A battlegrounds analysis and suggestions
GunterD_1
Member Posts: 18 ★
Been thinking a bit. Here’s how I think bgs went wrong, and how I think they can fix it. Its 3 big mistakes.
The setup looks to me to be very similar to 2 other very successful, very fun, and very popular Free To Play games, Hearthstone and Rocket League.
They have basically the same tier setup Hearthstone does with the victory track. Hearthstone has more intermediate tiers, and big seasonal rewards tied to what tier you reached, with very large jumps between silver/gold/plat levels etc. And when you hit the top tier, you're done with the ladder climb and instead they start ranking you individually, based on your rating. This is very similar to the framework battlegrounds launched with.
Here’s the thing though. In Hearthstone, maybe 50% of players can reach the gold level. Maybe 30% will touch plat. 5% will get to diamond. And less than 1% actually hit that top tier.
I am guessing that starting out, they weren’t sure how to math out the tier divisions. How many players are going to get to what level and whatnot. They were afraid that too many people would get to the top, or that nobody would. Honestly the beta stuff should have been collecting data to figure all that out, but whatever they got it seems like they didn’t trust it. And I think somewhere along the line, someone important misunderstood how this was supposed to work, and they ended up presenting and balancing the thing so it looks like everyone is expected to get to that topmost tier, since that’s where they loaded all the season rank rewards.
So, cardinal sin, they stuck all the rank rewards stuff up on the “gladiators circuit”, and put a bunch of focus on that, where in reality 99% of the player base shouldn’t even need to know that that exists. And they didn’t trust that the tier system is going to sort people out correctly, the way it should. The victory track rewards alone should be sufficient to incentivize playing the mode.
Then they asked “but how do we monetize this”. Don't get me wrong, this is fair, and necessary for a FTP game. The initial thought was probably “it drives interest in getting and ranking up champs that are otherwise ignored, which incentivizes buying cav crystals and stuff". And “well people will use energy restores and we can sell this shield thing to protect a win streak. But we’ll have to make that real expensive so people don’t just buy their way to the top”.
Then someone asked “that’s good but can we do something like Rocket League does? Have like some bonus rewards that people get by participating. And have some nicer rewards for people willing to pay a premium?”. I kinda think that might be why they've got the new graphic display for Summoner Camp actually. It looks an awful lot like the Rocket League rewards graphic, I think they might be planning on transitioning BGs season stuff over to use that as well.
But I think they thought “Summoner camp is pretty complicated, people got confused by it when we launched, can’t we just figure out a way to put them all on the same event, and just let the spenders get higher?"
So secondary big mistake: They put free and paid people on the same track for the event reward. If there’s one thing that pisses people off that want to play for free, it’s being reminded by that kind of direct comparison that the whales get so much more. And it kind of implies that you're supposed to be getting higher than you really can.
The final big mistake was making the mode cost energy, instead of giving it its own recharge system. That is essentially forcing people to choose between playing bgs and doing eq, which I can’t see how that benefits anybody.
So, all they’ve got to do to fix this is
1) market the main “victory track” mode as the primary method of getting rewards. And price the rewards accordingly. This may take some adjustment involving numbers of tiers and wins needed to advance.
2) either drop the associated event, make it all free, or separate it into a free and paid track like summoner camp (and make the paid thing like a one time buy instead of the paid tokens stuff).
3) instead of costing energy, have it cost some other kind of resource token. Give 5 free tokens a day. Let you stockpile them up to some amount. Allow purchasing of extras up to the stockpile cap.
I very much hope they can get this. BGs is fun. Would love it to succeed.
The setup looks to me to be very similar to 2 other very successful, very fun, and very popular Free To Play games, Hearthstone and Rocket League.
They have basically the same tier setup Hearthstone does with the victory track. Hearthstone has more intermediate tiers, and big seasonal rewards tied to what tier you reached, with very large jumps between silver/gold/plat levels etc. And when you hit the top tier, you're done with the ladder climb and instead they start ranking you individually, based on your rating. This is very similar to the framework battlegrounds launched with.
Here’s the thing though. In Hearthstone, maybe 50% of players can reach the gold level. Maybe 30% will touch plat. 5% will get to diamond. And less than 1% actually hit that top tier.
I am guessing that starting out, they weren’t sure how to math out the tier divisions. How many players are going to get to what level and whatnot. They were afraid that too many people would get to the top, or that nobody would. Honestly the beta stuff should have been collecting data to figure all that out, but whatever they got it seems like they didn’t trust it. And I think somewhere along the line, someone important misunderstood how this was supposed to work, and they ended up presenting and balancing the thing so it looks like everyone is expected to get to that topmost tier, since that’s where they loaded all the season rank rewards.
So, cardinal sin, they stuck all the rank rewards stuff up on the “gladiators circuit”, and put a bunch of focus on that, where in reality 99% of the player base shouldn’t even need to know that that exists. And they didn’t trust that the tier system is going to sort people out correctly, the way it should. The victory track rewards alone should be sufficient to incentivize playing the mode.
Then they asked “but how do we monetize this”. Don't get me wrong, this is fair, and necessary for a FTP game. The initial thought was probably “it drives interest in getting and ranking up champs that are otherwise ignored, which incentivizes buying cav crystals and stuff". And “well people will use energy restores and we can sell this shield thing to protect a win streak. But we’ll have to make that real expensive so people don’t just buy their way to the top”.
Then someone asked “that’s good but can we do something like Rocket League does? Have like some bonus rewards that people get by participating. And have some nicer rewards for people willing to pay a premium?”. I kinda think that might be why they've got the new graphic display for Summoner Camp actually. It looks an awful lot like the Rocket League rewards graphic, I think they might be planning on transitioning BGs season stuff over to use that as well.
But I think they thought “Summoner camp is pretty complicated, people got confused by it when we launched, can’t we just figure out a way to put them all on the same event, and just let the spenders get higher?"
So secondary big mistake: They put free and paid people on the same track for the event reward. If there’s one thing that pisses people off that want to play for free, it’s being reminded by that kind of direct comparison that the whales get so much more. And it kind of implies that you're supposed to be getting higher than you really can.
The final big mistake was making the mode cost energy, instead of giving it its own recharge system. That is essentially forcing people to choose between playing bgs and doing eq, which I can’t see how that benefits anybody.
So, all they’ve got to do to fix this is
1) market the main “victory track” mode as the primary method of getting rewards. And price the rewards accordingly. This may take some adjustment involving numbers of tiers and wins needed to advance.
2) either drop the associated event, make it all free, or separate it into a free and paid track like summoner camp (and make the paid thing like a one time buy instead of the paid tokens stuff).
3) instead of costing energy, have it cost some other kind of resource token. Give 5 free tokens a day. Let you stockpile them up to some amount. Allow purchasing of extras up to the stockpile cap.
I very much hope they can get this. BGs is fun. Would love it to succeed.
Post edited by Kabam Porthos on
3
Comments
I'd add: remove the cost for multiple decks and mastery setups.