[Mega Thread] Alliances

@supa nothing that you posted is remotely related to the issue I brought up.

@urihamrayne It certainly is. You are concerned with people spawning nearby after they are sunk as a result of PVP. This only occurs when you are in an alliance with them. Therefore the solution is very simple: break the alliance. Without an alliance in play, normal game mechanics take over.

The system is working fine.

@supa Have you considered that multiple alliances can be at play? Do I have to spell it out for you that what you are bringing up is not relevant because you are considering the one scenario where spawn distance is only beneficial to the one alliance? There are going to be people that are going to fight against an alliance that seeks the overwhelm them, and you think that the crew that is being singled out by them can just "break the alliance and solve the problem"?. No, stop bringing this up, it's not the solution, therefore not relevant.

The friendly fire should be off to prevent people who want to troll. This is in my opinion, the only thing you need to change with this excellent feature !

@urihamrayne You should consider being more clear when you make your point. Assuming others follow your thought process doesn't do anyone any favors. Had you stated that to begin with, I wouldn't have wasted my time.

The edge case that you're referencing would not be worth altering the mechanic for. IMO.

It is far more important for an alliance to stay within the same general area for both PVE and PVP.

We're going to agree to disagree on this one, because we have fundamentally different perspectives. I'm going to go back to enjoying the game.

@supa had you actually tried using your head you would not have needed me to draw the bigger picture, but I suppose I expect too much from people.

Anecdote for today (it may or may not have happened, believe if you want): I was playing as a sloop and I met 2 brigantines full of people from my own country, a monumental coincidence, we went to do the skelleton ship event and met a galleon full of people from another country and we allied with them. I spend most of the fight collecting the loot from the ships and putting it on board my sloop while the other 3 ships engaged the skelletons, at the end my fellow countrymen turned on the galleon and told me to get to the outpost to sell stuff, after quicky abandoning the alliance the brigs returned and we sold everything among us leaving the galleon without a single penny.

Moral of the story, had the galleon decided to fight us he would have to sink both the brigantines and our sloop (total of 8 players) while still managing to stop the returning ships that spawned nearby if they wanted the loot. This is the same deal from back in march and skull forts, where having to deal with multiple people coming back within 1 minute of distance was horrid, we managed but it wasn't optimal and will remain so for a long time, there is nothing you can say to imply this isn't an issue, you aren't even allowed to disagree because Rare themselves admited by their own willingness to change the respawn distance for the regular ships back in april. Of course I don't expect anything anymore, this whole nonsense is going into my list of steps backwards (that could arguably be plunges backwards) this game does with every update, this one is just the more blatant one.

The alliance system is a very good idea! After the skeleton ship events, I think it should be limited to a maximum of 2 boats per alliances. Because it's too easy to get into a game and let our allied boats do all the work. Moreover, if there is an alliance of 4 ships on the same server, they would be unsinkable. Having a limit of 2 boats would limit these problems.

Another thing to put in place, we should see the nicknames of the Allied boat players in a different color than the enemy ships and different from nicks of the players of our crews, so 3 different colors! it would make it easier to recognize allied and enemy players.

Love love love love it!!

We need to be able to lock the alliances. I did two fleet battles now and got screwed twice by randoms joining our alliance. Once was stealing loot and then leaving and selling it after getting a portion of all our loot and then tonight we were trying to do the commendation where the fleet has to have the same sails and they came in and ruined it for us by joining without the sails.

Let us lock the alliances please or kick people out.

@edemardil just posted this in another thread then saw this so here is what you have to do.

Once you are in an alliance go to the crows nest and on the pennants tab click the chest with the red arrow. This keeps you in the alliance. All ships in the alliance must do this, then no one else can join.

After you have done that you can fly any flag from the first tab.

I have to tell you what happened to me and my friend
We tried to beat the new event with skeletons ship near the east of marauder's arch.
We were on a sloop but we made an alliance with 2 other ships before we started.
First : They leaved the game 10 min after the start of the event. What the f**k, it's not game developpers fault but still... What the f**k ?
Second : The megalodon was here and he was a pain in the a*s. Seriously it's hard enough why the megalodon is here with skeletons ?
Third : We were completely full, max cannonball, max planks : IT WASN'T ENOUGH. But we won the event, after 1h of fight where my friend was just taking out the water for like 30 min because we were out of planks and i was aboarding ennemies ship to steal their cannonball to fire at them with it. We were very happy, very tired but very happy. We started the event day 21 and finished it day 26. I was taking our loot while my friend was STILL taking out the water of our sloop and guess what happened ? 1 min after we won the event, it started again. Sooo we tried to flee with half of the loot and we got poisoned by their cannonball in loop (dancing demons crew) and we sinked like idiots.
WHY ? We didn't even finished to take our look and the event STARTED AGAIN seriously why ? Who set the spawn time of the event ? Who did this ? It's horrible

Sorry i'm mad, sorry english is not my first language. Sorry if i look like a r****d, but it was the most traumatising experience i ever got in a video game and i hope you understood why and i hope i was clear enough

@urihamrayne said in [Mega Thread] Alliances:

@supa had you actually tried using your head you would not have needed me to draw the bigger picture, but I suppose I expect too much from people.

Anecdote for today (it may or may not have happened, believe if you want): I was playing as a sloop and I met 2 brigantines full of people from my own country, a monumental coincidence, we went to do the skelleton ship event and met a galleon full of people from another country and we allied with them. I spend most of the fight collecting the loot from the ships and putting it on board my sloop while the other 3 ships engaged the skelletons, at the end my fellow countrymen turned on the galleon and told me to get to the outpost to sell stuff, after quicky abandoning the alliance the brigs returned and we sold everything among us leaving the galleon without a single penny.

Moral of the story, had the galleon decided to fight us he would have to sink both the brigantines and our sloop (total of 8 players) while still managing to stop the returning ships that spawned nearby if they wanted the loot. This is the same deal from back in march and skull forts, where having to deal with multiple people coming back within 1 minute of distance was horrid, we managed but it wasn't optimal and will remain so for a long time, there is nothing you can say to imply this isn't an issue, you aren't even allowed to disagree because Rare themselves admited by their own willingness to change the respawn distance for the regular ships back in april. Of course I don't expect anything anymore, this whole nonsense is going into my list of steps backwards (that could arguably be plunges backwards) this game does with every update, this one is just the more blatant one.

I skimmed through the replies and this is from 20 comments ago and didn’t see if this was replied to but I agree with you.

Would it really be so bad for sunk crews (especially in the case of an alliance betrayal) to have to wait 5-15 minutes while doing mini games on the ferry (like we were told would be the case looong ago) ? No that would make perfect sense, any crew that attacks a ship that is either in your alliance or was in the one you left within a certain time (5-10 minutes) and then is sunk would incur the penalty, or some other similar solution, I’m sure this or any idea isn’t without faults and would need changes to further improve it, but that’s the thing, the entire game needs more things that dictate behavior rather than an arbitrary flag system that really doesn’t change much except duplicating loot, and add ships to the maps.

Alliances should have been added to give allied crews some peace of mind based on how the alliance system would work, rather than just being there to duplicate gold and really having no “conditions” to the agreement, so to speak.

It's really rather simple, Rare you screwed up with the alliance system.
Its exactly what you should not have done and we are seeing the Sea of Friends happening as we speak.
There is no danger anymore within the game.

There is a few aspects to this depending on what you are doing at the current time in game.

1. Events: The system is clearly a rather good option if you are going to do harder activities like the forts or skelly ships and don't feel like battling it out with another crew over who gets it.
   So that option is fine, what is not fine how ever is the reward system 100% to what you sell and 50% to the other crew.
   WHY!! Why would you ever think this is a good idea, this only leads to the fact that you will now still have to battle with your now allied crew over who gets the best treasures or you will have to stop at some point and split it 50/50 so no one looses out.

2. Voyages: this system is WAY WAY to good, there is absolutely no reason why the entire server should not be in an alliance, its simply 50% loot for everyone with no downside.
   Again WHY! would you think this would not happen?
   No downside = no reason not to do it.
   The only thing there is in the game is the insane grind to legend, this gives you 50% more progression towards that with no downside or risk involved.

So how do you fix it.
In general the Alliance system should be in place not to boost you outright, but to give you an option to band together with other ships to make things easier to do, like forts or skelly ships.
Or because you can be more ships together meaning you can do voyages faster or more of them = more gold per hour.
This is good options to have should you choose them, but there has to be a flip side to the coin, a downside.

You don't want to have to battle it out with the other crew over who gets what loot, it should not matter who sells it after you do an event or fort.
No matter what crew sells the loot it should be shared within the alliance evenly, but since you made it easier to do the event then you get slightly less rewards because of the split with the other crew, example of this could be 70-80% of the loot.
You lose out on example 20% of the loot, but you did it much faster and easier so the gold per hour is still much better.
The same goes when voyaging with an alliance, you get less gold per sell but you can do it faster so in the end it works out if you are efficient enough = more gold per hour.

Clearly you guys are lacking gamer perspective when you are making your new systems, I just don't understand how these decisions goes trough without realizing the same things that lots of people are writing here.
Ask us more before you implement these things and you will get it right the first time = less time spent correcting already done work.

Alliance made

Allies ship sinks, jump on ours

Continue battle

Their ship respawns and gets materials

Our ship sinks

Allies sink skele ships, disband alliance, screw my crew for our efforts

Alliance system is major broken garbage.

0/10 will not use again.

Should not be able to break alliance unless server is left.

I'm loving the alliances - they're making the seas a slightly friendlier place. However, I also think they need to be the starting point for something bigger - and that's allowing multiple ships full of your friends onto the same server.

Last night, we had eight people in party chat, spread across two servers. Two galleons of people who knew one another and wanted to do the same thing - sink skeleton ships. As it stood, both groups sailed around, loaded up their ships, then failed to find other crew to form an alliance with, and subsequently failed to complete the event they wanted to. If we'd been able to sail together, we'd have had even more fun.

So... yeah. Alliances need to be a stepping stone, I think - rather than being considered a whole solution in their own right.