Should Alliances have a " cap"?

Ahoy, pirate. I think that alliances are a particular and personal way to play this game. If players into a server create a "full server alliance" they decide to condivide all the treasures, and they agree to be in that alliance, so it's their chioce to play in this way. Lastly, an alliance is not a guarantee of friendship, it's possible to fight against the allies.

On the other hand I condivide your idea of creating a sort of "alliances war", it could be intresting.

PS: Forgive me for my english I'm a foreigner. ;)

I have always been on board for 2-3 ship max, and loot split by actual percentages. Majority goes to the turn-in crew.

1Ship: 100%
2Ship: 75%-25%
3Ship: 50%-25%-25%

@archangel-timmy I would hope that in a 6 ship alliance not all ships are getting 100%/50% cuts.

@xultanis-dragon Honestly I'm not sure what to think of it man. I joined one and it was a cash grab though not all ships were performing at a high level. It got boring really quick for me. I'd like to see them cap it though if for no other reason than to top off the pay outs.

Speaking for myself, I rather enjoy occasionally being able to join a server-wide alliance; it's kind of like hitting the jackpot on a slot machine, and a great way to increase funds in a short time.
Essentially, these full server alliances are the PvE community's only current means to obtain what amounts to a kinda, sorta PvE server (at least as long as everyone stays connected).
PvP players get what they want whenever they feel like it, because they can just attack the next ship that happens by, and PvEvP players just have to play the game to get what they want, so why should the PvE gold farmers be limited? They aren't bothering anyone, are they?

Look, I like PvP, and I like PvE, and I enjoy them both together as well, but I won't tell anyone how to play the game...which is why I don't think any limitations should be put on anyone's play style (truly toxic players don't fit any of the above categories, so they can go row themselves into the shroud and stay there).
PvP should have all of its rewards, and so should PvE, after all, without PvE, there's no loot to be marauded to begin with, is there?
Capping alliances (as far as the OP goes) does little more than to punish a specific group of players for refusing to do one thing...
Could you imagine the uproar if primarily PvP players were told they could only attack a couple ships a night, you know, just to make things 'even'? Or how about if they were told that their rep , commendations and gold had to be nerfed because they weren't earning it the 'right' way (digging up the treasure instead of just stealing it from another player)?
Just let people play the damned game already...

@jack-flintlock You're comparing apples and oranges my friend. If there was a limit to server alliances it would fix the ridiculous pay outs that now exist. Server wide alliances could still exist by creating two of them and keeping the peace between the two alliances but the pay outs would be more balanced. Giving every crew of a 6 ship alliance a 50% cut is overpaying bigtime.

@xultanis-dragon Infiltrate, pull your crew in and start looting! I love it!

@duke-of-spire said in Should Alliances have a " cap"?:

@jack-flintlock You're comparing apples and oranges my friend. If there was a limit to server alliances it would fix the ridiculous pay outs that now exist. Server wide alliances could still exist by creating two of them and keeping the peace between the two alliances but the pay outs would be more balanced. Giving every crew of a 6 ship alliance a 50% cut is overpaying bigtime.

For the life of me, I'll never understand why what rewards other people get in a game in which purely cosmetic items (clothing and titles) are the ultimate prize, is so important to so many people.

Ridiculous payouts? Seriously? That is the whole point of the alliances; to get a piece of the other crews loot, thus making possibly significantly more gold and rep than you would on your own, and please try to consider that we're talking about imaginary money here, and not real gold or cash.

And my comparison is not 'apples to oranges' when you consider its point: punishing people for not playing the way you want them to, is wrong.

The fact is, ever since talk of private servers began (which does apply to this conversation), anyone with a vested interest in attacking other players as opposed to you know, earning their own loot by completing voyages, has been trying to stop it from happening and barring that, nerfing any kind of rewards that those people get.

It's childish, and a complete waste of time. So, no. Alliances should not be capped, be they of the profiteering sort, or PvP pirating sort, in any way at all.

Like I said previously, just let people play the game, and stop worrying about what they're getting when it really doesn't matter.

@archangel-timmy said in Should Alliances have a " cap"?:

I have always been on board for 2-3 ship max, and loot split by actual percentages. Majority goes to the turn-in crew.

1Ship: 100%
2Ship: 75%-25%
3Ship: 50%-25%-25%

Yeah this is the way it should be.

@jack-flintlock Thanks for your input. I don't agree with you but that's ok. We aren't always going to agree😉

@duke-of-spire

I used to think of this as an issue as well. My opinion has changed. And I say this as someone who speaks out against implementing PvE servers in the game.

I’ve never been against a 6 ship alliance session that forms organically by people going out in the world, meeting other players, and breaking down barriers to become cooperative. The natural way.

I don’t necessarily think it goes along with the Sea of Thieves concept of “how will you respond to random encounters” and “friend or foe” for people to set up Discord servers with revolving door instant access to a full alliance server that is used for the sole purpose of grinding gold and rep, but I don’t see how they can do anything about that without damaging the overall balance of alliances. I don’t think there’s so much of this going on that it actually constitutes as players dividing themselves up based on their motivation, which is ultimately why I think actual PvE servers would be damaging to the game.

I thought about scaling gold and rep to alliance size, but I think that would lead to people being excluded from alliances, or discouraging against large alliances. Which again, they should not discourage large alliances since that is a perfectly valid thing that can form organically through the unpredictable interactions and the shaky sense of trust with other players.

So I’m short, being cooperative, having fun with a large alliance that you’ve put effort into forming organically, and reaping the rewards of is great! Discord servers that just encourage farming/boosting behavior seems odd to me, but I don’t see that it would be worth their time to specifically target these Discord servers and try to do anything about it, as it may have inadvertent affects of the good parts of the alliance system.

I think if they thought something would need to be done about it, they probably would have already made a change.

In summary:
Some of you feel like, "What's it matter if the payouts are out of balance?"
My response: As long as RARE continues to populate the game with TOP 10 lists and Easter Eggs for rare achievements then balancing should always be considered.
Some of us feel at minimum the loot percentages should be brought into line to represent a more realistic payout.
And a couple of us are for capping the alliances.
The best feed back in my opinion was to infiltrate those servers, bring your crew in as people drop out and wreck the alliance at critical points like when they're swapping Athena's. Of course this can only happen on those servers that are looking for players but hey, I'll take it.😀

Thanks to all of you again for your responses!

@duke-of-spire said in Should Alliances have a " cap"?:

While scrolling through the "looking for players posts" this past week I saw a few that mentioned they were in a "full server alliance". I'm not sure what RARE envisioned concerning alliances but I personally feel a total server alliance might be an abuse of the way alliances were intended to be used.

I'm thinking maybe we should "cap" alliances at say 3 ships per server. I'd also consider expanding the frequency of encounters within a server where alliances are formed if that is possible. Maybe if we count the ships within an alliance as 1 ship it would help populate the server so that the competitive edge within a server remains. This is just a theory and all responses/ ideas are welcome. Thanks ahead of time for your input.

I think there should be cap but only for interesting play reasons. I have been in a couple of alliance vs alliance fights and it was really fun. Imagine if you could only have 1 or 2 allies, that forces other players to start their own alliance and contested areas such as the fort become more fun.

This is a big problem, should be fixed.