Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
This is something I’ve written to death about too - there needs to be divisions instead of the current structure because as you say, it is a mode with diminishing returns unless you’re in the top half of the top 10%.
The GC format - absolutely fine, you match vs people with a similar score so beastly small accounts can still smash noob whales, but I don’t like the VT format where you do have to string victories together. If you get unlucky you can ruin all your progress which is irritating, and for someone who isn’t as sweaty, that’s probably when the phone gets put down.
I just don’t understand why a format wherein you play based on your ability is implemented from the start rather than 50% through.
Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
I think one of the biggest issues is player expectations personally. I don't understand why people that are lower in the progression ladder or higher up but not particularly good at the game feel entitled to finish VT at all.
A lot of that has to do with Kabam I'm sure in that they've gone out of their way to hide the fact that BGs inherently are competitive so that means someone has to lose. If they didn't try so hard to hide the competition aspect behind a bunch of "BGs are for everyone" rainbows and unicorns maybe people wouldn't have such lofty expectations of their return on time invested in them.
Not being able to progress higher than silver in VT by design doesn't mean that BGs aren't for those people, it just means that those people have hit their cap on what they can expect to reasonably earn from them. Lumping everyone together is probably the biggest mistake that's been made with the mode in general. Having people moving along the same exact path for the same rewards but segregating within that group by matchmaking was a massive gaffe imo. If top players aren't matching bottom players, there's no reason to have them in the same group at all. Just change the reward structure based on progression tiers and segregate the player base completely and give people what they think they want (I'm quite sure even more people are gonna dislike having their reward ceiling substantially slashed more than all this nonsense about matchmaking).
Whatever they end up doing, if anything at all, I highly doubt it has much of an effect on me personally so in the end I don't particularly care that much. Regardless of that, I do think the current setup is ridiculous and certainly not conducive to player retention. The only suggestion I'm vehemently against that I've seen is increasing the amount of matches needed for VT across the board to pad for the players struggling. Making the VT even longer for players that aren't struggling is a terrible idea as it's already a massive waste of time for them to begin with.
Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
It's a competition. A Paragon wins, and a Paragon loses. That's how it goes. Is every Paragon supposed to win every Match?
Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
It's a competition. A Paragon wins, and a Paragon loses. That's how it goes. Is every Paragon supposed to win every Match?
If it’s actually a competition everyone should be playing everybody. Shouldn’t be Paragons only play paragons.
Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
It's a competition. A Paragon wins, and a Paragon loses. That's how it goes. Is every Paragon supposed to win every Match?
If it’s actually a competition everyone should be playing everybody. Shouldn’t be Paragons only play paragons.
So....because a Paragon can't win against a Paragon, they should take out UC? Cav? That the logic?
Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
It's a competition. A Paragon wins, and a Paragon loses. That's how it goes. Is every Paragon supposed to win every Match?
If it’s actually a competition everyone should be playing everybody. Shouldn’t be Paragons only play paragons.
So....because a Paragon can't win against a Paragon, they should take out UC? Cav? That the logic?
If it’s a competition that offers the same rewards then everyone should just play play each other. Because a UC can’t beat a Paragon they should get an easy ride through all the rewards? Ultimately this thread is about BG killing drive of the OP in playing the game. That’s the OPs opinion and a lot of people share it. I share it. When you get to the point of fairly equal accounts with fairly equal skill all playing each other the ability to string together consecutive wins is really really hard. It becomes demoralising. Just treat this as feedback to Kabam that a portion of the player base is feeling a bit jaded with BG’s how it is. They can choose to ignore it if they want. But it’s a good thing they are getting active feedback in a constructive way.
Reading thru some of the recent comments and wanted to respond as the OP. @Worknprogress you mentioned about players feeling entitled. In this scenario I’d be the higher roster player with less skill. I would not say I am a low skill player, I’ve done all story content 100%; all 3x runs of Gaunlet and preparing to start EOP. I would not expect to get to the GT every season but I do not believe I should be getting stuck at silver 3 as much as I have. But to your point maybe it is just a wall for me and unless I start playing better not much will change. As I have said before I don’t see matching for me as the issue it’s just getting the string of wins.
Reading thru some of the recent comments and wanted to respond as the OP. @Worknprogress you mentioned about players feeling entitled. In this scenario I’d be the higher roster player with less skill. I would not say I am a low skill player, I’ve done all story content 100%; all 3x runs of Gaunlet and preparing to start EOP. I would not expect to get to the GT every season but I do not believe I should be getting stuck at silver 3 as much as I have. But to your point maybe it is just a wall for me and unless I start playing better not much will change. As I have said before I don’t see matching for me as the issue it’s just getting the string of wins.
I don't like the current system at all personally. I also am not sure what the better system actually is as long as everyone is in the same reward pool. If you make matchmaking truly random (my personal preference as long as everyone is in the same pool) then players lower in the progression ladder are obviously going to feel hard done by as then they're the ones hopelessly struggling. If you leave it as is, then players like yourself are the ones that feel like they're screwed.
In the current setup I'd rather players lower down have the harder time bc it just makes no sense that higher progression players are getting less from the mode than UC/Cav players. That's just not how progression games work typically.
It's a tough one to balance unless you segregate players completely in terms of rewards and matching. That opens up a whole other set of problems as then all the UC/Cav players that have been finishing VT as it is will feel like rewards have been taken away from them. Basically no matter what gets done someone is going to be upset besides the top level players that aren't having issues currently so very little would change for them regardless.
This IMO fixes everything ^ matches between Mysterium, Gamma etc. you get promoted/relegated at the end of the season. You should match against your skill/roster level and the rewards reflect it.
Just like in AW you can’t go from G1 to P1 in a season you wouldn’t this way, but it’d probably allow for a more natural progression for players as they take the game more or less seriously.
Just make seasons shorter and progressing wouldn’t be too slow for players and would give a bit more of a regular reward payout
Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
It's a competition. A Paragon wins, and a Paragon loses. That's how it goes. Is every Paragon supposed to win every Match?
If it’s actually a competition everyone should be playing everybody. Shouldn’t be Paragons only play paragons.
So....because a Paragon can't win against a Paragon, they should take out UC? Cav? That the logic?
If it’s a competition that offers the same rewards then everyone should just play play each other. Because a UC can’t beat a Paragon they should get an easy ride through all the rewards? Ultimately this thread is about BG killing drive of the OP in playing the game. That’s the OPs opinion and a lot of people share it. I share it. When you get to the point of fairly equal accounts with fairly equal skill all playing each other the ability to string together consecutive wins is really really hard. It becomes demoralising. Just treat this as feedback to Kabam that a portion of the player base is feeling a bit jaded with BG’s how it is. They can choose to ignore it if they want. But it’s a good thing they are getting active feedback in a constructive way.
I'm sorry, but having the same Rewards doesn't justify Accounts using other Accounts that are VASTLY behind them as fuel to get out of the VT. Anyone gets the same Rewards in the VT, and what one person gets takes nothing away from another. That doesn't happen until the GC. Is it perfect as it is? No. Clearly not. I'm just tired of people saying the same Rewards excuse as if we don't all get the same Rewards either way. We get currency that we buy whatever we want with, and the Ranking doesn't even start until GC. All of that is besides the fact that people want to use much lower Accounts to breeze through rather than take on Accounts in their own range. Rewards don't always justify anything. There are limitations to that excuse.
Reading thru some of the recent comments and wanted to respond as the OP. @Worknprogress you mentioned about players feeling entitled. In this scenario I’d be the higher roster player with less skill. I would not say I am a low skill player, I’ve done all story content 100%; all 3x runs of Gaunlet and preparing to start EOP. I would not expect to get to the GT every season but I do not believe I should be getting stuck at silver 3 as much as I have. But to your point maybe it is just a wall for me and unless I start playing better not much will change. As I have said before I don’t see matching for me as the issue it’s just getting the string of wins.
I don't like the current system at all personally. I also am not sure what the better system actually is as long as everyone is in the same reward pool. If you make matchmaking truly random (my personal preference as long as everyone is in the same pool) then players lower in the progression ladder are obviously going to feel hard done by as then they're the ones hopelessly struggling. If you leave it as is, then players like yourself are the ones that feel like they're screwed.
In the current setup I'd rather players lower down have the harder time bc it just makes no sense that higher progression players are getting less from the mode than UC/Cav players. That's just not how progression games work typically.
It's a tough one to balance unless you segregate players completely in terms of rewards and matching. That opens up a whole other set of problems as then all the UC/Cav players that have been finishing VT as it is will feel like rewards have been taken away from them. Basically no matter what gets done someone is going to be upset besides the top level players that aren't having issues currently so very little would change for them regardless.
Well said WIP; appreciate the honest feedback, it really is a tough thing to balance and I also don’t know what the right choice is. I’d be biased for paragon and above since that’s where I am at but I agree with your comment that it should be random matchups at the expense of lower accounts; that’s truely progression based.
Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
It's a competition. A Paragon wins, and a Paragon loses. That's how it goes. Is every Paragon supposed to win every Match?
If it’s actually a competition everyone should be playing everybody. Shouldn’t be Paragons only play paragons.
So....because a Paragon can't win against a Paragon, they should take out UC? Cav? That the logic?
If it’s a competition that offers the same rewards then everyone should just play play each other. Because a UC can’t beat a Paragon they should get an easy ride through all the rewards? Ultimately this thread is about BG killing drive of the OP in playing the game. That’s the OPs opinion and a lot of people share it. I share it. When you get to the point of fairly equal accounts with fairly equal skill all playing each other the ability to string together consecutive wins is really really hard. It becomes demoralising. Just treat this as feedback to Kabam that a portion of the player base is feeling a bit jaded with BG’s how it is. They can choose to ignore it if they want. But it’s a good thing they are getting active feedback in a constructive way.
I'm sorry, but having the same Rewards doesn't justify Accounts using other Accounts that are VASTLY behind them as fuel to get out of the VT. Anyone gets the same Rewards in the VT, and what one person gets takes nothing away from another. That doesn't happen until the GC. Is it perfect as it is? No. Clearly not. I'm just tired of people saying the same Rewards excuse as if we don't all get the same Rewards either way. We get currency that we buy whatever we want with, and the Ranking doesn't even start until GC. All of that is besides the fact that people want to use much lower Accounts to breeze through rather than take on Accounts in their own range. Rewards don't always justify anything. There are limitations to that excuse.
That is the problem with the mode as it stands, players who’ve put far more time, effort and money into their accounts are effectively getting penalised for their progress. I can see both sides - if I was an account of your size, I certainly wouldn’t want to be playing my account, let alone someone like WnP, but equally why should the larger players only play large accounts.
Gameplay itself - excellent piece of content, but how it has attempted to keep it attractive to smaller accounts has alienated a lot of the larger accounts in the process, and don’t forget that these players are Kabam’s biggest customers, and those newer players who are effectively boosting their rosters with EoP etc. or buying 4th July offers are actually hurting themselves by having an elite top half of their roster as it’s dropping them into the big boy league which they’re totally not ready for.
Ultimately there’s no correct answer in this set up. Noobs are either going to get flattened, or larger accounts are going to get roadblocked by whales.
My comment above has my proposed solution which I think deals with the match making concerns, which is what all of the discourse is about.
The problem is there's too much of a disparage between upper and lower for it to be considered fair by any reasonable perspective. I'd have much less of an issue if it wasn't everyone from UC to Paragon in the same pool. There would be differences, but not to such an extreme. Quite honestly, they have no chance. There's no skill that can overcome that. It's just a Loss at the gate.
So....Because a UC and Cav can't beat a Paragon, they should never face one and still be able to move up the ladder? That logic?
Also, if it's not about the reward then lower players can play friendly matches.
There is no "ladder" to go up in Ranking in the VT. It's the same for everyone. Same Milestones in Ranks. You don't get to that until the GC. I don't know why people keep applying that old War Matchmaking justification but it doesn't apply here.
Reading thru some of the recent comments and wanted to respond as the OP. @Worknprogress you mentioned about players feeling entitled. In this scenario I’d be the higher roster player with less skill. I would not say I am a low skill player, I’ve done all story content 100%; all 3x runs of Gaunlet and preparing to start EOP. I would not expect to get to the GT every season but I do not believe I should be getting stuck at silver 3 as much as I have. But to your point maybe it is just a wall for me and unless I start playing better not much will change. As I have said before I don’t see matching for me as the issue it’s just getting the string of wins.
I see your okay with matchmaking, but how do you feel seeing rosters of 7-8k prestige already in GC since week 1, thereby have gotten all victory track rewards and guaranteed some GC rewards while your still stuck in silver?
It's obvious those accounts wouldn't be able to beat your account, but yet they have gotten way better rewards than you and in way less time. This is a product of a bad matchmaking system in my opinion.
It's also a product of people not winning their own Matches. "It's unfair I haven't won. Put me up against someone that has no chance and I'll show you!"
Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
It's a competition. A Paragon wins, and a Paragon loses. That's how it goes. Is every Paragon supposed to win every Match?
If it’s actually a competition everyone should be playing everybody. Shouldn’t be Paragons only play paragons.
So....because a Paragon can't win against a Paragon, they should take out UC? Cav? That the logic?
If it’s a competition that offers the same rewards then everyone should just play play each other. Because a UC can’t beat a Paragon they should get an easy ride through all the rewards? Ultimately this thread is about BG killing drive of the OP in playing the game. That’s the OPs opinion and a lot of people share it. I share it. When you get to the point of fairly equal accounts with fairly equal skill all playing each other the ability to string together consecutive wins is really really hard. It becomes demoralising. Just treat this as feedback to Kabam that a portion of the player base is feeling a bit jaded with BG’s how it is. They can choose to ignore it if they want. But it’s a good thing they are getting active feedback in a constructive way.
I'm sorry, but having the same Rewards doesn't justify Accounts using other Accounts that are VASTLY behind them as fuel to get out of the VT. Anyone gets the same Rewards in the VT, and what one person gets takes nothing away from another. That doesn't happen until the GC. Is it perfect as it is? No. Clearly not. I'm just tired of people saying the same Rewards excuse as if we don't all get the same Rewards either way. We get currency that we buy whatever we want with, and the Ranking doesn't even start until GC. All of that is besides the fact that people want to use much lower Accounts to breeze through rather than take on Accounts in their own range. Rewards don't always justify anything. There are limitations to that excuse.
I agree with that it is not perfect, but disagree with pretty much everything else. Rewards justify the effort put in, otherwise everyone would just play friendly matches. So this is where we come back to the general loss of drive comes in. When you are putting hours of effort and getting nothing out of it, there is no point. When you’ve played the game for years and feel like you are in the ocean, swimming against the current and going backwards you give up. But then when you see Uncollected, TB etc swimming by you, there is a feeling of what was the point to begin with. I don’t know the answer in all honesty. I’m not sure I would want to play a bunch of UC players all the way through to Gladiators Circuit. But I do feel there is an inherent lack of fairness in the current system. That’s just for me. I’m on a break from the game and hoping it has a positive change for if I get the itch to play again.
You can't judge everything based on the Leaderboard. Some may not be there by legitimate means. Not to feed suspicion. Also, they've faced Matches within their own variety of range as well, so it's not like it was easy as can be for them. It's easy for someone to make that assertion when comparing how they would do with that Account or how they would do against it, but there's also a lack of acknowledgement for the fact that they fought to get there as well. They just didn't fight a bunch of stacked Paragons to get there. Finally, they're going to come up against everyone there, so it's not that dire of an issue really. Those are just a few points on the other side. I get what you're saying. I just don't think it's really that much of a matter of other Players so much as it is focusing on our own Matches. I've been stuck at Bronze 1 for days. I don't see that as anyone else's fault, or having anything to do with being TB. I just haven't strung 3 Wins together yet.
As I'm reading through all this, all I'm thinking to myself is that we want to advance in BG's to get better rewards to improve our roster to make advancing in BG's easier BUT it sounds as if the more you improve your roster, the harder it is to advance in BG's because of the matchmaking system.
It has nothing to do with building a Roster. Having the highest Champs is not entirely what BGs are about. It's about strategy, using the Nodes to your advantage, and having many options.
Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
It's a competition. A Paragon wins, and a Paragon loses. That's how it goes. Is every Paragon supposed to win every Match?
If it’s actually a competition everyone should be playing everybody. Shouldn’t be Paragons only play paragons.
So....because a Paragon can't win against a Paragon, they should take out UC? Cav? That the logic?
If it’s a competition that offers the same rewards then everyone should just play play each other. Because a UC can’t beat a Paragon they should get an easy ride through all the rewards? Ultimately this thread is about BG killing drive of the OP in playing the game. That’s the OPs opinion and a lot of people share it. I share it. When you get to the point of fairly equal accounts with fairly equal skill all playing each other the ability to string together consecutive wins is really really hard. It becomes demoralising. Just treat this as feedback to Kabam that a portion of the player base is feeling a bit jaded with BG’s how it is. They can choose to ignore it if they want. But it’s a good thing they are getting active feedback in a constructive way.
I'm sorry, but having the same Rewards doesn't justify Accounts using other Accounts that are VASTLY behind them as fuel to get out of the VT. Anyone gets the same Rewards in the VT, and what one person gets takes nothing away from another. That doesn't happen until the GC. Is it perfect as it is? No. Clearly not. I'm just tired of people saying the same Rewards excuse as if we don't all get the same Rewards either way. We get currency that we buy whatever we want with, and the Ranking doesn't even start until GC. All of that is besides the fact that people want to use much lower Accounts to breeze through rather than take on Accounts in their own range. Rewards don't always justify anything. There are limitations to that excuse.
A few things here…
1. We don’t all get the same rewards either way. There are just shy of 40K BG tokens for making it from Bronze through Diamond. Players who aren’t able to progress that far miss out on some if not most of those tokens. I think we can all agree that BGs aren’t a matter of just showing your deck to another person like a card game of War, but it is a fundamental denial of the way matches work to suggest roster strength isn’t a major part of BGs. The fact that roster strength is highly significant is the main point used to justify segregating competition by size/strength/prestige in the first place. If building my roster gets me more matches against @Worknprogress but staying put gets me more against early Paragons or late TBs, my incentives are very clear.
2. When you say “ranking doesn’t even start until GC” I’m not sure I get your point. For the solo event, rankings aren’t dependent on getting to the GC. The alliance event is a completely different event and based on full alliance points. The ~40K BG tokens you get for advancing to GC are quite possibly some of the most valuable items many players will get from playing BGs, especially since anyone who can’t make the top 5000 receives at best some allotment of 6* shards and 6* stones for solo.
3. As @Worknprogress suggested earlier, I’d say the decision to matchmake based on some version of “prestige” (or whatever it is) is about as bad an idea as requiring more matches to advance (which would serve to demoralize everyone who plays BGs). There is a ton of content available in MCoC and it nearly requires full-time commitment to do it all. If the time:effort ratio doesn’t work in BGs, there are again very clear incentives for players—especially many who have invested a ton in MCoC. I don’t think the game team wants that kind of disincentive active in this mode.
Rewards are great, but it’s a stressful game mode. I have a full life. Family, kids, demanding job, etc. I play this game to relax, not to grind and go nowhere. I didn’t play BG’s last season because the Meta didn’t seem enjoyable and it was a great relief.
BG’s is where this game is heading. It’s a competitive mode that requires you to rank up champs that you wouldn’t normally. It’s a money maker and not going anywhere.
If you don’t enjoy it, reassess your commitment to the game and play it accordingly. I did and it’s been more enjoyable.
Exactly this. I feel like this is the game mode that will make me retire from the game after 7 odd years. The best rewards are in BG so it’s essential for progression but I don’t have an hour distraction free every day to play BGs.
I can handle stressful content like once a month but not everyday for sure
Honestly, while I feel your pain, this is a you problem which is exacerbated by the matchmaking parameters.
I have 12 R4s in my deck and the rest are R3. Virtually all of the accounts I’m facing have at least that, many have close to full decks of R4s but that doesn’t mean they’re actually good at the game. The smaller/similar accounts I’m facing tend to be similar players to myself - from T1/2 alliances, so there’s no freebies.
Somehow I did ok yesterday…roster isn’t the answer, it’s just knowing what matchups are good, which are bad, what drafts are going to slow the opponent down. It’s rare you’re going to get a hard counter for fights and you should expect to finish fights in around a minute with 90%+ left. Your wins come from forcing an 80s fight, or making the opponent have to use their best attacker on an easy defender to stay in the game.
A lot of the players struggling don’t take proper planning into account, most of the time even someone like @Worknprogress won’t come out with a massively different draft to a mid range paragon because most of the time that Paragon is going to pick his R4s over his R3s, so the only real advantage is sig levels and he’s probably got the new releases in his deck because he spends.
Every match between paragons, a paragon loses. Maybe the design is that only regular platinum or master war+ paragons are supposed to advance through the VC and that your average skill paragon (so the bottom 60%) just aren't supposed to progress through the VC.
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
It's a competition. A Paragon wins, and a Paragon loses. That's how it goes. Is every Paragon supposed to win every Match?
If it’s actually a competition everyone should be playing everybody. Shouldn’t be Paragons only play paragons.
So....because a Paragon can't win against a Paragon, they should take out UC? Cav? That the logic?
If it’s a competition that offers the same rewards then everyone should just play play each other. Because a UC can’t beat a Paragon they should get an easy ride through all the rewards? Ultimately this thread is about BG killing drive of the OP in playing the game. That’s the OPs opinion and a lot of people share it. I share it. When you get to the point of fairly equal accounts with fairly equal skill all playing each other the ability to string together consecutive wins is really really hard. It becomes demoralising. Just treat this as feedback to Kabam that a portion of the player base is feeling a bit jaded with BG’s how it is. They can choose to ignore it if they want. But it’s a good thing they are getting active feedback in a constructive way.
I'm sorry, but having the same Rewards doesn't justify Accounts using other Accounts that are VASTLY behind them as fuel to get out of the VT. Anyone gets the same Rewards in the VT, and what one person gets takes nothing away from another. That doesn't happen until the GC. Is it perfect as it is? No. Clearly not. I'm just tired of people saying the same Rewards excuse as if we don't all get the same Rewards either way. We get currency that we buy whatever we want with, and the Ranking doesn't even start until GC. All of that is besides the fact that people want to use much lower Accounts to breeze through rather than take on Accounts in their own range. Rewards don't always justify anything. There are limitations to that excuse.
A few things here…
1. We don’t all get the same rewards either way. There are just shy of 40K BG tokens for making it from Bronze through Diamond. Players who aren’t able to progress that far miss out on some if not most of those tokens. I think we can all agree that BGs aren’t a matter of just showing your deck to another person like a card game of War, but it is a fundamental denial of the way matches work to suggest roster strength isn’t a major part of BGs. The fact that roster strength is highly significant is the main point used to justify segregating competition by size/strength/prestige in the first place. If building my roster gets me more matches against @Worknprogress but staying put gets me more against early Paragons or late TBs, my incentives are very clear.
2. When you say “ranking doesn’t even start until GC” I’m not sure I get your point. For the solo event, rankings aren’t dependent on getting to the GC. The alliance event is a completely different event and based on full alliance points. The ~40K BG tokens you get for advancing to GC are quite possibly some of the most valuable items many players will get from playing BGs, especially since anyone who can’t make the top 5000 receives at best some allotment of 6* shards and 6* stones for solo.
3. As @Worknprogress suggested earlier, I’d say the decision to matchmake based on some version of “prestige” (or whatever it is) is about as bad an idea as requiring more matches to advance (which would serve to demoralize everyone who plays BGs). There is a ton of content available in MCoC and it nearly requires full-time commitment to do it all. If the time:effort ratio doesn’t work in BGs, there are again very clear incentives for players—especially many who have invested a ton in MCoC. I don’t think the game team wants that kind of disincentive active in this mode.
Dr. Zola
1. People who aren't progressing that far are not at odds with those who are. They're not winning the Matches they have. That's not the result of limited spacing. It's not the result of lower Players taking their spots. 2. Such spots don't occur until the GC. Meaning anyone can make it to the GC, provided they win their Matches. That's about as fair as it gets. Blaming lower Accounts for doing better is ignorant to the onus that they're just not winning their own Fights. 3. Not all content is the amalgamation of all other content. The Arena is an example. You can make it easier on yourself by having a wider Roster, but you can also compete with less if you amass enough Points.
Comments
Which is odd, because bar some outliers, paragons will be, on average, amongst the best players in the game. Skill wise. Your somewhat have to be.
I'd agree with the opp, it's not really so much the matchmaking, as the ladder. If you're only able to achieve 40% win rate as a paragon (but with your skills and game knowledge would easily hit 70% against TBs or Cavs), you're not going to get above, probably, gold. And we have many examples here and in the other threads of just that; people can't get out of silver or gold on their main, but sailed to the GC on their much lower alt.
At every bracket, at least 50% of the player base, will be feeling disenfranchised.
So, that lower half will stop playing. What does that mean for you and worknprogress?
Death spiral.
It means eventually the *paragons* you are currently ploughing through, won't be playing in the future. You'll have to climb only against other paragons at much higher than the average skill and roster. Then the 50% of them that don't progress (this is zero sum remember, there's always a paragon losing), will also quit playing. Then you only get matched against worknprogress.... 😁
In short, the game mode is probably already dead, kabam and the player base just haven't realised it yet.
The GC format - absolutely fine, you match vs people with a similar score so beastly small accounts can still smash noob whales, but I don’t like the VT format where you do have to string victories together. If you get unlucky you can ruin all your progress which is irritating, and for someone who isn’t as sweaty, that’s probably when the phone gets put down.
I just don’t understand why a format wherein you play based on your ability is implemented from the start rather than 50% through.
A lot of that has to do with Kabam I'm sure in that they've gone out of their way to hide the fact that BGs inherently are competitive so that means someone has to lose. If they didn't try so hard to hide the competition aspect behind a bunch of "BGs are for everyone" rainbows and unicorns maybe people wouldn't have such lofty expectations of their return on time invested in them.
Not being able to progress higher than silver in VT by design doesn't mean that BGs aren't for those people, it just means that those people have hit their cap on what they can expect to reasonably earn from them. Lumping everyone together is probably the biggest mistake that's been made with the mode in general. Having people moving along the same exact path for the same rewards but segregating within that group by matchmaking was a massive gaffe imo. If top players aren't matching bottom players, there's no reason to have them in the same group at all. Just change the reward structure based on progression tiers and segregate the player base completely and give people what they think they want (I'm quite sure even more people are gonna dislike having their reward ceiling substantially slashed more than all this nonsense about matchmaking).
Whatever they end up doing, if anything at all, I highly doubt it has much of an effect on me personally so in the end I don't particularly care that much. Regardless of that, I do think the current setup is ridiculous and certainly not conducive to player retention. The only suggestion I'm vehemently against that I've seen is increasing the amount of matches needed for VT across the board to pad for the players struggling. Making the VT even longer for players that aren't struggling is a terrible idea as it's already a massive waste of time for them to begin with.
Because a UC can’t beat a Paragon they should get an easy ride through all the rewards?
Ultimately this thread is about BG killing drive of the OP in playing the game. That’s the OPs opinion and a lot of people share it. I share it. When you get to the point of fairly equal accounts with fairly equal skill all playing each other the ability to string together consecutive wins is really really hard. It becomes demoralising. Just treat this as feedback to Kabam that a portion of the player base is feeling a bit jaded with BG’s how it is. They can choose to ignore it if they want. But it’s a good thing they are getting active feedback in a constructive way.
In the current setup I'd rather players lower down have the harder time bc it just makes no sense that higher progression players are getting less from the mode than UC/Cav players. That's just not how progression games work typically.
It's a tough one to balance unless you segregate players completely in terms of rewards and matching. That opens up a whole other set of problems as then all the UC/Cav players that have been finishing VT as it is will feel like rewards have been taken away from them. Basically no matter what gets done someone is going to be upset besides the top level players that aren't having issues currently so very little would change for them regardless.
This IMO fixes everything ^ matches between Mysterium, Gamma etc. you get promoted/relegated at the end of the season. You should match against your skill/roster level and the rewards reflect it.
Just like in AW you can’t go from G1 to P1 in a season you wouldn’t this way, but it’d probably allow for a more natural progression for players as they take the game more or less seriously.
Just make seasons shorter and progressing wouldn’t be too slow for players and would give a bit more of a regular reward payout
Is it perfect as it is? No. Clearly not. I'm just tired of people saying the same Rewards excuse as if we don't all get the same Rewards either way. We get currency that we buy whatever we want with, and the Ranking doesn't even start until GC.
All of that is besides the fact that people want to use much lower Accounts to breeze through rather than take on Accounts in their own range. Rewards don't always justify anything. There are limitations to that excuse.
Also, if it's not about the reward then lower players can play friendly matches.
Gameplay itself - excellent piece of content, but how it has attempted to keep it attractive to smaller accounts has alienated a lot of the larger accounts in the process, and don’t forget that these players are Kabam’s biggest customers, and those newer players who are effectively boosting their rosters with EoP etc. or buying 4th July offers are actually hurting themselves by having an elite top half of their roster as it’s dropping them into the big boy league which they’re totally not ready for.
Ultimately there’s no correct answer in this set up. Noobs are either going to get flattened, or larger accounts are going to get roadblocked by whales.
My comment above has my proposed solution which I think deals with the match making concerns, which is what all of the discourse is about.
It's obvious those accounts wouldn't be able to beat your account, but yet they have gotten way better rewards than you and in way less time. This is a product of a bad matchmaking system in my opinion.
"It's unfair I haven't won. Put me up against someone that has no chance and I'll show you!"
Rewards justify the effort put in, otherwise everyone would just play friendly matches. So this is where we come back to the general loss of drive comes in. When you are putting hours of effort and getting nothing out of it, there is no point. When you’ve played the game for years and feel like you are in the ocean, swimming against the current and going backwards you give up. But then when you see Uncollected, TB etc swimming by you, there is a feeling of what was the point to begin with. I don’t know the answer in all honesty. I’m not sure I would want to play a bunch of UC players all the way through to Gladiators Circuit. But I do feel there is an inherent lack of fairness in the current system. That’s just for me. I’m on a break from the game and hoping it has a positive change for if I get the itch to play again.
Those are just a few points on the other side. I get what you're saying. I just don't think it's really that much of a matter of other Players so much as it is focusing on our own Matches. I've been stuck at Bronze 1 for days. I don't see that as anyone else's fault, or having anything to do with being TB. I just haven't strung 3 Wins together yet.
I need to lay down.
1. We don’t all get the same rewards either way. There are just shy of 40K BG tokens for making it from Bronze through Diamond. Players who aren’t able to progress that far miss out on some if not most of those tokens. I think we can all agree that BGs aren’t a matter of just showing your deck to another person like a card game of War, but it is a fundamental denial of the way matches work to suggest roster strength isn’t a major part of BGs. The fact that roster strength is highly significant is the main point used to justify segregating competition by size/strength/prestige in the first place. If building my roster gets me more matches against @Worknprogress but staying put gets me more against early Paragons or late TBs, my incentives are very clear.
2. When you say “ranking doesn’t even start until GC” I’m not sure I get your point. For the solo event, rankings aren’t dependent on getting to the GC. The alliance event is a completely different event and based on full alliance points. The ~40K BG tokens you get for advancing to GC are quite possibly some of the most valuable items many players will get from playing BGs, especially since anyone who can’t make the top 5000 receives at best some allotment of 6* shards and 6* stones for solo.
3. As @Worknprogress suggested earlier, I’d say the decision to matchmake based on some version of “prestige” (or whatever it is) is about as bad an idea as requiring more matches to advance (which would serve to demoralize everyone who plays BGs). There is a ton of content available in MCoC and it nearly requires full-time commitment to do it all. If the time:effort ratio doesn’t work in BGs, there are again very clear incentives for players—especially many who have invested a ton in MCoC. I don’t think the game team wants that kind of disincentive active in this mode.
Dr. Zola
I can handle stressful content like once a month but not everyday for sure
2. Such spots don't occur until the GC. Meaning anyone can make it to the GC, provided they win their Matches. That's about as fair as it gets. Blaming lower Accounts for doing better is ignorant to the onus that they're just not winning their own Fights.
3. Not all content is the amalgamation of all other content. The Arena is an example. You can make it easier on yourself by having a wider Roster, but you can also compete with less if you amass enough Points.