Poll Time: What is your ideal alliance type?

This is just for fun and to get a general feel of the overall spread of forum posters…

Poll is regarding YOUR IDEAL ALLIANCE type, which may or may not reflect your ACTUAL current alliance (if you have one)…

And no, this is not a recruitment thread or anything like that. Just me being bored and generally curious.

So without further ado…
WHAT IS YOUR IDEAL ALLIANCE?

  • Full alliance, strong members only, 13-14* titans, full participation mandatory all the time, go hard or go home!
  • Full participation expected, strong members preferred, currently fighting mid-high titans but hoping to get to top level eventually, occasional slacking permitted on a case by case basis
  • Full participation is ideal but not mandatory, not too picky about player strength, days off permitted
  • Training alliance, here to help newbies git gud. Low levels welcome and encouraged! We share tips and stuff, no judgment on scores, but we do expect you to put in effort and try to prove (and improve) yourself
  • Leader hasn’t logged on in over 3 months, nobody really cares, we just do our own thing when we feel like it
  • Single player alliance, I answer only to myself, and that’s how I like it
  • Mercenary. Nobody can tie me down. I go where I want, when I want.
  • Alliance-less because I just play this game on a casual level and have no desire to interact with other players or fight these “titans” or whatever they’re called
  • Alliance-less because I’m new and don’t know… what the heck is an alliance and what is the purpose?

0 voters

1 Like
Unimportant complaints

Accidentally clicked, and it won’t let me unclick :woman_shrugging:

Also, it won’t let me copy paste, and won’t let me see the poll and edit this post at the same time :angry:

My ideal alliance not really represented in the poll:
-Full participation required, except in RL serious issues. Prefer to notify in advance and opt out, but sometimes crap happens and that’s forgiven. Slacking off is not forgiven

-mid-level players and up. Not really trying for a certain alliance score. If it goes up, that’s nice but don’t really care

-11* titans with occasional 12*. Titans that will be let go called at the beginning so items are not wasted

-war strategy focused enough to beat higher power alliances sometimes, but not so rigid I have to plan my day around it

Yet more unimportant stuff

I’m actually in an alliance that satisfies most of these. Except we are stringing 12* with the occasional 13* titans and they kick my heinie :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

11 Likes

Sorry, I shouldn’t have used the word “slacking” in my poll… sounds like yours would fit mostly with

  • Full participation expected, strong members preferred, currently fighting mid-high titans but hoping to get to top level eventually, occasional slacking permitted on a case by case basis

The “slacking” term was just a cover-all for anyone who misses flags. They might have fully legitimate reasons for doing so. Hence the “case by case” basis. :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes

This poll is very telling I think of the general sentiment I have that advice on the boards is disproportionately applicable to the top tier/time players. The silent majority of lurkers need to keep this in mind when reading advice.

:beers:

6 Likes

My ideal alliance isn’t in the poll either.

Can I have a variable number of non-serious, but egghead nerd friends to drink beer with while 30 mega-powered bot accounts who never miss anything do all the hard work? And then I step in every now and again and declare Victory Against Someone Important? Is there some kind of split personality where everyone I know is super serious about doing the very best they can, but also doesn’t care at all, so there’s no conflict?

Why isn’t that on your list?

This is why I’m not in charge of anything. :rofl:

5 Likes

Not on the list because I have yet to see an alliance like that.

If you find one who is looking for a merge, please do let me know. I like the idea of bots giving me free loot while I sit back and drink beer.

3 Likes

Very common in almost every community, online or off. See the cloud of regulars hanging around at every comic book store, skate shop, and sewing shop. It’s a phenomenon that is well-know to business as a barrier to new customers. Bricks-and-mortar businesses that do not address this often sink pretty rapidly.

4 Likes

I based my choices on a few factors:

  • Alliances I have been in myself
  • Alliance recruitment ads regularly posted here
  • Anecdotal experiences from other players I’ve talked to
  • Alliances I have warred against

Seems to be quite a wide spread in the overall actual E&P community between full active vs. “nobody gives a damn” alliances. And then a rogue group of mercenaries and alliance hoppers and such.

It appears that the forum community tends to lean towards full activity / mandatory play, but reality is that they probably don’t represent the “average” E&P player who just downloaded the game because “it looked like a fun thing to do in my spare time”… but who don’t actually care enough to join a forum or research hero synergies and such.

5 Likes

Indeed.

I liken it to hockey, because I’m Canadian, and I can. :rofl:

The vast, vast majority are pickup players. They show up for weeks at a time, and then vanish, because real life. A few of them are really good, but most are not and just want some exercise and a little friendly competition. This is the nameless come-and-go audience that just play E&P casually

Then comes the rec leagues, from D up to A. In D, you’ll get at least one guy thrown off the ice per game for being too drunk, but that person’s team is only annoyed because that person is probably going to empty the cooler while he sits in the stands. The A group are all pretty dedicated, some probably played in uni or something, but few of them are the kind of people who go home and do drills. The A group guys, and maybe a few from B, also volunteer to organize the league and officiate. This is the bulk of low-to-mid alliances. Mostly, these people think about the game on game day and that’s it. It also includes a few people who maybe don’t care about the strategy, but like the group play aspect and socialization

Up from there, we have the college players and the intercity leagues, maybe A or AA. The young ones are on their way up, but many are veterans just relaxing into the notion that they had their shot, and they’re not going to make it. These guys compete hard, and it means something to them. They are dedicated, but are also not really making a living at it, so even though their lives revolve around hockey, RL must occassionally rear its ugly head. These are the hardcore alliances that have stepped back a little. They will occassionally shoot for top scores in particular aspects of the E&P, but are not in constant contention. This is not a big group, as the newer people want to move up, but the veterans that relaxed back here are on their way out.

Finally, we have the AAA teams and other NHL farm system teams. These guys live and breathe hockey, and although the pay is not great, scrape by with a little help. They are thus relieved of almost any RL problems that interfere with training, and they train hard. These are the fabled Top 100 Alliances that everybody’s always talking about.

In this analogy, THERE IS NO NHL, which is why a certain kind of person will just never see any sense in the last two groups’ level of dedication. :rofl:

Forum reading probably starts around Rec Group B or C, but making a meaningful number of posts is not the same thing. Funnily enough, I’m willing to bet that a substantial number of AAA-level players mostly exist inside their alliances ecosystems, and only use the forum as a reference, just like the Rec League people do. The bulk of the forum participation comes from the Rec A - college level people.

It’s worth noting that the Mods, beta-testers, and other weirdos are those few people that “want to put back into the community”. The key here is that they are not representative of ANY of these groups, and could come from almost any group but the pickup players.

5 Likes

Every bit of this I agree with.

Also mis-clicked Hahahah :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, I don’t care what * Titan. As long as people having fun. I do expect war participation. If you opt in , take your darn hits lol. (Gotta be real rare tbag doesn’t happen)

4 Likes

…record shop #guilty

1 Like

Very much like the sports analogy.

I’ve never played hockey myself, but the analogy works. And I agree.

Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to go full hardcore in this game, as there is no real world “prize” for “winning”. And even those who “win” (let’s say they make #1 in leaderboards)… 5 minutes later they get knocked down again.

A lot of effort for a few seconds of glory. Better hope you took a screenshot! Otherwise “pics or it didn’t happen” etc.

Majority of actual players probably are just pickup players.

My bad, I screwed up the poll again…

I try to base them on the basic poll scale of “strongly agree” down to “strongly disagree” while also including an “IDGAF” option, but yeah, doesn’t always fit every possible subcategory.

I usually suck at taking surveys myself for the same reason… they ask me “so do you like this or not?” and I say “well I like some parts but not others”… “that’s not the question, we don’t care about your individual opinions on every aspect, it’s a simple yes or no”… okay then put me down for “neutral / no opinion”.

I hope for and expect full war participation from those who voluntarily opt in… but… I’m also not a fan of kicking otherwise good members out over a single mishap… especially not if they have a good reason.

Way I see it is… titans appear every day. Wars happen twice a week. It’s much easier to recover from a lost war or titan than it is to replace an otherwise good teammate.

:slightly_smiling_face:

4 Likes

Ran through a lot of wars in other alliances where members would use 3, maybe 4 flags lol. Like, hey don’t opt in if ya aren’t gonna use the flags ya know :stuck_out_tongue:

Absolutely agree a one time infraction, or repeated infraction with apology / explanation is fine with me. ■■■ happens :slight_smile: as long as it’s explained almost the frequency doesn’t matter too :slight_smile:

I don’t care about Titan participation bc I don’t care what star Titan we fighting. But if ya aren’t hitting titans At all you are probably not gonna be an active player much longer , too :stuck_out_tongue:

Ah, the ole Likert scale :stuck_out_tongue: you’d need a multi question survey here to assess the same queries with a likert scale.

For example, you ask if we value the following variables in an alliance:
Activity
Team power
Desire for growth

You can not use a single likert scale question if you want to know all 3. A response choosing an option which says “I don’t care if we have much team power but I want the team to be active and grow” … was the option selected because the person wants an alliance that is Chatty/active, or because they want to be in an alliance that will help them to grow their roster/strategy and rise in the leaderboard ? There’s no way to know which reason the person chose.

Of course if we could agree on specific archetypes for alliances this would be feasible. But you’d want to probably conduct a poll to define those first :rofl: at which point this is officially a full time job and I’d start in voicing SG :stuck_out_tongue:

Simplest is, You’d want a separate question around each.

“I value individual players being held accountable to their In game activity, with an expectation that ALL team activities will be participated in.”
Strongly agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly disagree

Or something of that Ilk. Then ya make questions for the other 2, and then ya chart out the results I guess :stuck_out_tongue:

If you want to check on those 3 variables in a single question, looking for relevant importance, I would probably build the question like:

“The most important aspects of alliance to me are:”

  • activity and personality
  • activity and growth (individual and alliance)
  • activity (double weight activity as a response here)
  • growth (ind and alliance) (double weight)
  • growth and personality
  • personality (Again you’d double weight the response)

I’d chart out the results of this on a bar graph with only the 3 variables. Every response choosing activity and personality would provide +1 to activity and personality and zero to growth. If someone chose just activity, I’d double weight it. You could even triple weight those responses - for those people it is CLEARLY the most important aspect, so this carrying extra weight in your analysis makes sense. Then repeat for all 3 variables with the same method and viola - what are the most important aspects of alliances to members?

If you wanted to add in a fourth variable (say, team power of members), you’d be in trouble cuz you’d have to add like a bajillion survey options. (Or remove the individual options)

Final edit: while I think your methodology could be improved I supplied some ideas for how I’d approach this survey … that doesn’t mean I’m right or that that’s the only option. The @Brobb of the world could certainly provide a more precise, scientific methodology. I’m just makin ■■■ up same as you :stuck_out_tongue: but I thought there’s a chance someone may read what I wrote and think “ah, this makes sense.” So, I’m going with it :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes

Heh I left an alliance in which I felt good but there were only 13 of us and I wanted to belong to something stronger. Months later my old alliance is much more powerful than my current one and I’m too ashamed to come back. And there isn’t any room left anyway.

1 Like

Good observation. I’d venture to say that the average player doesn’t read the forum. Some don’t even know it exists. Some may pop in occasionally to have a specific question answered.

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That’s what I feared the most when people told me I should leave my alliance for better loot. Leave my friends behind so that I can pull an extra compass here and there? Leave an alliance where other members are jealous of my scores, to join a strong alliance where others look at me and say

“well… those scores aren’t bad for a newbie, I guess… what’s your roster look like? Wow that’s a lot of 4 stars… when do you plan on getting more 5s? Also, I see you didn’t show up to hit until like 3 hours after the titan had already spawned… what happened, miss your alarm clock or something? We expect promptness around here…”

:grimacing:

And @Duaneski… my alliance almost never leaves war flags behind. Most of our war opponents regularly leave at least 5-10 unused for whatever reason. :man_shrugging: I excuse the occasional slip on my own team when the player has a good reason.

I guess it’s mostly that in my alliance, we value teamwork and friendliness the most, and put less emphasis on people playing 24/7 or always getting the highest scores.

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I approve heartily of this concept :slight_smile:

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Only reason I don’t go overly strict on the war flag thing… is because I know that none of our people ever miss flags on purpose. On the rare occasion that it does happen, it was an honest mistake (player meant to opt out of that war due to time constraints). I’m not going to kick someone out over an honest mistake. I’ve got great players on my team. All different skill levels, each with their own individual strengths. If they don’t feel like fully participating in the war, I simply ask them to opt out. And they do. :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

I’d get in touch with your old alliance. Good people are harder to find than you think. I’m assuming you left on good terms… They’d welcome you back if a space became available.

GL

2 Likes

Can’t speak for their old alliance, but if any of my current members ever left on good terms and wanted to come back later? I’d absolutely let them back in.

There are also a few players from my original alliance who I’d be happy to bring on board with me if they ever popped up again. I don’t know whatever happened to most of them, guessing the majority of them no longer play the game at all, but if they do? Heck yes I’d love to have them join us (the good ones anyway… the bad ones, not a chance…)

2 Likes