Alliances in the bronze and silver bracket, honest observations. .
Welderofortune
Member Posts: 527 ★★
This going to be a long and rambling post you have been warned. Late in 2017 I joined an alliance after awhile of not being in one, It was a new one. The leader had as a top champ a four star rank 2, he was a really good guy kept us organized and we barely made it into the silver bracket that first season, i stayed in that one until the spring after a season or two he announced he was fed up and deleting the game. He wished us luck promoted a buddy of mine and me up to officer and told us have fun, have not spoken to him sense. Our alliance quickly went downhill as the new leader would move champs around willy nilly in AW and in general made a pain of himself. After voicing our concerns me and two friends were kicked from the alliance right before rewards were handed out at the end of the season. We then joined another alliance, once again the leader was a rank 2, four star as his top champ. Awesome guy kept us on point, really active in recruiting. He pulled a goldpool and pool stayed his top champ for a couple weeks without passing rank one, in a few more weeks he announced that he was deleting the game and promoted me to leader, I quickly found out why these guys were getting burnt out, as being the leader is a rough thing to be, as you need to take part in everything the alliance does. Within a week I passed the leadership role to a new friend and we saw that season out both of us trying to cover recruitment and running the alliance together, it was still exhausting and nether of us progressed much. I grew to dread having to log on and sort out minor squabbles between alliance members, the game had lost all fun and I was not progressing at all. Sure I was popping a lot of crystals and had tons of glory and gold but no Iso or Class Cats. This put a hold on my rank ups, we then decided to merge with another alliance for the next season. Once again the leader has remained stagnate with just a couple rank one 5 stars, and a few rank two fours. I have reached a conclusion that I hope you guys will comment on down below that being a leader/senior officer in an alliance is really tough on developing players and causes many to drop out of the game due to burn out and lack of progression. I almost came close to deleting when a new member of the alliance I was trying to help run at the time accused me of cheating, this is a game and should be relaxing not just more stress to lay on people. This is all just my two cents have you guys had similar experiences, or do you think it is best for new summoners to try and run alliances to progress quickly. Thanks for commenting and don't call out alliance or other summoners names, thanks and remember its just a game.
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Comments
I myself turned it down three times before I finally agreed because the officer of my BG was leaving and didn't want to leave the BG in the lurch. But right up there with not reading the forums, my advice is don't be quick to step forward and become an officer. You can not care what happens and be a horrible one, or you can care what happens and be a stressed one, but there's no such thing as a good, well respected, effective, happy officer.
I disagree here. While it may not be usual, I have been an officer of my Alliance for a long while now. I'm not the Leader, but I step in and help keep things going with AQ, AW, etc. I have by far the strongest team of champions (currently I'm the only Uncollected in the Alliance, but we have a few guys getting close), and I do spend some time helping others, but I do so because I want to help them grow. We are a low-tier alliance and I believe never made it out of Silver bracket, so no big pressure for top tier expectations or anything. We do what we can, and I've never been unhappy about being an officer.
Maybe that's just a super rare situation, but I would not say it's impossible to find effective yet happy officers in an Alliance.
Of course there are always exceptions, but if the alliance literally has no goal except having fun, it hardly needs officers in anything but name. If all I had to do was push the button and sit back and see if anyone did anything in the events, there'd be zero stress for me as well.
I'm not saying this is bad, I'm saying this is an example of an officer with no responsibilities, because they are in an alliance where no responsibilities of any significance exist to have. Nice work when you can get it.
Before anyone starts worrying about my mental health, I am aware that there is no generalization about players that will hold true across all one million+ players of the game: a generalization with no exceptions is certainly hyperbolic by definition. And everything I do personally is entirely voluntary: I'm not psychologically addicted to the game to the point of self-destruction, nor do other players nor the game operator compel me to do anything explicitly.
But just so there's no confusion, I will retract my prior statement and simply state that it is a very common problem across the game that officers of alliances are under more stress than the game itself places on players on average, because managing other people is in general a stressful affair not just in this game but everywhere. A situation where someone must manage other human beings and there exists no conflicts at all is the exception, not the rule. No one should presume that being an officer is all about the power and control and not about the intrinsic responsibility the person in charge should feel towards the people they are presuming to organize and lead.
In general I think it is a good recommendation for all players to treat the game primarily as a source of entertainment, and not to do things that interfere with that entertainment. However, everyone has to interpret that recommendation through the prism of their own personality. I'm a goal-oriented person, and one of the goals I've set for myself is to help my alliance succeed, and that means taking on responsibilities that aren't necessarily the most enjoyable. For me, that's a choice, and an educated choice based on years of prior experience dealing with that sort of situation. But most players do not take on that responsibility from an educated perspective, and some large fraction of them will find themselves in situations within alliances where it will not take trivial effort to manage the players in that alliance. You can take a laissez-faire approach and simply let the chips fall where they may, but that's not always practical or possible.
No. Just the opposite.
True. And as long as you don't have bills to pay, you're never truly poor.
In general, it shouldn't.
If your only goal is to have fun that’s great. More often than not trying to coordinate 30 people’s schedules and timezones for AQ is occasionally stressful. If you’re a college student or a kid in high school or one of those MCOC mercenaries who’s commented on line chats about “having no life” AQ and other MCOC requirements probably aren’t stressful at all for you.
I’ve been an officer in a mid-level alliance, a platinum alliance that was 10 spots from platinum 2 before AW Seasons stress broke us up, and currently a grinding alliance that has finished top 3 in the group and completion alliance events every time since peak milestones were introduced. I agree with DNA’s original comment and will further comment that it is possible to have no stress and only have fun being an officer in an alliance. All it takes is recruiting members who have no life outside of MCOC except for possibly high school or college classes and not caring when members don’t show up for AQ or don’t place AW defenders or disappear without warning during AQ & AW.