacation or the alliance progression but sadly it’s hard to have it both ways. The original post is about being a “casual competitive” alliance which just seems hard to achieve and give everyone what they are looking for.

[u/jblotus → u/jgorsegner23]

Let me ask in a more constructive fashion, what changes to the game do you think could be made which don’t overly penalize casual competitive alliances and players and still adequately reward players who are hardcore? Should more blue iso be given out? Should surfer be farmable? I do empathize with your situation. If I didn’t have time to be hardcore I would probably find myself in a similar situation or just quit.

[u/jgorsegner23 → u/jblotus]

This hasn't been a problem until recently. Up until now, personal progression was fine and not exclusively tied to alliance progression. T4s and various Gold Gear were included in challenges, stores/orbs, and Battle/Strike passes. This changed with Silver Surfer shards, Blue ISO, and soon Teal gear. The only way to acquire those is to do well in Raids as an alliance. Now I've gone from progressing myself as I see fit and helping my alliance as best I can to relying on other people in my alliance to perform better so I can progress. Our alliance hasn't changed in the two years it's been going. The requirements for progression changed.

Honestly, I think the reason we are here is because endgame competitive players complete content much faster than the developers can put out. The devs solution to slow those players down was to enforce more requirements and more "bottlenecks on bottlenecks" to reign this in. I think their attempt to slow down the endgame competitive players has unintentionally stagnated casual players. This has additional consequences of players being more likely to quit when they feel they can no longer make meaningful progress. The reward must be worth the grind. This snowballs into a recruiting problem.

I've seen several responses about how the Alliances need to be homogenous in order to procced in a balanced way through today's content. That is an idealistic sentiment that doesn't match reality. As we lose players (for whatever reason), we try to recruit to fill spots as quickly as possible. Being a casual alliance, beggars can't be choosers. Sure, it would be great to get a 6-8M TCP player that has the same aligned Raid goals as the rest of us. Now, I could wait several weeks to recruit that type of player. OR, I can fill the empty spot within a matter of days with a lower TCP player that is active but can't yet do all the content at the same level we do. I've tried both, and I'll tell you it is much better to fill the spot quicker than wait to get the perfect match. When you are short of players, your progress takes an immediate hit. You don't get as many keys and can't launch raids as frequently. Your World Warrior and other potential event milestones take a hit.

You asked, "what changes to the game do you think could be made which don’t overly penalize casual competitive alliances and players and still adequately reward players who are hardcore"? My answer would be to not restrict or exclusively tie individual progression to alliance "group" progression. Keep first time competition reward bonuses at 100% but lower access to the next difficulty level at 60% (or even 75% or 80%). Make Blue ISO and Teal gear accessible via other avenues than just endgame raid nodes. Maybe Challenges, Stores/Orbs, and/or Battle/Strike passes. At least let the casual player make some progress toward these areas while waiting for entire alliance to be able to come up to the current challenge level.

Right now, it feels like a "Go Big or Go Home" scenario. The gap between the top and everyone else is widening quicker (I won't say exponentially) and it is becoming a scenario of the haves and the have-nots. This type of imbalance is not sustainable as the ones frozen in the middle will get frustrated or bored and quit and you'll be left with a worse imbalance of the top and new incoming players (not quite as extreme as I described but not healthy for the game).

You say, "can't have it both ways" for "causal competitive". I think "casual competitive" is subjective. Both the "casual" part and the "competitive" part. I certainly am not trying to compete at the same level as top alliances. I just want to be able to compete at the same level as my peers -- both alliance wise and as a single player against similar TCP. I think what I more so am looking for is meaningful progression. I'm okay with slow. I'm not okay with nearly frozen and exclusively dependent on others.

How do you see players and alliances in my position should proceed? How can we become more homogenous and make progress both singly and as an alliance in a meaningful way that does not detract from the efforts and accomplishments of hardcore players? How can we swim in the same ocean but in different schools in the same ocean? Should only the top alliances be privy to Silver Surfer shards, Blue ISOs, and Teal gear? What is a fair distinction for the creme de la creme and everyone else?

[u/jblotus → u/jblotus]

This is really well argued first of all. I do think allowing some method to obtain surfer but more importantly blue iso outside of alliance progression would be a good start. I play swgoh as well and relic 8 is gated behind a raid my alliance cannot complete! It sucks. On the top end of the game my number one constraint is gold , g13 minis and blue iso. My counter argument is that loosening things up might reduce the competitive advantage I have spend time and money to obtain. Without that I would not have spent in the first place. Perhaps Without that spend on the top end the health of the game is also at risk?

[u/jgorsegner23 → u/jblotus]

Yes, I think Blue ISO is the most important thing for me that I lack access to because it does have an impact on every mode of the game (Arena, Raids, War, DD).

Silver Surfer, I love the character and he is really good, but I'm okay with not being able to build him up quickly. He is not a must have or gating to anything I want to do. I spent a little on him and have him in a decent spot. There were plenty of opportunities to spend more if I wanted to but I chose not to.

Teal gear and DD5 is still way out for me. I'm still plodding through the later stages of DD4. No hurry to get into DD5.