Alliance ranking just makes sure that, to get all the rewards, we have to all be in big alliances. 5 member alliance nets you very little, regardless of who you play with. 10 people need to get half the points to get to the same rewards. With 20, all you have to hope is that everyone is active, and then you get a bunch of rewards for your ISO investment.
I think it’d be pretty instructive if IceX could use some of his special access to look at the alliance rankings on simulator 2 main, and do some basic analysis on them:
Anyway, I’ll like to get back to the main question I’ve been asking.
Seeing how getting 20 members is most assuredly a requirement in getting the top Alliance ranking rewards, would you guys now consider this game Pay-To-Win?
We have to pay for member slots in Alliances and it’s not cheap might I add. But teams who are willing to do so get their money’s worth in more than one way.
Yes. It is just a matter of whether you are paying cash or you are paying with your time. Only 2 ways to get HP. Buy with cash or play hard. Either way, there is an element of cost involved.
I don’t think it follows the traditional P2W model where you can’t progress until you spend money. The game already gives you a ton of HP if you play in each event. I was calculating how much HP I have spent since the last event started. Around March 18-19th I had 1200 HP and now I have 1000 HP. In these 11-12 days I spent 900 HP to open the 33th and 34th roster slot. I also spent 600 HP to open the 6th slot in my alliance and more than 300 to shields. This means I made more than 1600 HP in 12 days just from game rewards so the game is more than generous with HP. Once someone has made the transition to 3# and can place high regularly he will soon find himself/herself with a ton of HP. Once he opens the roster slots he needs the rest can only be used for leveling covers or buy shields, healing packs, boosts and now alliance slots. Considering that an alliance will bring you more covers than what you would get from buying them yourself, even slots that cost 2000HP are worth it. Additionally, if someone cannot participate in a tournament or event because life prevents him, he could still end up with a cover even with minimal effort as long as the other members can cover for him. So there are more benefits than negatives that come from joining an alliance.
I’d say the necessity of having 20-man alliance to compete for high prizes is degenerative, but not P2W. It’s not really that out of question for a bunch of guys to poll their resources together without paying, and you only have to do it once (assuming the guys are trustworthy and don’t just immediately kick you out) and it’s still a long term gain. That doesn’t necessarily make it any better than P2W. It’s a necessary evil that you must do to be competitive, and sure that evil is most easily dealt with by paying money, but paying money always allowed you to bypass a whole mess of stuff in this type of game.
