Changelog and Previews comment thread

[Hillians]

Alliance score is now calculated with a new and straightforward method: The total score of the alliance is the average airline score of all members participating in the alliance, apart from the airline with the lowest score who is excluded from the average calculation (in order to allow alliances to recruit new members without big effect to their scores).

Hi Sami,

first of all thanks for looking to overhaul the alliance scoring but you have now actively encouraged alliances to downsize as much as possible and only keep the top scoring players.  From an A team perspective we've been recruiting a lot of players with lower scores helping them and teaching them the game. I believe thats the value of alliances as newer players get to learn from more experienced players this way.. From an A Team managing member perspective I can now state that this will actively discourage us from training new players.

I feel this is against the spirit of AWS as many players join alliances to learn. I understand that the bottom airline gets excluded but that makes no difference.. Alliances will just cull the bottom 10-15 or whatever it takes to potentially move up the score and that's not how it should work. The scoring should not be able to be manipulated in this manner.

some more suggestions were made https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,41677.20.html and I like the idea of potentially having a sum of the scores (of perhaps the top 50/100 airlines). Then the more players you can get in the top 50/100 the better and it doesn't encourage cutting members from an alliance.. any sort of average calculation will just result into the lower end being removed from the alliance.

regards
Fred

[Verto]

As a relatively new player to AWS this change seems to hurt us immensely. The strong alliances won't want to recruit us and teach us new things. I was struggling alone, but when I was recruited into an alliance I quickly learned from the shared knowledge and found relative success.

Personally I would of left the game out of frustration if left alone. This change to alliance scoring impacts new players the most and I am afraid it will only discourage new players to AWS more.

[[ATA] Sunbao]

Hello Sami,

Its sad to see the game taking a turn for the worse, for thats really what this new alliance scoring system are doing.
From now on you in the last game year or so as alliance, need to kick out all but 4 players to get the highest score possible.
I have as such no problem in the airline score being used, but its just not enough to base it on.

Before this new world you gave us a improved airline rating system, that you now already has moved away from, its shown but not used its so said, as it sure was a move forward.
In gw2, the second worst alliance by alliance rating is now the leader by alliance score, alone that says how wrong this is, the worste alliance by rating is number 4 in score now, again it show how wrong this move is. Both of them has a low number of member that bring them up around the top.

You have basically killed the alliance team work and fun of running an alliance, sorry to say but thats how i feel.
The future will now be that we get a lot of smal alliances A Team 1 A Team 2 etc as we can't have more then 4 player in each to perform best way possible is that really how you want the game to be going forward ?. the larger alliances split up in smaller ones when we are coming to the end of a game.


"Yeah well nice to have you With us Guys but well we need to throw out most of you as we just need the best 3 scoring members when we reach the last game year"

Thats basically what you tell us to tell our members by this move.

I hope you really will look into change the rules once again, otherwise you will kill the joy and fun for a lot uf us.

Sunbao

[gazzz0x2z]

I am just a small fish internally in Elite, so don't take my word as the official word of the alliance.

That being said, we also took a few recruits in the hope of training them. Probably not as many as ATeam, but still, we take a few each game. It's a gamble. Some will succeed, some will fail. That's a part of the risk.

Both ATeam, us, and a few other alliances, have a few very, very, very good players, who always score high. The temptation would be huge to kick everyone else from the alliance one day before the end of the game. That would be gaming the system. Imagine, we do that : the standings would be :

"Winner, Elite, 3 members, 2500 points. Second, ATeam, 33 members, 1800 points". Elite was 28 members 2 days before the end of the game.....
Does it make sense? nope
Does it risk to happen? Well, most other alliances would do the trick, too.....so alliances would be empty the last day, bar the best players.

[Sami]

The "last day & kick people out" won't work due to the intervals/history on how the score is calculated. (so no sense in trying)

Other than that... This is the system chosen for now, and we'll be using that for some time and see how it works and might be improved later in the future.

[[ATA] Sunbao]

The "last day & kick people out" won't work due to the intervals/history on how the score is calculated. (so no sense in trying)

Then we do it 5 years before the end or 10 it dosen't matter at all, the key is that we need to limit number of members to gain a chance to be at top in your new scoring system.

[DanDan]

The "last day & kick people out" won't work due to the intervals/history on how the score is calculated. (so no sense in trying)

Other than that... This is the system chosen for now, and we'll be using that for some time and see how it works and might be improved later in the future.

But isnt that contradictory to what you said in the changelog, that the alliance score is the average of the airlines, excluding the lowest scoring airline?
So if a year before gameend all the "mediocre" players, the players in smaller countries, ... leave the alliance, that should be the result: you have the 3 best players, you win.

Not what i would consider an "alliance", but maybe i am misunderstanding something here.

[Hillians]

Last day/month/quarter/year will be the case then since airlines near the top won’t move much.

We will work with it but I’m sure you will see less engagement in new people joining alliances and disconnect from the game and ultimately less entertaining gameplay.

I for one don’t see purpose anymore of helping new players and can see gameworlds towards the end with a lot less players than historically.. after all only the top few matter if it’s based on average.

[DanDan]

Last day/month/quarter/year will be the case then since airlines near the top won’t move much.

We will work with it but I’m sure you will see less engagement in new people joining alliances and disconnect from the game and ultimately less entertaining gameplay.

I for one don’t see purpose anymore of helping new players and can see gameworlds towards the end with a lot less players than historically.. after all only the top few matter if it’s based on average.

i have to admit: i never cared much for alliance scores - but since thats the only feature of an alliance (except for communications): you could be right.

[Zombie Slayer]

Yeah, this is an alliance management's nightmare....

[Tha_Ape]

Hi Sami,

I completely agree with the others and think this is counter-productive. There's no point in repeating the same arguments, so I'll keep it short.
I think this new feat was rushed in before weighting all the pros and cons, and while the discussion was still going on (see link above).
The pros you see are real, but so are the cons, and they're big.
Sky recruited around 10-12 young players in GW#2, 1/3 of all our airlines. Sky usually scores pretty high despite this policy of welcoming these young players, but the current system made us... n°6!
SASA, an alliance focused only on one continent (which deeply impacts their rating) and consists of only 7 players ranks n°3.*
Shaving off the single worst scoring airline ain't gonna change anything if an airline consists of 33 members with 1/3 low scoring.

Thank you for considering our concerns,

Arthur

* SASA members, if you read me, don't feel offended. Indeed, I feel the idea of an alliance on only one continent very interesting and challenging, I just think you shouldn't be n°3 in score. Especially considering you have only 7 members.

[Andre090904]

A picture is worth a thousand words.

[groundbum2]

an alliance doesn't have to be about coming top in scores! There's load more to alliances than just getting the top score. Perhaps we're seeing some true colours now...

Don't get me wrong, I think alliances are brilliant, but a few make me want to stop playing this game due to their kill other players at all costs hyper competitive mindset..

Simon

[Tha_Ape]

an alliance doesn't have to be about coming top in scores! There's load more to alliances than just getting the top score. Perhaps we're seeing some true colours now...

Don't get me wrong, I think alliances are brilliant, but a few make me want to stop playing this game due to their kill other players at all costs hyper competitive mindset..

Simon

Hi Simon,

alliance do have a score, and this score should effectively reflect various things, and Sami agrees on it. Then comes the problem of defining what make an alliance score bigger than the some other one's: here we can discuss and dispute.
Whatever your opinion is, the new alliance scoring system makes no sense:
 - doesn't promote varied alliances
 - doesn't promote formation of new players
 - doesn't promote large alliances
 - promotes small alliance with high scoring airlines

Indeed, the new calculation would promote even more the "kill others": if you have 3 mini-alliances forming a cartel with some common discord channel or such, they would rule the GW and kill the rest. Actually, my best interest in last GW#2 would have been to leave Sky with VladimirJohnson, Luperco and 1 or 2 others, and then set up something off the grid with King Kong, Spiff, Konchr, etc. We would have destroyed any hope for the others to score in the top.

[Zobelle]

an alliance doesn't have to be about coming top in scores! There's load more to alliances than just getting the top score. Perhaps we're seeing some true colours now...

Don't get me wrong, I think alliances are brilliant, but a few make me want to stop playing this game due to their kill other players at all costs hyper competitive mindset..

Simon

This.

If anything this should encourage the top tier to bring up their struggling members, not push them out.

[Mort]

This.

If anything this should encourage the top tier to bring up their struggling members, not push them out.

The embodiment of Phoenix! 

[Jake]

Why is almost everyone moaning about a freakin number that doesn't even matter? Jeez, just chill out, enjoy the game and start thinking about stuff that actually matter... 

[Zobelle]

Why is almost everyone moaning about a freakin number that doesn't even matter? Jeez, just chill out, enjoy the game and start thinking about stuff that actually matter... 

Because we can only take 3 used frames per 8 days. Gotta have something to do in between.

[JumboShrimp]

The "last day & kick people out" won't work due to the intervals/history on how the score is calculated. (so no sense in trying)

Other than that... This is the system chosen for now, and we'll be using that for some time and see how it works and might be improved later in the future.

As I said elsewhere, I think using players score is good, but I think the score should be the sum, not the average, which will not discourage taking on new airlines.  This way, adding new players will not be a liability, every player in the alliance will be an asset.

[Talentz]

Hmm, alot of people are bored today. If you have spare time inbetween market refreshes, help out here: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/board,590.0.html - 



Talentz