Battlegrounds Champion Charge Reduction

The beta will be reducing champion charges from the previous value of 99 to 3 for Battlegrounds. Why are we limiting this? Using the full breadth of our roster is what made this so engaging the first time around. Limiting rosters in any way will just lead to limiting the time players put into the game mode and extra frustration in most cases.

Comments

BattlegroundsFan

Don’t forget though! You still have to pay energy costs on top of the charges!

K00shMaan

This is a competitive game mode. Limiting the number of time you can play with a pseudo-restriction like this is a good idea I think. It makes climbing the ladder using brute force far more difficult to do. In the game mode now, winning 10 games in a row would get you about 150 points. You can also get 150 with a worse winning percentage by playing more games. If you were only winning 3 out of every 4 games, 150 points would take 20 games instead. This is fair enough but what really makes it fair is that there is a limit to how much you can endlessly grind in order to improve your ranking. At some point the quality of your champs will decrease too much and you will be unable to maintain the same winning percentage with the roster you can field at that point. Kind of annoying that your Character's only get used when you actually draft them but that is probably better for players in the long run. Keep in mind we have only been exposed to the "Ranked" version of this game mode. There will be an "Unranked" version of this mode as well that we can only hope is far more user friendly when it comes to a player's entry fee or other costs.

Edit: forgot to mention though, 3 seems pretty low depending on what the refresh timer will be. If it's going to be the better part of a day to refresh my champs, I would hope that they can be used more like 5-7 times if not more.

unknown

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Riptide

I don’t like the idea of champ refreshes at all tbh

Demonzfyre

Can y'all just keep in mind this is still a beta version and not the final version. Each time now that this has come around, y'all act like it's permanent changes and it's going to be full released.

They are testing out how reducing the charges will work. This is not a permanent change.

DarkEternity

The issue is that it’s punishing high skill players with smaller rosters (mostly F2P players or those who don’t spend much) and is benefiting people with larger rosters (people who spend quite a bit). Battlegrounds in of itself already does this but it’s to a lesser degree if you have 30+ R3s & 1-3 R4s. With this change if you don’t have enough R3s, R2s, R5s, etc you won’t be able to push leaderboard without running into someone with stronger champs than you which will likely result in them knocking out your defenders faster than you can knock out theirs.

Worknprogress

It's an 8hr refresh. Just wait 8hrs then. This is the planned limit for live launch as of now so will provide a much more realistic representation of what's planned to go live

Worknprogress

Roster size and strength has always had an advantage in this game elsewhere as it should. There's absolutely zero reason it shouldn't be the same here.

Tx_Quack_Attack6589

Y’all also need to understand they only lose one of the 3 “charges” is if the champ is used, many times I didn’t even see champs as options several matches in a row.

DarkEternity

At least in AW you can make up the difference with skill, I just simply don’t see that possibility here. Beyond that, even AQ is based off of your top 5 champs which can easily be made up for if you did all the content that rewards sig stones (aka you have 5 Sig 200s at R3 or R4). In battlegrounds you physically will be unable to surpass anyone who whales. The leaderboard won’t be filled with high skilled players but instead the people who have the largest roster. I already know of several people who were on the leaderboard (including top 10) that physically will be unable to compete on full release due to this ‘feature’. Annoys me if I’m being quite honest. I fully acknowledge that roster should play a part but I do not believe it should be to the degree that if you don’t have 60+ R3s you can’t compete on the leaderboard. That number is, for one, impossible to reach if you’re F2P (atm) and pretty unrealistic.

Demonzfyre

Just remember its still in beta. 3 might not be the number they land on. They were 99 now its 3. Kabam never said 3 was the final number.

Worknprogress

This isn't even necessarily true. Playing more matches isn't what gets your rating higher, winning more matches is. If you play less matches but have a much higher win percentage, you end up higher than someone that plays more and wins less. Pretty sure that's skill winning out there.

Not sure why you think you know how this plays out before A: What this looks like when it launches and B: How people actually play it when it's live.

Colinwhitworth69

I’m fine waiting to see how it plays out.

DarkEternity

I mean I thought it was already a given that I was talking about number of winnable matches. Someone with a larger roster with the same or even a (let’s say) 2:1 win ratio versus someone with a 3:0 win ratio but a smaller roster will result in the person with the 2:1 ratio placing higher if the person with the larger roster plays all the matches possible for them. Now, if we had a global match limit it would make a bit more sense. Let’s say everyone can play 10 matches and then they’d have an 8 hour wait to refill that energy. THEN it would be completely fair, imo.

Worknprogress

This thread is just a different flavor of the one we had during the beta where the person said ranked BGs should be limited to 3*s so it's fair to everyone.

Worknprogress

This game isn't now nor has it ever been completely fair. Spending has always and I'm pretty confident in saying, will always give an advantage. If you're looking for a totally level playing field, you're playing the wrong game. This is a gacha mobile game, not an E-sport.

McCloud33

I played more than 150 matches the first beta and didn’t use up the 99 charges in a week. I had friends who did 300+ and did use them up. 3 is just too few IMO, but the real issue here is not that they go on cool down, is that You can pay units to refresh them early.

Big spenders already have a big advantage in this game mode with the breadth of their roster, but now they’ll just spend to always have their top champs available when other ftp players won’t.

Personally I don’t think there should be any champion refresh timer. Play the mode as much as you want. If you’re good, you’ll earn points. If you’re not, it won’t matter how many games you play, someone who plays less but wins more often can still have a higher number.

If we are forced to have refresh timer, it needs to be something like 25 minimum though.

DarkEternity

Did I not already state that having a large roster still is a big advantage even with 99 charges? The problem is how impossible it will be for anyone low-spending/F2P to get onto the leaderboard. Which is obviously an issue that is extremely easy to address.

DNA3000

It only seems like an obvious issue to you because you have a vision for the game mode that seems to be incompatible with the one the game is moving towards. The obvious issue with your vision of the game mode is: how would you monetize it? If everyone can only run the same number of matches, and everyone can use their roster the same amount of times within the same cooldown window, what would your monetization avenue be?

Every game mode is monetized in some fashion, because every game mode has to pay for itself. Given a choice between a battlegrounds game mode with no monetization avenues and a battlegrounds game mode with one, the one with the monetization avenue will displace the one without one. We can debate how much or how little the game mode should be monetized; AQ is arguably very lightly monetized while AW is more heavily monetized, and arena is only partially monetized, but there are no game modes that have zero monetization opportunities at all.

Having a big roster is only an advantage vs players without one. But a big roster is no advantage against the other high tier players with equally large rosters. At the highest levels of competition, there's almost certainly going to be ways for Kabam to monetize the competition among the largest roster players. If it isn't champion recharge, it will probably be something equally useful and equally limiting to those who don't utilize it.

DarkEternity

Ah, but that’s the thing. They can still monetize it through the refills for said charges. There is still incentive if the variety of champs you have access to is greater than another players if you spend. Just because you remove individual energy recharges doesn’t mean there is suddenly no incentive. What I’m proposing is just a way for high end players with smaller rosters than the more heavy spenders to keep up as long as they have grinded the units (for charge refills) and have the skills to do so.

DarkEternity

Quite simply put, making a certain amount of energy you can use per PLAYER versus per CHAMPION could be very beneficial for the game. People would still want to spend and rank up champions for battlegrounds because they want the champions and higher ranks to beat out the people that cannot spend as much. The playing field cannot be even but I do think doing it in that way could be a potential option in the future.

BitterSteel

I managed to get into and stay in top ten on the leaderboard by doing around 55 matches on the beta. That was about 8 matches a day, which means 48 champions were used each day (3 attackers, 3 defenders per match up). Your deck of 30 champions has 90 energy between them, so as long as you have enough depth you’ll be absolutely fine. (Note, this is only addressing the “high skilled players” you’re talking about - due to % win rate).

I don’t know what the refresh will be, I know @Worknprogress mentioned 8 hours but I haven’t seen anything on that (if you have a link that would be great). So every 8 hours means 3 times a day, easily letting you do those 8 match ups a day - even if you need to reuse champions.

The issue people will run into is if they have an over reliance on specific champs, meaning their deck is significantly weakened once a small amount of champions have run out of energy. Assuming you have 30 champions in your deck that can all play a part and all be used, you have enough depth as a high skill player to get into the top.

No amount of high skill can circumvent a weak roster, which is absolutely correct. We need to reward roster depth, which is theoretically what the stamina does.

I think people see 3 energy and panic, and yeah I was the same. I didn’t like the idea at the start, but having thought about what I did and managed to do with one deck and only 8 matches a day, I think it’s vastly being overstated how much of a big deal these stamina are. I will wait and see how the beta feels with this stamina addition, maybe it’ll feel to limiting, maybe it’ll be fine. I look forward to testing it.

People are also overstating the brute force, throw cash at it approach. This is not arena where every matchup adds points to your total. Someone with a medium level of skill could throw a million dollars at this mode and get nowhere. Even someone with high skill will need to be eternally on their game.

Take someone like BeroMan for example, clearly a highly skilled player. But he seems to be one of the most highly matched players, he had 250 match ups near the end. He threw energy refills at it like there was no tomorrow, but he still ended up hovering around the 5-20 range. Throwing money at this mode alone will not get you to the top, this isn’t arena. And to me, as a player who doesn’t spend anymore and won’t spend on the mode. I feel absolutely fine with making this mode have a monetisation aspect that doesn’t wipe the floor with non-spenders.

I feel like I can likely compete with spenders by doing my 8 or so fights a day, and I can back my skill and my roster to do so. The people who can’t get into and stay in the top parts of the leaderboard without doing 15, 20 or 30 matches a day will have to work on percentage wins, either by strengthening their roster or by sharpening skills. Either that, or prepare to pay - and even then, don’t expect it to get you higher than your percentage wins allow.

Worknprogress

I got 8hrs from the CCP beta. They only had 3 charges and the cooldown was set at 8hrs.

Colinwhitworth69

I wish more players would just have fun and not worry about everything.

redsoxpatsfan89

On the other side of it, if there is no refresh timer, then its all about who has more free time in a day. Then it goes more like arena. Those who can grind it for hours on end can "potentially " move up quicker. Not saying thats bad or good. Just no matter what, someone will be at a disadvantage. If they use charges, the disadvantage is smaller rosters, or potentially (if units can be used for charges) a paywall. Its all just part of the game. Cant find a way to make a competitive to make it work for everyone unfortunately