Alliance rewards blackout period. Any changes planned?

I know this was implemented to stop alliances from hopping back down to the same bracket they just advanced out of for weekly T4cc's.

Now I believe the expert tier is the only place to get t4cc, and hopping doesn't benefit in the way it used to.

Due to the changes S4 has brought are their any plans to remove the blackout period?

Not to be rash, but there are so many retiring due to the bugs that the blackout period is becoming a burden.

Comments

420down

100% agreed. The lockout period was needed and helped level the playing field for season three. For season four it's obsolete.

Mcord11758

It does appear to no longer be needed.

CoatHang3r

The blackout was not implemented just to stop tier manipulation exploits. It inhibits other exploits as well, like selling your tier rewards in a black market, allowing your twink/alt to claim the rewards of your main account, giving away milestones to sister alliances and likely many others.

Riegel

CoatHang3r wrote: »

The blackout was not implemented just to stop tier manipulation exploits. It inhibits other exploits as well, like selling your tier rewards in a black market, allowing your twink/alt to claim the rewards of your main account, giving away milestones to sister alliances and likely many others.

Cool lets find another way around that.

Riegel

Has an admin posted on a similar thread with a response?

I would be happy with a system like the glory store (the more you buy the more they cost). The more times you leave an alliance the longer you have to wait in blackout to get rewards.

This will allow those of us who just need to switch alliance through no fault of our own to continue to gather rewards. The following week.

This doesn't solve every issue, but it's just an idea.

superunknown012

Riegel wrote: »

Has an admin posted on a similar thread with a response?

I would be happy with a system like the glory store (the more you buy the more they cost). The more times you leave an alliance the longer you have to wait in blackout to get rewards.

This will allow those of us who just need to switch alliance through no fault of our own to continue to gather rewards. The following week.

This doesn't solve every issue, but it's just an idea.

Was thinking the exact same idea - love this.

TenebrousTenebrific

I'm not sure if there's any plans to remove or change this, but it's certainly a suggestion worth looking into! If you have more feedback to provide on the topic please do! I've moved this thread for better visibility! Thanks!

Riegel

TenebrousTenebrific wrote: »

I'm not sure if there's any plans to remove or change this, but it's certainly a suggestion worth looking into! If you have more feedback to provide on the topic please do! I've moved this thread for better visibility! Thanks!

This is great news I hope people will continue to come up with ideas on this.

LocoMotives

My suggestion is 3 day blackout. This covers the alliance events such as completion and also will inhibit people from swapping last second for rewards.

Riegel

Id love for it to be something simple like that. Wouldn't simply having to be in the alliance for 3 days to get any rewards be enough? This meaning AQ starts on Monday you join on Monday you become eligible for rewards Thursday AQ ends Friday so you qualify for AQ rank milestone rewards.

I just honestly can't see how people would exploit it if you have that. At least not at my level in the game. Allainces are only looking for the best players, because they do not want to risk wars or hold off on wars. Shards are too valuable.

@TenebrousTenebrific is there a feasible reason to keep it, that we just are seeing, that the team is aware of? If so, if we knew it would could help formulate a better solution.

CoatHang3r

Other things.

Prestige manipulation.
Last I knew starting prestige is based on the average prestige of current alliance members. This allowed alliances to boost their prestige by removing low prestige members and starting AQ then inviting those members back in. This gave the alliance an exploited starting prestige. While this can still be done regardless of the blackout the players stepping out on day 1 receive zero benefit, changing the blackout would allow them to benefit and make the practice more feasible.

Riegel

Just make it to where if you start AQ with 29 people those are the only 29 people eligible for rewards.

Kabam Miike

We don't have any plans at this time to change the Blackout periods for Alliances. While many think that these were only initiated to prevent the exploitation of the old bracket system, (it was a big part), it is not the only reason.

The blackout periods were initiated to stop the present, and any future possible exploits, for all kinds of Alliance events. Players weren't only jumping Alliances to move around in Alliance Quests.

While we may revisit the time frame in the future, we don't plan on it at this time.

Riegel

Kabam Miike wrote: »

We don't have any plans at this time to change the Blackout periods for Alliances. While many think that these were only initiated to prevent the exploitation of the old bracket system, (it was a big part), it is not the only reason.

The blackout periods were initiated to stop the present, and any future possible exploits, for all kinds of Alliance events. Players weren't only jumping Alliances to move around in Alliance Quests.

While we may revisit the time frame in the future, we don't plan on it at this time.

Hard to tell what "at this time" means anymore, but the team may want to look into removing this temporarily as it has been becoming a burden with the amount of people leaving, retiring, semi-retiring due to recent events.

In any case thanks for the reply, and if there are any other issues related to the black out you can discuss to "open source" this a little bit I'm sure the community would love to try to find a better solution than missing rewards for multiple weeks.

LocoMotives

I do like the idea of blackout being the same for all events as War. If you're there when it starts, you are eligible. If not, then no soup for you.

Riegel

Bumping this as it seems many others are now talking about their experience with losing alliance members.

Thatweirdguy

Do you think it wise to ask the game team to change something when they have not been able to keep up with all the issues the game is currently facing. They are busy with Transformers and trying patch our bugs on the side. They do not have time to implement a change like this although I agree that it is needed.

Riegel

If it helps them retain users, then yeah I think it would be.

Not saying it will that's just my personal feel for it.

C0atHang3r

I think it's a good idea to remove for now. Miike said it's to also block future exploits, but you can just add it back later.

If mods have issues with anything forum related let THEM address it. Otherwise stay on topic.

vrto

It's unfair and absurd, it just punishes lot's of people doing nothing wrong! Why can't I play in a diff alliance every week if that's my wish? Why can't you give all the rewards that players worked for?!??!

The blackout was always the kind of workaround/temporary fix, punishing more people playing right than people playing wrong, and there was more than enough time to come up with a proper solution... Also, the possibilities of taking advantage of no-blackout nowadays would always be a very edge use case, without any true impact on the game community, please consider turn it off ASAP and if issues arise from that then develop solutions for those specific issues.

Noobeeus

Kabam Miike wrote: »

We don't have any plans at this time to change the Blackout periods for Alliances. While many think that these were only initiated to prevent the exploitation of the old bracket system, (it was a big part), it is not the only reason.

The blackout periods were initiated to stop the present, and any future possible exploits, for all kinds of Alliance events. Players weren't only jumping Alliances to move around in Alliance Quests.

While we may revisit the time frame in the future, we don't plan on it at this time.

10 days is too long and punishes people moving legitimately. Totally unfair.

The system is too simplistic and needs to change to include how many times a player has moved. We all know AQ is on an 8 day cycle.

Moving once to a new Alliance should not initiate the blackout, moving a second time within a 15 day period should.

This means moving once, whether or not legitimately will still grant AQ rank rewards (but not SA rewards) moving a second time locks you out. This will prevent prestige manipulation and alliance hopping.

ctp1223

Sorry to bump this, but I did not want to make another post when moderators have commented here.

I am having trouble finding the right alliance. I join because I think they have what I need, but after a few days or a week, I see I am/they are not a good fit. Sometimes this can go on for weeks or even a couple months and I am missing AQ ranked rewards like t4cc and t4b's which are crucial to my progression. The lockout period really takes a blow on my account and progression. Is there anything we can do to pacify this and find some compromise?

Noob412

There are lots of higher tier players swapping down into lower tiers to collect more war rewards now. With AQ brackets being so big, they miss out on 1 catalyst and claim extra shards from easy war wins. If you don't fix the blackout period, at least apply it to everything.

vrto

Noob412 wrote: »

There are lots of higher tier players swapping down into lower tiers to collect more war rewards now. With AQ brackets being so big, they miss out on 1 catalyst and claim extra shards from easy war wins. If you don't fix the blackout period, at least apply it to everything.

So due to that small numbers of players swapping on AW, screw everyone else? That's the exact thought that allowed Kabam to get away with this **** blackout, which affects more people playing good than bad...

Noob412

It's not a small number of people. There are more and more everyday doing it. Now people in lower tiers are running into alliances that should be tier 1 and have no chance for rewards. How is that even remotely fair?

vrto

Noob412 wrote: »

It's not a small number of people. There are more and more everyday doing it. Now people in lower tiers are running into alliances that should be tier 1 and have no chance for rewards. How is that even remotely fair?

And because of those should ALL people that join an alliance not have a chance to play AW too? How is that even a possible idea for you?

And by the way, why would a Tier 1 alliance even do that? AW rewards are totally **** till mid tiers, and they would be in AQ and SA blackout for over a week when swapping both times, doesn't sound like a great idea unless they go for a full clean restart (and spend over 2 months getting **** rewards), and in such case that should not be forbidden in any way...

Noob412

It's a 6 week rotation. They don't go down to bottom tier, that would be pointless. They go down to tier 6 and work back up to tier 2. Meanwhile they have an a second account launching war in their main alliance purposely losing so by the time their lower alliance reaches tier 2, the main one is now in tier 6. Then they swap back. All easy victories for 5 star shards. Nobody cares about one week of AQ anymore, not now that they get weekly catalysts anyway. There are lots of alliances doing this now. Not a few.

TheShanMan

So as a victim of the blackout period due to my first alliance move in over a year, I am confused as to exactly what could be exploited if the logic was 'if your account was a member of the alliance when the new AQ week started, you're eligible for rank rewards'?

KhanMedina

TheShanMan wrote: »

So as a victim of the blackout period due to my first alliance move in over a year, I am confused as to exactly what could be exploited if the logic was 'if your account was a member of the alliance when the new AQ week started, you're eligible for rank rewards'?

This. I shouldn't be penalized a week of rewards when I waited until the last event ended to avoid screwing over my previous alliance. Sometimes things happen and you have to move on. Maybe allow one hop every 6 months or something with a 3 day blackout?

roy888