AW Season rewards Plat 1-3 Disparity
BitterSteel
Member Posts: 9,264 ★★★★★
I think there is a monumental gap between rewards for Plat 1 and 2, and then a miniscule gap between Plat 2 and 3. And I think this disparity and gradient in rewards really enforces the wrong attitude for players.
For context, here are Plat 1 through 3 rewards
Ignoring the T5B and T2A (identical across brackets), the t5cc (which decreases reasonably) and the 5* Nexus, You'll see that:
Plat 3 get 15k 6* shards
Plat 2 get's 17.5k 6* shards
Plat 1 gets 20k 6* shards and a 6* Nexus
That is an extremely dramatic leap. Plat 3 to 2 gets an increase of 2.5k 6* shards and 10% T5CC, Plat 2 to 1 get's the same increase of 6* shards and T5CC and a 6* Nexus.
I think that jump is genuinely ridiculous. Losing out on plat 1 by a few spots would hurt immensely, you've lost out on 2.5k 6* shards, 10% T5cc, and an entire 6* Nexus. Obviously the main thing here is the Nexus, the other two items are fair and just increments. And an alliance mid table in plat 2 feels immense pressure to step things up and push for that 6* Nexus because... it's a 6* Nexus, it's an entire other champ plus 2.5k 6* shards. I think that's an unhealthy and unenjoyable amount of pressure for plat 2 alliances.
But a player in plat 3 who misses out on plat 2 just shrugs their shoulders, in the grand scheme of things, 2.5k 6* shards and 10% T5CCC won't be hard to make up. And an alliance mid plat 3 has almost no incentive to push for plat 2, that's a hell of a lot of extra revives, items and boosts to push for only 2.5k 6* shards, plat 1 feels too far out of reach so why bother pushing through two tiers of season bracket which could take the best part of a year, by which time the rewards will have hopefully been buffed.
The push for plat 1 is artificially and unhealthily high, and the push for plat 2 is artificially and unhealthily low. That's what has happened by this huge gap in the incremental rewards from tier to tier.
I think Plat 2 rewards should get a bump so the step up between plat 3 and 1 isn't so lopsided. I'm trying to write this post unbiased, and for transparency's sake I am in plat 3 at the moment, but the reason I write this post is because I feel 0 desire to spend 12 wars sweating, bursting blood vessels,crying, and otherwise putting effort into pushing for 2.5k 6* shards and 10% T5CC, when I see players in plat 2 and 1 fighting for that and an entire Nexus. I do think the units, items and stress required to get that extra 2.5k 6* shards are worth it.
But I look to lower tiers and think the same, the difference there in tiers steps down the same, 2.5k 6* shards and 10% T5CC less from plat 3 to plat 4, then the same again minus a bit of T5B for gold 1, then 2k 6* shards, a bit of T5B and 10% T5CC less for gold 2 and so on.
But I know that 2.5k 6* shards to a player in Gold 3 is much more valuable than it is to me, so (and feel free to correct me if you disagree), I don't feel like the issue is as prevalent there. I mean a player in gold 3 may want to push to gold 2 for an extra 2k 6* shards. You tell me.
However, my point of this thread is to propose a smoothing out of tiers. Instead of a dramatic drop off that promotes attitudes of both extremes (too much pressure and desire to push, and not enough), this is what I suggest as an example. Catalyst amounts, 5* Nexus and T5CC remain unchanged. I'm just talking about 6* Shards here.
Plat 1 remains the same: 1 Nexus, 20k 6* Shards
Plat 2 from 17.5k --> 25k 6* shards
Plat 3 from 15k --> 17.5k 6* shards
Plat 4 remains the same: 12.5k 6* shards
Obviously this part is more open to interpretation and discussion and I'm not saying this is the right answer. I wanted to keep Plat 1 6* shards and Nexus the same, because I'm not looking for a nerf of any rewards. But to make Plat 2 and 3 more smoothed out you have to add some 6* shards to them. I feel like this is a pretty happy medium. Plat 4 is 800 alliances compared to P1: 50, P2: 100 and P3: 300, so I feel that's a good place to draw the line to stop increasing 6* shards, as that's 800 extra alliances getting shards, compare to the 100 and 300 of P2 and 3 respectively.
If you think I'm selfishly drawing the line after my tier for AW seasons, know that I'd be equally happy if only Plat 2 6* shards were increased and P3 remained the same. I thought personally that 1 Nexus +20k 6* shards -> 25k shards -> 17.5k shards -> 12.5k Shards made more sense than 1 Nexus +20k 6* shards -> 25k shards -> 15k shards -> 12.5k Shards.
Another option is to extend the smoothing further, and bump up gold 1 and plat 4 rewards, but I feel like as I said before, adding extra 6* shards to 800 in Plat 4 and 1500 in Gold 1 could be too much for the economy in Kabams eyes.
But if you disagree that's absolutely fair, this thread isn't supposed to be a debate around how to smooth the brackets, more just to raise the issue with Kabam about how these bracket structures make players in P2 and P3 feel.
So anyone in P1-3 please drop your feelings on how the brackets and the reward decrease affects your enjoyment of Seasons, and anyone else with their thoughts please share too.
For context, here are Plat 1 through 3 rewards
Ignoring the T5B and T2A (identical across brackets), the t5cc (which decreases reasonably) and the 5* Nexus, You'll see that:
Plat 3 get 15k 6* shards
Plat 2 get's 17.5k 6* shards
Plat 1 gets 20k 6* shards and a 6* Nexus
That is an extremely dramatic leap. Plat 3 to 2 gets an increase of 2.5k 6* shards and 10% T5CC, Plat 2 to 1 get's the same increase of 6* shards and T5CC and a 6* Nexus.
I think that jump is genuinely ridiculous. Losing out on plat 1 by a few spots would hurt immensely, you've lost out on 2.5k 6* shards, 10% T5cc, and an entire 6* Nexus. Obviously the main thing here is the Nexus, the other two items are fair and just increments. And an alliance mid table in plat 2 feels immense pressure to step things up and push for that 6* Nexus because... it's a 6* Nexus, it's an entire other champ plus 2.5k 6* shards. I think that's an unhealthy and unenjoyable amount of pressure for plat 2 alliances.
But a player in plat 3 who misses out on plat 2 just shrugs their shoulders, in the grand scheme of things, 2.5k 6* shards and 10% T5CCC won't be hard to make up. And an alliance mid plat 3 has almost no incentive to push for plat 2, that's a hell of a lot of extra revives, items and boosts to push for only 2.5k 6* shards, plat 1 feels too far out of reach so why bother pushing through two tiers of season bracket which could take the best part of a year, by which time the rewards will have hopefully been buffed.
The push for plat 1 is artificially and unhealthily high, and the push for plat 2 is artificially and unhealthily low. That's what has happened by this huge gap in the incremental rewards from tier to tier.
I think Plat 2 rewards should get a bump so the step up between plat 3 and 1 isn't so lopsided. I'm trying to write this post unbiased, and for transparency's sake I am in plat 3 at the moment, but the reason I write this post is because I feel 0 desire to spend 12 wars sweating, bursting blood vessels,
But I look to lower tiers and think the same, the difference there in tiers steps down the same, 2.5k 6* shards and 10% T5CC less from plat 3 to plat 4, then the same again minus a bit of T5B for gold 1, then 2k 6* shards, a bit of T5B and 10% T5CC less for gold 2 and so on.
But I know that 2.5k 6* shards to a player in Gold 3 is much more valuable than it is to me, so (and feel free to correct me if you disagree), I don't feel like the issue is as prevalent there. I mean a player in gold 3 may want to push to gold 2 for an extra 2k 6* shards. You tell me.
However, my point of this thread is to propose a smoothing out of tiers. Instead of a dramatic drop off that promotes attitudes of both extremes (too much pressure and desire to push, and not enough), this is what I suggest as an example. Catalyst amounts, 5* Nexus and T5CC remain unchanged. I'm just talking about 6* Shards here.
Plat 1 remains the same: 1 Nexus, 20k 6* Shards
Plat 2 from 17.5k --> 25k 6* shards
Plat 3 from 15k --> 17.5k 6* shards
Plat 4 remains the same: 12.5k 6* shards
Obviously this part is more open to interpretation and discussion and I'm not saying this is the right answer. I wanted to keep Plat 1 6* shards and Nexus the same, because I'm not looking for a nerf of any rewards. But to make Plat 2 and 3 more smoothed out you have to add some 6* shards to them. I feel like this is a pretty happy medium. Plat 4 is 800 alliances compared to P1: 50, P2: 100 and P3: 300, so I feel that's a good place to draw the line to stop increasing 6* shards, as that's 800 extra alliances getting shards, compare to the 100 and 300 of P2 and 3 respectively.
If you think I'm selfishly drawing the line after my tier for AW seasons, know that I'd be equally happy if only Plat 2 6* shards were increased and P3 remained the same. I thought personally that 1 Nexus +20k 6* shards -> 25k shards -> 17.5k shards -> 12.5k Shards made more sense than 1 Nexus +20k 6* shards -> 25k shards -> 15k shards -> 12.5k Shards.
Another option is to extend the smoothing further, and bump up gold 1 and plat 4 rewards, but I feel like as I said before, adding extra 6* shards to 800 in Plat 4 and 1500 in Gold 1 could be too much for the economy in Kabams eyes.
But if you disagree that's absolutely fair, this thread isn't supposed to be a debate around how to smooth the brackets, more just to raise the issue with Kabam about how these bracket structures make players in P2 and P3 feel.
So anyone in P1-3 please drop your feelings on how the brackets and the reward decrease affects your enjoyment of Seasons, and anyone else with their thoughts please share too.
20
Comments
It took all the choice of what to do with your rewards away. You could go for 3 basics for ISO, 3 x 750 lots of 6* shards from Black ISO Market or go for some featured crystals. Now I use the 5* Nexus to try and target a class of ISO I need.
There is one champion in the 5* basic I would rank up, Shang Chi. Wish I could have 2 or 3 shots at his featured crystal though. Such a demoralising change.
This way the difference is a very small margin of shards and the pain of missing a tier is much less.
And remember, I’m not saying missing out is bad in general. Im saying having one monumental missing out for plat 1 and one tiny missing out for plat 2 doesn’t make as much sense because it’s not a smooth increment.
I'm pretty sure the big jump between P1 and P2 is a compromise over the notion that the *boundary* between P1 and Masters is relatively small, but they still want to have a big bump in rewards for the "highest" levels of competition at tier 1. It isn't that P2 players are missing out on P1 rewards even though they are "almost" P1, it is that both the top and the bottom of P1 are getting the rewards the devs want the players who just missed Masters to get, and the bottom of P1 are just getting lucky.
The devs are not going to make a hundred war brackets with finely tuned rewards, because they aren't going to manage a hundred brackets. But more importantly, there is this vague notion that there is a hyper competitive range of alliances and a not-so competitive range below, and they want the rewards to reflect that. So there's going to be a range of rewards at the bottom that tends to be relatively smooth, because big jumps in rewards wouldn't really function as well to incentivize strong competition in brackets where the alliances intrinsically don't want to push (if anything, it will just stress them out more). But at the top, where alliances are already pushing, they want to give them something to push for. Which means they actually want players feeling that "I missed out" feeling somewhat and structure the rewards accordingly.
Everyone is free to argue whether this is something they think is a good idea or not: my opinions on the matter are coming mostly from the outside looking in. But I think if you want to advocate for changing this, pointing out that a large disparity exists between P1 and P2 is probably insufficient to cause Kabam to act, because I believe that disparity is deliberate, not accidental.
Secondly, you're making an assumption that we want the reward structure to be the same if moved down. They could easily just remove the extra 6* shards or lower them significantly say down to 5k shards and then include the 6* nexus to the rewards gaps to make them more organic.
Most importantly even if they make a big jump from gold to plat it's still a net positive. The gold players aren't losing anything they had before and now 800 alliances get better rewards instead of just 50.
There's literally no argument that can be made logically for kabam not to keep rewards increase consistent across tiers as long as they aren't removing anything from the players at the top or the bottom
It's not the same exact problem at all
The rewards do not reflect the effort we put in, and we knew that going in. The jump between p3 and p2 in rewards is relatively nothing. I agree with @BitterSteel . The difficulty between p3 and p2 is huge, but the rewards dont reflect it.
to reach p3, one needs to stay between Tiers3 and tier4. Here you face challenger map, with lower stats and slightly lower defenses. As we move up in tier3 though, you start to see majority r3 defenses before you hit tier2.
To hit P2, you have to be majority in tier2 with some tier3 wars. Here you face the expert map, with inflated stats. And here you start to see majority r3 defenses and low double digit/ if not single digit deaths.
To hit P1, you HAVE to be in t2 and spend time in t1 tiers. Here you see majority if not full r3 defenses and max boosts.
Currently, the P1 players definitely get their dues in terms of rewards, as they should. But p2 players, do not really. The items, the boosts, required to get/stay in p2 does not reflect its difficulty. It is far more stresssful, takes longer to assign, more to boost and heal.
Will we push p2 again? not really. We did it once, and the rewards did not feel adequate. Id rather chill and get easy p3 rewards instead.
currently p2 feels rather like losers of p1, than winners from p3. A sharp drop off in rewards that does not incentivize the push.
I would love to see selectors used to restore some of this flexibility.
5-star selector - choose from a 5-star nexus, a 5-star feature, or x-number of shards. Supplemental shards can be added in smaller numbers to the nexus or feature if needed.
T5cc selector - choose between x% random or half-x% selector
My war season was a total bust. A 6-star Loki, and two t5cc drops in the one class where I already had an unused t5cc due to a lack of a quality champ.
Everyone has their views on this topic but I personally don't agree with it
Jaded said just replace the 5* nexus with 6* nexus for plat 2-4 and I said no that wouldn’t be good.
There are twice as many alliances in P2 than there are in Master and P1 combined. The gap between those two groups is fairly massive in comparison to the upper half of P1 to Master.
If you see the drop off though, it is very steep.
A) 15k 6* shards or
then drop the base 20k shard reward to 10k.