DISCLAIMER

I'm gonna start off by clarifying that this post is in no way a negative one, neither does it aim to send a message across. I just wanted to cherish the good times and thank everyone involved with the purest intention. It will be long, probably far too long so if you're uninterested or don't have the attention span, please feel free to just ignore it altogether. I appreciate you taking the time to check it out regardless.

The Decision

For quite some time I knew that it had to be made. I've always struggled to maintain a balance between playtime and the responsibilities I have toward myself. Despite getting a bit better at it, I'm an addiction prone person and I still fail miserably as a result. I knew that it was long overdue as setting up virtual goals eventually became pointless. I figured that I couldn't focus on my actual priorities like university studies and social connections as long as I had a part of me invested in this game. It didn't seem possible for me to function as fully as I'd have liked to going forward. To clarify, this is solely a me problem and a decision had to be made in order for me to keep growing as a person. I'm glad that I finally made it and hope you can share my happiness.

The Experience

Overall I've enjoyed my stay and I'm grateful to have been a part of this community. I've taken many breaks from the game throughout my 10+ years of playing but eventually came back every single time. In the end I appreciate Kabam and all the effort behind the scenes. I try to view it as a whole and despite countless frustrations leading to harsh criticism, some valid some not as much, I believe that they did a great job for the most part (serpent escaping nerfs will always boggle my mind though). I respect them a lot for their success and wish many more years to come. Thank you to everyone involved with this game and creating this environment. I hope anyone picking this game up today enjoys it as much as I did and hope you guys still playing keep on enjoying as well! Even though I may be long gone...

As for the "virtual achievements", I actually have a few I'd like to share from recent memory:

-Getting 7* Deathless Thanos and taking him to r4 sig 200. The deathless chase was quite an enjoyable ride and the fact that we could get him for free was amazing. It is truly remarkable that we finally have a strong version of Thanos (who is honestly borderline broken). Having him as technically a free champion is also crazy generous and I'm glad that the over a year commitment paid off. He was worth all the hype and effort which is an astonishing accomplishment. What a journey it was!

-Getting a 7* Tigra from 2 HoF 7* crystals, twice! It was personally worth it to spend a bit less than 100$ (spending is lame, I know) to pull my most wanted champion not once but twice. I couldn't get her to r4 sig 200 though as I lacked the resources so she'll always stay at r3 with around 40 sigs.

-Managing necropolis solos. Long form content is probably my favorite of all and I liked to attempt such tough fights from time to time. My most proud 3 solos were on Red Goblin with r3 unduped Onslaught, r4 sig 200 Thanos and r3 sig 40-45 Tigra respectively. Onslaught and Thanos both took around 5-6 minutes and Tigra took a little over 7 minutes which were quite impressive imo. I'm far from decent at the game so these always felt great. There were no boosts or synergies in play btw. Also, Tigra one will remain as my last ever fight in this game.

All in all, I probably have many more noteworthy "achievements" of similar kind if I tried to remember but these are the most recent ones I found that are "worth sharing". Honestly I wouldn't expect anyone to care or keep reading at this point. Even I got bored typing. To conclude this part, thank you Kabam and everyone involved for this amazing experience and the memories. Hope you guys keep growing as a consistent source of joy for many more years to come!

Appreciation of the Forum Community

You guys are awesome! Even though I didn't interact that much, I still followed the discussions regularly and enjoyed them a lot. Everyone here is so passionate about the game whether they love or hate it. People are always respectful, kind and helpful other than in some occasional heated arguments which are natural and don't reflect the general atmosphere. I'll miss you guys, even those "innocent" cheaters and their weekend posts which never cease to amaze. I'd like to thank a few notable people though I'm pretty sure that I'll forget some:

- @Emilia90 probably the person I've agreed with the most. Always appreciated your valuable thoughts and opinions.

- @Demonzfyre although I disagree with you quite often, I appreciate your contradictory opinions as I feel like they fulfill a purpose. I feel like you are clearly as passionate as anyone and its great to have different voices in a community.

- @willrun4adonut such a wholesome member of this community, we should all be grateful for you. Sole reason people don't hate incursions as much anymore. Hope you get your title someday though the drop rates seem horrendous.

- @SpideyFunko your post a while back thanking some people inspired me a lot for this I guess so thank you for the inspiration. Glad you had such a positive influence.

- @EdisonLaw you might be the single most passionate person I've seen here. Your interest in the game is beyond my comprehension but I'm glad its there.

- @DNA3000 thank you for sharing your insights and bringing clarity when the community is drowning in confusion. I admire your work and effort.

- @ahmynuts and @SirGamesBond you guys were funny. A single comment from you always made me smile uncontrollably. Even thinking about it now does.

In conclusion, thank you to everyone involved with the game and the passionate community for being awesome. You guys were a big part of my teenage years but this goodbye was long overdue. Sincerely, wish everyone the best. Take care and hope that the positivity you guys spread never fades.

Goodbye.

over and over again i'm matched with people doubling, even tripling my account rating in battlegrounds. why, after time and time again almost 30 SEASONS deep and you guys can't figure out a balanced way to engage al of your players in a pvp mode.

We tried all the other ways and they were much more horrible. At the end of the day, the problem is most of the people who want "balanced" match making want something that sounds reasonable to them, but always leads to ridiculous results in practice. And we just don't have the time or the resources to go to every single one of those players' houses and explain it to them on a white board. Its been explained at least a hundred times - at least that many because *I've* done so at least that many times - and it doesn't seem to put a dent in the complaints about it.

The short version is that the whole point of BG is for players to climb ladders. To advance upward, you have to beat the players above you. There are fundamentally two, and only two ways to do that. The first one is the "zero reset" method. Everyone participates, and they get rated based on their performance. Eventually, everyone settles to approximately their nominal strength, and from that point onward you will tend to win about half your matches. That's the definition of "fair match making." Which means, on average, you won't go up, you won't go down, you'll just stay there. If all of BG was just one big Gladiator Circuit with no season resets, that's what BG would evolve to being. It would also mean the newest players with the weakest rosters, players such as yourself, would be stuck at the bottom forever. You wouldn't get tough matches, but you also would have no chance to actually go anywhere either. And your rewards would also be stuck at the bottom forever.

The alternative is how BG basically operates now. To encourage participation, we have a Victory Track and a Gladiator Track. In the Victory Track, you can only move upward. You can't drop downward. So even weaker players that win half the time or even less than half the time can still move upward slowly. Uncollected players can easily make it to, say, Platinum or even Diamond. Platinum and Diamond are not the bottom of BG, they are more than half way through VT, and players in the bottom 20% of all players of the game can still get there. VT also has additional incentives: the 2/1 medal system makes it possible for even players who do not win half their matches - which means they are substantially weaker than their competition - to still promote upward. All of this allows lower players to get a lot of rewards from BG that they would otherwise have zero chance to get in a purely competitive BG with "fair matchmaking."

If BG was absolutely fair, then weaker players would not run into stronger players, but that's because a fair BG would trap them at the very bottom of the game mode only matching against each other and fighting over scraps. BG is unfair because it *helps* weaker players a ton. In doing so those players end up advancing to the point of facing much stronger players. We can't simultaneously give them those hand outs AND ALSO let them beat each other up all the way to the top. At some point they have to fight the real competition, or BG becomes highly unfair to the players who are actually stronger.

You want a fair BG? Imagine you, and everyone like you, trapped in Bronze 17 fighting for 3* shards. That's a fair BG. Making a fair BG is easy. All we have to do is just not care about players like you, and give you what you keep asking for and calling the game stupid for not giving it to you. And I truly wish there was a way to give everyone who asked for "fair BG" exactly that, without hurting all the other players who want nothing to do with that. If there was such a way, I would throw the Big Red Switch and give it to them myself personally, then break off the handle so no one could ever switch it back.

Progression-based victory track and seeding based entry to gladiator circuit.

That’s easy to say, literally. However, it is mostly nonsensical.

Players at a particular progression tier are not all uniform in skill or even roster/deck strength. If we segregate players by progression, or even by roster strength, we will still have players stronger and weaker in each bucket. Right now, the stronger Cavs are beating the weaker TBs and Paragons and advancing past them. With progression brackets those players will never get that chance. They will just beat other Cavs and get Cav rewards.

Basically, progression tiered VT doesn’t help all lower players. It helps the weaker ones in each progression tier at the expense of penalizing the stronger ones in each tier. Which is a perverse thing to do in a competitive game mode.

The easier this sounds to fix, the less you probably understand about how the mode works.

Here is a quick decision tree that you can use:

1. Does the content I want to play nextabsolutely require either a specific mechanic (bleed debuffs), type of champion (based on tags, class, rarity), or is it just tough content? You typically want to have at least one good champ ranked in each class (or other main subset of champion) because you then typically will have a good range of abilities and counters to the major class abilities. Most of the time though, content just requires a minimal level of not choosing a champion whose abilities actively suffer from the fight conditions (eg bringing most mystics against Human Torch) and you should be fine.
2. Do I like the champion? If so, you will be more motivated to learn their abilities, feel comfortable playing them, use them a lot, and have more fun in general. This should trump other concerns about the champion being "the best".
3. Do you understand their abilities? If not, there is an easy fix, but don't just bring along a champion to a fight without at least mostly understanding what they do. Just because Rintrah is a beast doesn't mean he doesnt have a specific playstyle or match up terribly against defenders sometimes.
4. Are they a higher rarity/rank? If you don't know about the benefits between champion rarity (star level) and rank, then I'd suggest spending a couple minutes learning about combat power and things like the sp3 minigame and adrenaline (though, less useful for you rn). If two champs are similar base PI (the number under their name), but one is a 4* and one is a 5*, you probably want to prioritize the higher rarity (5*) because they will last you longer and have a higher ceiling for ranking/attack/health/etc.
5. Some champions are just better *IN GENERAL* than others, and will often be at least slightly more powerful all things considered. But the game has 250+ champions, and almost infinite combinations of nodes and modifiers. Not every champ is always better, and often the gap is not that large. There is a wide grouping of great champs, but you will almost always want Doom over Elektra. Just how it is.


Keep posting and learning! The forums are a great place to learn if you can filter out the noise. Plus, some of the noise is funny, so there's that.