lmao

Do those guys even know how wolfpacking going at 7 on a rising tides is ?

Congrats though. Please give me the names in DM

It is what alliances do, when you do not give them training maps. clear the map of randoms and then start the training *cough*

The thing is, now there is a form for internals, but i think that even with this, some random groups will continue to wolfpack anyway.

It's not a laughing matter : users already have been disabled for this kind of things.

Yeah, but you have the choice: either Elite Challenge or Training Map

Which I consider a laughable offer, but not of the funny kind

Either that or nothing. And turning public maps into private ones through wolfpacking ain't an alternative. Also, there are limits to what we can obtain : if it's not used, then it will simply be removed, without any ability to follow the "gradual path" where Dorado acknowledges bit by bit the win-win situation of allowing elite and training at the same time.

I have a 7 vs 7 training scheduled, in fact

me and the gang turn public game into test map
but hey! we are not more then coalition limit

Everybody is a random, who is not part of their alliance I suspect



Since PK dropped inactive, I am not that much with the finger on the pulse.

But my current impression is, that the alliance and challenge scene is not in a healthy condition.

One Elite Challenge per month is hardly enough to keep the action going, not to mention the regular issues (still?) occuring with those maps.

The lack of opportunities to train and entertain your members, cause alliances to stagnate and die, like it happened with PK.

Publics are not even a slightest bit of reasonable way to train your members and keep them hooked, in how boring those maps tend to be beside some golden boys.

Not to mention the lack of care from Dorados side to fix all those lingering bugs and inconsistencies in battle behaviour.

If BFM had not asked me to join them, I would have already dropped this game.

Since they have gone mobile, this game does not feel that much of having healthy goals to foster real communities.


Additional Remark:
They don't want their game to be PvE, but that is exactly how those publics tend to be after the first week, if you don't call in your own 'opponents' into a map, which how ever would be illegal, if I am mistaken

The only map I so far witnessed with a more active player based, his getting overrun by a hard golder, so surely a great experience for them.

Can't argue with most of those facts. I'm a bit less bothered by the inconsistencies in game because i'm still playing Supremacy1914, so i can't help but compare the two

Except one : I don't think that granting unlimited elite or unranked would be a life-saver to alliances. Sure, it would be more convenient, and allow for better training and better retention. However, it's to be admitted that even the elite challenge thingy is in decline, with a lot of mobile/casual alliances/players (95% of the userbase) just plainly regard as too bothersome.

It would be great for us, alliances like Nelva or BFM. For the wider community, i have my reserves. There are more active alliances than ever, they are more challenges played than ever, but as you said, it's arguable it's healthy (at least from our perspective).

"Since they have gone mobile, this game does not feel that much of having healthy goals to foster real communities." ---> yes. Different User bases and psychology. The same happened in S1914, and the same happened with the fact we are 30 years old, which is the double of the 15 years old playing this game.

A lot of alliances plainly die from the shock of playing elite challenges too, and our duty as alliance leaders to educate young alliances and introduce them to our world has been a spectacular failure. Mostly, we prefer to organise tournaments in between our irrelevant alliances, than try to fertilise the soil.


"They don't want their game to be PvE, but that is exactly how those publics tend to be after the first week, if you don't call in your own 'opponents' into a map, which how ever would be illegal, if I am mistaken"

What would be illegal would be to bring 2 teams of 5 and establish a cooperation to exterminate the whole map before fighting to have you "public challenge". But i know for a thing that some alliances do speak with partners to ensure that they are two rival coalitions on a map, and they try to kill each other.


This said, as long as Nelva can "live long and prosper", and generally speaking on CoN it's very very very easy to build and keep an alliance lively, i will not migrate.

Has there been any alliance challenge that isn't limited to 5 members?

It could be crazy fun to have a challenge of 20 vs 20 vs 20... If I was in a huge alliance I'd be really excited about "the big war"

It does exist. up to 16 vs 16 so far.

However, they are pretty rare at high skill because of the sheer difficulty of having so much GOOD PLAYERS able to dedicate themselves to sleepless nights at the same time.

So, most 16 vs 16 are more casual, with people playing with activity standards unfit to real challenges. They are great fun, though !

I never suggested unlimited access to those feature, as I understand why they got limited in the first hand. (Between 1 and unlimited there is quite a huge array of possibilies, you could say and unlimited amount of possibilies )

Elite Challenges are in decline, because most new alliances have no clue they even exist. Nothing on the main page tells you about them.
2 years and there is still nothing automated for Elite Challenges. You still can't go into your alliance page and submit a request for an Elite Challenge there.
And regular challenges still lack pretty much all the feature Supremacy1914 offers, so they improved nothing there either.


One of the reason I dropped Supre a few years ago.
After two years of trying to get issues with german translations in CON (forum, discord, german supporter) fixed, I got paid for my effort with 40k gold, but hardly looks like anything of it got really adressed so far...
So I just started to stop caring.


PK did not fight new alliances for a reason, at least not outside of educational challenges, though we were sadly not able to keep them unranked, but because this feature also still does not exist...
How ever the way ranking still works: 'farming' is key, this fertilizes a toxic alliance challenge community from the start, where experienced alliances steam role new ones for easy 'profit'


Also how are alliances supposed to fertilize the soil, without the proper tools to do so?
There are no mock/unranked challenges possibles and even those 'training' games are not inbetween alliances but for the alliance itself.
No to mention that 1 Elite Challenge per month is already not enough for any bigger alliance keep up with those 'farmers'


Fun fact: PK is still ranked 16th, even though they are dead for over a year at least and TLL is still rank 11 even though being dead much longer.

I some fail to see difference between those two 'variants'. In both situations they end up killing each other and they will likely clean up all possible outside meddlers in advance.




So far the biggest I witness was a 12 vs 12 challenge, they were quite fun but most alliances are unable to field as many players of a decent quality or even lead them properly into fight.

Also the system currently can't compute more then two different teams in regards of alliances. It can't even compute to automatically assign the correct team depending on your alliance, at least in Elite Challenges...

Agree.

Unranked are a thing now though

True, kind of forgot, because not sure if anyone even uses them under the current cirumstances because of the core problem:

Alliances can chose for 1 thing per month:
- Elite Challenge
- Training Game
- Elite Challenge for Training (Unranked)

Even for small alliances that is hardly enough to keep them occupied, not to mention bigger alliances with 20-30 members, when most challenge tend to be a 7vs7

Getting 1 each would be not necessarily satisfying enough for big allliances but already a huge improvement

I will convey that once again. I doubt i can reasonably suggest a Elite and a Training at the same time, because there is, always, a underlying philosophy, that so far Dorado hasn't changed :

Alliance players are not supposed to play only alliance challenges, even less challenges where no gold can be spent. There are worries of jeopardising the business (less gold spent), and a worry of segregating the community (alliances playing only internally).

I think however i can find some good arguments in favor of allowing both an elite and an unranked.

To elaborate, this problem is also tied to the state of public games.

If public games were not so god damn awful in the current state of the map, active players would feel less aggressively tempted to hop on alliance challenges like a bottle of oxygen, and of course, in that context, one challenge a month is not enough.

I doubt there are many players who would stop playing publics completely, if you offer them to much play time otherwise.
Even more as long speed maps remain a public feature.

I'm still impressed, how much you can worry about segregating the community while not worrying about keeping players enganged to the community from the start.
The public turn into pure PvE all the time, because the game still fails to keep players engaged into maps, because the scarcity of resources just makes players not play at all instead of spending gold to gain more resources.

Most of my mates from PK for example stopped playing completely and most of those we accepted into our alliance dropped dead without further notice in a few weeks.
One of the reasons, recruiting new players for your alliance is one of the least satisfying experiences.





Even that would be still an huge improvement and give alliances the opportunity to fertilize the soil without chipping away at your own trunk at the same time.