Four participants, Wouldn't mind hitting the 3m milestone and we started the week late so its definitely a possibility if we pick up the extra day. Around 7k points per fight (I guess this is based on alliance prestige lol)
For me hitting that 8mil peak milestone by doing map 2 with master modifiers is important. There is a good jump in glory up from 700 at 6mil to 1200 at 8mil. So definitely worth pushing to hit 8mil every AQ.
I'm doing exactly what you're talking about; staying solo because it suits me, but running my own alliance for Glory. I just feel that if I was in a full alliance, on LINE, that I'd end up spending more time in chat, in war and so on; and it would impact on my current work/family time. Maybe I'm wrong...
I'm also FTP, and just take the game slow, for fun. So I'm Uncollected; completed Act 5 but not into Act 6 yet. Completed Variant 4, but not explored.
With that explanation of my status: I run both AQ Map 2 three times and Map 3 twice with my own Alt account. You can usually finish both if careful about using your energy; and since the introduction of Map Modifiers, I typically get to a score of over 8,000,000 without too much difficulty or use of items. I recently created a third, minor account just for a bit of extra Alliance Quest Energy; as it can get a bit tight finishing otherwise and I missed out on finishing one or two maps.
Running all five AQs (three on Map 2, twice on Map 3) currently earns me 1200 Glory for the Peak Milestone, plus usually 400 or 450 for Alliance Rank rewards. So about 1600 Glory per eight days.
It's certainly enough to assist in building up T5B, which is my main motivation for running AQ at all; and you get useful units, revives and so on from Alliance Events. (And @phillgreen? Definitely, just do it!)
This is me, if you want to take a look at a relatively casual FTP 'solo' account:
I'm doing exactly what you're talking about; staying solo because it suits me, but running my own alliance for Glory. I just feel that if I was in a full alliance, on LINE, that I'd end up spending more time in chat, in war and so on; and it would impact on my current work/family time. Maybe I'm wrong...
I'm also FTP, and just take the game slow, for fun. So I'm Uncollected; completed Act 5 but not into Act 6 yet. Completed Variant 4, but not explored.
The way I would describe that is you want to play the game on your own terms. Which was the main motivation for me posting about this "strategy" - it isn't optimal, it doesn't outperform active alliances, it isn't even necessarily recommended for most players, but it is an option that exists, that maybe many players haven't considered, that opens the door to alternate play styles.
People should feel free to play the way they want to play, as long as they accept the fact that there will be limitations on how fast they can progress doing things unconventionally. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to push the envelope on what's possible within those limits.
I have just done almost a week solo of map 2 just to see how it was and I think if I did map 2 X5 days I would hit the 6mil cutoff not tons of rewards but it's something ?
I'm doing exactly what you're talking about; staying solo because it suits me, but running my own alliance for Glory. I just feel that if I was in a full alliance, on LINE, that I'd end up spending more time in chat, in war and so on; and it would impact on my current work/family time. Maybe I'm wrong...
I'm also FTP, and just take the game slow, for fun. So I'm Uncollected; completed Act 5 but not into Act 6 yet. Completed Variant 4, but not explored.
The way I would describe that is you want to play the game on your own terms. Which was the main motivation for me posting about this "strategy" - it isn't optimal, it doesn't outperform active alliances, it isn't even necessarily recommended for most players, but it is an option that exists, that maybe many players haven't considered, that opens the door to alternate play styles.
People should feel free to play the way they want to play, as long as they accept the fact that there will be limitations on how fast they can progress doing things unconventionally. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to push the envelope on what's possible within those limits.
Absolutely. If you want to progress fast, then this definitely isn't the way to do it.
But if you just enjoy playing the game at your own pace, then a personal mini-alliance is definitely a way to get useful resources.
I just thought I'd be a useful example of what can be done for you. The next milestone is 10,000,000 honour; and only gives 1250 Glory - just 50 more. So where I am is probably the upper end of what is realistic to earn as a 'solo' alliance player. Active alliance play will probably earn way more; but this is fine for me, at least for now.
I'll need to log in to check where we ended up but for minimal to no effort besides a handful of really easy fights I'm a little annoyed that I never bothered before because grinding for T3cc really annoys me and T1A is always welcomed. That stuff is easy to get with glory though I'm at the point where I want T5B, this will get me there much quicker.
Thanks for the thread @DNA3000 , 'twas the kick up the bum I needed and @Magrailothos for showing what can be done without getting all caught up in the game and turning it into a job.
This is an interesting analysis. I usually play a more competetive side of the game, but there's always a month or two when I need a break, and I always go solo in December due to the holidays. While I enjoy the break from competetive AW/AQ and enjoy the time I have to focus on solo content , I do miss the rewards from the ally content. I'm pretty confident I could do map 3 on my own. I even kinda want to test map 4 solo, though I think that might be a bit too ambitious. My prestige atm id 10.4k, so I'm curious as to where that could land me after reading this. I might give a solo ally a shot on my next break. Appreciate the break down!
Thanks for the thread @DNA3000 , 'twas the kick up the bum I needed and @Magrailothos for showing what can be done without getting all caught up in the game and turning it into a job.
Another thing this experiment tells me is that in spite of the fact that it can seem like this game is a job, most players don't treat it as a job: its just that the most visible or vocal players tend to be the most active.
After all, you managed to become one of the top 17,000 alliances in AQ. You as in you all by yourself outperformed probably close to half of the alliances out there. True, you used alt accounts, but still. *Most* people play the game casually, and as they can, at their own pace. We just don't hear about them, or even see them. Until we do something like this, and see what "average effort" actually is.
When people say that this game "forces" people to treat it like a job, just remember a solo player goofing around in Map 1 outperformed thousands of alliances in the game. We always have a choice, and most players make reasonable ones.
Hmmm... that gives me the idea to do another experiment. I'll be back in a week.
I have a 2 man alliance, both my own accounts (neither one UC but both have begun Act 5). I've been running Map 3 with no modifiers. I am not always able to get to/beat the final boss, but I usually get the 2 million milestone unless I'm busy and cant put enough time in. It never occurred to me to do the lower map with the modifiers. I will give that a shot.
I tried in the past to get other casual players to join me in my alliance, but I only ever got two people and they both left pretty quickly and I gave up, lol. Would love to find a super casual alliance to increase my rewards. In the meantime I'll be going solo with my two accounts.
I have a 2 man alliance, both my own accounts (neither one UC but both have begun Act 5). I've been running Map 3 with no modifiers. I am not always able to get to/beat the final boss, but I usually get the 2 million milestone unless I'm busy and cant put enough time in. It never occurred to me to do the lower map with the modifiers. I will give that a shot.
I tried in the past to get other casual players to join me in my alliance, but I only ever got two people and they both left pretty quickly and I gave up, lol. Would love to find a super casual alliance to increase my rewards. In the meantime I'll be going solo with my two accounts.
Best of luck!
You'll definitely get better scores running Map 2 with modifiers and finishing it consistently than you will running Map 3, but not always finishing. Remember, you only get the modifier bonus (and the big score for beating Thanos) if you finish.
My main tips on modifiers: 1 - You need to remember that modifiers become increasingly valuable as you work your way through more of them - using your first 'hard' modifier of the week earns a lot less (I think 125k) than the fifth one (about 800k on Map 2). Even Normal modifiers are worth it if you get through all of them.
2 - Personally I use the most disagreeable Master modifiers (Brute Force, Special Delivery*) on Map 2, and then the less-tricky ones like Bane and Hurt Locker on Map 3. You can even use Heroic modifiers at the end of the week, and still get a good bonus to your score.
*My top champ is Ghost Rider, so find Special Delivery a bit tricky against the Thanos boss as I can't reach SP3 to reset his Judgements. Other champs who rely on SP3s will also struggle against this node; with the notable exceptions of those with potent Power Gain abilities, like Hyperion and Thor Ragnarok.
Thanks for the thread @DNA3000 , 'twas the kick up the bum I needed and @Magrailothos for showing what can be done without getting all caught up in the game and turning it into a job.
Another thing this experiment tells me is that in spite of the fact that it can seem like this game is a job, most players don't treat it as a job: its just that the most visible or vocal players tend to be the most active.
After all, you managed to become one of the top 17,000 alliances in AQ. You as in you all by yourself outperformed probably close to half of the alliances out there. True, you used alt accounts, but still. *Most* people play the game casually, and as they can, at their own pace. We just don't hear about them, or even see them. Until we do something like this, and see what "average effort" actually is.
When people say that this game "forces" people to treat it like a job, just remember a solo player goofing around in Map 1 outperformed thousands of alliances in the game. We always have a choice, and most players make reasonable ones.
Hmmm... that gives me the idea to do another experiment. I'll be back in a week.
An interesting perspective/analysis as always, DNA.
I always smile inwardly when the visible/vocal people on the forums talk about the 'average' player. Given that this game has been downloaded 100 million times, and there are (at most) a few hundred people regularly vocal on the English forums, almost by definition, no-one inclined to be vocal on the forums is going to be 'average'.
Out of curiosity, do we have any idea how many alliances there actually are, and how many enter AQ?
This would actually apply to me. A few months ago, I retired. The last couple days I've been dipping my toes in a few Quests here and there. I opened an Ally just for myself, incase there are any Events for Allies only. I'll probably run the AQ for Objectives and Glory. Not entirely sure how much deeper I'll get into the game again, but it's definitely useful to get some Glory.
I have a 2 man alliance, both my own accounts (neither one UC but both have begun Act 5). I've been running Map 3 with no modifiers. I am not always able to get to/beat the final boss, but I usually get the 2 million milestone unless I'm busy and cant put enough time in. It never occurred to me to do the lower map with the modifiers. I will give that a shot.
I tried in the past to get other casual players to join me in my alliance, but I only ever got two people and they both left pretty quickly and I gave up, lol. Would love to find a super casual alliance to increase my rewards. In the meantime I'll be going solo with my two accounts.
I've gotten a few alliance invites recently, which I assume are a result of this post.
I appreciate the invites but I have already accepted one. Thanks!
Kabam should make a subscribe option on the forums so I'm notified when you make a thread
I have a feeling there's a non-zero number of people who would subscribe just so they could get a head start on flagging my posts with disagrees. You can always tell when the disagree fairy is in the neighborhood because you'll see a post flagged for what seems to be no reason, then go back and see someone has decided to flag a ton of posts all at once just running through them.
Of course there's no way to really know who's disagreeing, what part of the post they are disagreeing with, or in what way they are disagreeing with it, so I generally disregard anonymous flagging. But sometimes, just for fun, I will look at a post like "I have an idea. I will have a better idea in a week" and try to picture in my head how someone might go about disagreeing with it. Muppets are often involved.
That's approximately the number of alliances that participate in AQ in an AQ week. For those that enjoy coincidences:
3962 points ended up placing 39962 place. So roughly, about 40,000 alliances score at least *something* in AQ. I just went in, killed one thing, and let the rest of the week slide to generate a reasonably low score for AQ, to get an idea of where the "bottom" was.
You can argue that many of those low scores represent alliances that broke up or gave up on AQ, and of course in a game like MCOC people and alliances come and go: the total alliances participating over an entire week is not precisely the same thing as the average number of alliances participating in general. But that's basically the numbers we're talking about.
That roughly jibes with my guestimate for the number of alliances that participate in AW, which was generally in a similar ballpark value.
Now, how many alliances are there? That's also a kind of tricky question: would alliances like we're discussing in this thread count? There are probably lots of alliances that are dead, or alliances that only have a few active members, or alliances that only contain semi-active members that only log in occasionally. But I suspect that there are significantly more than 40k alliances even factoring all that in. My guess is that there are probably at least 50k alliances that are at least somewhat active, in that they have some number of reasonably active players that interact on at least some level. But the line at the bottom is probably very blurry.
Interesting. I had no idea and never thought about testing it like you did. I wonder how many active players the game has after seeing this. I know a lot of ppl aren't part of an alliance. Also not every alliance has 30 members or runs 3 battlegroups. Do u have any idea or guesstimate on how many ppl at least are somewhat active in the game?
Interesting. I had no idea and never thought about testing it like you did. I wonder how many active players the game has after seeing this. I know a lot of ppl aren't part of an alliance. Also not every alliance has 30 members or runs 3 battlegroups. Do u have any idea or guesstimate on how many ppl at least are somewhat active in the game?
One data point we have from a long while ago is the stats Kabam released about Rocket's button. They said that 1.3 million players claimed the button from email, which implies at least that many accounts were "active enough" to be logging in and reading that email.
I did a random sampling survey of alliances using AQ and AW ranks, and I believe between all active AQ and all active AW alliances we're talking about at least 500k-700k players. The majority of the alliances in the upper half of all placements are at least two-thirds full and I estimate the average number of players in such alliances to be around 22-25. That's 400k-500k players right there. The lower half tends to have a lot more half empty or unfilled alliances, but I think there's still 100k-200k players in those alliances.
It is much more difficult to guestimate how many players are not in alliances. I think it could be as many as half of all players that are at least somewhat active, which would imply somewhere between 1M and 1.5M players of at least some activity level. That's actually not too far off the 1.3M player estimate based on the button statistics.
These numbers have very large error bars, but the order of magnitude is probably correct. We have something between a million somewhat active players, and 1.5M. In terms of dedicated login almost every day players, I think at least half of those might be of that kind. There have to be at least a couple hundred thousand such players to fill the alliances with high enough activity in AQ to need mostly full alliances.
Managed 4m doing 2,2,2,1,1 and finished in the 15k region which will probably be the sweet spot for now. Alliance prestige is hurting (mine is double the ally rating) but spending time on alts and forcing very low ranked non participants to rank isn't what I'm about.
My account can manage as many steps as I care to, the second active account only plays a couple of hours per day (except weekends) and the alt is moved and backed out of fights but probably only contributing 5 to 8 steps per day.
Rewards aint bad compared to a few weeks ago when the exact number was zero. 1000 glory plus crystals.
Managed 4m doing 2,2,2,1,1 and finished in the 15k region which will probably be the sweet spot for now. Alliance prestige is hurting (mine is double the ally rating) but spending time on alts and forcing very low ranked non participants to rank isn't what I'm about.
My account can manage as many steps as I care to, the second active account only plays a couple of hours per day (except weekends) and the alt is moved and backed out of fights but probably only contributing 5 to 8 steps per day.
Rewards aint bad compared to a few weeks ago when the exact number was zero. 1000 glory plus crystals.
Well done Phil. If you're managing 1000 Glory (which will soon buy you 4500 T5B shards), that's pretty good.
Remember, if you want to get more points with exactly the same amount of effort, run maps in the order 1,1,2,2,2. The Honour bonus points climb the more modifiers you've done; so if you can run the hardest modifier on the last map, it'll get you far more points than if you do exactly the same map/modifier combination earlier in the week. You might move up a milestone; for what it's worth. Or alternately you might well be able to get the exact same 1000 Glory rewards by running maps 1,1,1,1,2; and just having one tougher map to run on the last day, instead of running it three times at the beginning of the week.
Stats for me, this week (running 2,2,3,3,3): Scored - 9.1m Ranked - 12,298 Glory - 1600
Comments
2,1,1,1
Sitting on 2.7m, so 500 glory I guess.
Four participants, Wouldn't mind hitting the 3m milestone and we started the week late so its definitely a possibility if we pick up the extra day. Around 7k points per fight (I guess this is based on alliance prestige lol)
Just realised I dudded myself out of 300k by not using a different Master modifier each day so that's something for next week if we go again.
I'm doing exactly what you're talking about; staying solo because it suits me, but running my own alliance for Glory. I just feel that if I was in a full alliance, on LINE, that I'd end up spending more time in chat, in war and so on; and it would impact on my current work/family time. Maybe I'm wrong...
I'm also FTP, and just take the game slow, for fun. So I'm Uncollected; completed Act 5 but not into Act 6 yet. Completed Variant 4, but not explored.
With that explanation of my status: I run both AQ Map 2 three times and Map 3 twice with my own Alt account. You can usually finish both if careful about using your energy; and since the introduction of Map Modifiers, I typically get to a score of over 8,000,000 without too much difficulty or use of items. I recently created a third, minor account just for a bit of extra Alliance Quest Energy; as it can get a bit tight finishing otherwise and I missed out on finishing one or two maps.
Running all five AQs (three on Map 2, twice on Map 3) currently earns me 1200 Glory for the Peak Milestone, plus usually 400 or 450 for Alliance Rank rewards. So about 1600 Glory per eight days.
It's certainly enough to assist in building up T5B, which is my main motivation for running AQ at all; and you get useful units, revives and so on from Alliance Events. (And @phillgreen? Definitely, just do it!)
This is me, if you want to take a look at a relatively casual FTP 'solo' account:
Alt account:
People should feel free to play the way they want to play, as long as they accept the fact that there will be limitations on how fast they can progress doing things unconventionally. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to push the envelope on what's possible within those limits.
I have just done almost a week solo of map 2 just to see how it was and I think if I did map 2 X5 days I would hit the 6mil cutoff not tons of rewards but it's something ?
I couldn't post all the screenshots in my comment
But if you just enjoy playing the game at your own pace, then a personal mini-alliance is definitely a way to get useful resources.
I just thought I'd be a useful example of what can be done for you. The next milestone is 10,000,000 honour; and only gives 1250 Glory - just 50 more. So where I am is probably the upper end of what is realistic to earn as a 'solo' alliance player. Active alliance play will probably earn way more; but this is fine for me, at least for now.
Excelsior!
I'll need to log in to check where we ended up but for minimal to no effort besides a handful of really easy fights I'm a little annoyed that I never bothered before because grinding for T3cc really annoys me and T1A is always welcomed. That stuff is easy to get with glory though I'm at the point where I want T5B, this will get me there much quicker.
Thanks for the thread @DNA3000 , 'twas the kick up the bum I needed and @Magrailothos for showing what can be done without getting all caught up in the game and turning it into a job.
After all, you managed to become one of the top 17,000 alliances in AQ. You as in you all by yourself outperformed probably close to half of the alliances out there. True, you used alt accounts, but still. *Most* people play the game casually, and as they can, at their own pace. We just don't hear about them, or even see them. Until we do something like this, and see what "average effort" actually is.
When people say that this game "forces" people to treat it like a job, just remember a solo player goofing around in Map 1 outperformed thousands of alliances in the game. We always have a choice, and most players make reasonable ones.
Hmmm... that gives me the idea to do another experiment. I'll be back in a week.
I have a 2 man alliance, both my own accounts (neither one UC but both have begun Act 5). I've been running Map 3 with no modifiers. I am not always able to get to/beat the final boss, but I usually get the 2 million milestone unless I'm busy and cant put enough time in. It never occurred to me to do the lower map with the modifiers. I will give that a shot.
I tried in the past to get other casual players to join me in my alliance, but I only ever got two people and they both left pretty quickly and I gave up, lol. Would love to find a super casual alliance to increase my rewards. In the meantime I'll be going solo with my two accounts.
You'll definitely get better scores running Map 2 with modifiers and finishing it consistently than you will running Map 3, but not always finishing. Remember, you only get the modifier bonus (and the big score for beating Thanos) if you finish.
My main tips on modifiers:
1 - You need to remember that modifiers become increasingly valuable as you work your way through more of them - using your first 'hard' modifier of the week earns a lot less (I think 125k) than the fifth one (about 800k on Map 2). Even Normal modifiers are worth it if you get through all of them.
2 - Personally I use the most disagreeable Master modifiers (Brute Force, Special Delivery*) on Map 2, and then the less-tricky ones like Bane and Hurt Locker on Map 3. You can even use Heroic modifiers at the end of the week, and still get a good bonus to your score.
*My top champ is Ghost Rider, so find Special Delivery a bit tricky against the Thanos boss as I can't reach SP3 to reset his Judgements. Other champs who rely on SP3s will also struggle against this node; with the notable exceptions of those with potent Power Gain abilities, like Hyperion and Thor Ragnarok.
I always smile inwardly when the visible/vocal people on the forums talk about the 'average' player. Given that this game has been downloaded 100 million times, and there are (at most) a few hundred people regularly vocal on the English forums, almost by definition, no-one inclined to be vocal on the forums is going to be 'average'.
Out of curiosity, do we have any idea how many alliances there actually are, and how many enter AQ?
I appreciate the invites but I have already accepted one. Thanks!
Of course there's no way to really know who's disagreeing, what part of the post they are disagreeing with, or in what way they are disagreeing with it, so I generally disregard anonymous flagging. But sometimes, just for fun, I will look at a post like "I have an idea. I will have a better idea in a week" and try to picture in my head how someone might go about disagreeing with it. Muppets are often involved.
That's approximately the number of alliances that participate in AQ in an AQ week. For those that enjoy coincidences:
3962 points ended up placing 39962 place. So roughly, about 40,000 alliances score at least *something* in AQ. I just went in, killed one thing, and let the rest of the week slide to generate a reasonably low score for AQ, to get an idea of where the "bottom" was.
You can argue that many of those low scores represent alliances that broke up or gave up on AQ, and of course in a game like MCOC people and alliances come and go: the total alliances participating over an entire week is not precisely the same thing as the average number of alliances participating in general. But that's basically the numbers we're talking about.
That roughly jibes with my guestimate for the number of alliances that participate in AW, which was generally in a similar ballpark value.
Now, how many alliances are there? That's also a kind of tricky question: would alliances like we're discussing in this thread count? There are probably lots of alliances that are dead, or alliances that only have a few active members, or alliances that only contain semi-active members that only log in occasionally. But I suspect that there are significantly more than 40k alliances even factoring all that in. My guess is that there are probably at least 50k alliances that are at least somewhat active, in that they have some number of reasonably active players that interact on at least some level. But the line at the bottom is probably very blurry.
I did a random sampling survey of alliances using AQ and AW ranks, and I believe between all active AQ and all active AW alliances we're talking about at least 500k-700k players. The majority of the alliances in the upper half of all placements are at least two-thirds full and I estimate the average number of players in such alliances to be around 22-25. That's 400k-500k players right there. The lower half tends to have a lot more half empty or unfilled alliances, but I think there's still 100k-200k players in those alliances.
It is much more difficult to guestimate how many players are not in alliances. I think it could be as many as half of all players that are at least somewhat active, which would imply somewhere between 1M and 1.5M players of at least some activity level. That's actually not too far off the 1.3M player estimate based on the button statistics.
These numbers have very large error bars, but the order of magnitude is probably correct. We have something between a million somewhat active players, and 1.5M. In terms of dedicated login almost every day players, I think at least half of those might be of that kind. There have to be at least a couple hundred thousand such players to fill the alliances with high enough activity in AQ to need mostly full alliances.
My account can manage as many steps as I care to, the second active account only plays a couple of hours per day (except weekends) and the alt is moved and backed out of fights but probably only contributing 5 to 8 steps per day.
Rewards aint bad compared to a few weeks ago when the exact number was zero. 1000 glory plus crystals.
Remember, if you want to get more points with exactly the same amount of effort, run maps in the order 1,1,2,2,2. The Honour bonus points climb the more modifiers you've done; so if you can run the hardest modifier on the last map, it'll get you far more points than if you do exactly the same map/modifier combination earlier in the week. You might move up a milestone; for what it's worth. Or alternately you might well be able to get the exact same 1000 Glory rewards by running maps 1,1,1,1,2; and just having one tougher map to run on the last day, instead of running it three times at the beginning of the week.
Stats for me, this week (running 2,2,3,3,3):
Scored - 9.1m
Ranked - 12,298
Glory - 1600