My Battlegrounds Experience
21Eggatron
Member Posts: 104 ★★★
This is about to be long. Read if you want, I don't want to see any complaints about length though, because good feedback needs to be detailed and offer solutions.
Battlegrounds was amazing. I love everything about the mode; the banning, the drafting, the chess match of selecting our drafts for fights, all of it.
Personal Meta rankings: Safeguard, Power Snack, Masochism, Bubble Shield.
Favorite Champs to use: Black Cat, Toad, Nimrod, Dragon Man, Doc Ock, Bishop, Guardian.
Peaks: 4th in Canada, 200th Globally
Proof:
Aside from the blast I had with it, it still has some flaws that NEED to be fixed before it goes live.
To me, the things that can kill this game mode before it can truly achieve its potential are three things: Champion Energy, Match Energy and Modders. There are plenty of minor tweaks that I think should happen, but these can and will kill the game mode if Kabam isn't careful.
Champion Energy: The individual Energy each Champion has that determines how many times they can be actually used. Two things about this are bad when combined; the number of times each champ can be used and the refresh timer. 3 Champion Energy for the most part felt fine. I averaged 7 matches before at least one champ went on cooldown. It still feels slightly too small, maybe bump it to 5 at most. Refresh timer on the other hand is way too long; 6 hours for 1 charge is absurd (18 hours for a full recharge). I recommend 2 hours for 1 charge. This allows someone to play the mode in the morning, go about their day, then play freely in the evening with the same deck and no units spent, more reasonable for the casual player.
Match Energy: Energy consumed to search for and get into a match. BGs not having its own energy is mind boggling to me. Enough things already take quest energy (story quest, event quest, variants, occasionally the side event). Put simply, adding one more thing to the list just limits progression. Make it something like AQ, AW and Arena where it's something other to do rather than something to have to do instead.
Modders: Anyone who wins fights at higher health and faster than is actually possible (i.e. finishing at 100% health with Nimrod against Bishop or K.O.ing defenders in under 10 seconds), on top of people with profiles that do not reflect their ranking (i.e. being top 10 with the top champ being an unleveled r3 6 star and the other profile champs being low level r5s or r1s).
NOTE: Forums mods, if you take this post down because of these examples, that's disgusting. I'm not accusing anyone directly, and anyone who has made it to the top 250 has experienced these examples, so this is absolutely something that happens and therefore is applicable to feedback.
There is nothing more disheartening than to be grinding through and losing because you never had a chance from the minute you matched them. Seeing the global leader board peppered with them is just as gut-wrenching. Whatever anti-cheat plan you have Kabam, it has to be good and it has to be able to evolve as mods evolve, because when this goes live, no one will play if they can't get a fair shot in games that actually matter.
Other QoL changes that I think need to be in place is some way to make Special 3s actually usable and balancing the game mode in terms of who drafts first.
Special 3s: As incredible a job the animation/design teams have done, they take way too much time off the clock, and champs with Special 3s in the rotation are defense fodder or forced to be used in a suboptimal way. The only fix I legitimately think is fair is adding the skip Special 3 button.
Drafting Balance: If you are drafting first you are at way too much of a disadvantage. Drafting first, you place a defender first for round 3, you have a short timer to place for round 1 so you can't process who your opponent drafted last most of the time, and your opponent picks last. I propose making it so that if you draft first, you place a defender first in round 2, which is much more fair, as well as increasing the timer to place the defenders slightly. How it is currently, drafting last is way too much of an advantage.
Outside of the above criticisms, I cannot wait for this to go live. I can absolutely see this becoming my favorite game mode, and the casual mode will result in some epic tournaments.
If anyone else has other proposed fixes to these problems, I'd love to hear them. Also, post your best round wins, I'd be thrilled to see them!
Here are mine:
TL:DR: BGs is fun, has some big issues that must be addressed if it'll succeed and could use some minor QoL balance tweaks.
Battlegrounds was amazing. I love everything about the mode; the banning, the drafting, the chess match of selecting our drafts for fights, all of it.
Personal Meta rankings: Safeguard, Power Snack, Masochism, Bubble Shield.
Favorite Champs to use: Black Cat, Toad, Nimrod, Dragon Man, Doc Ock, Bishop, Guardian.
Peaks: 4th in Canada, 200th Globally
Proof:
Aside from the blast I had with it, it still has some flaws that NEED to be fixed before it goes live.
To me, the things that can kill this game mode before it can truly achieve its potential are three things: Champion Energy, Match Energy and Modders. There are plenty of minor tweaks that I think should happen, but these can and will kill the game mode if Kabam isn't careful.
Champion Energy: The individual Energy each Champion has that determines how many times they can be actually used. Two things about this are bad when combined; the number of times each champ can be used and the refresh timer. 3 Champion Energy for the most part felt fine. I averaged 7 matches before at least one champ went on cooldown. It still feels slightly too small, maybe bump it to 5 at most. Refresh timer on the other hand is way too long; 6 hours for 1 charge is absurd (18 hours for a full recharge). I recommend 2 hours for 1 charge. This allows someone to play the mode in the morning, go about their day, then play freely in the evening with the same deck and no units spent, more reasonable for the casual player.
Match Energy: Energy consumed to search for and get into a match. BGs not having its own energy is mind boggling to me. Enough things already take quest energy (story quest, event quest, variants, occasionally the side event). Put simply, adding one more thing to the list just limits progression. Make it something like AQ, AW and Arena where it's something other to do rather than something to have to do instead.
Modders: Anyone who wins fights at higher health and faster than is actually possible (i.e. finishing at 100% health with Nimrod against Bishop or K.O.ing defenders in under 10 seconds), on top of people with profiles that do not reflect their ranking (i.e. being top 10 with the top champ being an unleveled r3 6 star and the other profile champs being low level r5s or r1s).
NOTE: Forums mods, if you take this post down because of these examples, that's disgusting. I'm not accusing anyone directly, and anyone who has made it to the top 250 has experienced these examples, so this is absolutely something that happens and therefore is applicable to feedback.
There is nothing more disheartening than to be grinding through and losing because you never had a chance from the minute you matched them. Seeing the global leader board peppered with them is just as gut-wrenching. Whatever anti-cheat plan you have Kabam, it has to be good and it has to be able to evolve as mods evolve, because when this goes live, no one will play if they can't get a fair shot in games that actually matter.
Other QoL changes that I think need to be in place is some way to make Special 3s actually usable and balancing the game mode in terms of who drafts first.
Special 3s: As incredible a job the animation/design teams have done, they take way too much time off the clock, and champs with Special 3s in the rotation are defense fodder or forced to be used in a suboptimal way. The only fix I legitimately think is fair is adding the skip Special 3 button.
Drafting Balance: If you are drafting first you are at way too much of a disadvantage. Drafting first, you place a defender first for round 3, you have a short timer to place for round 1 so you can't process who your opponent drafted last most of the time, and your opponent picks last. I propose making it so that if you draft first, you place a defender first in round 2, which is much more fair, as well as increasing the timer to place the defenders slightly. How it is currently, drafting last is way too much of an advantage.
Outside of the above criticisms, I cannot wait for this to go live. I can absolutely see this becoming my favorite game mode, and the casual mode will result in some epic tournaments.
If anyone else has other proposed fixes to these problems, I'd love to hear them. Also, post your best round wins, I'd be thrilled to see them!
Here are mine:
TL:DR: BGs is fun, has some big issues that must be addressed if it'll succeed and could use some minor QoL balance tweaks.
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