Alliance seems fine to me. It’s pushing GW to another step.
We can imagine treason (ie one guild didn’t change their defense and just take advantage that the other guild low his defense), spies or whatever.
And that’s why it’s interesting: devs gave us GW and we can go further by adding Guild Diplomacy where you have to deal relationship between guilds. And it could show where devs have to go. What some players want to. Because I’m sorry but GW are just 30 “PVP” battles so nothing new in terms of gameplay…
So yeah, some players decide that GW should be like sports. Why this analogy? It’s not Guild Sports that we have, it’s Guild Wars. It seems you have a point of view and then find a good analogy that fits it and uses it as a proof. GW is like X, in X context, alliance = cheating so in GW context, alliance = cheating.
About sister guilds:
Guild Wars today force us to put the worst defense to stop the invaders to make more points (it’s maybe true only in the first brackets). Not funny team. Not challenging team. But trolling team composed generally of some unbalanced troops (cough cough Famine).
Do you really think that sister guilds want to force their friends to fight against another Deathknight/Famine/Death/Famine? You’re talking about competition but if there is no competition between two guilds, I don’t see why one player will have to put an horrible-to-fight defense team…
About the 10-guilds alliance:
It is a extreme case. We can just assume what happens if these 10 guilds have the same points. Another parameter could be taken into account. Or the rewards can be split (ie 150 gems for the 10 guilds better than 1,500). There is way for devs to counter that.
But I can understand that devs are afraid of this situation and that could be the reason why they didn’t give a clear “okay” to alliance.
That all made sense. It also proves the theoretical collusion posit to be an impossible scenario, if the multiple factors in braket layout is correct.
The top tier guilds would never be able to hold the top tier even working together. It would only give the top tier guilds the best possible chance to remain.
Just out of curiosity -
i know this will be just a small portion of players or even small portion of forum users but im still curious:
lets see what the tendency is, so we could actually discuss the main subject here
I would like GW alliances and setting easy teams in the GW to help another guild - to be ALLOWED and legal
I don’t mind if it is allowed or not
I would like setting easy teams in the GW to help another guild - to be FORBIDDEN, illegal and punishable - i want it official right now - even if there is no method that would clearly make it impossible or not-beneficial (maybe make it impossible or not-beneficial in the future)
I would like setting easy teams in the GW to help another guild - to be made IMPOSSIBLE to do, or to make it not-beneficial to the “helping” guild by adding some kind of automated negative consequences to the process (like including gw defense wins/losses to the gw points score) - i can wait until its implemented
I don’t want to state my opinion
I am not sure yet (in this case please just wait to vote later)
Yes I want to see this cheating be made illegal. If a few guilds are working together to get maximum points why bother even playing when there is no way for me to even have a chance at getting better rewards.
If the devs ever do say that this cheating is allowed I’ll probably just quit playing.
I will not cheat. I just want a fair guild vs guild competition where the guilds that put in the effort of coming up with teams and winning their battles gets rewarded.
Here is the thing about an Alliance that I think people are forgetting…
Does it make it easier for (provide an advantage to) those two teams by giving them, potentially, a free maxed out GW point day?
YES
Does it prevent other teams from maxing out their points too?
NO
Just because two Guilds assist each other, does not mean that every other guild can’t still have perfect runs as well and in the end a non-Allianced team could still prevail. After all, the team that was part of the Alliance would still have to face 5 other Guilds with whom no such Alliance exists, in this example.
EDIT: Altered first question for clarity per @beanie42 post below.
This is a bit of a red herring, since your carefully selected questions do not include the important “Does a team with an alliance have an advantage over a team without an alliance?”. Those with an alliance are getting those max points for “free” while others would need to work for them. Also, while other teams could tie you, nobody can beat you. There is basically no risk to you. If you like/want alliances that’s fine, but trying to make it sound like there isn’t really an advantage is disingenuous. To use an analogy (switching to cards since sports seems to be annoying some while failing miserably), if we play euchre and you start with 5 points, I can still win but I am objectively at a disadvantage. You can debate whether that is fair, reasonable, allowable, but you can’t say it’s not really an advantage.
I hear you @beanie42 and perhaps my wording was not as direct as you would prefer, but my first statement was not intended to be disingenuous. By making it easier it is clearly advantageous.
You aren’t going to have any non-allied team in Bracket 1 making a perfect run against another team. Let’s just keep this realistic. Defenses at that level are filled with meta instakill/devour defenses. (Not to mention, a legit perfect run requires far more skill and work than faked perfect runs.)
So, allied teams at that level will gain a significant point advantage over others in that bracket. There is no getting around that.
In top bracket the competition is very tight. The difference between winning or losing a war or a whole week could be determined by a single battle lose or even couple of troop loses. If this alliance is allowed then it will be who got more alliance to win. Two guilds colluding already make some big gap in points, let alone 3 or 5. I think it’s not the spirit of Guild Wars in the first place. And I don’t want this become alliance vs alliance. GW will be boring as hell. Winning a battle will be worthless because you got it effortlessly. You don’t need to think really hard to build a good monocolor deck and practice with it to fight specific defense. Etc etc.
This is 100% true and also something that I think needs to be pointed out.
That bracket means bracket 1, and to be perfectly honest, Bracket 1 is the ONLY place where this would even occur because from Bracket 2 down everybody gets the same thing!
So, there has been a huge uproar about something that only affects the very tip top of players. When Mean Machine was in Bracket 3, this thought never occurred to us. But when we suddenly found ourselves in a Bracket where each position mattered greatly we saw this as a viable strategy, to help ourselves and our friends attain better rewards. (PSA: I am not defending ethics. That has been addressed ad nauseum above so please do not get hung up on this statement.)
With that being said, as a PROPONENT of Alliances, I would love to see EACH bracket have tiered rewards that would encourage this behaviour all the way down the ranks.
If the community is TRULY against this kind of strategy/collusion (choose your favorite color commentary) then perhaps rewards should be fixed for each Bracket. Then the accomplishment is breaking INTO Bracket 1, not WINNING it.
If alliances are allowed, everybody would be in bracket 1 and tied for first. Or alternatively bracket 1 would be a revolving door based on which 10 teams won a tie-breaking coin toss. But basically every team would have max points. And any team without an alliance and max points would be left in the dust (which is why they too would join the max points alliances out of necessity).
Ignoring the ethics as you suggested, I think the issue is NOT the rewards/brackets so much as the lack of any defensive incentive or downside to alliances. From a game theory point of view, under the current scoring if alliances were allowed then it would objectively be a mistake to not be part of it. It’s not strategic (or even a choice) if there’s only one way of doing things. If there was a trade-off, some sort of risk/reward where both sides (those in alliances and those outside of them) could gain an advantage, that would be a different discussion. But that would require defensive teams or results to affect scoring in some way. Using another non-sports analogy, it’s like the early discussion of the game “rock-paper”, before it evolved into it’s current more playable form.
