He is fixating on UC cause its the lowest allowed in BGs, u reach UC at around lvl 37-40.. it doesnt even make sense you are competing against people 20+ lvls below...
You aren't competing against them, they are not blocking your progress and they aren't getting the same rewards. For all purposes they are playing a different competition. You only get matched against them when there isn't anyone in your range to be matched against. You can do what DNA did and game the system if you want to.
The current system is exactly what you want - two different competitions for different levels. Just under the same banner. Your current placings and game experience would be slightly worse if it was bifurcated into two separate competitions since there wouldn't be the occasional easy match-ups which happen currently.
Wrong.
We are competing for the same rewards.
In the literal sense, we aren't. Which is to say, there isn't a finite pool of VT rewards, and any rewards one player gets are rewards another player gets. VT is not zero-sum.
However, there's a meta consideration. Can I say "in theory, everyone could get into GC?" Not really, because the only way to enter GC is to win, and every win is a loss for someone else. Consider the last two players in VT. One of them can enter GC by beating the other. The other can't, because they have no one left to beat.
Within practical limits, some percentage of VT players can reach GC. It could be a pretty high percentage, but it can't be everyone. So how the competition is structured does pick winners and losers by circumstance, and if you are on the wrong side of the cake cut, you are going to get less rewards.
So we are not competing for the same rewards, but we also don't have independent access to rewards. It is possible for a lot of people to get a lot of rewards, and it is also possible for very few players to get a lot of rewards, but it isn't possible for everyone to get all the rewards. There is some implicit jostling for rewards.
This is a subtle property of the system, and it takes a very nuanced perspective to appreciate. The gut instinct that we're competing for the same rewards is not strictly correct, but it may be reacting to a more subtle imbalance that most people would find difficult to articulate. In the same way we are often saying the match maker issues are benefiting low progress players, when it isn't helping all of them and isn't hurting all Paragons. It is more subtly shuffling winners and losers among all progress tiers, and the *obvious* result is very low progress players sailing into GC. That isn't the problem, it is just the spikey tip of the more general problem.
It is the same rewards cause staying in Cav is your choice.. i am not naming UC, cause i seriously don't understand why they are spending resources in BG when they should be leveling. If you really tell me that if u ignored BG completely within 1 or 2 seasons you can't get to TB i call it bs... Now if u tell me.. hey im gonna do BGs because i can buy mats and its less stressful than doing content to be a TB and i only want to have r3s. then u r playing for the exact same rewards which is trophies... Its the same reward and saying is not because of the sole reason that items have a different price is like saying "well its your fault your paragon and u can't get the trophies i get by having an easy pool of fights to climb up... Who told u to invest on r4s and sig stones?" This system literally punishes developing a roster.
It is the same rewards cause staying in Cav is your choice.. i am not naming UC, cause i seriously don't understand why they are spending resources in BG when they should be leveling. If you really tell me that if u ignored BG completely within 1 or 2 seasons you can't get to TB i call it bs... Now if u tell me.. hey im gonna do BGs because i can buy mats and its less stressful than doing content to be a TB and i only want to have r3s. then u r playing for the exact same rewards which is trophies... Its the same reward and saying is not because of the sole reason that items have a different price is like saying "well its your fault your paragon and u can't get the trophies i get by having an easy pool of fights to climb up... Who told u to invest on r4s and sig stones?" This system literally punishes developing a roster.
I interpreted "play for the same rewards" as "play for rewards from the same finite pool of rewards" not the way you are asserting here as "we are all trying to earn the same kind of rewards." The rewards we are all playing for are identical in the local context. They buy different things in the absolute sense in the store, because the store is progression priced. But that's offset by the fact that the store's prices are intended to be progression-relevant.
In other words, the way I would state this is that we are all playing for similar amounts of progression help in BG regardless of progression tier.
It is the same rewards cause staying in Cav is your choice.. i am not naming UC, cause i seriously don't understand why they are spending resources in BG when they should be leveling. If you really tell me that if u ignored BG completely within 1 or 2 seasons you can't get to TB i call it bs... Now if u tell me.. hey im gonna do BGs because i can buy mats and its less stressful than doing content to be a TB and i only want to have r3s. then u r playing for the exact same rewards which is trophies... Its the same reward and saying is not because of the sole reason that items have a different price is like saying "well its your fault your paragon and u can't get the trophies i get by having an easy pool of fights to climb up... Who told u to invest on r4s and sig stones?" This system literally punishes developing a roster.
I interpreted "play for the same rewards" as "play for rewards from the same finite pool of rewards" not the way you are asserting here as "we are all trying to earn the same kind of rewards." The rewards we are all playing for are identical in the local context. They buy different things in the absolute sense in the store, because the store is progression priced. But that's offset by the fact that the store's prices are intended to be progression-relevant.
In other words, the way I would state this is that we are all playing for similar amounts of progression help in BG regardless of progression tier.
I understand what u are saying.. I just don't understand their logic... The rewards are the trophies... The store u buy is based on your progression... Meaning.. if u pay more is cause u decide to stay in that progression.. it's supposed to be a transition...not a "I only wanna battle cavalliers cause i'm cavallier and i also pay cavallier prices with my trophies"... We can't have a game based on progression that actually caters to staying on lower progression cause its more rewarding... How do u explain this to my f2p Paragon buddy... Just cause he got the 3rd r4...and invested a few sig stones... Is now fighting 16k prestiege player... While others who stay in their progression . Milking the bg store with their 5-10 R3s stay in Cav.. get easier matches and climb up higher... Its absurd..
Dna wasn't lying about what he said in parentheses
I know it can sometimes seem like this is pointless, but I don't think any of this is pointless. Perhaps not always heading in the most productive directions, but I've learned useful things from the thread.
Some of the most interesting Chess games happen when two very strong players meet in a (relatively) friendly game. The reason being Chess at the highest levels played by the strongest players tends to be very defensive and usually a draw. It takes only the smallest of mistakes - and sometimes not even mistakes, just slightly less than the best play - to lose. So obviously competitive players are not going to show their hand, so to speak, and play their best strategies when they face future competition in less meaningful games. So instead you get ultrapowerful players playing the strangest games sometimes for the lulz, because the unspoken agreement is when they are playing for fun, they are going to play goofy stuff to hold their best stuff for when it matters. Goofy games between top tier competitors can be very entertaining.
No matter how strange, frustrating, weird, incomprehensible, or sophistric a position is, it is always nice when you have a proper counter for it. And a proper counter is not an argument that convinces the other party. It is one that everyone else will judge more convincing. This takes practice. And if they are willing to show their best stuff (such as it is) and you know you can beat it, the game's over. Remember, the real battle is with the devs. They are the ones we need to convince. Compared to them, this is easy mode. If I can't win here, even against the most intractable competition, I'm not going to win there.
It's a PVP competition... Someone is always gonna lose as long as someone wins... It doesnt make sense that someone who put 7 years into a Paragon account is not getting the same ammount of trophies as someone who put 2 or 3... Just because the system is catering to give them a number of "fair matches"
It is the same rewards cause staying in Cav is your choice.. i am not naming UC, cause i seriously don't understand why they are spending resources in BG when they should be leveling. If you really tell me that if u ignored BG completely within 1 or 2 seasons you can't get to TB i call it bs... Now if u tell me.. hey im gonna do BGs because i can buy mats and its less stressful than doing content to be a TB and i only want to have r3s. then u r playing for the exact same rewards which is trophies... Its the same reward and saying is not because of the sole reason that items have a different price is like saying "well its your fault your paragon and u can't get the trophies i get by having an easy pool of fights to climb up... Who told u to invest on r4s and sig stones?" This system literally punishes developing a roster.
I interpreted "play for the same rewards" as "play for rewards from the same finite pool of rewards" not the way you are asserting here as "we are all trying to earn the same kind of rewards." The rewards we are all playing for are identical in the local context. They buy different things in the absolute sense in the store, because the store is progression priced. But that's offset by the fact that the store's prices are intended to be progression-relevant.
In other words, the way I would state this is that we are all playing for similar amounts of progression help in BG regardless of progression tier.
I understand what u are saying.. I just don't understand their logic... The rewards are the trophies... The store u buy is based on your progression... Meaning.. if u pay more is cause u decide to stay in that progression.. it's supposed to be a transition...not a "I only wanna battle cavalliers cause i'm cavallier and i also pay cavallier prices with my trophies"... We can't have a game based on progression that actually caters to staying on lower progression cause its more rewarding... How do u explain this to my f2p Paragon buddy... Just cause he got the 3rd r4...and invested a few sig stones... Is now fighting 16k prestiege player... While others who stay in their progression . Milking the bg store with their 5-10 R3s stay in Cav.. get easier matches and climb up higher... Its absurd..
The argument is that because lower progression players have higher store costs, they aren't actually "progressing" faster in BG. They might appear to be scooping up more trophies, but those trophies buy so much less that in effect, they are actually earning less rewards even if they seem to be sitting at a higher track.
As I mentioned (way, way) above, I don't find this to be a compelling argument, because it fails to account for how progression based rewards actually work, but that I believe is the line of thought those that believe this are following.
It's a PVP competition... Someone is always gonna lose as long as someone wins... It doesnt make sense that someone who put 7 years into a Paragon account is not getting the same ammount of trophies as someone who put 2 or 3... Just because the system is catering to give them a number of "fair matches"
Ultimately, I believe no amount of progress entitles you to any amount of rewards. However, roster development should be a respected component of competitive strength. If you are a Cav player and you beat me fair and square with your Cavalier-tier roster, then I deserve to lose and you deserve to win and it is perfectly fine if you earn more trophies than me. I don't deserve more. The paragons don't always beat the thronebreakers in alliance war.
The strength of a player in BG is based on their roster strength, their playing skill, their strategic acumen, and their champion and node knowledge. They are all equally important, and the whole point of a competition should be to see who has the best bag of that stuff total. We are not looking for the player with the biggest roster, *or* the player with the best twitch skills. We are looking for the strongest battlegrounds player. The players who deserve to get the most rewards should be the players who have the best overall combination of roster, skill, strategy, and knowledge. As far as I'm concerned, all four are equally important, and should be rewarded equally.
I don't worry about making it too easy to nullify the time advantage but creating a mode/rewards structure which makes it futile for casual players to even bother engaging in and then putting the best rewards in the game there.
I don't worry about that *too* much, because even for casual players (in general: I'm ignoring the "stuck at" issues we've been discussing here) the rewards in BG are very good relative to what casual players can earn elsewhere. They are low relative to more aggressive BG players, but not low relative to their other reward opportunities in the game.
The "stuck at" issue is the critical issue here, not the "casual" one. Casual players not stuck are fine. Hard core players that are stuck are not fine. And for a competitive game mode, you'd think being a relatively casually engaged player would be a huge disadvantage, but it isn't consistently. A casually engaged player is unlikely to reach GC, but a casually engaged player on the right side of the skill/roster ratio can easily glide their way up to the upper tiers of VT and scoop up a big bunch of rewards. At least, this seems to be the case as far as I can observe.
The "stuck at" issue is to be expected given the progression system between tiers. Changing that without changing matchmaking would still allow hardcore players to progress. If your 2-0, 2-1, 1-2 system was implemented, players would progress through VT faster with their current matchups. An ELO type rating, similar to the one in AW, without a change in progression system will not see more people in GC. It will only redistribute the spots from "casual" to "hardcore" players. It will also, for the large part keep leaderboards largely similar across seasons. Is that what we are solving for?
You are looking at rewards from a single season perspective. But progression in the game is cumulative. BG is the only mode where the incremental rewards of moving up a tier increases with tiers. You get as many tokens from moving through diamond and vibranium tiers as much as you get from getting up to platinum. Also, the BG store does not get progressively expensive as you buy more items (unlike glory store). The 6300 tokens from moving to vibranium gets you the same items as the tokens you get from moving up the first 4 levels.
Casual players churn in and out of the game. Hardcore player base is a lot more stable. Think about the implications of a reward structure which is extremely top heavy with a ranking set up which is also extremely top heavy (and stable). Over time, it is a sure fire way to have lower progress players fall too far behind. Given that tracking back on rewards is rare, you are in for a fairly inflationary economy.
I don't worry about making it too easy to nullify the time advantage but creating a mode/rewards structure which makes it futile for casual players to even bother engaging in and then putting the best rewards in the game there.
I don't worry about that *too* much, because even for casual players (in general: I'm ignoring the "stuck at" issues we've been discussing here) the rewards in BG are very good relative to what casual players can earn elsewhere. They are low relative to more aggressive BG players, but not low relative to their other reward opportunities in the game.
The "stuck at" issue is the critical issue here, not the "casual" one. Casual players not stuck are fine. Hard core players that are stuck are not fine. And for a competitive game mode, you'd think being a relatively casually engaged player would be a huge disadvantage, but it isn't consistently. A casually engaged player is unlikely to reach GC, but a casually engaged player on the right side of the skill/roster ratio can easily glide their way up to the upper tiers of VT and scoop up a big bunch of rewards. At least, this seems to be the case as far as I can observe.
The "stuck at" issue is to be expected given the progression system between tiers. Changing that without changing matchmaking would still allow hardcore players to progress. If your 2-0, 2-1, 1-2 system was implemented, players would progress through VT faster with their current matchups. An ELO type rating, similar to the one in AW, without a change in progression system will not see more people in GC. It will only redistribute the spots from "casual" to "hardcore" players. It will also, for the large part keep leaderboards largely similar across seasons. Is that what we are solving for?
To break this down a bit, first of all the "stuck at" issue being generally discussed here is not a mandatory requirement for how the progression system itself works. It is an effect of the combination of the progression system's trophy loss feature and the match system's blindness to win/loss record that produces this effect.
Second, the scoring change was proposed with a linked adjustment to trophies necessary to advance to compensate on average. This means some players would progress just as fast or faster while some would progress slower but the psychologically punishing aspects of losing progress would be ameliorated.
The goal was never to propel more players into GC. The problem(s) being addressed, at least for me, were the three problems I specifically highlighted: the frustrating aspects of the scoring system, the fairness of the match system (specifically its inability to match on the basis of competitive strength) and the repetitive nature of forcing players to progress through tiers vastly below their competitive strength. The proposed solutions to those three problems were linked together in a way that attempted to gain the maximum amount of benefit while counterbalancing most of the deleterious side effects of each adjustment in isolation.
You are looking at rewards from a single season perspective. But progression in the game is cumulative. BG is the only mode where the incremental rewards of moving up a tier increases with tiers. You get as many tokens from moving through diamond and vibranium tiers as much as you get from getting up to platinum. Also, the BG store does not get progressively expensive as you buy more items (unlike glory store). The 6300 tokens from moving to vibranium gets you the same items as the tokens you get from moving up the first 4 levels.
I'm not sure how to respond to this section. This appears to be truisms that aren't relevant to the discussion at hand. Yes, progression rewards are cumulative in net benefit, but they are balanced around local incremental valuations. We don't balance 6* crystals based on the secondary progression benefits they provide in terms of allowing the player to earn even more rewards through the use of those champions. That's a form of reverse double counting. We offer players progressional rewards to help them progress. The act of progressing will improve their reward earning rates, but that's the intended benefit of progress. It shouldn't - and more directly, it never is - counted as a separate component of a reward's value.
Setting that aside, it is true that when it comes to tokens, the amount of tokens you earn gets higher per track the higher the track. But the tracks themselves get intrinsically harder to achieve - at least on paper - due to two separate design choices. The first is the amount of trophies necessary to promote, which increases (not continuously, but overall). And the second is the presumption, however loose, that the competition itself gets harder the higher you go, because higher VT tracks are depleted of weaker players.
The question, though was not whether the rewards were higher for players who reached higher tracks. The question was whether, as you stated, the structure of the rewards and requirements for them were such that it was futile for casual players to pursue. And that's not judged on how much they can get relative to higher achieving players, but rather how much they can get relative to what they can get elsewhere. If you have jealous players, they might decide not to participate in the mode if they can't get what other higher achieving players get. But we don't design games for those players. The BG rewards are designed relative to the real opportunity cost of playing the mode. If a casual player can get reasonably good rewards from BG relative to what they can get with the same playing style and approach elsewhere in the game, then it is not futile for them to play the mode, and that's the primary consideration a game designer should address.
Casual players churn in and out of the game. Hardcore player base is a lot more stable. Think about the implications of a reward structure which is extremely top heavy with a ranking set up which is also extremely top heavy (and stable). Over time, it is a sure fire way to have lower progress players fall too far behind. Given that tracking back on rewards is rare, you are in for a fairly inflationary economy.
That's true in theory, but in my opinion BG is nowhere near such an inflection point. It is a competitive mode that is explicitly sabotaging competition to attract lower progress and more casual players. It isn't doing so in the way I would like, but compared to any possible game mode configuration that simply implemented a straight up competition, it is already bending over backwards to accommodate lower/casual players. And the rewards are unlikely to amplify progressional lock in for two completely different reasons. First, the highest progressional players are already fenced in by the game ceiling. Even *I* am starting to bump up against the top of the game. I am strictly limited in how I can leverage BG rewards to "run away" from lower players. I'm running out of 6* champs to collect. I am rapidly filling in my rank 3 roster and my rank 4 roster is pretty strong at this point. To put it in simplified geometric terms, BG is making my roster wider, but not especially taller.
Until 7* champs arrive, BG is helping lower tier players go higher, but higher progression players go wider. This means in real world terms a smart low progress player is more likely to be catching up than being left behind And it isn't an automatic given that 7* champs will immediately change this dynamic. It took years for even the mega whales to parlay 6* access into unambiguously higher progress. I'm sort of the poster child for this phenomenon. I am not a whale, and I am not in a top alliance. So I am not the recipient of the highest value rewards in the highest quantities. And yet, I'm probably closer to the top tier players than I have ever been. Virtually no one has lots of R5s, and the difference between the mega accounts with dozens of R4s and my account with eighteen is not proportionately higher.
In fact, I am looking at the big picture when it comes to BG rewards. I'm just looking at a bigger big picture: a picture where the theoretical progressional issues you're describing aren't an immediate or projectable threat, while the long term health of the game mode is the more actionable problem.
@DNA3000 Point taken, maybe the wider vs. taller dynamic plays out the way you think. At least, it makes sense that it would be so in the other game modes. 7-stars/Ascension would probably widen it again, till then we might be good.
If 7* champs worked the same way as 6* champs, it will take a while for them to ramp up, since 6* champs really needed both rank 3 and a ton of very hard to get sig stones to unambiguously start to over take the 5* rosters that lower players could build.
However, at the moment I would not place bets on either me or anyone else being right about any aspect of how 7* champs will launch. I've been having doubts of late (Yolo's recent podcast comments were the latest thing that I probably read completely differently than most people, and I think I'm looking at the recent combat power numbers in a different light as well). I think we will need to see them before making judgments about how they will change the game.
Kabam actually did add a significant rank up acceleration opportunity to another game mode before Battlegrounds. Well, sort of. The one game mode that can't really earn you rank up materials is the arena. You get them in AQ, in AW, in quests, and now in Battlegrounds. But not in the arena. Except the catalyst store, which offers a rank of catalysts for units, is technically an opportunity for arena grinders to convert arena rewards (units in particular) into a ton of mid range rank up materials. Very specifically the stuff that would make a roster wider but not really taller.
This might be a coincidence, or this might be a sign of things to come. The game has been moving in a direction that Kabam calls "RPG-like" content for a while, with less one-dimensional difficulty and more roster check style node combinations that encourage wider rosters. It is possible that Kabam is adding more opportunities for wider roster growth to go along with the kind of content that seems to be the wave of the future. The flood of BG resources might be one part of that, and it just seems weird and excessive to us because we're comparing that stuff to what we used to need, not what we will one day need. And by "we" I mean less the strong roster players, and more of the average players. For the game to give them enough, the rest of us higher progress players will have to be hip deep in the stuff.
I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing if it's the case. I think expanding Rosters has always been something that some Players fall short on. They think Prestige, and they think the most popular/effective overall. They don't think wide range. I think that's part of the lack of preparedness some Players may be facing. I've always been a proponent of widening Rosters, not only going for the "best", as high as possible. We already have a number of game modes that focus on that. I think it's useful to have one that centers around breadth as well. One thing that has been true in general, although not for everyone, is people are way too selective in their Ranking choices and use of Champs. This has changed somewhat over the years, but I've still maintained the same stance. I Rank anything and everything I feel at the time. I may never have all Champs Ranked as high as they can go, but that's the neverending goal.
Great response, thanks. Im not focused on uc, I guess it's just the easiest moniker to use to indicate low accounts (I think you said you're tb, as am I, so I consider us probably mid-tier).
Thanks for your great posts as well.
Yeah, it sounds like we're in the same group. I don't know how the MCOC population or BG player population breaks down %-wise across progression. Or how that has changed over time, etc.
When I said better roster should matter, im saying that if you work on your roster for years then you should have an inherent advantage over someone who has not, in a practical way that can be displayed in the setup of matches and in the actual fights (having better defenders, stronger defenders, better and stronger attackers).
The notion that gameplay should promote built-in imbalances is definitely a modern era thing. And it definitely is a major part of MCOC.
So, if we're fated to imbalance BG, then we should tackle who get the imbalances, what the imbalances should be, and their expected impact.
which of the following should matter for getting an "advantage" in BG?: 1) progression level 2) roster diversity 3) roster star level/rank/sig 4) player knowledge+skill 5) draft luck 6) nodes luck (does it fit your roster) 7) total spend 8) recent spend 9) actual spend at that moment to buy an advantage 10) BG spend 11) alliance 12) years on account 13) total time on account 14) in content creator program 15) community celebrity 16) number of posts on forum 17) likes/equivalent on forum 18) position on leaderboard 19) surveys filled out 20) login calendar 21) other
What type of advantages should there be?: 1) cheaper prices in the Battlegrounds store 2) better rewards on BG Events 3) more matchups with lower accounts 4) greater difference in level between accounts when playing lower accounts 5) less matchups with greater accounts 6) lower difference in level between accounts when playing higher accounts 7) more coins gained per win 8) less coins lost per loss 9) start at a higher tier in VT 10) Kabam tracking power level of decks used, and using that to match vs. a weaker deck 11) Kabam tracking power level of decks used, and using that to match vs. a deck that has bad matchups 12) change the draft to give higher frequency of best Champs showing up in draft 13) change draft to give lower frequency of best Camps to opponents 14) change the draft to give higher frequency of counters to whatever opponent drafts 15) change the draft to give opponent lower frequency of counters to whatever you draft 16) give you more time on the BG timer 17) give opponent less time on the BG timer 18) give you extra bonus points in the BG scoring 19) give opponent points reductions in the BG scoring 20) give a special UI that gives suggestions for which Character to draft 21) give you bonus beneficial nodes or Incursion style choice nodes 22) give opponent additional difficulty nodes 23) give you an option to swap in a Character of your choice that you didn't draft 24) allow your use of boosts 25) allow the use of heals an revives after each fight, these affect health and scoring 26) give you a certain number of bans that you can assign to players so that you don't get matched to them 27) give you more ban selections 28) give your opponent less ban selections 29) let you pick a champion that cannot be banned 30) extra special items in the battlegrounds store 31) access to premium limited access battlegrounds 32) other
For each of those2 questions, which numbers should be included in Imbalanced BG?
Seriously. This is the type of conversation we need to have. The actual details about what the advantages should be.
After that, we will set the degree and range of those advantages. Then we can project the impact.
As an example, as I posted earlier, over my last 37 VT matches: 56.8% were with accounts ~above my level, 18.9% were with accounts ~at my level, and 24.3% were with accounts ~below my level (NOTE: based crudely on the Star Level of the top 4 prestige Champs).
So at a TB level, I am having to face 57% of accounts above me. And only get to face 24% of accounts below me. I won 89% of my matches vs. lower accounts; I won 38% of my matches vs. higher accounts. If we want to reward easier opponents based on progression level, then we could set the following:
Paragon gets: 0% accounts above their level 20% accounts at their level 80% of accounts below their level
Thronebreaker gets: 50% accounts above their level 20% accounts at their level 30% of accounts below their level
Cavalier gets: 70% accounts above their level 20% accounts at their level 10% of accounts below their level
Uncollected gets: 80% accounts above their level 20% accounts at their level 0% of accounts below their level
With those % shifting depending on matchmaking being able to find the target range of opponents.
Or else remove roster entirely from the equation to put everyone on an even level from a champ perspective.
Would rewards for that still be based on progression?
If roster is removed entirely, we will likely see a LOT less people working to expand and grow their rosters. But if everyone gives up on BG, we would likely see that anyway.
Whether or not that advantage comes into play every match, or any match, would be up to the draw. 1. Lesser accounts are currently doing easier content (facing a much weaker field than say paragons) for rewards that are the same. The system is making them face a comparatively smaller challenge for rewards that are comparatively more valuable to them.
What % of lesser accounts?
Unless players use Victory Shields, BG is a "zero sum game". For every won coin, there is also a lost coin. For every lesser account with a huge win streak, there is a trail of corpses of lesser accounts with losses.
Do you really care if the top 10% of each progression level makes it through VT? Do you really think their rewards are gonna break your account? Unless you have a decent % of players at each progression level advancing, nobody at that progression level is gonna bother trying, beyond just zombie play to grab participation event rewards for losses.
If higher accounts just want better rewards, we can just lower the rewards achieved at each lower Progression Tier. What they get at milestones, what they can get in events, prices in the store, etc.
If higher accounts want better records, if they want to progress farther, and have all lesser account just hit a wall, then lesser accounts are just gonna stop playing.
Imagine if higher accounts lobbied to prevent lesser accounts from being able to complete lower level Monthly Quests.
If separate, the rank rewards should be different but of equal comparative value. Kabam makes a point to dictate the kinds of rewards each tier of player should be able to access, and maintain the in-game economy equitably across those tiers. So the ceiling for rewards should be firm for uc type accounts. I also think in a separate track situation, you could easily make the tracks accessible vertically. So a uc could enter any track, but paragon could only enter the mid or high tier, and the high tier would be locked to one track.
Should it be progression level based, or based on the power level of the saved deck?
The high skill players that climb progression on weaker rosters would have a really a harder time competing at their progression level. Likewise, some people could stack their alts and crush lower progressions. I know my alt currently is Cav because I am too lazy to take down GM, but it has enough firepower to probably crush most other rosters at the Cav level. I know in the New Player Arenas, super accounts dominate the top spots.
5. No, absolutely not. Farming should not be an option, but currently is if you have skills and a fresh roster or timing like DNA posted above. You can easily take my alt and pound out a bunch of rounds for easy wins.
All good.
I do expect some people will complain if this is not part of BG.
If you think roster progression is important how can you also be all in on protecting lacklustre rosters against those who have invested in progression?
It is the same rewards cause staying in Cav is your choice.. i am not naming UC, cause i seriously don't understand why they are spending resources in BG when they should be leveling. If you really tell me that if u ignored BG completely within 1 or 2 seasons you can't get to TB i call it bs... Now if u tell me.. hey im gonna do BGs because i can buy mats and its less stressful than doing content to be a TB and i only want to have r3s. then u r playing for the exact same rewards which is trophies... Its the same reward and saying is not because of the sole reason that items have a different price is like saying "well its your fault your paragon and u can't get the trophies i get by having an easy pool of fights to climb up... Who told u to invest on r4s and sig stones?" This system literally punishes developing a roster.
I interpreted "play for the same rewards" as "play for rewards from the same finite pool of rewards" not the way you are asserting here as "we are all trying to earn the same kind of rewards." The rewards we are all playing for are identical in the local context. They buy different things in the absolute sense in the store, because the store is progression priced. But that's offset by the fact that the store's prices are intended to be progression-relevant.
In other words, the way I would state this is that we are all playing for similar amounts of progression help in BG regardless of progression tier.
I understand what u are saying.. I just don't understand their logic... The rewards are the trophies... The store u buy is based on your progression... Meaning.. if u pay more is cause u decide to stay in that progression.. it's supposed to be a transition...not a "I only wanna battle cavalliers cause i'm cavallier and i also pay cavallier prices with my trophies"... We can't have a game based on progression that actually caters to staying on lower progression cause its more rewarding... How do u explain this to my f2p Paragon buddy... Just cause he got the 3rd r4...and invested a few sig stones... Is now fighting 16k prestiege player... While others who stay in their progression . Milking the bg store with their 5-10 R3s stay in Cav.. get easier matches and climb up higher... Its absurd..
The argument is that because lower progression players have higher store costs, they aren't actually "progressing" faster in BG. They might appear to be scooping up more trophies, but those trophies buy so much less that in effect, they are actually earning less rewards even if they seem to be sitting at a higher track.
As I mentioned (way, way) above, I don't find this to be a compelling argument, because it fails to account for how progression based rewards actually work, but that I believe is the line of thought those that believe this are following.
A question on this. In the only other PVP mode, rewards are not gated by progression. It doesn't matter if you are Cav or TB or Paragon, if you are competitive in a particular AW tier then you get the rewards for that tier. Why should this be different in BG?
If the expectation is that players will be ranked in a AW style ELO rating, then they are expected to face of against stronger rosters until their win rates drop. This means putting skilled TBs against not so skilled Paragons and so on. It makes no sense that the two players are rewarded differently for the same match. There is no solo content where a player gets rewards differentially, based on progression titles, for completing the same content - SQ/EQ/Story.
The argument on rewards isn't just that "lower progression players have higher store costs, they aren't actually "progressing" faster in BG". But also that they are getting rewards at their level for beating the competition at their level - similar to doing uncollected EQ or TL4 SQ for lower rewards. If they are expected to beat stronger opposition, they should also qualify for the same reward the stronger opposition has access to.
Like you said, the competition is to identify the strongest BG player. If that player is a Cavalier or a TB, why should they not have the same store costs as the Paragon? In your MLB example, a team with a lower budget wins the World Series, their prize money is not adjusted according to their budget size and neither does that prize money become less valuable because it goes to a smaller team.
He is fixating on UC cause its the lowest allowed in BGs, u reach UC at around lvl 37-40.. it doesnt even make sense you are competing against people 20+ lvls below...
Great response, thanks. Im not focused on uc, I guess it's just the easiest moniker to use to indicate low accounts (I think you said you're tb, as am I, so I consider us probably mid-tier).
Thanks for your great posts as well.
Yeah, it sounds like we're in the same group. I don't know how the MCOC population or BG player population breaks down %-wise across progression. Or how that has changed over time, etc.
When I said better roster should matter, im saying that if you work on your roster for years then you should have an inherent advantage over someone who has not, in a practical way that can be displayed in the setup of matches and in the actual fights (having better defenders, stronger defenders, better and stronger attackers).
The notion that gameplay should promote built-in imbalances is definitely a modern era thing. And it definitely is a major part of MCOC.
So, if we're fated to imbalance BG, then we should tackle who get the imbalances, what the imbalances should be, and their expected impact.
which of the following should matter for getting an "advantage" in BG?: 1) progression level 2) roster diversity 3) roster star level/rank/sig 4) player knowledge+skill 5) draft luck 6) nodes luck (does it fit your roster) 7) total spend 8) recent spend 9) actual spend at that moment to buy an advantage 10) BG spend 11) alliance 12) years on account 13) total time on account 14) in content creator program 15) community celebrity 16) number of posts on forum 17) likes/equivalent on forum 18) position on leaderboard 19) surveys filled out 20) login calendar 21) other
What type of advantages should there be?: 1) cheaper prices in the Battlegrounds store 2) better rewards on BG Events 3) more matchups with lower accounts 4) greater difference in level between accounts when playing lower accounts 5) less matchups with greater accounts 6) lower difference in level between accounts when playing higher accounts 7) more coins gained per win 8) less coins lost per loss 9) start at a higher tier in VT 10) Kabam tracking power level of decks used, and using that to match vs. a weaker deck 11) Kabam tracking power level of decks used, and using that to match vs. a deck that has bad matchups 12) change the draft to give higher frequency of best Champs showing up in draft 13) change draft to give lower frequency of best Camps to opponents 14) change the draft to give higher frequency of counters to whatever opponent drafts 15) change the draft to give opponent lower frequency of counters to whatever you draft 16) give you more time on the BG timer 17) give opponent less time on the BG timer 18) give you extra bonus points in the BG scoring 19) give opponent points reductions in the BG scoring 20) give a special UI that gives suggestions for which Character to draft 21) give you bonus beneficial nodes or Incursion style choice nodes 22) give opponent additional difficulty nodes 23) give you an option to swap in a Character of your choice that you didn't draft 24) allow your use of boosts 25) allow the use of heals an revives after each fight, these affect health and scoring 26) give you a certain number of bans that you can assign to players so that you don't get matched to them 27) give you more ban selections 28) give your opponent less ban selections 29) let you pick a champion that cannot be banned 30) extra special items in the battlegrounds store 31) access to premium limited access battlegrounds 32) other
For each of those2 questions, which numbers should be included in Imbalanced BG?
Seriously. This is the type of conversation we need to have. The actual details about what the advantages should be.
After that, we will set the degree and range of those advantages. Then we can project the impact.
As an example, as I posted earlier, over my last 37 VT matches: 56.8% were with accounts ~above my level, 18.9% were with accounts ~at my level, and 24.3% were with accounts ~below my level (NOTE: based crudely on the Star Level of the top 4 prestige Champs).
So at a TB level, I am having to face 57% of accounts above me. And only get to face 24% of accounts below me. I won 89% of my matches vs. lower accounts; I won 38% of my matches vs. higher accounts. If we want to reward easier opponents based on progression level, then we could set the following:
Paragon gets: 0% accounts above their level 20% accounts at their level 80% of accounts below their level
Thronebreaker gets: 50% accounts above their level 20% accounts at their level 30% of accounts below their level
Cavalier gets: 70% accounts above their level 20% accounts at their level 10% of accounts below their level
Uncollected gets: 80% accounts above their level 20% accounts at their level 0% of accounts below their level
With those % shifting depending on matchmaking being able to find the target range of opponents.
Or else remove roster entirely from the equation to put everyone on an even level from a champ perspective.
Would rewards for that still be based on progression?
If roster is removed entirely, we will likely see a LOT less people working to expand and grow their rosters. But if everyone gives up on BG, we would likely see that anyway.
Whether or not that advantage comes into play every match, or any match, would be up to the draw. 1. Lesser accounts are currently doing easier content (facing a much weaker field than say paragons) for rewards that are the same. The system is making them face a comparatively smaller challenge for rewards that are comparatively more valuable to them.
What % of lesser accounts?
Unless players use Victory Shields, BG is a "zero sum game". For every won coin, there is also a lost coin. For every lesser account with a huge win streak, there is a trail of corpses of lesser accounts with losses.
Do you really care if the top 10% of each progression level makes it through VT? Do you really think their rewards are gonna break your account? Unless you have a decent % of players at each progression level advancing, nobody at that progression level is gonna bother trying, beyond just zombie play to grab participation event rewards for losses.
If higher accounts just want better rewards, we can just lower the rewards achieved at each lower Progression Tier. What they get at milestones, what they can get in events, prices in the store, etc.
If higher accounts want better records, if they want to progress farther, and have all lesser account just hit a wall, then lesser accounts are just gonna stop playing.
Imagine if higher accounts lobbied to prevent lesser accounts from being able to complete lower level Monthly Quests.
If separate, the rank rewards should be different but of equal comparative value. Kabam makes a point to dictate the kinds of rewards each tier of player should be able to access, and maintain the in-game economy equitably across those tiers. So the ceiling for rewards should be firm for uc type accounts. I also think in a separate track situation, you could easily make the tracks accessible vertically. So a uc could enter any track, but paragon could only enter the mid or high tier, and the high tier would be locked to one track.
Should it be progression level based, or based on the power level of the saved deck?
The high skill players that climb progression on weaker rosters would have a really a harder time competing at their progression level. Likewise, some people could stack their alts and crush lower progressions. I know my alt currently is Cav because I am too lazy to take down GM, but it has enough firepower to probably crush most other rosters at the Cav level. I know in the New Player Arenas, super accounts dominate the top spots.
5. No, absolutely not. Farming should not be an option, but currently is if you have skills and a fresh roster or timing like DNA posted above. You can easily take my alt and pound out a bunch of rounds for easy wins.
All good.
I do expect some people will complain if this is not part of BG.
I had a whole thing typed up but it got boring so I scratched that and am replacing it with a hypothetical: aliens come down and demand we present the top 100 mcoc bg gc players to compete against their best alien players for the fate of the world. Do you take the top 100, or do you filter out the lower accounts that had an easier ride and send up the strongest dudes? If your answer is filter it out to save the world, then the system is not raising the most worthy to the top ranks currently.
If we're arguing about who is the best, the Aliens won't come down at all.
I had a whole thing typed up but it got boring so I scratched that and am replacing it with a hypothetical: aliens come down and demand we present the top 100 mcoc bg gc players to compete against their best alien players for the fate of the world. Do you take the top 100, or do you filter out the lower accounts that had an easier ride and send up the strongest dudes? If your answer is filter it out to save the world, then the system is not raising the most worthy to the top ranks currently.
Reasonably sure that the world would be told to "git gud". It was a choice to not invest in these skills and they should expect to be obliterated now, sucks but fair. Why should the entire world get to enjoy the rewards of being saved when only 100 cared enough to be prepared for it? Now, if you promise them lifetime leadership positions, build their statues in every city, agree to only refer to them as "Le Grand Fromage" and pledge eternal servitude, then maybe, just maybe, it would be worth the incredible effort of tapping the screen for next 30 min.
I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing if it's the case. I think expanding Rosters has always been something that some Players fall short on. They think Prestige, and they think the most popular/effective overall. They don't think wide range. I think that's part of the lack of preparedness some Players may be facing. I've always been a proponent of widening Rosters, not only going for the "best", as high as possible. We already have a number of game modes that focus on that. I think it's useful to have one that centers around breadth as well. One thing that has been true in general, although not for everyone, is people are way too selective in their Ranking choices and use of Champs. This has changed somewhat over the years, but I've still maintained the same stance. I Rank anything and everything I feel at the time. I may never have all Champs Ranked as high as they can go, but that's the neverending goal.
I think you may be coming around.
BGs is an ideal place to encourage players to expand the breadth and depth of their rosters. Which is, of course, why it rewards smaller accounts for ranking a handful of super-useful champs for their decks so they can thrash other less fortunate smaller accounts and leapfrog players who have spent years building things like roster breadth and depth.
I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing if it's the case. I think expanding Rosters has always been something that some Players fall short on. They think Prestige, and they think the most popular/effective overall. They don't think wide range. I think that's part of the lack of preparedness some Players may be facing. I've always been a proponent of widening Rosters, not only going for the "best", as high as possible. We already have a number of game modes that focus on that. I think it's useful to have one that centers around breadth as well. One thing that has been true in general, although not for everyone, is people are way too selective in their Ranking choices and use of Champs. This has changed somewhat over the years, but I've still maintained the same stance. I Rank anything and everything I feel at the time. I may never have all Champs Ranked as high as they can go, but that's the neverending goal.
I think you may be coming around.
BGs is an ideal place to encourage players to expand the breadth and depth of their rosters. Which is, of course, why it rewards smaller accounts for ranking a handful of super-useful champs for their decks so they can thrash other less fortunate smaller accounts and leapfrog players who have spent years building things like roster breadth and depth.
Dr. Zola
The same is true for Players who consider themselves the Top because they've rushed through Story with a few select Rank-Ups. Just being Paragon doesn't make a Player have more breadth and depth. It goes both ways.
I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing if it's the case. I think expanding Rosters has always been something that some Players fall short on. They think Prestige, and they think the most popular/effective overall. They don't think wide range. I think that's part of the lack of preparedness some Players may be facing. I've always been a proponent of widening Rosters, not only going for the "best", as high as possible. We already have a number of game modes that focus on that. I think it's useful to have one that centers around breadth as well. One thing that has been true in general, although not for everyone, is people are way too selective in their Ranking choices and use of Champs. This has changed somewhat over the years, but I've still maintained the same stance. I Rank anything and everything I feel at the time. I may never have all Champs Ranked as high as they can go, but that's the neverending goal.
I think you may be coming around.
BGs is an ideal place to encourage players to expand the breadth and depth of their rosters. Which is, of course, why it rewards smaller accounts for ranking a handful of super-useful champs for their decks so they can thrash other less fortunate smaller accounts and leapfrog players who have spent years building things like roster breadth and depth.
Dr. Zola
The same is true for Players who consider themselves the Top because they've rushed through Story with a few select Rank-Ups. Just being Paragon doesn't make a Player have more breadth and depth. It goes both ways.
Holy buckets, you can't actually believe this statement.
I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing if it's the case. I think expanding Rosters has always been something that some Players fall short on. They think Prestige, and they think the most popular/effective overall. They don't think wide range. I think that's part of the lack of preparedness some Players may be facing. I've always been a proponent of widening Rosters, not only going for the "best", as high as possible. We already have a number of game modes that focus on that. I think it's useful to have one that centers around breadth as well. One thing that has been true in general, although not for everyone, is people are way too selective in their Ranking choices and use of Champs. This has changed somewhat over the years, but I've still maintained the same stance. I Rank anything and everything I feel at the time. I may never have all Champs Ranked as high as they can go, but that's the neverending goal.
I think you may be coming around.
BGs is an ideal place to encourage players to expand the breadth and depth of their rosters. Which is, of course, why it rewards smaller accounts for ranking a handful of super-useful champs for their decks so they can thrash other less fortunate smaller accounts and leapfrog players who have spent years building things like roster breadth and depth.
Dr. Zola
The same is true for Players who consider themselves the Top because they've rushed through Story with a few select Rank-Ups. Just being Paragon doesn't make a Player have more breadth and depth. It goes both ways.
Holy buckets, you can't actually believe this statement.
Absolutely. You have Players content-rushing and calling it progress. Watch some YouTube, do a Google search, and rush through the content for the Titles. That isn't all there is to progress, and it creates a handicap when you're talking about content that tests the extensiveness of their Rosters.
Comments
However, there's a meta consideration. Can I say "in theory, everyone could get into GC?" Not really, because the only way to enter GC is to win, and every win is a loss for someone else. Consider the last two players in VT. One of them can enter GC by beating the other. The other can't, because they have no one left to beat.
Within practical limits, some percentage of VT players can reach GC. It could be a pretty high percentage, but it can't be everyone. So how the competition is structured does pick winners and losers by circumstance, and if you are on the wrong side of the cake cut, you are going to get less rewards.
So we are not competing for the same rewards, but we also don't have independent access to rewards. It is possible for a lot of people to get a lot of rewards, and it is also possible for very few players to get a lot of rewards, but it isn't possible for everyone to get all the rewards. There is some implicit jostling for rewards.
This is a subtle property of the system, and it takes a very nuanced perspective to appreciate. The gut instinct that we're competing for the same rewards is not strictly correct, but it may be reacting to a more subtle imbalance that most people would find difficult to articulate. In the same way we are often saying the match maker issues are benefiting low progress players, when it isn't helping all of them and isn't hurting all Paragons. It is more subtly shuffling winners and losers among all progress tiers, and the *obvious* result is very low progress players sailing into GC. That isn't the problem, it is just the spikey tip of the more general problem.
If you really tell me that if u ignored BG completely within 1 or 2 seasons you can't get to TB i call it bs...
Now if u tell me.. hey im gonna do BGs because i can buy mats and its less stressful than doing content to be a TB and i only want to have r3s. then u r playing for the exact same rewards which is trophies...
Its the same reward and saying is not because of the sole reason that items have a different price is like saying "well its your fault your paragon and u can't get the trophies i get by having an easy pool of fights to climb up... Who told u to invest on r4s and sig stones?"
This system literally punishes developing a roster.
In other words, the way I would state this is that we are all playing for similar amounts of progression help in BG regardless of progression tier.
The rewards are the trophies... The store u buy is based on your progression... Meaning.. if u pay more is cause u decide to stay in that progression.. it's supposed to be a transition...not a "I only wanna battle cavalliers cause i'm cavallier and i also pay cavallier prices with my trophies"...
We can't have a game based on progression that actually caters to staying on lower progression cause its more rewarding...
How do u explain this to my f2p Paragon buddy... Just cause he got the 3rd r4...and invested a few sig stones... Is now fighting 16k prestiege player... While others who stay in their progression . Milking the bg store with their 5-10 R3s stay in Cav.. get easier matches and climb up higher... Its absurd..
Some of the most interesting Chess games happen when two very strong players meet in a (relatively) friendly game. The reason being Chess at the highest levels played by the strongest players tends to be very defensive and usually a draw. It takes only the smallest of mistakes - and sometimes not even mistakes, just slightly less than the best play - to lose. So obviously competitive players are not going to show their hand, so to speak, and play their best strategies when they face future competition in less meaningful games. So instead you get ultrapowerful players playing the strangest games sometimes for the lulz, because the unspoken agreement is when they are playing for fun, they are going to play goofy stuff to hold their best stuff for when it matters. Goofy games between top tier competitors can be very entertaining.
No matter how strange, frustrating, weird, incomprehensible, or sophistric a position is, it is always nice when you have a proper counter for it. And a proper counter is not an argument that convinces the other party. It is one that everyone else will judge more convincing. This takes practice. And if they are willing to show their best stuff (such as it is) and you know you can beat it, the game's over. Remember, the real battle is with the devs. They are the ones we need to convince. Compared to them, this is easy mode. If I can't win here, even against the most intractable competition, I'm not going to win there.
Someone is always gonna lose as long as someone wins...
It doesnt make sense that someone who put 7 years into a Paragon account is not getting the same ammount of trophies as someone who put 2 or 3... Just because the system is catering to give them a number of "fair matches"
As I mentioned (way, way) above, I don't find this to be a compelling argument, because it fails to account for how progression based rewards actually work, but that I believe is the line of thought those that believe this are following.
The strength of a player in BG is based on their roster strength, their playing skill, their strategic acumen, and their champion and node knowledge. They are all equally important, and the whole point of a competition should be to see who has the best bag of that stuff total. We are not looking for the player with the biggest roster, *or* the player with the best twitch skills. We are looking for the strongest battlegrounds player. The players who deserve to get the most rewards should be the players who have the best overall combination of roster, skill, strategy, and knowledge. As far as I'm concerned, all four are equally important, and should be rewarded equally.
You are looking at rewards from a single season perspective. But progression in the game is cumulative. BG is the only mode where the incremental rewards of moving up a tier increases with tiers. You get as many tokens from moving through diamond and vibranium tiers as much as you get from getting up to platinum. Also, the BG store does not get progressively expensive as you buy more items (unlike glory store). The 6300 tokens from moving to vibranium gets you the same items as the tokens you get from moving up the first 4 levels.
Casual players churn in and out of the game. Hardcore player base is a lot more stable. Think about the implications of a reward structure which is extremely top heavy with a ranking set up which is also extremely top heavy (and stable). Over time, it is a sure fire way to have lower progress players fall too far behind. Given that tracking back on rewards is rare, you are in for a fairly inflationary economy.
Second, the scoring change was proposed with a linked adjustment to trophies necessary to advance to compensate on average. This means some players would progress just as fast or faster while some would progress slower but the psychologically punishing aspects of losing progress would be ameliorated.
The goal was never to propel more players into GC. The problem(s) being addressed, at least for me, were the three problems I specifically highlighted: the frustrating aspects of the scoring system, the fairness of the match system (specifically its inability to match on the basis of competitive strength) and the repetitive nature of forcing players to progress through tiers vastly below their competitive strength. The proposed solutions to those three problems were linked together in a way that attempted to gain the maximum amount of benefit while counterbalancing most of the deleterious side effects of each adjustment in isolation. I'm not sure how to respond to this section. This appears to be truisms that aren't relevant to the discussion at hand. Yes, progression rewards are cumulative in net benefit, but they are balanced around local incremental valuations. We don't balance 6* crystals based on the secondary progression benefits they provide in terms of allowing the player to earn even more rewards through the use of those champions. That's a form of reverse double counting. We offer players progressional rewards to help them progress. The act of progressing will improve their reward earning rates, but that's the intended benefit of progress. It shouldn't - and more directly, it never is - counted as a separate component of a reward's value.
Setting that aside, it is true that when it comes to tokens, the amount of tokens you earn gets higher per track the higher the track. But the tracks themselves get intrinsically harder to achieve - at least on paper - due to two separate design choices. The first is the amount of trophies necessary to promote, which increases (not continuously, but overall). And the second is the presumption, however loose, that the competition itself gets harder the higher you go, because higher VT tracks are depleted of weaker players.
The question, though was not whether the rewards were higher for players who reached higher tracks. The question was whether, as you stated, the structure of the rewards and requirements for them were such that it was futile for casual players to pursue. And that's not judged on how much they can get relative to higher achieving players, but rather how much they can get relative to what they can get elsewhere. If you have jealous players, they might decide not to participate in the mode if they can't get what other higher achieving players get. But we don't design games for those players. The BG rewards are designed relative to the real opportunity cost of playing the mode. If a casual player can get reasonably good rewards from BG relative to what they can get with the same playing style and approach elsewhere in the game, then it is not futile for them to play the mode, and that's the primary consideration a game designer should address. That's true in theory, but in my opinion BG is nowhere near such an inflection point. It is a competitive mode that is explicitly sabotaging competition to attract lower progress and more casual players. It isn't doing so in the way I would like, but compared to any possible game mode configuration that simply implemented a straight up competition, it is already bending over backwards to accommodate lower/casual players. And the rewards are unlikely to amplify progressional lock in for two completely different reasons. First, the highest progressional players are already fenced in by the game ceiling. Even *I* am starting to bump up against the top of the game. I am strictly limited in how I can leverage BG rewards to "run away" from lower players. I'm running out of 6* champs to collect. I am rapidly filling in my rank 3 roster and my rank 4 roster is pretty strong at this point. To put it in simplified geometric terms, BG is making my roster wider, but not especially taller.
Until 7* champs arrive, BG is helping lower tier players go higher, but higher progression players go wider. This means in real world terms a smart low progress player is more likely to be catching up than being left behind And it isn't an automatic given that 7* champs will immediately change this dynamic. It took years for even the mega whales to parlay 6* access into unambiguously higher progress. I'm sort of the poster child for this phenomenon. I am not a whale, and I am not in a top alliance. So I am not the recipient of the highest value rewards in the highest quantities. And yet, I'm probably closer to the top tier players than I have ever been. Virtually no one has lots of R5s, and the difference between the mega accounts with dozens of R4s and my account with eighteen is not proportionately higher.
In fact, I am looking at the big picture when it comes to BG rewards. I'm just looking at a bigger big picture: a picture where the theoretical progressional issues you're describing aren't an immediate or projectable threat, while the long term health of the game mode is the more actionable problem.
However, at the moment I would not place bets on either me or anyone else being right about any aspect of how 7* champs will launch. I've been having doubts of late (Yolo's recent podcast comments were the latest thing that I probably read completely differently than most people, and I think I'm looking at the recent combat power numbers in a different light as well). I think we will need to see them before making judgments about how they will change the game.
Kabam actually did add a significant rank up acceleration opportunity to another game mode before Battlegrounds. Well, sort of. The one game mode that can't really earn you rank up materials is the arena. You get them in AQ, in AW, in quests, and now in Battlegrounds. But not in the arena. Except the catalyst store, which offers a rank of catalysts for units, is technically an opportunity for arena grinders to convert arena rewards (units in particular) into a ton of mid range rank up materials. Very specifically the stuff that would make a roster wider but not really taller.
This might be a coincidence, or this might be a sign of things to come. The game has been moving in a direction that Kabam calls "RPG-like" content for a while, with less one-dimensional difficulty and more roster check style node combinations that encourage wider rosters. It is possible that Kabam is adding more opportunities for wider roster growth to go along with the kind of content that seems to be the wave of the future. The flood of BG resources might be one part of that, and it just seems weird and excessive to us because we're comparing that stuff to what we used to need, not what we will one day need. And by "we" I mean less the strong roster players, and more of the average players. For the game to give them enough, the rest of us higher progress players will have to be hip deep in the stuff.
I think that's part of the lack of preparedness some Players may be facing. I've always been a proponent of widening Rosters, not only going for the "best", as high as possible. We already have a number of game modes that focus on that. I think it's useful to have one that centers around breadth as well.
One thing that has been true in general, although not for everyone, is people are way too selective in their Ranking choices and use of Champs. This has changed somewhat over the years, but I've still maintained the same stance. I Rank anything and everything I feel at the time. I may never have all Champs Ranked as high as they can go, but that's the neverending goal.
Yeah, it sounds like we're in the same group. I don't know how the MCOC population or BG player population breaks down %-wise across progression. Or how that has changed over time, etc. The notion that gameplay should promote built-in imbalances is definitely a modern era thing. And it definitely is a major part of MCOC.
So, if we're fated to imbalance BG, then we should tackle who get the imbalances, what the imbalances should be, and their expected impact.
which of the following should matter for getting an "advantage" in BG?:
1) progression level
2) roster diversity
3) roster star level/rank/sig
4) player knowledge+skill
5) draft luck
6) nodes luck (does it fit your roster)
7) total spend
8) recent spend
9) actual spend at that moment to buy an advantage
10) BG spend
11) alliance
12) years on account
13) total time on account
14) in content creator program
15) community celebrity
16) number of posts on forum
17) likes/equivalent on forum
18) position on leaderboard
19) surveys filled out
20) login calendar
21) other
What type of advantages should there be?:
1) cheaper prices in the Battlegrounds store
2) better rewards on BG Events
3) more matchups with lower accounts
4) greater difference in level between accounts when playing lower accounts
5) less matchups with greater accounts
6) lower difference in level between accounts when playing higher accounts
7) more coins gained per win
8) less coins lost per loss
9) start at a higher tier in VT
10) Kabam tracking power level of decks used, and using that to match vs. a weaker deck
11) Kabam tracking power level of decks used, and using that to match vs. a deck that has bad matchups
12) change the draft to give higher frequency of best Champs showing up in draft
13) change draft to give lower frequency of best Camps to opponents
14) change the draft to give higher frequency of counters to whatever opponent drafts
15) change the draft to give opponent lower frequency of counters to whatever you draft
16) give you more time on the BG timer
17) give opponent less time on the BG timer
18) give you extra bonus points in the BG scoring
19) give opponent points reductions in the BG scoring
20) give a special UI that gives suggestions for which Character to draft
21) give you bonus beneficial nodes or Incursion style choice nodes
22) give opponent additional difficulty nodes
23) give you an option to swap in a Character of your choice that you didn't draft
24) allow your use of boosts
25) allow the use of heals an revives after each fight, these affect health and scoring
26) give you a certain number of bans that you can assign to players so that you don't get matched to them
27) give you more ban selections
28) give your opponent less ban selections
29) let you pick a champion that cannot be banned
30) extra special items in the battlegrounds store
31) access to premium limited access battlegrounds
32) other
For each of those2 questions, which numbers should be included in Imbalanced BG?
Seriously. This is the type of conversation we need to have. The actual details about what the advantages should be.
After that, we will set the degree and range of those advantages. Then we can project the impact.
As an example, as I posted earlier, over my last 37 VT matches:
56.8% were with accounts ~above my level,
18.9% were with accounts ~at my level, and
24.3% were with accounts ~below my level
(NOTE: based crudely on the Star Level of the top 4 prestige Champs).
So at a TB level, I am having to face 57% of accounts above me. And only get to face 24% of accounts below me. I won 89% of my matches vs. lower accounts; I won 38% of my matches vs. higher accounts. If we want to reward easier opponents based on progression level, then we could set the following:
Paragon gets:
0% accounts above their level
20% accounts at their level
80% of accounts below their level
Thronebreaker gets:
50% accounts above their level
20% accounts at their level
30% of accounts below their level
Cavalier gets:
70% accounts above their level
20% accounts at their level
10% of accounts below their level
Uncollected gets:
80% accounts above their level
20% accounts at their level
0% of accounts below their level
With those % shifting depending on matchmaking being able to find the target range of opponents. Would rewards for that still be based on progression?
If roster is removed entirely, we will likely see a LOT less people working to expand and grow their rosters. But if everyone gives up on BG, we would likely see that anyway. What % of lesser accounts?
Unless players use Victory Shields, BG is a "zero sum game". For every won coin, there is also a lost coin. For every lesser account with a huge win streak, there is a trail of corpses of lesser accounts with losses.
Do you really care if the top 10% of each progression level makes it through VT? Do you really think their rewards are gonna break your account? Unless you have a decent % of players at each progression level advancing, nobody at that progression level is gonna bother trying, beyond just zombie play to grab participation event rewards for losses.
If higher accounts just want better rewards, we can just lower the rewards achieved at each lower Progression Tier. What they get at milestones, what they can get in events, prices in the store, etc.
If higher accounts want better records, if they want to progress farther, and have all lesser account just hit a wall, then lesser accounts are just gonna stop playing.
Imagine if higher accounts lobbied to prevent lesser accounts from being able to complete lower level Monthly Quests. True. Only if you define "competition" as having a better roster. Should it be progression level based, or based on the power level of the saved deck?
The high skill players that climb progression on weaker rosters would have a really a harder time competing at their progression level. Likewise, some people could stack their alts and crush lower progressions. I know my alt currently is Cav because I am too lazy to take down GM, but it has enough firepower to probably crush most other rosters at the Cav level. I know in the New Player Arenas, super accounts dominate the top spots. All good.
I do expect some people will complain if this is not part of BG.
I don't expect a definitive answer but I'd happily take a PM if you have anything to share
If the expectation is that players will be ranked in a AW style ELO rating, then they are expected to face of against stronger rosters until their win rates drop. This means putting skilled TBs against not so skilled Paragons and so on. It makes no sense that the two players are rewarded differently for the same match. There is no solo content where a player gets rewards differentially, based on progression titles, for completing the same content - SQ/EQ/Story.
The argument on rewards isn't just that "lower progression players have higher store costs, they aren't actually "progressing" faster in BG". But also that they are getting rewards at their level for beating the competition at their level - similar to doing uncollected EQ or TL4 SQ for lower rewards. If they are expected to beat stronger opposition, they should also qualify for the same reward the stronger opposition has access to.
Like you said, the competition is to identify the strongest BG player. If that player is a Cavalier or a TB, why should they not have the same store costs as the Paragon? In your MLB example, a team with a lower budget wins the World Series, their prize money is not adjusted according to their budget size and neither does that prize money become less valuable because it goes to a smaller team.
Joke. Not to be taken seriously.
BGs is an ideal place to encourage players to expand the breadth and depth of their rosters. Which is, of course, why it rewards smaller accounts for ranking a handful of super-useful champs for their decks so they can thrash other less fortunate smaller accounts and leapfrog players who have spent years building things like roster breadth and depth.
Dr. Zola
That isn't all there is to progress, and it creates a handicap when you're talking about content that tests the extensiveness of their Rosters.