The entry Barrier is too high. New and smaller guilds are more or less forced into one of the big alliances. Because it is too difficult to get involved in any kind of end game content without joining them. (i.e. GvG scene / crystal realm / castle fights, etc.)



Only a few top GvG teams fight the majority of all fights, making it extremely difficult to get fresh blood into this scene. Since the top teams circumvent most locking mechanics and potentially fight alliance-wide



Alliance armies are too mobile. An Alliance can spontanously accumulate all online members fast at any spot of the world. They are not regionally bound in any sense. Making it hard to have smaller skirmishes, because battles easily escalate in numbers, due to reinforcements getting there very fast.



There is not enough incentives to fight enemies in the open world; outside of the structured fights.



Mega Alliances lead to a lot of no-shows and auto wins in crystal realm battles.



First, our take on alliance in a nutshell:

Hence this proposed change to improve the situation in the long run:

Enable Friendly Fire between alliance members



Effects of this change:

Large scale battles will likely turn into only guild vs guild battles. Since friendly fire will make it very challenging to form an army consisting of multiple guilds. Meaning on big fights like on reset day, each guild fights on its own. Additionally, this is also good for the game on a technical level. Because if the fights are usually between just two guilds and not between two alliances, the player numbers involved in a single battle go down on average, which will lead to better game performance during fights.

On a political level, mega-alliances are less likely to form - because inviting too many guilds increases the chance of one (or more of them) turning against you. Alliances are more likely to be formed by a smaller amount of guilds who trust each other. Thus has the potential to lead to multiple smaller alliances, which offers more opposition.

Lastly, with this change, we would adjust the matchmaking process in Crystal GvGs. So that alliance members will be able to face each other, leading to more fights.



Hello everyone,after taking in all your feedback and more internal disucssions, we decided toThe alliance system in this regard will stay unchanged for season 5.We are aware, this would have been a very big change in a running game, even for a test period. That is why we wanted to evaluate this proposal with you, the community, before trying it in the live game. Obviously the opinions on this are quite divided and there is no clear agreement on this. Therefore we are looking at other options instead.From the feedback in this thread, I noted these as your main problems with alliances:These are all things which needs more fundamental changes and / or reevaluation of some existing features and content in the game. Which is why we won't be able to adress these points for the short time left until season 5. But we are aware of these problems and will prepare solutions to see how we can best improve those aspects in the long-run.Regarding Point 5), we will make a change to Crystal Realm battles for Season 5:In Season 5, Auto Wins (aka No Shows) will not generate any season points anymore. This way we want to make it less attractive to have a majority of towers queuing from one alliance. Which creates a bigger incentive to not accumulate too many guilds in one alliance. Potentially leading to less No Shows.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hey everyone,I would like to ask your feedback and thoughts on a potential change to alliances.We have been following your discussions about alliances and this has always been a very passionate discussion among the community. This is also something we have been discussing a lot and I would like to share with you how we would like to proceed.We think some form of alliances are unavoidable. If we remove alliances form the game or cap the membership, the most organized guilds will still form non-aggression pacts (NAPs) outside of the game. These guilds would, in this case, have an unfair advantage over guilds with no NAPs. However, we have also heard your concerns and agree that our current system has the risk of forming just a few mega alliances, thus diminishing the impact of each individual guild.Other than that, alliance and guild membership limits will stay untouched. But now all alliance members can be attacked any time. For guild members nothing changes, there will be no friendly fire between guilds.Overall this change allows us to keep the management of your alliance through the in-game UI, while still reducing the likelihood of mega alliances forming.This should give us sufficient time to evaluate the results and your feedback before committing to such a change in the long-term.We would also like to hear your thoughts on this proposal. Are you in favor of it? Or would you rather see a different change? Or do you think alliances are fine the way they are right now?We will use the results of this poll and your feedback as one of the key factors in making our decision, so we encourage you to share your opinion with us.Cheers,Retro